Carluccio’s

I was catching up on my ‘mentions’ over on Twitter the other morning when I noticed that the Italian chef Antonio Carluccio was a member on there, naturally I clicked to follow him. Not only did I click the follow button but I clicked the profile button too; a dangerous thing of course as it then drew me onto looking at his delightful website/online store. As per my standard behaviour I ended up adding a few ‘essentials’ to my virtual shopping basket and a small(ish) order was placed.

The large box of exceedingly well packaged delights arrived the following day and two of the items became tonights dinner – fresh egg fettucce pasta and a jar of ragu di lepre (hare sauce).

Ragu di lepre is one of my all time favourite Italian dishes and generally the first thing I make a beeline for when I visit the beautiful country. I first ate it in a tiny trattoria in the Trastevere district of Rome; an area that hasn’t lost the ‘local’ feel and charm. Whilst the rest of Rome may feel cosmopolitan and incredibly modern Trastevere somehow doesn’t; it has kept its strong local (working class) identity; happen it is because it is separated by geography too – being separated from central Rome by the river Tiber. In Trastevere internet cafes are happily nestled side-by-side with gloomy ancient premises of uncertain function, trendy bars lie next to traditional bakeries down narrow cobbled lanes.

Image courtesy of Google Images.

That’s enough, I’ve said enough, Trastavere is Romes hidden secret gem and if I keep telling you all how nice it is, it won’t stay hidden for much longer

According to Carluccio’s website the ragu di lepre was based on a recipe from the Piemonte region but I have to confess it was most like the versions I have eaten both in Rome and Umbria. The ragu was spot on, it hit all the right key notes in flavour and texture.  When I considered how much pasta I’d got cooking and then looking at the small quantity of sauce I thought I’d made a big error, much as I like the Italian route of little sauce to lots of pasta the rest of the family are not always quite as keen, however with a tablespoon or so of the pasta water left clinging to the beautifully cooked al dente fettucce the sauce morphed and mingled its way through the golden strands to create one of lifes most wonderful pleasures when it comes to simple cooking – a bowl full of heartwarming, memory evoking pasta. We both throughly enjoyed it.

As for the pasta, well I’m always on the lookout for good pastas. They form a large part of the backbone of my pantry; perfect for speedy pre night shift meals that need to fuel me but not leave me feeling ’stuffed’ and sleepy, wonderful for meals for one when a lot of preparation cannot be faced and for the times when you want to create decadent meals for guests. Pasta is most versatile, suiting any situation you wish of it; now if only I could convince my mother, hmmm.

This fettucce genuine all’uovo is made with at least 25% eggs making it incredibly rich both in colour and taste. It is apparently the use of  a bronze dye in the production process that leads to its rough and ready texture, perfect for helping sauces cling and stopping that terrible fate suffered all too much by pasta and sauce in the UK, the sauce simply being in one area of the plate and the pasta the other alla spaghetti Bolognese – a British created culinary travesty if ever there was one.

I will be ordering many more boxes of this pasta, it was so good I’d have been happy to eat a plateful of it simply adorned with a trickle of olive oil or a dot of unsalted butter. Trust me, its flavour and texture was out of this world.

A very beautiful pasta, wouldn’t you agree?

According to Carluccio’s website the ragu di lepre was based on a recipe from the Piemonte region but I have to confess it was most like the versions I have eaten both in Rome and Umbria. The ragu was spot on, it hit all the right key notes in flavour and texture.  When I considered how much pasta I’d got cooking and then looking at the small quantity of sauce I thought I’d made a big error, much as I like the Italian route of little sauce to lots of pasta the rest of the family are not always quite as keen, however with a tablespoon or so of the pasta water left clinging to the beautifully cooked al dente fettucce the sauce morphed and mingled its way through the golden strands to create one of lifes most wonderful pleasures when it comes to simple cooking – a bowl full of heartwarming, memory evoking pasta.

Of course I couldn’t resist getting myself a copy of Antonio’s latest book Antonio Carluccio’s Simple Cooking, either, after reading several good reviews by fellow Twitter members I felt a compulsion too great to fight. Once I’ve had time to curl up with the book and a couple of glasses of Carluccio’s wine and a listen to some Italian music, I’ll get back to you with my thoughts.

