Nigella's Korean Keema

I've written before about my nagging feelings of guilt about not making enough use of all the amazing Asian ingredients around me...  I'm doing better now (thanks to Bill!  Awesome Thai-style pumpkin last night, from Bill's Everyday Asian) but I've had a recipe from Nigella's latest book, Kitchen, bookmarked to try for ages: Korean Keema.

Nigella writes how she has discovered a new ingredient, a Korean chilli paste called Gochujang.  I suspect that this means that all UK supermarkets will now be stocking this, such is the merchandising power of Nigella!  Anyway, I managed to lay my hands on a tub in a little Japanese shop here (the shop underneath the Gadong branch of Excapade for any readers in Brunei) and thought I'd give it a try.

This is indeed a quick and easy meal.  It took about 10 minutes from start to finish once the ingredients were assembled:

For the sauce - Chinese rice wine, soy sauce, honey and Gochujang.

Aside from this, all that was needed was minced turkey (although I used chicken), frozen peas, and fresh coriander.  Brunei seems to be all sold out of coriander this week so I didn't bother, but next time I'll make sure to use some.

My blog-friend Anna has very kindly typed out the recipe which can be found here, on her lovely blog.  I completely agree with Anna that I think I'd use a touch more of the Gochujang if I made it again, although what I felt was lacking was any kind of chilli heat.  The paste is described as 'Hot Pepper Paste' but despite its unusual smoky flavour (almost liquorice-like as Nigella describes it), it packs very little punch.  This would make it great for the chilli-haters, but as we certainly don't fall into that category next time I'll be adding plenty of chopped fresh chilli to the dish.

Served with plain Jasmine rice and a side of garlicky kailan, this made a speedy and healthy supper.

Tarte Fine Aux Pommes

Why is it that when you want to make something sound posh, or chic, you give it a French name?  I wasn't aiming for chic with this pudding - although I have to admit it did look lovely - but rather I wanted something that didn't use huge amounts of cream.

I'd volunteered to make a pudding for our Book Club meeting last night.  An easy task I'd thought...  but I was quite surprised how difficult it was to find recipes that didn't involves too much dairy produce.  This wasn't because of any allergies, or indeed health reasons (as if!), simply that dairy products here are hard to find.  They're all imported from Australia or New Zealand and they're a) expensive and b) sometimes not-quite-right, not quite what you're expecting, often because many of them are UHT.

I've recently acquired the excellent Nigella Kitchen book, and thought I'd make my first recipe from that...  but nothing inspired me, mainly because every recipe in the 'My Sweet Solution' section included 300ml double cream, or 500g mascapone.  So I turned to Nigella Express, a book that I rarely use, and sometimes have twinges of guilt about.  (Do you ever feel like that?  Guilty that you don't use certain cookbooks enough?)  Anyway, I discovered the Tarte Fine Aux Pommes (Fine Apple Tart perhaps?) and decided that it fit the bill perfectly.

The recipe can be found here and I made no alterations, other than to increase the caramel sauce a little - I used a heaped tablespoon of both the butter and sugar.  It was also quite slow to take on the caramel colour so I gingerly spooned in a little of the lemony water that the apples had been soaking in.  It bubbled up madly - so be careful - but it did the trick, loosening the sauce a little and helping it magically to brown.

I thought that I had bought a block of puff pastry, but when I defrosted it it turned out to be 10 squares of pastry instead.  I put them together like a jigsaw, sealing the edges with some beaten egg, and slicing some up to make a raised border.  You can see the joins as the edges rose - all very rustic!

I cut up all 3 apples that I had bought (I used Granny Smiths) but found that 2 was plenty.  The other apple was eaten uncooked, using the wedges of it to scrape the leftover caramel sauce out of the pan...   Mmmmm!

We had a lovely evening at Book Club (despite no one except me liking Eat Pray Love..!?!  Ah well!) and there was food galore - gorgeous curries, and several puddings.  I really didn't mind having leftovers to take home though - I enjoyed a generously-cut oven-warmed slice of it this morning with a cup of coffee.  It was fabulous, rather like a Danish pastry, and definitely much nicer warmed than cold.  I can't honestly say that I could taste the caramel sauce very distinctly, but I think it just added to the sweet butteryness of the filling - a lovely contrast to the crispy flaky pastry.  I'll definitely make this again.

Home Sweet Home

It seems way too long since my last blog post.  Since I last wrote we've had half term which we spent in Vietnam (blogs to follow on that subject - still mustering my thoughts on a fantastic trip) and had an exhausting week back at work.

On our arrival back in Brunei we discovered that our shipping had finally arrived from the UK.  Yes, that's our shipping that we packed up in July...  all 37 boxes of it!

