Irn Bru Ice Cream

I first properly fell in love with Irn Bru about 8 years ago on a trip to Scotland in which I had run out of tonic for gin and needed a suitable substitute. In walked Irn Bru, strutting its Barley water, sugary goodness saying "I contain quinine". It worked perfectly with gin and I've been in love ever since.

But when Irn Bru announced it was making an ice cream, I knew I had to get my hands on it. Sadly, it's only currently on sale in Glasgow and Scottish friends were unwilling to bring me some back from their ventures north of the border.

Necessity breeds ingenuity and I decided to make my own Irn Bru ice cream.

You will need:
 - 1 litre of Irn Bru
 - 300ml full-fat milk
 - 300ml double cream
 - 4 egg yolks
 - 2 teaspoons of cornflour

 - 1 litre freezable container. I used an old ice cream tub

This recipe comes in two parts. The first is the creation of the Irn Bru syrup.

For this stage you want to use a pan which you wouldn't miss if it got ruined, just in case. Pour your litre of Irn Bru into the pan and bring to the boil and reduce until half.

Combine the cornflour with a small amount of water to create a paste and add to the Irn Bru. Reduce further until half of the remaining liquid has gone. You should now be left with a quarter of what you began with and a thin syrup.

The second part of this recipe is the ice cream itself.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks together for a few minutes.

Place the cream and milk into a milk pan on a medium heat and bring just to the boil. Remove from the heat and pour the dairy mix into the eggs, whisky until completely mixed.

Add the Irn Bru syrup at the stage and watch your custard go orange.

Return the Irn Bru custard mix back to a pan and place on the lowest heat possible, continuously stirring until the mix has thickened. You can check this by drawing your finger over the back of the spoon to create a line. If the line remains stable the custard is ready.

Strain the custard into the bowl and leave to cool to room temperature. Transfer into the container and put it into the freezer.

Every few hours you will have to remove it from the freezer and whisk, or stir, so that you break up the crystals and get a smoother ice cream.

When finished you should have something that looks a bit like this

PANCAKES

I would lovingly write pancake recipes for you but Duggers has already done that and I intend to use her recipes because they look awesome and I can't actually flip pancakes (the horror)!

So far there are THREE recipes on her blog.
My favourite: Galette Saucisse (complete with sing-along) http://sarahduggers.com/2014/03/03/galette-saucisse/ will satisfy your inner Frenchman any day of the year.

Those with a sweeter tooth can try her sweet pancake recipe http://sarahduggers.com/2014/03/01/pancake-day/

For those of you who prefer things American you can try these http://sarahduggers.com/2014/01/05/new-year-pancakes/

I will be trying all three and I encourage you all to follow by example.

By the way, this is what happened last time I tried to flip a pancake...

South African Cuisine: Bobotie

I'm been craving South African food for a long time and having unsuccessfully searched high and low in London for a place to get my fix I had to resort to my own natural talents.

Bobotie is a dish from the Cape and it is essentially spiced mince with a custard topping.

You will need:
1 thick slice of white bread (crusts removed)
250ml milk
1 finely chopped onion
1 finely chopped garlic clove
750g of mince (doesn't matter what variety but Quorn mince absorbs the custard)
2 tbsp curry powder (as mild or spicy as you like)
2 tbsp of vinegar
2 tbsp of chopped almonds
2 tbsp of chutney (I used Gratton & Oldridge's Spicy Tomato chutney as it's very, very nice. See: http://www.grattonandoldridge.co.uk/)
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground pepper
3 eggs

Soak the bread in the milk and then squeeze dry. Combine the squeezed bread with the mince, onion, garlic, curry powder, vinegar, almonds, chutney, ginger, turmeric and pepper and mix well.

Lightly brown the mince mix in a pan before transferring to a casserole dish.

Beat the eggs and milk together and pour over the mince.

Bake in an oven at 180 degrees Celsius for ~50 minutes. Serve with rice

Please excuse me for interchanging imperial and metric measures, tablespoons are much easier to measure than 17.75 ml

Galette des rois

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me a cake to celebrate the arrival of the Magi.

The galette des rois is a popular tradition in Francophone parts of the world to mark the end of Christmas and to draw the kings to the Epiphany. A figurine or, in this case, a bean is placed inside the cake and the person who finds the bean becomes king for the day and has to provide the cake for the next year. It's also common for the cake to be decorated with a crown for the finder of the bean to wear.

Anyway, to the most important bit - the recipe... One of my more demanding friends requested this recipe. However, the original recipe, of which this is an adaptation, came from the Telegraph .

You will need:
 - 2 packets of puff pastry, totalling around 700g.
                                       You can make your own but shop bought pastry is much easier to use and the smugness of making your own pastry might be short lived...

