Crazy Englishwoman Cooks!

#1. Anele’s question. Do you have a natural ability to cook or do you feel you just “get by?”

I originally started cooking just to get by. My mum is a wonderful cook and both of my sisters loved cooking, while I was the one who made gray macaroni and cheese in home ec class! I hated even trying to cook at home because I was surrounded by people who could cook better than I could and all wanted to tell me how I should be doing it. Plus I hated to even touch raw meat.

Once I was away at college, I could cook for myself and I always wanted to cook from scratch - it was a pride thing as much as anything. I'd grown up eaten decent food, so I didn't want to survive on meals from a can. Once I had my own space to work, I learned that I love cooking and now I hate for anyone else to be in my kitchen.

#2. Why do you buy the size eggs that you buy?

I always buy large. It's the size usually needed for recipes.

#3. Do you have any cooking “rules”?

I don't do pastry. No need to put myself through that when I can buy it.

#4. Fresh corn. Yellow, white or bicolored?

Makes no difference to me. Corn is corn.

About ten years ago, while I was living in Japan, I organized a prefectural British festival, as part of a British-Japanese culture year. We taught maypole dancing, cricket, and rugby, and served scones with cream and jam. We also managed to find a company willing to donate some cases of Irn Bru. At the end of the day, I got to take the remaining cans home with me, which was great because I loved it, and most people who tried it did not.

How to describe Irn Bru? Well first, there's the name. It's pronounced "iron brew" and has been made in Falkirk and Glasgow for more than 100 years. It's an orange color, like Lucozade, and contains a small amount of iron. One ad campaign when I was younger claimed it was "made from girders." As for the flavor - it's not citrus,
it's... well, what is it? You'd have to try it for yourself to decide.

Head on over to www.irn-bru.co.uk to learn more.

Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns!
One a penny two a penny - Hot cross buns
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons
One a penny two a penny - Hot cross buns

You know, I've always wondered about that rhyme - am I supposed to give them only to my daughters? Who knows!

Admittedly, I should have given you this recipe in time for Easter, since Hot Cross Buns are traditionally eaten on Good Friday. Bakeries still stock the spiced buns every year in time for Easter and my family eats them. But if you want to make your own...

1 packet yeast
150 ml milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
12 oz flour
2 oz butter
2 oz sugar
4 oz dried fruit (raisins, sultanas)
1 egg

Warm the milk and mix with the yeast, then leave for about 10 minutes to froth up.
Sift the cinnamon, nutmeg and flour together. Rub in the butter. Add the sugar and dried fruit, then add the yeast liquid and the egg. Mix well.
Knead the dough and leave somewhere arm to double in size. Punch it down and knead it again.
Divide the dough into 12 portions and roll into balls. Put on a greased baking tray and use a knife to make deep crosses in the top of each one. Leave for another 25 minutes to rise.
Bake at 425F or Gas 7 for about 12 minutes.
Brush the buns with some sugar dissolved in hot water and leave to cool.
Try them next year!

It occurs to me that I have mentioned Enid Blyton several times recently - ginger beer, greengage jam, etc. Her books, particularly the Famous Five series, were staples of my childhood and I still love to read one occasionally for some simple escapism. I can't recommend her books highly enough for kids to read.

Gooseberries and greengages. When was the last time you saw either of those in a US supermarket? (If the answer is yesterday, please tell me where you live - I'll come visit!)

I've written about gooseberries before (see here). My grandfather used to grow them, and once I got over their hairiness, I discovered they were actually very nice in a crumble with evaporated milk.

But I have to admit eve I was stumped by the greengage.

I'd heard of them while I was growing up (good old Enid Blyton once again), but I'd never actually seen them or eaten them, nor do I know anyone who has. It turns out that the greengage is simply a type of plum that is, you've guessed it, green. Now since I haven't tried them, I can't say if they are as sweet as regular, purple plums. In my old Enid Blyton books, the fruit was used in a jam and I did find the following recipe for greengage jam online:

6lbs greengages washed.
6lbs sugar
1and half pints water
Cut gages in half and remove stones. Crack some of the stones and remove kernels. Put gages and kernels and water in pan and simmer gently for about 30 minutes or until fruit is really soft. Add sugar stirring until dissolved. Bring to boil and boil rapidly until setting point. Pour into warmed pots and cover in the usual way.

#1. Do you celebrate Memorial Day with a picnic, cookout, road trip or some other way?

