Herman the German

Some of you will already know that Herman is the German Friendship Cake that is currently doing the rounds.  Herman is a sourdough cake that gets given out in goo form (i.e. as a starter) and needs to be tended to for ten days mainly through a schedule of stirring well everyday and feeding with flour, sugar and milk every few days.  Then at the end of the ten days you divide him into four, pass three onto friends to care for and bake one quarter yourself.  It has recently reached my friends and we've all been feeding and baking Herman feverishly.  Looking after a growing, yeasty mass for ten days is a strange experience but a distinctly enjoyable one.  There is something comforting in the routine of coming home to stir Herman and as you know I'm all about feeling comforted.  The recipe that came with my Herman seems to be the standard one on the internet involving apples, raisins and spices such as cinnamon but I thought I would tweak it a little.  I assumed the apples were to keep the cake moist as well as for taste so swapped two apples for four pears which may have been one too many in hindsight but it was just a very pear-y cake and it did definitely stay moist.  I don't like dried fruit such as raisins and wasn't keen on buying a bag just to try and figure out what to do with the rest so I left those out as well.  A pear Herman sounded good but I was sure it could be improved so I decided to make it a chocolate and pear Herman and leave out the cinnamon as it's difficult to balance cinnamon with chocolate I find. This was also a cunning ploy on my part as if the pear didn't quite work or the cake was too dry I would be forgiven as I had provided chocolate cake and everybody likes chocolate cake.  To give my cake a chocolate flavour I used 1 3/4 cups of flour instead of the suggested two and used 1/4 cup of cocoa.  The recipe also said it should cook in 45 minutes but I found mine wasn't ready until it had been in for 1 1/4 hours.  
My tinkering with Herman went down very well and he didn't even last twenty four hours in my office.  

I don't own a cake stand so my classy version is an upturned saucepan.  

Leftovers paella

I am a secret hoarder.  But only when it comes to my freezer.  In the rest of my life and my home I am decidedly clutter free and organised but my freezer is my shameful secret.  Every tiny little scrap of leftover food goes into the freezer.  I was going through it at the weekend and found five parmesan rinds I had forgotten I have.  I keep them for when I make soup because they give it a nice deep and savoury flavour.  I last made soup two years ago but did I throw these tiny bits of barely usable parmesan away? No. I tidied them neatly at the back of the top shelf.  I have tiny smidges of sauces, less than one serving of mashed potato and conversely, eighteen mini meringues.  Which I only made because I didn't want my liquid egg white to go to waste once it was opened.  If someone can suggest something to do with these then I am all ears.


Now I've told you my little secret it explains nicely how I came to made this dish which I have called paella but every Spaniard on the planet would probably want to throttle me for it. As I was trying to bring order to the freezer I found myself with one chicken breast in one hand and about a four inch piece of chorizo in the other.  Staring at these two items led me only to paella.  I have made paella before and it was really tasty but I fancied something slightly different so decided to try and cook it in the oven.  I also had some baby vegetables knocking around in the fridge alongside a tiny dribble of wine so I was all set to use up some leftovers.  This was remarkably simple and really amazing.  I'm certain not everybody would agree if they tried it but it was my dinner and this is my blog so I'm entitled to call it amazing!  


Nothing was said but I have a feeling the husband would have liked more meat.  If it had been in the freezer he would have had it but if you are buying the ingredients fresh I would recommend adding another piece of chicken.  Maybe even some prawns if it takes your fancy.  


Even my shockingly bad photography can't make this look anything other than true comfort.  

The lemon looks like it's from another planet because the zest went into a bakewell tart.  I have parmesan rind in my freezer for goodness sake, I am so not throwing away a lemon just because it's without zest! I'm not going to give quantities below because aside from the rice and stock ratio, it's fairly flexible.  


Ingredients:


1 cup rice
2 1/2 cups stock
chicken
chorizo
vegetables
white wine
lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
pinch each of turmeric and paprika
salt and pepper


Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade
Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the chorizo and chicken until cooked. Add a glug of white wine and reduce.  
Add the rice to the pan and turn to coat in the oil.
Pour the stock onto the rice and add the paprika and turmeric.  Bring to a gentle boil.
Transfer the mixture into a casserole dish that has a lid, add the vegetables, some salt and pepper and put in the oven for 30 minutes.
Add lemon wedges to the top and dig in.  

Polenta

When I first started teaching myself to cook a long while ago (you would think I would be better by now) somebody gave me a copy of the Silver Spoon, the essential Italian cookbook.  One of my favourites in this weighty tome was the simple sausages in tomato.  Just brown off some sausages and then cover in passata, throw in a bit of salt and pepper and cook with a lid on for about half an hour.  It sounds too simple to be tasty but it really is.  I have not had this in a very long time but it popped straight into my head when I was trying to think of something that I could accompany with polenta for my first foray into making it.  It seems weird to me now that I have never made it as it really is my type of food.  It's easy to cook carbohydrate that benefits greatly from the addition of parmesan.  That's my main food criteria hit.  It's May already and I shouldn't be seeking the comfort of dishes like this but with all the rain we've been having lately I am craving comfort food.  This has just rocketed right to the top of that list.  Even above cheese on toast which is about as good as it gets.  I'm not going to write a recipe for this because all you do is cook some sausages in tomato, make up some polenta to the instructions on the packet and add a generous sprinkling of parmesan on top. It doesn't get easier than that.  Even making mashed potato is more effort for goodness' sake.  

