pancake mix? Really?

Which would you rather your pancakes were made of - egg, milk & flour or salt, dextrose, vegetabe fat and powdered ingredients (plus the carbon footprint of a plastic bottle thrown in)?
Is adding water to one of these and shaking it up really any easier than putting milk, flour and an egg into a container and mixing it with a fork?

To be fair, the small supermarket in the photo did have real lemons and eggs alongside, but I do object to this. It's not as green, I don't believe it's as healthy and there's no need.

Cherry Almond slices

Ingredients

Pastry:

• 8oz s/r flour
• 2oz lard
• 2oz margarine

Topping:

• 2oz margarine
• 2oz sugar
• 2oz ground almonds
• 1 egg
• 2oz flour
• glace cherries

Also:

• Raspberry Jam
• Chopped almonds

Method

• Make pastry in the usual way (rub fat into flour, add a little water and knead into a dough)
• Roll out and line a tray with it
• Spread thinly with jam
• cream together the margerine and sugar
• add the egg, ground almonds, flour, chopped up cherries and mix together
• Spread the mixture onto the pastry base
• Bake at moderate heat 190/375 for 20-25 mins

Trans fats

Just heard on Radio 4's 'You and Yours' that trans fats are often found in manufactured foods such as cakes and biscuits and also, surprisingly, take-aways. No talk of banning this harmful additive, but calls for better labeling. The ingredients list is your friend...

Taking the best meat from a pheasant - the quick no-pluck, no-smell method

Required:

• One pheasant
• Very sharp knife

 

Doing this on newspaper is a great idea because when you've finished you can simply wrap up the remains and pop it in the wheelie bin.

 

part the feathers at the breast bone and expose the skin as best you can. Gently cut the skin for an inch or two down the breast bone. Pull it apart with your fingers, tearing it all the way down and away from the meat.

 

slide your knife down one side of the breast bone. Cut the meat from the bone using the breast bone and wishbone as a guide. There is a very thin membrane separating you from the body cavity (you can see it in the picture below), and if you are very careful not to pierce this, there will be no smell at all. If you do break through into the body cavity it will make your kitchen smell a bit unpleasant for a while. Do this both sides to get the breast fillets off.

Now the legs. I think this is the tastiest meat. pull the skin away, just like taking off its PJ bottoms. Gently cut the meat away from the body and break the joint where the leg joins the body. Also break the knee joint to get the foot off (or is it the ankle? You know what I mean). There are some seriously hard tendons there that will need cutting.

That's it. It is possible to delve into the bird to get out the heart, kidneys and liver, but for today we'll just wrap up the remains and cook the meat.

Wrap the breast fillets in bacon and grill everything for a couple of minutes to seal it.

Put the meat in a casserole dish, pour on white wine and sprinkle with rosemary. Cover and cook in the oven.

When the meat is tender, pour off the juice, reduce / add some cornflour to thicken. Pour back over the meat and serve with roasties and lots of veg. That's just the way the bird would have wanted it. [edit - I can't believe I couldn't manage to pick matching plates after all that effort.]

Lime Cheesecake

I've finally managed to perfect my cheesecake recipe. I like to make the English-style cheesecake, which is unbaked. I've never been very successful folding in whipped egg-white, and so I leave that out. Some recipes simply use whipped cream and soft cheese, but I find that it doesn't really set, and so serving it gets messy. Some recipes use gelatine, but I've found that too much makes the cheesecake set like a jelly. I've settled on using a very small amount of gelatine, which makes the top of the cake firm but still creamy.

Ingredients

• Digestive biscuits - 175g
• Butter - 75g
• lime - 1 (cut a slice or two and reserve for decoration)
• full-fat soft cheese - 350g (one and a half 8oz tubs if using 'Philadelphia' type cheese)
• Whipping cream (whipped until stiff) - 150ml
• Gelatine - I use the granulated type. 1/4 of a sachet dissolved in a very small amount of hot water and allowed to cool

Method

1. Put the biscuits into a small plastic bag and get brutal with a rolling pin until they're crumbs
2. Melt the butter gently until all liquid, then stir the butter and biscuit crumbs together. Press this into the bottom of an 8" flan dish.
3. Mix the whipped cream, cheese and the lime juice and gelatin together in a food blender.
4. pour / spread this over the biscuit base. Arrange a slice or two of lime on top
5. Leave in the fridge overnight to set
6. Enjoy!!

Yurt Cake

Thanks to Helen for passing on this recipe for a cake which her friend Alex used to make. "still does, I suppose, in his yurt, so I'll call it Yurt Cake", she says.

Similar to Han's Freestyle Breakfast Biscuits, in that you can improvise as much as you want.

My first attempt wasn't entirely successful - I don't think it cooked long enough, and it only made a half-hearted attempt at rising. Next time I'll try making it drier and rolling it out into a flat tin like flapjacks.

It's still very tasty. A little bit bland, as it has no sugar (I'll try adding some honey next time), but strangely addictive.

Apologies to anyone English - this one's in volume rather than weight - but Americans will feel at home with cups.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of s/r flour
• 1 oats
• 1/2 of oil
• 1/2 raisins
• 1/2 seeds / nuts / dried fruit / ad lib
• Add fruit juice to moisten

Onion Bhajis

I'm accident-prone, and so deep-frying is quite a scary experience, but worth it for these.


Ingredients (makes 4 big ones or 6 small ones)

• gram flour (chick-pea flour) - 6oz
• onion - 1 chopped
• chillie - chopped, powder or paste
• cumin - a little
• corriander - a little
• yoghurt - 1 or 2 tbs

Method

1. mix together the above ingredients. Most are optional - I've made some delicious ones using just onion, chillie and gram flour
2. add just enough water so that the mixture binds together
3. drop into hot oil and fry until cooked through (deep golden brown)
4. Enjoy with a dollop of natural yoghurt!!