ENGLISH MUM

Foie gras? I’ll pass, thanks all the same

On Sky today, they had a news item about the force feeding of ducks and geese for the foie gras industry  (DON’T click on this link if you’re easily upset) in Hungary and Bulgaria.  The charity Four Paws took sneaky video evidence of this force feeding practice and I have to say, it’s not pleasant viewing.  So yes, different cultures think different things are acceptable.  I wouldn’t think many people in the UK or Ireland would ever think of eating foie gras, but in some places in Europe, like France,  it’s hugely popular.  The charity workers trying to get the undercover film were chased and threatened with axes – someone not particularly happy about being filmed, methinks?

Now I’m not an animal rights campaigner.  I eat beef, and chicken and pork and all that stuff and I know the animals die in order that I can eat them.  However, I don’t want anything to suffer on my behalf, and I do find it incredibly distasteful in this day and age when the public demand much higher levels of animal welfare, that the mighty Tesco feel that it’s acceptable to sell this product in their Hungarian branches, while declaring that they don’t sell it here on ‘welfare grounds’.  

I have heard, by the way, that some foie gras facilities have ‘free range’ geese and ducks, and that they rush over to the ‘force-feeding’ machine at dindins time.  I wouldn’t know, but the crating seems excessively cruel.  I know foie gras is a foodie thing, and is regarded as a delicacy, but being responsible for shutting a bird in a teeny cage and and walloping a great tube down its neck  twice a day in order to make something yummy would put me right off ordering it.  Sorry and all that.  Stupid question, but is there a kinder way to produce it?

Step by step: lemon meringue pie

 I’m still struggling with this photography lark, y’know.  It’s not easy trying to take classy pictures when you’re up to your elbows in egg whites.  I’m going to wreck my camera at this rate.  Still, here we go with another step by step: this time a classic lemon meringue pie.

For the pastry, you’ll need:

115g butter, melted

100g caster sugar

175g plain flour

Pinch of salt

Firstly, preheat the oven to 180/gas 4.  Pour the melted butter into the sugar and stir.  Then add the flour and teeny pinch of salt and mix it around until it becomes a thick paste.  Press the mixture into your flan dish or baking tin  (about 24cm should do it), then bake it blind (scrunch up a bit of greaseproof paper, then smooth it over the pastry and pour in the baking beans) for about 15 minutes.  Then take it out of the oven, remove the baking beans and put it back in to cook the bottom (ooer) for about another 5 minutes, then take it out and leave to cool.  Turn the oven down to gas 2/150 degrees.

Meanwhile, make the lemon curd:

100g butter

2 lemons, zested then juiced

150g caster sugar

2 eggs plus 1 extra yolk (keep the white for the meringue)

Take a saucepan and bung in the butter, lemon juice and zest and caster sugar.  Melt it all together slowly until the sugar is all dissolved.  In a bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until well combined.  Now, take your warm, lemony, butter mixture and gently pour a little bit into the egg, whisking all the time, then a bit more, then a bit more, until you’ve combined about half of it with the eggs.  Now bung that lot back into the saucepan and keep whisking and simmering until the mixture thickens.  Turn off the heat and leave to cool.  Remember to just stir it occasionally to keep it from getting a skin on.  When it’s about room temperature, pour it into the pastry case.

Finally, for the meringue:

4 egg whites

225g caster sugar

Whisk the eggs in a very clean bowl until they form stiff peaks, then keep whisking while you add the sugar, spoon by spoon, until it’s all incorporated and the meringue is thick and glossy.  At this point, it’s best to keep passing children from all trying to nab fingerfulls of the meringue mixture.  I find something pointy helps here.  Pile it all on top of the lemon curd and fluff it up a bit.  Bake in the very low oven (gas 2/150 degrees) for about 40 to 50 minutes, depending on how squelchy you like your meringue.  Guard the pie with your pointy implement until it’s at room temperature, then quickly take it into the bathroom, lock the door, and stuff into face.

Mr Lovely’s 100 cupcake birthday

So this week, Mr Lovely (D next door’s brother in law – it’s all so incestuous round these parts) turned 40.  Mrs L has been, somewhat reluctantly it has to be said, planning a big party and we had a little brainstorming evening to sort out the finer details.  Seeing as Mr L is a fireman, it made sense for someone to bake a fire engine cake.  Mrs Lovely didn’t volunteer.  Neither did I.  It turned into a bit of a staring contest and then we decided that we’d pursue other avenues – both of us being severely cack-handed in the cake decorating department.  We were chatting about cupcake towers and the like and looking on the internerd when it dawned: cupcakes…loads and loads of little cupcakes each decorated with a teeny fire engine.  Mrs Lovely vowed to have a crack at a fire engine cake too.  The nutter.