 - 200g of ground almonds
 - 150g of sugar
 - 100g of softened butter. Don't use margarine, it doesn't taste quite right
 - 2 eggs

Whack the oven onto 210 degrees Celsius.
Line the bottom and sides of a pie dish or flan case with one packet of the puff pastry and trim the excess.

Mix the almonds, sugar, butter and eggs together to make a paste. You could probably use marzipan in its place if you're lazy as it will have a similar result.

Spread the almond paste evenly across the puff pastried dish. Cover with the other puff pastry packet, trim the excess and crimp the edges using a fork. Score with a criss-cross pattern and glaze with an egg wash.

Pop in the oven for 30 mins or until golden and puffed.

Voila! Galette des rois

Partridge in a pear tree

A few weeks ago I acquired some partridges and, seeing as it is coming up to the festive period I thought I would share the recipe for this most festive of dishes.

Before the jus

Partridge can be readily found in your local fields. However, if you don't fancy shooting and preparing your partridge you should be able to find them in your butchers or a supermarket. Preferably go for the butcher. 

For this recipe you will need:
2 pears
1 partridge
some carrots
some chopped cabbage leaves
(This is for one dish. Increase the pear and partridge by one for every additional dish)

Peel and halve the pears. One pair of pear halves will be kept to one side for the time being. The other pair should be chopped up finely and put in a saucepan with about 200ml of water. Bring to the boil and then simmer whilst you prepare the rest of the dish. 

Heat the oven to 180C. Sear the partridge in a frying pan with a knob of butter to colour the skin and start the cooking process. Wrap the breast in some bacon, the fattier the better, and transfer to the oven along with the whole pair of pear halves and carrots. Leave in the oven for about 15-20 mins. 

Strain the pear sauce and return to the heat to reduce by half.

Once all cooked, prepare in the following way. Plate up the pair halves at 90 degrees to each other to form the trunk. Place the carrots underneath the horizontal pear and the cabbage leaves above the vertical pear. Carve the breast off the bird and place the breasts in the cabbage. Drizzle the pear jus over the dish and eat.

Devonian Sausage and Mash

This weekend I had the pleasure of entertaining two very good friends from home. The trickiest thing, I find, is thinking up food to cook for people that is a) tasty; b) quick / can be left alone. So, on Saturday as we went around the museums of London I put a dozen sausages in the slow cooker with the very best compliment to sausages, and which definitely makes this recipe Devonian as opposed to being from any other (and inferior) county. 

This key ingredient is cider. But any old cider won't do. It has to be from Sandford Orchards as that is, in my opinion, the best cider in the world. But for this recipe I used some Old Kirton (see image) as it is a great cooking cider and great drinker. It's dry, sharp and with a kick to whisk you back to the rolling, red mudded hills of Devon. 

Not only is Old Kirton a great cooking cider, it's also a fantastic drinking cider. However, if you like your cider fizzy and cold you should probably rethink your life and get some of this down your gullet. 

Anyway, back to the recipe. Dozen sausages and about a litre of cider. If you can't make it Old Kirton, make sure it's dry and flat. Whack on the slow cooker for a few hours (I think this was on for about eight). 

When it's almost ready, mash up some spuds and transfer most of the liquid into a saucepan. Now, with some cornflour you want to thicken up the cider sauce into a cider gravy. Serve up the sausages and the mash and cover with a ladle of the cider gravy. 

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a proper job.

Ox heart stew

It be proper hearty!

Lots of people eat steak these days but most of them neglect other parts of the cow, such as the offal. It could be dismissed as awful, but offal is actually tasty and people need to get over their phobia of such things. So, this is the first post of many to come about the offal side of life.

Ox heart is huge and cheap. I bought mine for £5 from the local butcher and they were perplexed that someone asked for heart. I did initially want lamb's heart as they fry rather nicely, but they only had ox heart in stock.

That's what an ox heart looks like. Not that dissimilar to your own heart, just a lot bigger. To prepare the heart you want to rinse it first, washing out the ventricles etc., because congealed blood isn't that nice (unless it's in a black pudding). Then you want to grab a sharp knife and cube the heart. Be sure to leave the fat on as it'll make the stew rich in taste, but if you come across any sinew you want to cut this out and discard. It gets tough in the cooking process.

 Half way done and the heart will look like this. Finish off the cubing process.

Complete cubed ox heart in a slow cooker. If you've cooked a stew before you can do what you want to finish it off. If you haven't cooked a stew before, pay attention.

Dust the heart with flour as this will help the sauce thicken up and you'll have a nice jus. If you want a gravy at the end, you'll have to take the jus and add a cornflour paste to get that sort of thickness.
Add some vegetables. What you put in is entirely up to you. For this I went simple with potatoes, onion and carrots.
Add some stock (beef, chicken or vegetable is fine) and season to taste. Cook slowly for a good few hours and you'll be the proud owner of one of the most delicious tasting stews there is. Also suitable for freezing.