Damn Good Food

• 
• Damn Good Food: 157 Recipes from Hell’s Kitchen by Mitch Omer (founder of the original Hell’s Kitchen Restaurants) and Ann Bauer (previous food editor at Minnesota Monthly) is a roller coaster of a book, from recounting Omer’s darker days of addiction and suffering from bipolar disorder to sweet childhood memories inter-spaced with belly rumble inducing recipes of the most exciting kind, all written in a style that makes you want need to keep turning the pages. Add to this some amazing photography of both the food and Omer’s famous Hell’s Kitchen restaurants with decor aptly dubbed “The nightmare side of Sesame Street” by Bauer and you have a book you will truly not want to put down, let alone, let out of your sight.
• 
• In places this book seems to go for the shock factor as much as the inducing mouth-watering moments factor. In fact, depending on how tender your sensibilities, there may even be moments where you wish the authors had held back, from various disclosures about relationships, or moments when Omer gets unnecessarily, perhaps, profane. It could be argued rather successfully though that this book wouldn’t be the ‘joy’ it is without that very notion of shock. Omer has had a life full of unconventional and shocking moments, this book relies on the truth being told, without it we would simply have another same old chefs memoir full of fuzzy feel good moments — this is not the movies, this is real life and the dark side of real life at that told against a backdrop of good honest food. It is very clear that food played a large part in Omer’s ‘recovery’ process, maybe too big a part as he ended up having to have a gastric bypass. 
• Damn Good Food: 157 Recipes from Hell’s Kitchen is beautifully presented, mostly in black and white but dotted with bright, full colour photographs which help bring warmth and dare I say it, even more character (as if Mitch didn’t already bring enough, just by talking about himself). The book is printed on premium quality paper, making it joyous to handle. The text is set out so that there’s plenty of white space around it, and the font is a good size, making the recipes and text paragraphs very easy to read. The excellent publication quality doesn’t stop there, the photography is both of excellent quality and inspiring, particularly the inner kitchen shots of the chefs at work.
• Omer really does allow his soul to be bared, nothing is held back: not his opinions, not his personal failures and triumphs and most certainly not his recipes. Recipes range from the basic such as French Toast and Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches to awe inspiring dishes such as Bison Sausage Bread and Chocolate Bunnies (you’ll have to read the book to learn more), covering every concept of American comfort food imaginable —macaroni and cheese, corned beef hash; of course the famous Mahnomin Porridge is included too, but how could it not be?
• Most of the recipes have side notes as to how Mitch came up with the idea or for variations on the theme; for example next to the Mahnomin Porridge recipe is a text box that reads “I first got the idea for this recipe more than twenty years ago while reading transcripts of journals kept by fur traders travelling across Canada in the nineteenth century. There was a meal served by Cree Indians that consisted of wild rice with nuts and berries and sweetened with maple syrup. But I decided it needed more fat, so I added heavy cream.” These anecdotes really help to bring life and spirit to these recipes, many of which while a mainstay of American food culture, are unfamiliar to the UK market. 
• According to the book “Mitch was encouraged to hold some recipes back — ”God knows I tried,” says [his wife and business partner] Cyn but he chose not to do so; what you the reader have in this book is a ‘manual’ that includes every single ingredient, secret, and cooking tip from the inner sanctum of Hell’s Kitchen. With Hell’s Kitchen you really do have all the information you’d require to cook a Mitch styled restaurant dish, So it’s your choice. Prepare yourself for the crowds and the queues, fight for a table, and have a meal. Yes, I know — all very nice, but… or, spend that same money on the book, and be able to recreate over a hundred of their very best recipes in the comfort of your own home? I know which I’d be choosing.
• With thanks to Minnesota Historical Society Press/Borealis Books for the review copy.
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press,U.S.; 1 edition (1 November 2009)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0873517245
• ISBN-13: 978-0873517249

EDIT: If anyone of you who buy the book have any queries about the recipes or ingredient substitutions please leave me a comment and I will pass them on to the publisher, who has very kindly said she will then pass them on to Mitch and I will get back to you asap with an answer.