Memorial Day means my husband's annual visit with his parents to graves in London and Manchester (KY, not England) so we'll be doing that on Saturday, with a stop off at Weaver's Pool Hall in London for their chili dogs. Other than that, it's just a lazy weekend.

#2. What are staples at your summer time cookouts?

Homemade potato salad and fruit salad.

#3. What drink do you find most refreshing on a hot summer day?

Since moving to the US, I've come to like iced tea, but not when it's sweet. I'm a water drinker.

#4. Share a recipe for a picnic side dish.

Very simple cold rice salad that we've made for years. Cook some brown rice and leave to cool. Chop red peppers and green onions and toss with the rice, along with some almonds, and anything else you want to add, plus a tiny bit of mayonnaise.

If you're looking for a dessert that's rich, sugary, and very sweet, you won't find one much sweeter than Gypsy Tart. I adore gypsy tart butI should probably thank Mum for still having all my teeth!). After looking for recipes and pictures of it for this blog, I may just have to make one this weekend.

What I didn't realize until yesterday is that Gypsy Tart originated in Kent, where I come from. It supposedly was invented early in the 20th century when a woman wanted to feed the gypsy children playing near her house and just had sugar and evaporated milk to use for a pie filling.

As you know, I am not a pastry maker, which makes this pie incredibly easy - just 3 ingredients!

Gypsy Tart

1 pie crust
1 14oz can evaporated milk
12oz dark muscovado sugar (you want a dark brown sugar to give the tart its color)

Preheat oven to 400°F or Gas 6. Whisk evaporated milk and sugar together for approximately 10 minutes until the mix is fluffy and coffee colored. Pour into the pastry case. Bake for 10 minutes.
Serve cold.

I'd suggest washing it down with, as Enid Blyton would say, "lashing and lashings of ginger beer." NOT ginger ale, which is a wimpish, pale comparison to true, fiery ginger beer. Proper ginger beer should set your mouth on fire. Wonderful stuff!

OK, back tomorrow with more gs - green fruits.

F lets me talk about one of my all time favorite English foods: faggots. I know it's another dish with a name that has now become rather unfortunate but faggots are absolutely wonderful.

Basically, they are a giant meatball, and are usually served in gravy. Growing up, I had a particular fondness for Mr. Brain's Faggots. They were advertised in a fabulous commercial, narrated by Timothy Dalton. I still love remembering his rich, deep voice telling me about Herbert Hill Brain. That man has a gorgeous voice... but I digress. Much as I love the Mr. Brains product, I have read that they are not comparable to the traditional faggot. Having not tried the ones I used to see in the butcher's shop (that bore more than a passing resemblance to a giant testicle!), I can only say that I like what I've tried, and I look forward to them whenever I visit Kent.

Here's the recipe for you, courtesy of Marguerite Patten:

1 large onion
12 oz pig's liver
4 oz pig's heart
4 oz bacon or pork belly
450 ml water
salt and pepper
ground ginger
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp thyme
2 oz breadcrumbs
1 egg

Peel and slice the onion. Slice the meats. Put the onion and the meats in a saucepan with the water, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes. Strain the liquid but do not discard.

Put the onion and meats in a food processor and chop. Add the ginger, sage, thyme, breadcrumbs and beaten egg. Add a little of the reserved stock, if necessary. (Use the rest in gravy).

Preheat the oven to Gas 5 or 375F. Patten's recipe then tells you to spread the mix in the tin and mark into 12 portions. Alternatively, roll the mix into 12 large balls and place in the tin. Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour.

Serve with gravy.

I am preparing to head out of town to attend a conference in Houston, Texas for the rest of this week, and find that I've already covered my E foods in earlier blogs. You can find the recipe for Eccles Cakes by clicking here. Jellied Eels can be found here.

Back next Monday, fresh from Texas and ready to pick up where I left off.

I love dumplings. They're soft, and fluffy, and wonderful. So when I arrived in Kentucky and saw chicken and dumplings on the menu at dozens of local restaurants, I was more than happy... until I saw the dumplings. For the uninitiated, if you order chicken and dumplings, you will be presented with flat, pieces of rolled out dough. Little more than thick noodles.

Dumplings?

I think not!

I'm a purist so I'm going to describe how to make good old British dumplings, and, as a purist, you must use Atora suet.
Mix 2 oz suet with 4 oz SR flour and just a little bit of water. Roll the dough into balls and drop into the cooking stew for about 15 minutes.