We were almost dreading its arrival as we had got very used to our house as it was.  It looked very chic and minimalist - far from our usual style.  It's amazing how quickly you get used to living with a very small amount of 'stuff', and you quickly realise you really don't need very much.

However, once we started unpacking it all got quite exciting to see our belongings once again.

... although our speed in unpacking was equally motivated by the need to clear a path through the heap of boxes that were covering the floor!

Rob unpacked the things in the lounge, while I tackled the kitchen boxes (no gender stereotyping here then).  Although I've found it strangely liberating to be without my cookbooks - there's been a lot of 'intuitive', making it up as we go along-style cooking here - I was delighted to be reunited with Nigella, the first books to go onto the shelf.

It made me laugh that I had packed my Elvis cookbook!  Still, you never know when you'll need to cook an Elvis-themed meal (right Sarah?!)

I was pleased we'd had the forethought to pack all our Asian cookbooks.  It'll be much easier to buy all the ingredients we need for them here.

   
We bought some fantastic fairy-lights in Vietnam and have strung them up in the pondok (a sort of garden-room which has netting for windows so you can be inside/outside at the same time - perfect for enjoying the sunset without the mosquitoes!)  They look lovely.

It's taken many hours, but now the house finally feels like home.  The concrete walls proved a challenge, but we've managed to get lots of pictures up - it's like a black-and-white photo gallery, with a couple of mine hanging alongside our two Tom Wilson originals! 

Phew!  We're just trying not to think about the fact that we'll have to pack it all up again in 18 months time...

Easter Treats

I didn't do as much baking as I had hoped for Easter.  This was largely due to the fact that the school term didn't end until Maundy Thursday, so rather than the usual week-either-side-of-Easter holiday, we have the 2 weeks after Easter.  I'm not complaining of course - it's lovely now to have so much time after the Easter weekend - but it has meant less cake.  Oh well.

I've never got round to making my own Hot Cross Buns, but we have enjoyed plenty of bought ones.  Halved, hot from the toaster and slathered in butter...  sometimes with Marmite too.  Although everyone who've ever seen me spread Marmite (or even Bovril) on a Hot Cross Bun thinks I'm some kind of madwoman.  But it's nice, trust me!

The one thing I did manage to bake was a Simnel Cake.  I don't use a 'proper' Simnel Cake recipe, but instead make Nigella's Marzipan Fruit Cake from the recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess.  Instead of the traditional layer of marzipan in the middle of the cake, this recipe calls for a block of marzipan to be cubed, then frozen overnight before being stirred into the uncooked cake mix.  This means that there are nuggets of marzipan throughout the cake - as well as the layer, plus 'apostles' (just 11 - Judas doesn't get one), I put on the top.

Looking at the finished cake I think I should have made the effort to make my own marzipan.   The pack I purchased, labelled 'Golden Marzipan' should perhaps have been renamed 'Scarily Vivid Yellow Marzipan'... although maybe that might not have made it a best-seller.   Our attempts to burnish the marzipan topping using our kitchen blow-torch nearly ended in disaster (Rob lost all the hairs on the back of one hand, and I consider myself lucky to still have my eyebrows...)  But, it's the taste that counts, no?  And this cake tastes good.

It's a very fruity cake, made with glace cherries, sultanas and, slightly unusually, dried pears.  These give the cake a wonderful fudgy graininess and help keep it moist, even when accidentally overcooked.

I think I left it in the oven for 10 minutes too long, but in my defence it was very hard to test its 'doneness' as inserting a skewer without hitting some gungy marzipan was impossible.  However, it was far from ruined as the marzipan and fruit kept it pleasantly squishy.

The recipe can be found here, on the Nibb'lous website.  I didn't change the recipe much, although I don't keep white rum in the house so ended up soaking the dried fruit in medium sherry, with a splash of rum flavouring and some extra orange-flower water (not, incidentally, an essential addition to the cake).

I hope you all had a very Happy Easter.

Christmas Approaches... bring on the snow and cake!

"Let it Snow!" I pronounced in my last blog post, and...  sure enough, it has!  You might think I'd be immune to the charms of snow having lived through two Canadian winters, but I still find something magical in it.  I suppose it's that it's always quite unexpected here in England.  I just love how the snow brings so much excitement - on our walk yesterday we saw so many people having fun on sledges. 

The snow has also made everyone so cheerful.  Practically everyone we have passed whilst walking this weekend has greeted us with a cheery 'hello!' and one even offered us a go on their sledge!