Bread Baking Day

Somehow World Bread Baking Day escaped my event planning this year and as such I’ve rushed to create something for it. It is too good an event to miss out completely. 

So I have compiled a photo gallery (just click the links to go to the appropriate blog post) of some of my most recent bakes. I do hope this is ok.

King Arthur’s Burger Buns

Hazel Maizel Bread

Chestnut Bread

Cabernet Grape Flour Bread & Farmhouse White 

Cheats Sourdough

Ivy Honey Malt House Bread

River Cottage Focaccia

Hope you see something that inspires you to get bread baking, it is so much fun and so rewarding, not to mention how much better for you it is than most store bought bread – for some bread truths & horrors look here.

The Eagle Has Landed

Not so long back I joined Twitter, some of you might even have noticed the “follow me” widget in my side bar Twitter is something I’ve put off and put off; do I really need to cram what I’m doing into 140 characters and spout about daily life to the rest of the world? Is what I do that interesting? Oh well I babble on enough here don’t I, why not start tweeting too; so bare with me I’m new to all this, please be gentle with me, oh and do say ‘hi’ on twitter if you’ve got a moment to spare.

One of the first Tweets I read was by A Forkful of Spaghetti, who has a most amazing food blog; sure most of my contacts on Twitter are fellow bloggers. A Forkful (as they are known out in ‘tweet land’) had just finished reviewing The Eagle Cookbook: Recipes from the Original Gastropub by David Eyre. You can read the review here, such a great write up left me wanting needing the book, in true form I made fast headway to Amazon and bought a copy before I could stop my mouse hovering over the ‘purchase’ icon — whole procedure done and dusted in no more than a couple of minutes.

A couple of days later the book arrived and I began the wonderful task of reading the lovely selection of robust recipes of the pubs past and present chefs, and jotting down recipes to try, recipes to adapt and general ideas to be gleaned. All of this came in incredibly handy for yesterdays dinner.

I had guests for dinner and wanted a classy (all right slightly cheffy and show off type) dinner but without too much hassle, I didn’t want to be tied to the kitchen all day or to the stove when my guests arrived. The Eagle had recipe choices aplenty, good home cooking but with a modern and slightly ‘exotic’ twist. 

In the end I adapted a beef stew recipe, giving me the basis of a marinade and sauce for roast duck and served it with a Tom Norrington-Davies savoy cabbage and roast potato dish. I know what you’re thinking, how does beef stew become roast duck? Well, keep reading because you’re about to find out. 

Originally my plan was to simply roast a duck crown and serve it with a red wine reduction but then I got the notion that it would be a good idea to marinade it in the same manner as say you would marinade the beef for a Bourguignon - but how? Scanning through The Eagle Cookbook: Recipes from the Original GastropubI was grasped by some lovely photography on page 157, well opposite that sat a recipe for Casseroled Beef with Cinnamon, Thyme and Shallots. Feeling highly inspired I began to read further through the ingredients list making a mental list of which components would work well with a rich meat like duck; cinnamon yes, red wine yes, thyme yes, garlic yes and so it went until I had a lovely bath of aromatics waiting for the duck to submerge and relax until the big event.

This soaking causes the meat to gain buckets of flavour while plumping it up with water so that after cooking it still contains a lot of juices and remains incredibly moist. It also (shamefully hangs head) allows for the meat to become slightly stained in colour and allows the cook to get away with serving the meat a tiny bit rarer than she otherwise would have; bonus!

There seems to be a bit of a panic about roasting duck, goodness knows why though. The high proportion of fat means a moist bird even if it is slightly overcooked and unlike chicken or turkey it can be served rare, timing is obviously an issue but not a major failing point should you be slightly ahead or behind of your timing schedule.

The wine and aromatics then formed the basis of the sauce, I simply strained it and boiled it to reduce in volume after adding a splash of red wine vinegar and some brown sugar. The vinegar gave a lovely kick which cut through the ‘fatty’ mouth feel of the duck. 