Saturday morning dawned, then, and I started on the cupcakes. While I baked batches of 24, passing children were enlisted to help melt chocolate and whisk ganache and stick on the little rice paper/icing cake-toppers that Mrs L ordered and had delivered to her sister in the UK, along with a big list of other baking stuff that’s hard to find here (she got stopped coming through customs with a big block of royal icing – ‘no officer, it’s not semtex – honest’).  We decided to stick to vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate ganache, and chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate.  But honestly, after a while, it all kind of got a bit confused and anyone that happened to have made a bowl of ganache dolloped it on the nearest available cakes.

So for the vanilla cupcakes, then, you need

125g butter

125g caster sugar (vanilla sugar if you have it)

1 tsp vanilla extract (leave out for the chocolate ones)

2 large eggs

125g self raising flour (replace a heaped tbsp with cocoa for chocolate ones)

Couple of tbsp milk

Firstly, try to make sure everything is at room temperature.  Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the vanilla extract and then the eggs, beating well after each addition.   Don’t worry if it curdles – that’s such an old wives tale – just add some of the flour and carry on.  Then gently fold in the flour (if you beat the hell out of it you won’t get a lovely light sponge) and lastly the milk – just enough to make the batter plop softly off a tablespoon into the cupcake paper.  Bake at 180/gas 4 for about 18 minutes until golden – they should spring back when lightly pressed.  Cool on a wire rack.  This amount will make about 12 cupcakes.  Remember you don’t want them too high, or the ganache won’t completely cover them.

For the ganache:

200g bar white chocolate

2 tbsp icing sugar

About 100ml double cream

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t let it spit everywhere as you risk getting water in the chocolate, in fact, once it’s boiled just turn it off – the chocolate will still melt).  When just melted, take it off the heat and sieve in the icing sugar.  Gently start to whisk that in, then while you’re whisking, pour in the cream until you have a thick, glossy bowlful – about the same consistency as melted chocolate.  Pour a generous tablespoon of it over each cupcake – ideally so that it just about reaches the top of the paper case.  Then just leave them naked or decorate with whatever you like: mad, printed cake toppers…grated chocolate… a big swirl of whipped cream… jelly beans… whatever.

Multiply that recipe by about 8, blow up your food mixer, scoff any disasters, make a few more and there you have it.  A 100 cupcake birthday extravaganza.  Happy birthday, Mr Lovely!  Oh, and she never did make that fire engine cake, y’know.  Great party though.

The Friday Photo: Recessionist chic

Look at this dress.  Isn’t it cute?  It would be perfect for our wedding blessing in September.  Not too ‘weddingy’, nice and understated… There’s just one tiny problem: the price tag.  ‘Between £600 and £1900’.  Might as well be between 1 million and 5 million.  Ain’t going to happen.  The designer?  Only one, surprisingly talented, Victoria Beckham. 

And listen, you know me, I’m not mad on celebrity bashing.  Those magazines shouting: ‘SHE’S TOO FAT!’ and ‘SHE’S TOO THIN!’ only ever get perused when I’m in the hairdresser, and only then if someone else has nabbed the Indo.  So today, then, saw me covered in fetching tinfoil highlights (‘half head today, Lorraine, times are hard’) and perusing one of said magazines.  This one had a picture of some poor girl bending over in a bikini and showing a teeny bit of tummy.  Gosh.  Shocking.  More shocking, I thought, were pictures of the designer of this cute little number, Madam Beckham, tottering about between ‘design meetings’ and ‘lunch with Marc Jacobs’ (God,  I bet that’s a carb-fest: ‘another lettuce leaf for you, Marc?‘, ‘no thanks Vick’, [pats tummy] ‘I’ve had two already’ ) on her little kebab stick legs in the $1500 shoes of the season, carrying this ‘must-have’ handbag one day, then that ‘must-have’ handbag another day… then another in another colour… then another… and another.  Now I love fashion, but seriously, does La Beckham not realise there’s a recession on?  Companies are going bankrupt.  People are losing their jobs.  Doesn’t it all seem a little, well, tactless?  So okay, we know she’s got more money than all of us put together, but does she have to rub all our noses in it quite so brazenly?  I love fashion, and I’ve always adored reading about this season’s stuff, but suddenly I’m not finding her wardrobe (and her price tags) so fascinating.  In fact, I’m actually finding it all quite vulgar.