Of course, it's only lovely if you have nowhere you need to go.  We haven't really had to drive anywhere this weekend so it's not been a problem.  I didn't much enjoy my snowy commute to work on Friday though... 

So, what better to do on a snowy weekend after a long walk than to enjoy some festive food?  Wherever we are spending Christmas Day itself, Rob and I always like to cook our own early Christmas Dinner, so that's what we did last night.  Turkey, stuffing, bacon-wrapped chipolatas, lots of sprouts - even a Christmas Pudding.  It was gorgeous!

My Christmas baking has also been done.  Having salivated over Nigella's Chocolate Christmas Cake recipe and heard excellent reports of it from my online foodie friends, I decided to go with the version in Feast (very similar to the version in Nigella's Christmas).  As ever the contents of my cupboards necessitated a little tweaking of the recipe (no Tia Maria?  Mix up some Rum and Camp Coffee instead!), and I left out the candied peel because, well, it's gross. 

The recipe made one 20cm cake, as stated, but I had quite a lot of mixture left over so managed to also make 4 cute mini loaf-cakes as well.  These were very handy for giving as Christmas presents, especially when adorned with edible glitter and chocolate stars.

And the cake itself?  Amazing.  Gorgeous.  Better than I ever expected!  Even Rob, who really didn't like the idea of it, and even grimaced in disgust when he tasted the uncooked mixture, is a convert.  You can't really taste the chocolate in it, but the cocoa and the coffee add a deep rich smokiness to the cake.  The texture is not as dense as a traditional fruit cake, but it's heavy with moist fruit, spongy and sticky.  In short, perfect. 

The recipe can be found in many places online, but here's a link on the BBC Food website.  I can't recommend it enough.  I had a large slab of it with a cup of tea this afternoon... and now I'm a little worried about how I'll fit in my 'Boxing Day' supper of cold turkey and fried stuffing!  I'm sure I'll manage.

The Weather Outside is Frightful...

But the scene in front of the fire has been delightful.  What could be nicer than sitting on the sofa, warming up after a brisk walk with a cup of tea and a toasted crumpet, and surrounded by recipe books?   I'm thinking of making the Incredibly Easy Chocolate Fruit Cake, as pictured in Nigella's Christmas book.  It's the phrase 'incredibly easy' that's tempting me... oh yes, and the word 'chocolate'.  I'm also keen to find an excuse to use my 'Hologram Gold Disco Glitter' once again - it looks stunning on top of a dark cake such as this one.

The Jane Asher book is from the local library.  I'm glad I didn't buy it, her writing style really irritates me, although there are some nice-looking recipes that I might just take note of before returning the book.

A little later on and the tea and crumpets are replaced by wine...  and the Christmas socks have emerged!  Ho ho ho.   It's still a little early for us to be decorating the house, although we nearly went to buy the Christmas tree this last weekend - we've decided to go next Saturday instead.  We did however collect some lovely holly.  Last year it was almost impossible to find any with berries on it, so this year we were keen to grab some as soon as we saw it.  We put some behind every picture in the sitting room, and I'll add some ivy too soon.  I like to use as much natural greenery as I can... but leaving plenty of room for some tasteless kitch decorations too!

Talking of kitch, we've also started playing our extensive collection of Christmas music.  Before we went to Canada we had a very tasteful selection of classic Christmas carols and festive choral music.  Now we have a broad range of other 'classics' such as Elvis' Christmas Album and The Beach Boys sing Christmas (thanks to a crazy moment in the cut-price music section of Walmart!).  My favourite album is a double CD I bought - rather oddly - at a Bath and Body Works shop in Las Vegas, entitled Glitter and Glow.  It has a fantastic selection of Christmas hits, some classics, some new recordings.  One of my very favourite tracks is this one from Bing Crosby:



Now if only the rain would stop... let it snow!

Fancy Dress for Cupcakes

I have so many talented friends that I seem to spend much of my life saying things like "Wow!" and "I wish I'd thought of that". I had one such moment a couple of months ago when Dani, founder of the excellent Cottage Cooks website, announced on our forum that she had been designing and making her own cupcake wrappers. She's even set up a website dedicated to them: www.cupcakewrappers.co.uk, complete with 'Cupcake Wrappers Blog' to keep you informed of new developments on the Cupcake Wrapper scene.

It's no secret that I love baking cakes, but I must admit that I'm not great at decorating them... I have many sprinkles and glittery bits for cake decorating, but I've never really mastered the art of icing (it's on my 'to do' list!). However, these cupcake wrappers do away with the need for all that - of course you can still decorate them if time, skill and occasion allows, but just slip the naked cupcake into one of these and voila! It looks pretty perfect with no effort on your part at all.