The duck should really have been the star of the show but I have to confess it wasn’t. The real star was Tom’s cabbage and potatoes, that dish is to die for. I concede that the potato dish did rather worry me — duck fat roasted potatoes = perfect, savoy cabbage simmered for 30 minutes = a cause for concern. I needn’t have worried, the cabbage whilst soft maintained its fresh vibrancy both in taste and colour.

Now I know I’m a bit of a spud addict but that aside this is a dish not to be missed, everyone was clamouring for second and third servings. I wish I’d made more of it, but then who could not enjoy duck fat roasted potatoes tossed with juniper scented dark iron rich cabbage? I did adapt the recipe a wee bit to suit the ducks flavours and had to sadly omit the chunks of pancetta as I didn’t have any, although I believe they’d have made a great companion to both the duck and cabbage dishes. I also added a couple of sweet potatoes as I had them lurking in the vegetable box and it seemed a shame not to use them up. I love the sweet, stickiness that you get with sweet potatoes, completely different to the crunch of a basic roasted spud but just as good.

Thank you Tom for a true recipe keeper

The glistening shades of green dotted with reddish tinged  browns make me think of autumn leaves, I wish you could smell it.

Aromatic Roast Duck with Red Wine Reduction

• 1 bottle red wine
• 5 garlic cloves, left whole
• 1 onion, cut in quarters skin left on
• 2 fresh bay leaves
• 2 large sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 satsuma or clementine, cut in half
• 1 cinnamon stick, broken into two or three pieces
• 1 duck (around 2kg)
• 60ml red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

1. Place the wine, duck and aromatics (not the vinegar and sugar) in a large bowl and cover with cling-film.
2. Leave to marinade for as long as possible (at least four hours), turning the duck every hour.
3. Remove the duck from the wine bath and pat it dry before placing it on a rack over a baking tray, keep the wine.
4. Roast the duck for 20 minutes per 500g, plus 20 minutes extra in a preheated oven at 200C or the equivalent.
5. Remove the duck from the oven and place on a serving platter, cover with aluminium foil and leave to rest while you make the sauce.
6. Strain the wine into a saucepan and discard the aromatics, add the vinegar and sugar to the pan and heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
7. Now bring the sauce to a rapid simmer and allow to reduce by half.
8. Carve the duck and drizzle with the red wine reduction on serving.

Potatoes With Braised Cabbage (adapted recipe)

• 3 tablespoons duck fat
• 8 large waxy potatoes, cut into thick rounds (I didn’t peel)
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into thick rounds
• 1 teaspoon juniper berries crushed
• 1 savoy cabbage, shredded
• salt and black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200C or the equivalent
2. Heat the duck fat in a roasting tray until really hot and add the potato slices, stir until they have a good coating of fat.
3. Place in the oven.
4. Put the cabbage and juniper berries in a saucepan and add 250ml of water, bring to the boil then cover and leave to simmer for around 30 minutes, while the potatoes cook.
5. Drain the cabbage and then add to the tray of potatoes, stirring to combine.
6. Season well with salt and pepper.
7. Serve.

Red Devil

After Pear Cafe began discussing on Twitter the fact that it is National Chocolate Week this week, I decided I would just have to bake something. How could such a week go unnoticed, especially by a chocaholic such as myself?

Autumnal weather always leads me on to thinking about Bonfire Night (5th November) and the associated food and drink — mulled cider, parkin, hot mugs of soup and perhaps most exciting, especially for the children, toffee apples. I was never that fond of toffee apples as a child, they were hugely messy and I hated that stickiness, I did however gain a fondness for the combination of toffee and apple flavours; it was that fondness for a flavour combination that led to last nights dessert.

Based loosely on a Jamie Oliver recipe I made a Toffee Apple Chocolate Cake. The cake is basically a nut based chocolate sponge dotted with small chunks of apples, in this case I used Red Devil’s but any apple of your choice or available to you will work just fine, before finally getting scattered with bashed up vanilla fudge pieces, again you could adapt the type of fudge to suit availability and personal preference.