So this year, I’m seeing myself less as a ‘fashionista’ and more as a ‘recessionista’.  I’ll be making do and mending.  I’ll be grabbing the contents of my wardrobe, tipping it all out on the bed and starting again: reviewing all my previous purchases, rediscovering the jeans I’d forgotten about (let’s be honest, I might love fashion but I only ever wear jumpers, jeans and wellies – I live next to a peat bog, for God’s sake) and Ebaying some of my more expensive mistakes.

With the help of TC, my gardening and self-sufficiency guru, I’ll be working on my kitchen garden (and working on Hubby – pleeeease can we have some chickens?), cooking from scratch, treating the kids to a big chocolate cake instead of a new PSP game and looking for a fabulous, cheap, dress for our blessing, not, sadly, this one.  But hey.  Them’s the breaks.  I bet ol’ Vicky wishes she had an athletic, adoring (if somewhat dim) companion to accompany her on her walks like I have.  Oh, hang on…

Sunday lunch: step by step beef stew with fluffy parsley dumplings

So the spanking new camera I got for Christmas has finally got an airing.  On Saturday, D next door took me to the fantastic butcher near Lough Sheelin which I’m incapable of finding on my own, hidden as it is down several miles of windy roads.  They had some beautiful looking cubed beef, so seeing as it’s freezing outside (-4 this morning) and pefect weather for stew, I thought I’d have a little play and photograph my efforts while I was cooking.  Muchas Gracias to Jen from BellyRumbles for the tips on food photography – I’m probably her worst student but hey, I’m trying (very trying).

Righto then: beef stew or casserole or Daube, if you’re feeling all Gallic and fancy and want to add a bit of garlic and some herbs.  Firstly you’ll need:

About 1/2 kilo braising steak/stewing steak/some sort of cubed beef (Irish obviously)
3 tbsp plain flour, well seasoned 
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped (or use baby onions – either way I keep them big so fussy ones can pick them out)
Carrots, cut into big chunks
Large glass red wine
Jug of beef stock (about 1 litre)

For the dumplings:

100g self raising flour
50g vegetable suet
Big pinch salt
About 5 tbs cold water

So firstly, gather yourself together.  Trim the beef of any excess fat or sinewy stuff, but don’t worry about the soft fat, which will melt, then put the flour in a bowl and season (generously season – this will flavour your gravy remember), and get your oil heating in a nice, heavy-based pan:

Now, taking a few at a time so as not to overload the pan, toss a handful of beef cubes in the flour, shake off the excess, then fry until they start to look nicely brown and caramelised on the outside. 

Remove this meat to another bowl, and carry on with another handful and so on until all the meat is browned.

Then, fry the chopped onions (you might have to add a bit more oil) and reserve those with the meat. 

Next, turn up the heat and slosh a generous glass of red wine into the pan to bubble up and scrape at all the bits in the bottom of the pan.

Then add your meat and onions back in …

…along with your stock and carrots (or mushrooms/parsnips/chunks of swede, whatever).

I cut the carrots quite big because I can’t be trusted to remember to put them in later – this way they don’t get too mushy. 

Now, stick the lid on and bung the dish into the oven (about 160/170 degrees) and forget it for an hour.

To make the dumplings, just bung all the dry ingredients in a bowl  – I picked fresh little parsley shoots from the garden (in January!)…

… and add the water carefully (you might not need it all)  until you’ve got a nice soft dough.    Roll the dough into little balls (it’s a standing joke in our house that I always make seven – no idea why), then just pop them on top of your casserole for the last half hour.  Make sure your lid fits properly as they need to steam to make them nice and fluffy.

The flour that coated the meat thickens the gravy.  If, when you go to pop the dumplings in, the gravy is quite reduced (as mine was – see above), you might need to add a little more stock, otherwise the dumplings won’t steam and be lovely and fluffy.

Serve with fresh veg and a big, steaming pile of buttery mash.  Oh, and try to bite your tongue as you watch your youngest child pick out every single piece of onion. Grrr.

Altogether now: Oh. My. God!

So lovely Kieron the postie’s back at work today.  And true to form this morning found him whizzing up the drive to English Towers in his little green van.  He bought me a parcel.  Not just any parcel though; the best parcel a girl could possibly wish for.  Four big fat slabs of chocolate from the divine, sublime Hotel Chocolat from the Disreputable One.  He may well think I’m still 18 but bloody hell, I don’t care if he sends parcels like this little baby.  Hell, I’ll even backcomb my hair and sing ’99 Red Balloons’ if it makes him happy.  First up, then people, we have the classic fusion of milk, dark and plain chocolate – a big, huge, chunky wodge of it:

Bit ‘conventional’ for you, maybe?  Okay, perhaps you’d prefer the scrumptious Caramellow: “caramel milk chocolate drops, cinder toffee and tiny pieces of caramelised hazelnut stirred into a swirled fusion of caramel chocolate and milk chocolate”.  Oh yeah.  Drooling yet?  But hang on, maybe – just maybe -  you’d prefer some Rocky Road…

“Handmade chocolate chip cookies, generous white chocolate chunks and lively pieces of puffed rice all stirred into a silky smooth Belgium 70:30 milk and dark chocolate fusion”.  My favourite, by a country mile, though, is the Praline White chocolate.  I can’t find the official description on their website, but no matter, because shortly it will have been devoured.