I can't tell you how delighted I was to receive some of these fabulous wrappers as part of an Easter gift from Dani. They arrived in a bag, flat-packed, prompting plenty of "what are they?!" confusion from those unfamiliar with this genius concept.



Yesterday I was struck by the cupcake-making urge and had one of those days where lots of things came together very nicely... I had half a tin of condensed milk in the fridge which needed using up, and I was determined to find a great chocolate cake recipe after a couple of recent chocolate-cake-related disappointments. I found Nigella's 'Birthday Cake' recipe in her book How to Eat and discovered that it required the exact amount of condensed milk that I needed. It was clearly meant to be. I also had 3 pears that were past their best, and as I love the combination of chocolate and pear I peeled and chopped them and added them to the cake mix.

They turned out beautifully. The mix made 15 generously-sized cupcakes. You might even call them muffins - I've never quite worked out the difference.

When the cakes were cool I made up the cupcake wrappers - the work of a moment, inserting the tab into the slot provided - and slipped the chocolately beauties inside.



As you can see, the wrappers are reversible so you can choose which look you prefer - or wrap half a batch each way.



I think I'm most drawn towards the elegance of the brown polka-dots with the chocolate cakes... but the ice-creams and lollies design is very cute and summery, and such pretty colours!



These wrappers would be a perfect way to make any special occasion even more special - do take a look at the Cupcake Wrappers website yourself and have a browse through the many designs there.

Lamb - Cute and Tasty

Thank heavens that lambs grow out of that 'unbearably cute' phase pretty quickly, otherwise I could never again eat my favourite meat. But cute or not, I always think that sheep have a very nice time. They're not intensively reared, trapped in restrictive pens like chickens and pigs can be, they eat grass, they have what seems to be a simple and carefree life in the fields. A meat to eat with a relatively clear conscience?

Last week was spent in the Lake District, and the fields were full of baby lambs. I think Rob was getting a bit sick of my constant exclamations of "oooh! Little lambs!!!" They were everywhere. I really should have stopped with the excitement, but they just got me every time.

Despite this overdose of cute, I managed to tuck in to a tasty plateful of lamb 3 times during the week...

We were staying in a cottage in the village of High Lorton, and a mere 10 minute walk away was this excellent pub in Low Lorton, the Wheatsheaf. Good food, reasonable prices, great beer on tap, nice ambience, unpretentious - what more could you want in a village pub? (And free books too! They were having a clear-out, I picked up a couple of top quality retro cookbooks to add to my collection). Both Rob and I had the 'Wheatsheaf Lamb' that you can see on the menu. Melt-in-the-mouth tender, with a tasty sauce - although I always prefer a little more gravy with my meat.

Later on in the week we drove to the Kirkstile Inn in Loweswater. This small hotel has become justifiably famous in the area - we had to book a few days in advance just to get a table in the atmospheric bar, the only place worth sitting in in this cosy pub (I don't know about you, but I can't bear the sterile ambience of the 'Family Room' invariably found at the back of a pub, or what is often the style-free zone of the dreaded 'conservatory'. I want to be by the coal fire. And by the bar). The food here was also great value and great tasting - once again I went with the shoulder of lamb, slow-roasted for 4 hours, and this time swimming in rich gravy. The beers, brewed on site, were superb. I was really glad we'd made the effort to book.

We arrived home in Buckinghamshire on Easter Eve and whipped the shoulder of lamb out of the freezer ready for Easter Day! You'd think I'd be sick of it, but not a bit of it. The shoulder is my favourite cut of lamb. Fatty and hard to carve if roasted incorrectly, but done right it's a moist and tender meat that literally falls off the bone. I got the idea of slow-roasting it from Nigella Lawson's gorgeous Lamb and Mint Salad, from Nigella Bites, probably the recipe that I have cooked most from that book. I now use a similar method to this for cooking a traditional Sunday roast lamb:

Slice an onion, placing it in the bottom of a large roasting tin, along with 4 or 5 bruised cloves of garlic (unpeeled) and a spring of rosemary. Place the shoulder of lamb on top and give a generous scattering of salt and pepper.

Pour in about half a pint of boiling water, then tent the tin with foil. Place in a slow oven - about 150C - for between 4 and 6 hours. But no need to worry about setting a timer - it's difficult to spoil the meat using this method!

Remove from the oven when you need to turn up the temperature for the roast potatoes, but place the lamb back in, foil removed, for the final 30-45 minutes before serving. This crisps up the gorgeous skin.