Aptly named, the Red Devil apple is a highly striking bright red colour, and a medium-sized, early season apple. A cross between Discovery and Kent, Red Devil was raised by an H F Ermen at Faversham, Kent in 1975 and later introduced at Matthews Nursery, Worcester in 1990. Compelling to look at, the flavour, however, is less remarkable unless eaten straight away, but Red Devil is sweet and juicy, crisp in texture, and the flesh is pink stained with a hint of strawberry.

This cake is so simple to make as it is done in a food processor, you simply add everything and blitz it up together. If you pre grind the nuts and grate the chocolate it can be done by hand too but if you have a food processor I’d recommend you get it into action here.

I was expecting a cake with a brownie like texture but it wasn’t like that at all. In fact it was very light and cakey, slightly moist but still more like the chocolate sponge to be found in tins made by Heinz, anyone else remember those? They were my mums staple dessert treat for us, I seem to recall I did rather enjoy them at the time. 

Don’t let the comparison to a tinned sponge put you off, oh please don’t, as this cake is utterly delicious, needing nothing more than a wee drizzle of thick double cream to bring it alive with a smile factor like no other. 

What is there not to love about a rich, buttery, sweet chocolate sponge and sweet pieces of moist, juicy apple with a hit of sweet vanilla fudge in every bite? 

Hot it was soft, unctuous and warming to body and soul, cold it became more cake like and suited to mid morning coffee, both ways it was stunning

As with all things chocolate this is hardly the most healthy dessert in all the world but sometimes you need a good, old fashioned, warming pudding and anyway chocolate contains serotonin, the good mood chemical, so it can’t be all bad

Toffee Apple Chocolate Cake

• 250g dark chocolate
• 175g butter
• 120g soft brown sugar
• 100g pecans
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 4 large eggs
• 150g self-raising flour
• 100g vanilla fudge
• 4 apples, cored and diced but skin left on

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C or the equivalent
2. Break up the chocolate, put it into a food processor with the butter, sugar, pecans, and cocoa , and whiz until smooth.
3. Crack your eggs, one at a time, into the food processor (pulsing well with each addition), then and add the flour.
4. Whiz again until smooth.
5. Get a deep baking dish roughly 25 x 25cm and butter the dish really well and sprinkle with cocoa powder, shake it around a bit so it lightly coats the whole surface of the dish.
6. Pour the cake mixture into the dish and dot with the apple pieces and scatter over the fudge.
7. Pop the baking dish into the preheated oven and cook for 25-30 minutes or until the cake is firm but a cake tester still comes out slightly sticky.
8. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

Muddy Boots

I know it’s taken me a good while to get around to telling you, my lovely readers, that I visited the Ludlow Food Festival this year. What a delight, a sight to behold indeed. Stand upon stand of fabulous foods, drinks and kitchenalia all set out in the picturesque town centre of Ludlow.

It goes without saying that I came home laden with bags of shopping and then faced the post shopping dilemma of ‘where do I actually store all this stuff?’ I do that all the time, buy without a notion of how I’ll be able to store the item, but eventually everything found a home, well almost. 

Whilst there I got chatting to Miranda on the Muddy Boots stall and she offered a few taster pieces of beef burger, ever gladly accepted — sure the chance to try good food can’t be missed, these tasters were outstanding and I just had to buy a few for our freezer. Burgers are not something I would ever normally consider buying ready made; firstly because I am always so weary that the ingredients will fall below my standards and secondly because they so simple to make yourself. Muddy Boots burgers were an exception to the rule. 

Muddy boots say:

Muddy Boots is the only company in the country to exclusively use 21-day matured, grass-fed, pure-bred Aberdeen Angus Beef to make home-made meals and beef burgers, simply because we asked the question, “Why shouldn’t meals and burgers get the best beef too?”

Our beef is from an entirely grass-reared herd, which is born and raised at Church Farm in Shrawley, Worcestershire. The grass-rearing means that our beef is packed full Omega 3 and 6, which is great for our bodies and minds and good beef like this is a top source of potassium, iron and vitamin B.