Kung Po Chicken

My husband loves Chinese food and if both his jeans waistband and I would allow it, he would eat it every night for dinner.  Surprisingly this dish was a new one even on him and thankfully being home made is at least slightly healthier than the takeaway.  Trying to find a definitive recipe for Kung Po chicken on the internet was, predictably some might say, not an easy task. I was also hampered by not actually owning a wok and my one available frying pan being used for Ken Hom's egg fried rice (see earlier blogpost, I am now almost addicted to this stuff). It was also a weeknight meal so there was no way I was going to spend hours faffing about buying new ingredients I would use once in a blue moon, chopping, flavouring oil, deep frying etc.  In the end I took a few recipes I liked the look of and then combined them to make my own.  I was expecting it to be passable but require lots of tweaking but actually it was really quite good.  It wasn't a dish with a great deal of sauce and if that were a problem it would be easy to increase the quantities.  I know that no Chinese person or someone who knows anything about Chinese cookery would recognise this dish but we're pretty happy with it in my house and if anyone has a more authentic recipe they use please let me know.

Ingredients:

Two chicken breasts, diced

Vegetables knocking around in the fridge (in this case, mange tout, baby sweetcorn and a mushroom)

45g peanuts (non salted!)

For the marinade:

1 tbsp white wine

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp corn flour mixed with 1 tbsp water

2cm piece of fresh ginger, chopped.

For the sauce:

1 tbsp white wine

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp white vinegar

2 tsp brown sugar

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp garlic oil

2cm piece of fresh ginger, chopped.

Serves two

Mix together the marinade in a bowl, add the diced chicken and leave in the fridge for at least one hour.

Once the chicken has marinaded, heat the ingredients for the sauce together slowly. When the sauce is hot, add the peanuts and simmer for around 10 minutes.

Sauté the chicken and towards the end of the cooking time add the vegetables.  Once cooked, add to the sauce and simmer together for a minute or two.

Serve with egg fried rice and groans of happiness! 

Salted caramel shortbread

I first tried to make this last week after seeing this blog post and it went disastrously wrong.  I should have worked out that it would as it involved a) pesky conversion from American measures and most importantly b) a sugar thermometer.  I own a hell of a lot of kitchen paraphernalia, too much if you ask my husband, but one of those little blighters is not among the masses crammed into my cupboards.  I've never needed I one for making caramel so it didn't seem too important at the time. It all looked fine, looked like caramel and then in the flash of an eye it turned really dark, scary dark.  Out of nowhere.  Then due to what I can only describe as pathological clumsiness I proceeded to throw the saucepan of boiling hot sugar everywhere, namely all over my hands.  I won't repeat what I said but it really hurt.  My cries of pain could clearly be heard all over the house as the husband rushed to my aide and swiftly dunked the aforementioned limbs into cold water and then looked helplessly over the now solidifying toffee all over the kitchen.  I could do nothing but look a combination of pitiful and sheepish.  
Fast forward one week and now having full use of my hands again I decided I was not going to be beaten by salted caramel shortbread.  Macaroons had already defied me and there was not room for one more dissenter in the ranks.  I decided to wing it which is what I should have done in the first place.  I know how to make shortbread and I know how to make caramel, this should have been over a week ago rather than heading for round two. This time there was no injury to report, although I am having trouble typing this having burned my left hand on the oven earlier today.  I really am a waking disaster area. I may have slightly burned my caramel (it really does happen frequently) and have dark flecks spreading throughout but it tastes awesome and isn't really that unattractive so I'm happy.    It ain't too pretty but it is tasty:

Shortbread:
185g unsalted butter
80g caster sugar
270g plain flour


Caramel:
397g can of condensed milk#
50g light muscovado sugar
50g butter
1 tsp ground sea salt plus extra for sprinkling on top


Makes 20 small squares


Grease and line a 6in x 8in baking tin. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Cream the butter and sugar for the shortbread together.  Then add the flour and bring together into shortbread crumbs.  Press into the tin and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Bake the shortbread for 15-20 minutes until slightly golden on top and put to one side to cool.
For the caramel heat the condensed milk, butter, sugar and salt together on a very gentle heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted.  Then bring to the boil.  The caramel needs a lot of stirring but take it from me you need to be really careful as it's getting hotter.  Once the caramel has boiled lower the heat right down and simmer for 2-3 minutes.  Pour immediately onto the shortbread, add extra salt on top and leave to one side to cool.


Eat with tea and glory in not making a mess of yourself and the kitchen. 

Cheese Risotto

Cheese really is one of my favourite foods and when I was leafing through some of my cookbooks this week I spotted a couple of risottos made with cheese and thought I would give it a go. Most of the recipes required fontina cheese which I really cannot find near me so I improvised heavily and I doubt any Italian would call this a proper risotto so I was a bit nervous about the combination but was really pleased with the result. It was cheesy and oozy but not too overpowering, really filling and comforting. As usual I forgot to check my ingredients before I started and was a bit short on parmesan so I used what I had and next time would use more like 50 grams.

Ingredients:


150g arborio rice
1 - 1 1/2 litres vegetable stock
30g strong cheddar cheese
30g emmental 
30g parmesan plus extra for sprinkling
30g butter
100ml white wine
Serves 2


Melt 20g of the butter in a saucepan and then add the rice, coating it in the butter. Add the wine and cook until mainly absorbed, stirring frequently.   Add the stock a small amount at a time, stirring frequently and adding more once it has been absorbed.  Each risotto seems to take a different amount of fluid, add until the rice has softened.  This should take no longer than 20 minutes.  Once the rice is cooked, stir through the remaining butter and the cheeses with some salt and pepper.  The residual heat of the rice should melt the cheese.
Sprinkle some additional parmesan over the top and serve. 

Finally a photo...

I caved in to my co-workers' requests this week and made another batch of cheesecake brownies.  This time I photographed them so that you can see their beauty too!