The lamb will have produced lots of wonderful sauce as its juices mix with the onion, garlic and rosemary, and the water will have stopped it burning. It will also have released lots of fat, which I always carefully pour off. What is left can be served as it is, as a flavourful gravy, or thickened slightly with cornflour if desired. The matter of gravy is a very personal one so I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do!

The lamb doesn't need carving, simply shredding slightly as it pulls easily from the bone.

With apologies to the little lambs...

Stirring it Up

Yesterday dawned crisp and snowy, but our excitement was dimmed within minutes as it fast became wet and sleety. Bummer. Still, this was no time to grumble because there were things to be done in the kitchen... yesterday was 'Stir-Up Sunday'. The Sunday before Advent is one of those days when the religious and culinary worlds meet in perfect harmony: 'Stir up, we beseech thee O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded.' So reads the collect of the day; and the injunction to 'stir up' has been adopted in the kitchen too, as this is the traditional day for preparing the Christmas pudding. A plenteous reward indeed!


Of course one needs to begin the process a day in advance as the dried fruits need to be plumped up with a good overnight soaking in rum. I just love the smell that pervades the kitchen during this process, and the way that the fruit swells stickily in its alcoholic bath. But is it wrong to relish the smell of hard liquor first thing in the morning??




I love the way that the fruit makes up such a large proportion of the pudding mixture. Why, there must be at least 2 of your daily portions of fruit in each slice of pudding! Somehow it never feels like a health-food when you're eating it though...




I have to confess that I didn't really know what suet was until I made my first Christmas Pudding. Since I found out I use vegetable suet instead of beef suet because, well, bleugghhh! Beef fat belongs on the edge of a steak, not in a dessert!


My trans-Atlantic readers may be interested to note the English robins pictured on the teatowel. Very different to the larger, orange-breasted bird that shares its name.




Traditionally all the family have to have a stir of the mixture, so Rob and I both had a go with the wooden spoon. Apparently you're meant to make a wish when you're doing it but I didn't know that bit. Rob was on the phone with his brother when I presented him with the bowl and spoon so I don't think he did the wish either. Mind you, at the time he was discussing the huge cost of making a Christmas Pudding (having just gagged in horror when I told him the price of the dried cherries) so he was probably wishing that he had bought that half-price Tesco Finest pudding we saw on offer on Saturday...




I usually pile the mixture into one large bowl and make a huge pudding, but this year I divided it into two, one to be taken to Devon for Christmas Day, and one to be scoffed by the two of us during our pre-Christmas Christmas Dinner.


This is the third year that I have made Christmas Pudding. I have never really been a big fan of it in the past. Added to the fact that it is traditionally eaten at the end of the biggest meal of the year, I have never actually liked the taste much - too dark, too dense, too heavy. However, these homemade puddings have been an absolute revelation to me. They are lighter in colour and in texture (if not in weight!) and the taste is worlds away from your average shop-bought pud. Making your own also gives you the freedom to add more of the ingredients you like the most, so my recipe is freely adapted from Nigella's in How to Be a Domestic Goddess. I prefer the squidge of sultanas and raisins to the traditional but mean-sized currants so that's what I use. I adore the sourness of dried cherries, so add them instead of the dried blueberries Nigella specifies, and whole blanched almonds go in in place of the marrons glaces. I love the crunch they provide. I detest candied peel, so that's definitely forbidden. I don't bother with coins either - a dental emergency is possibly the last thing I would welcome on Christmas Day.


As much for my own reference as yours, this is the recipe I use. I know I'll forget by next year unless I write it down!

Christmas Pudding

200g mixed raisins and sultanas
100g glace cherries, chopped
100g dried cherries
100g dried prunes, chopped

Soak fruit (above) overnight in 170ml rum

Mix soaked fruit together with the following ingredients:

90g self-raising flour
150g shredded suet
150g brown sugar (dark or light, depending on preference)
1 medium cooking apple, roughly grated (to provide 120g)
1/2 tsp mixed spice (I use a pot of 'Pumpkin Pie Spice' bought in Canada)
generous grating of nutmeg
pinch of salt
3 large eggs
zest of an orange (although this year I used 1 tsp Boyajian Orange Oil instead)
60g whole blanched almonds

Butter 1 large, or 2 smaller, pudding basins, spoon in the mixture and press down with the back of a spoon. Cover with a pleated piece of greaseproof paper, and then with a lid (or tie on a foil lid, as I do), and steam for 3 and a half hours.

Rewrap the pudding and store somewhere cool until Christmas. Reheat on the day by steaming for another 3 hours.

Flambe if desired (Nigella recommends using vodka for the best flame).

Serve with brandy or rum butter, or - our favourite - Rum Sauce. Ho ho ho!