… about the burgers …

We don’t add salt, we let you add that yourself. We don’t use breadcrumbs, just a little egg to bind, so they’re gluten free. Burgers haven’t been handled very well in the past and there’s no reason why they should be so processed and contain such low quality beef.

On chatting with Miranda it became highly evident that the above was a really heart felt passion about ethical farming and eating not cleverly worded personal relations spin and that sold it to me. 

I had these bookmarked instantly for a burger and fries meal, albeit a top notch one, even though Muddy Boots have this to say:

The biggest compliment we’ve been lucky to receive a few times is that people have bought our burgers at farmers’ markets and served them at dinner parties — not in a bap, nor with plastic cheese nor a serving of greasy floppy fries… This makes our day.

So sorry Muddy Boots but for me there is nothing wrong with a top quality serving of burger and fries.

I froze the burgers on return home, and there they sat patiently waiting for the night when quick and simple really was the order of the day. Friday night was the night. Whilst I had the day off work and so had time to prepare and plan the other family members weren’t going to be home until late and would want something they could easily eat, sat on the sofa, relaxing after a hard days work. 

Top notch burgers deserved top notch bread so I made some burger baps earlier in the day. I used King Arthur’s Flour Beautiful Burger Buns recipe and oh my goodness me they were beautiful indeed. Light, slightly chewy and sweet in an almost challah like way from the enrichment with butter and eggs.

The recipe requested the use of plain flour, which would give a slightly softer dough, but I didn’t have any – the shock of it, I have over 15 varieties of flour in my cupboard but no plain! I debated whether to go shopping and decided against it, choosing instead to use Tipo 00 flour, an Italian flour which is similar in make up to a blend of half bread flour to half plain flour. Next time I will use plain flour so as I can compare the results.

I brushed the rolls with melted butter before baking and sprinkled half the batch with poppy seeds as I love them. Sesame seeds could be used instead if you prefer. If you like a more golden roll egg wash could be used to brush the rolls before baking but I find that sometimes it makes for a slightly crisper top and I don’t really care for that in a burger bun.

The original burgers were meaty and juicy with a real smoky barbecue hit even though I only cooked them in a frying pan, the griddle didn’t get a look in. How did they manage that? According to the website the original burgers contain only beef, parsley, tomato puree and black pepper, making for a very simple but tasty burger. If you fancy something a little more fancy Muddy Boots also sell several other more adventurous burgers.

As soon as I have more freezer space available I will be stocking up with Muddy Boots goodies, steaks and beef joints are top of the list.

I filled the bun with a lovely juicy burger, some fresh lettuce, sliced home grown tomatoes and some lovely tangy, organic mayonnaise from Riverford. Nothing else was needed, I did originally plan on serving some red onion chutney too but in the end I left the burgers to sing out with their own flavoursome goodness. They needed no adulteration, sometimes the simple things in life are best

I’d go so far as to say I haven’t eaten a better burger than this in the UK ever. The sweetness of the burger bun and the deep smokiness of the burger were reminiscent of the hamburgers I ate while on childhood holidays in Florida.

I suppose now would be a good enough time as any to introduce the event, 67 Days of Smiles in Orlando – an event where two Orlando Smile Ambassadors (Kyle & Stacey) will be experiencing all of Orlando’s more than 100 attractions in just 67 days. They have been documenting and reporting their adventures in their blog, on Twitter (@67Days) and via the Visit Orlando Facebook fan page. Do take the time to look at the websites and if you’re a member of Twitter follow them too. Orlando holds many a fond holiday memory for me, it was my first place Stateside to visit and reading the blog has stirred up some great memories.

Kyle and Stacey are not just visiting theme parks and major tourist attractions but local places to eat, local events and other off the beaten track style events such as historical walking tours.  Beware though looking though all the lovely dining experiences may make you hungry, although, you could just head back on over here for some recipe ideas.