Trust me, you will never want flat pseudo-dumplings again.

Taking a break from our alphabet run (although I need your d and e questions!)... here is the latest Four Foods meme and my answers.

#1. blueyes’ question. What’s your favorite seafood recipe?

I love seafood. Adore it. Would eat it every day if I could. I dated a guy in college who was allergic to shrimp and knew our relationship would never go anywhere. I think the worse thing to happen to a shrimp is marinara sauce. Don't dip it in a sauce that hides its flavor. Eat the shrimp as it is - pure and unadulterated. As you can see, this is something I feel strongly about, which is probably why my favorite way to eat seafood is in sushi. The Japanese understand how to let the simplicity of flavors stand on their own.

Alternatively, toss some shrimp with olive oil, red pepper flakes and pasta for a very simple dinner.

#2. Italian Ice. Like it, love it or leave it?

Never tried it so can't say.

#3. What’s your favorite crunchy food? (anything - pickles, chips, fruit, etc.)

Sometimes I crave crunchy purely for the texture. Luckily I don't keep chips in the house because I wouldn't be able to stop. In fact now I'm trying to think what I do have that's crunchy. Apples. Wheat toast. Kashi cereal.

#4. Have you ever eaten so much of something that you felt or got sick?

Have I ever drunk so much? Yes.
Have I ever eaten so much? Trying to think. I've become sick from food before but usually because it was terrible food (Long John Silver's will never darken my door again).

Not a good combination, I admit, but separately, each is delicious.

Clotted cream is an essential part of any traditional cream tea, and is served with jam and scones. Unpasteurized cream is heated and then left for several hours until you have a thick, rich, yellow-tinged cream. It is very difficult to find in the US, except in a few specialty stores on online, but if you find it, clotted cream makes that scone extra special.

Curry and Chinese are the two most popular forms of takeaway food in Britain. In fact, according to a recent study, Chinese food has now overtaken the ever popular chicken tikka masala as Britain's favorite ethnic dish, and both are more popular than fish and chips!

Curry first appeared in Britain in the late 18th century and gained popularity as the British empire expanded through India. Curry houses began to spring up and now Indian food has expanded from a late night meal on the way home from the pub to some truly wonderful neighborhood restaurants. My mum used to make some form of curry weekly, and I was amazed, when I moved to Iowa, that my roommates had no concept of Indian food. In addition to the aforementioned tikka masala, other popular dishes of Indian origin or based upon Indian cuisine are balti, tandoori, and korma. If you haven't tried good Indian food yet, you have no idea what you're missing out on. It is a huge part of British food culture.

Today is going to offer a simple explanation of chips and crisps for nonBrits.

Chips = What Americans might call French Fries. I say "might" because a proper British chip is in no way related to those puny little remnants of potato that you get at McDonalds. A chip is thick. I like mine soft and with a bit of grease (adds to the flavor) and topped with salt and malt vinegar. One thing I truly miss is a proper bag of chips, and I haven't found them anywhere in the US, not even at British-style restaurants or pubs.

Crisps, on the other hand, are what Americans know as potato chips, and we have dozens of flavors: salt and vinegar, cheese and onion, prawn cocktail, pickled onion, Worcester sauce, and more. Although good on their own, my favorite way to eat them is tucked inside a cheese sandwich to give it some crunch.

So there you have it - no reason to confuse chips and crisps any more.

Continuing our weekend round up of the letter B...

Black Pudding - lets get it out of the way first since it seems to be one of the foods that Americans ask me about the most. Apparently it is also known as blood pudding (although I have never heard it referred to as that in Britain). Made of congealed pigs blood, it is black when cooked. It is full or iron (and fat) but tastes lovely.

Now for biscuits. In America, biscuits are what the English would call a scone, and are served with a thick sausage gravy (whereas we would enjoy our scones with jam and cream). Biscuits in Britain are the equivalent of cookies. There are dozens of varieties, including:
Digestives (graham crackers)
Hob Nobs (oatmeal based and absolutely wonderful)
Bourbons (no booze, just chocolate)
Custard Creams
Gingernuts
Garibaldis (or as my sisters and I still call them, squashed fly biscuits)
and many, many more.
Whatever type you choose, they're best when dunked in your cup of tea.

And lastly, a recipe for the weekend. We've all hard of carrot cake but how about beetroot cake? My sister recently made a chocolate and beetroot cake. I didn't try it but my sister and mother assure me it was wonderful. If i get a chance to make it soon, I'll post pictures.