Beautiful Burger Buns (Adapted)

• 3/4 to 1 cup lukewarm water
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 large egg
• 3 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 sachet fast action yeast

1. Mix and knead all of the dough ingredients—by hand, mixer, or bread machine—to make a soft, smooth dough.
2. Return the dough to a clean bowl, cover the dough, and let it rise for 1 hour, or until it’s doubled in bulk.
3. Tip the dough gently onto a floured work surface and using your finger tips gently deflate the dough, reshape into a round and return to the bowl.
4. Repeat stage 3 twice more.
5. Gently deflate the dough, and divide it into 8 pieces. Shape each piece into a round 1″ thick (more or less); flatten to about 3″ across. 
6. Place the buns on a lightly greased baking sheet, cover, and let rise for about an hour, until very puffy.
7. If desired, brush buns with melted butter. Or brush lightly with egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water), and sprinkle with poppy seeds.
8. Bake the buns in a preheated 375°F oven for 12 to 15 minutes, till golden. 
9. Cool on a rack.

Mulling It Over

I must say thank you to Delicious magazine for the inspiration behind last nights recipe creation, mulled wine fruit crumble with clotted cream. I reckon I must be in full crumble mode as it’s only a few days since I made an autumn fruit crumble. I’m putting it down to the cold weather, I enjoy the cooler months and love spending the grey days pottering around the kitchen but it does rather unfortunately give me a craving for comfort food.

As per my normal crumble making routine I used a 50/50 combination of flour and oats to rub in with some butter and sugar to make my topping. Along with making the crumble top oaty I added some roasted, roughly chopped cobnuts. Not only do the cobnuts add a little crunch but they impart a sweetness that is almost buttery in taste, giving a little more vibrance and freshness to the dessert.

A Kentish cobnut is a type of hazelnut. Most of the hazelnuts grown in Britain are of the named variety Kentish Cob, which was introduced in the early 19th century, but growers are now beginning to plant other varieties too. However, they all taste relatively similar – more similar than different varieties of apple for example.

Whilst it would be possible to simply use mulled wine to simmer the fruits, I decided to use red wine which I infused with some organic mulling spices from Riverford. These spiced sachets are made by the award-winning Heron Valley using a blend of organic cinnamon, ground ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Although it is really, even for me, to mention Christmas, that is exactly what the house smelt like while the fruit simmered away in its heady broth.  The notion of Christmas being further influenced by my inclusion of cranberries, the cranberry is the Christmas fruit for me, cranberry jam, dried cranberries and nuts, cranberry juice in cocktails; but not the dreaded jars of cranberry sauce with turkey, why I do not know, but I can’t abide it.

I’d be perfectly happy to serve the simmered fruits as they are with maybe a little splash of cream or a shortcake biscuit as they’re so deep and flavoursome. That would be a good idea if a slightly lighter pudding was required. As it was I wanted pure, unadulterated, comfort and the crumble topping was a prerequisite for that.

Clotted cream is my favourite crumble serving partner but double cream or custard also work really well. The choice is yours.

Mulled Wine Crumble

• 6 apples, peeled cored and sliced
• 6 plums, halved and stone removed
• 1 mango, peeled,stone removed and diced
• 3 tablespoons dried cranberries
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 300ml red wine
• 1 sachet mulling spice
• 75g plain flour
• 75g medium oatmeal
• 75g butter, diced
• 50g demerara sugar
• 50g cobnuts, shelled and roughly chopped

1. Melt the tablespoon of butter in a saucepan and when foaming add the prepared fruits (except the mango), toss in the butter until golden and add the wine and mulling spice sachet. Allow to simmer until the fruit is just tender.
2. Remove from the heat and add the mango, stir to combine. Remove the fruit to a baking dish, reserving the liquid and sachet and return the saucepan to the heat.
3. Reduce the sauce by half, remove the mulling spice sachet and discard, pour the sauce over the fruits.
4. Preheat the oven to 180C or the equivalent.
5. Make the topping, put the flour, oats and butter in a bowl and rub together using your fingertips until you have the consistency of bread crumbs, stir in the sugar and cobnuts.
6. Sprinkle the topping over the fruits, mounding it up a little towards the centre.
7. Bake for about 25 minutes or until crisp and golden.