Beetroot Chocolate Cake

50g cocoa powder
175g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
200g caster sugar
250g cooked beetroot
3 medium eggs
200ml sunflower oil
100g dark chocolate, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 180 C/ gas 4. Grease & line a 23cm springform cake tin. Sieve the cocoa, flour, baking powder and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Drain and halve the beetroot and blend in a food processor. With the machine running add the eggs one at a time and then pour in the oil. Blend until the mixture is just smooth. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix in the chocolate. Pour into the tin and cook for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Back tomorrow with the letter C, so if you have any questions, be sure to send them in.

On to B today.

What does it have to do with Monty Python? Only one of the funniest skits ever: a blancmange from outer space lands on earth turning people into Scotsmen in a cunning plot to win Wimbledon. (Don't ask - remember, it's Monty Python!) Eventually, kilt salesman Angus Podgorny wins the tennis tournament by playing against himself for 15 years.

So what is blancmange? I have to admit that I do not personally like it since, as several friends tease em about, I have "texture issues" when it comes to food! Blancmange is a dessert made from gelatin and milk, often either white or a bizarre shocking pink in color. It is believed to be of Arab and early European origin but evolved into a popular British dessert in the 19th century.

Moving on from extraterrestrial desserts, we come to Bovril. You might see it on the shelf in grocery stores ad wonder what it is and what to do with it. Bovril is a salty, beef extract developed in the 1870s. It can be sued to add flavor to stews and soups. It can be mixed with hot water to make a beef tea. However, my favorite way of eating it is just spread on a piece of toast.



More Bs tomorrow when we look at black pudding and biscuits.

Arugula, Ale, and Angel Delight.

Appropriately enough, I'm eating avocado on toast for breakfast as I write this, to keep me in an alphabetical frame of mind.

Let's kick this off with 2 great questions from Torwen:

1.I have noticed a lot of recipes calling for arugula. I have never seen it in the UK but it looks like wild rocket to me. Do you know the difference and whether I can substitute them for each other without missing out on something.



Arugula and rocket are actually different names for the same plant variety (why on earth do they do that?) so feel free to use them interchangeably as they are the same. Incidentally, I came across one gardening board where someone was quite puzzled by the fact that the had bought both rocket and arugula seeds from different sources and just had double of the same plant.

There are different varieties of arugula / rocket so the pepperiness of the plant may vary slightly.

2. I would like to cook/bake with ale (just luv it, can't stand the Continental beer) But the only thing that pops into my mind is steak-n-ale pie. Unfortunately I am a vegetarian, so this is out of question. Do you know some other English recipes using ale?

This was actually much tougher than I expected, largely because the rich flavor of ale goes so well with meat (sorry!).

You mentioned using ale in baking and I came across the following recipe for Midsummer Ale bread in my copy of The Wicca Cookbook: Recipes, Ritual, and Lore

Midsummer Ale Bread
(makes 3 loaves)

3 cups SR flour
2 tbs sugar
12 oz ale
1/2 cup butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350F or 175C. Mix the flour and sugar then gradually blend in the ale. Transfer to 3 loaf tins and drizzle melted butter over the top. Bake for 50 minutes.

I was also determined to find a recipe for cooking vegetables with ale, and finally found one in the Vegetarian Times for Ale-Braised Cabbage with Leeks:

(serves 6)
3 Tbs olive oil
2 medium leeks, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red cabbage, cored and finely shredded
2 cups pale ale
2 Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs chopped fresh dill

Heat oil over medium heat in 12-inch skillet. Add leeks and garlic, and sprinkle with salt, if desired. Sauté 1 minute. Add cabbage, and cook 15 minutes, or until cabbage wilts and begins to brown, stirring frequently. Add ale, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 10 minutes, or until most of ale has evaporated. Remove from heat, and stir in lemon juice and dill. Season with salt and pepper, if desired.

If anyone else has any vegetarian recipes using ale, feel free to share.
Also, for any Guinness fans, I have a recipe for Chocolate Guinness Cheesecake that I'll be sure to post once I've tried it.

And finally, Angel Delight.

If you live in England and have not yet tried this, y should. It's a powder dessert that you mix with milk to create a sort of mousse and it was a favorite when I was young. There used to be dozens of flavors and I think there are only a few now, but butterscotch, topped with Dream Topping was a personal favorite.


Tomorrow, we cover b: blancmange, beetroot, and more. So send those questions if you have any.