Pop round and share it.  No,  really.  I’ll save you some.

At last, I’m all growed up

Do you know the best thing about having my family over for Christmas?  How could I choose, you may wonder?  Was it spending Christmas with my siblings again after so long?  The sheer accomplishment of getting 6 busy people and their offspring to the same place at the same time?  The kids opening their stockings together?  Even sharing a glass of wine with my sister in law in front of the fire with everyone else asleep or down the pub?  Well yes, all of those.  But the very best bit was feeling, possibly for the first time, like a grown up.  I know, it’s ridiculous.  For one thing, I’m 38 years old.  I’m the mother of two children – both of whom can read, write, don’t smell too bad and get to school on time – and a food writer too (okay, so I still find myself opening up the magazine and sneaking a happy look at my name on the first page, every month, but still, it really is me) .  I can make a cracking pavlova and read a whole book – both in one day.

What is it about spending time with family that makes everyone revert to their childhood ‘roles’, I wonder?  I’m the little sister: the scatty Doris that’s had seventy five different jobs, crashed a few cars and lived in so many different places that everyone has no room left in their address books…  But no more.  This time I was the hostess.  I welcomed them into my home (my immaculately clean and tidy home – me Ma nearly fell over with the shock), fed them, watered them and accommodated them with laundered sheets and a sparkly fresh bathroom.  And let me just clarify that I’m not bagging all the glory here – Hubby helped enormously with… erm… getting drinks and… er…well, anyway, he was there too, and my Ma and sister in law were fantastic help in the kitchen, but I did it.  I fed ten people for four days and enjoyed every second.

Okay, I still reverted to type a couple of times: firstly by knocking a full cup of tea all over the rug by the fire, then following it up by kicking a glass of water over about ten seconds later.  I got a ridiculous fit of the giggles when we stuffed the turkey too, but generally I felt rather clever and in control.  A first.

So what’s changed then?  I’m not sure.  But you know how certain people have this impression of you?  This image that they’ve perpetuated for so long you almost believe it?  Take my Disreputable Dad (no, please, take him).  I’m sure he’s very fond of us all, and he’s fantastically supportive in a crisis, but when I emailed him to tell him I’d finally got my dream job, what was his response?  ‘I wonder how long this one will last?’  You see, to him I’ll always be his dizzy blonde 18 year old, grabbing any random, unsuitable job and leaving after five minutes because it was boring.  And then there are friends.  Don’t tell me you haven’t got a friend who smiles indulgently at you while recounting any number of silly things you’ve done in the past to anyone who’ll listen?  Thought so.

So there you have it.  I know nothing’s changed: I’ll probably still run out of petrol occasionally, eat four cupcakes for breakfast, fall down the stairs when Bert treads on the back of my slipper and drop the boys to school wearing pink fleece pyjamas, but I’ll do in in the knowledge that it’s my choice, my prerogative as an adult, if you will, and absolutely not because underneath it all I’m still that dizzy blonde Frank Spencer.  Not any more.  Uh uh.  No way.

The Friday photo: I wonder where dem birdies is?

Righto, a bit of nature to see you gently into the new year, then.  We had a quiet new year: big plates of sausage, mash and onion marmalade, a bottle of sparkling Pinot and ‘Wanted’ on DVD, followed by a bit of Tiesto and cuttin’ some shapes in the living room (#1, #2 and Little C joined in until Hubby’s overenthusiastic boogying earned #2 a handful of bent fingers and he went to bed, disgusted).  Still, it was lubly and we got up late, sitting with a cup of tea by the kitchen window watching the birdies.  We get lots of gorgeous birds here at English Towers, being cat-free and a bit heavy on the cake (the leftovers get thrown out the window), and when Rockin’ Robin isn’t chasing them all away, they’re a sight to behold.  This morning, we were joined by this beautiful little chap, a quick Google identifying him as a Redwing:

And then there were two:

And then there were these two beauties just over in the field. Turns out they’re Fieldfares:

Rockin’ Robin wasn’t having any of that and made his small, angry presence felt:

But most of the interlopers were bigger and, frankly, far more attractive.  Check out this gorgeous golden chested Song Thrush:

Oh and in case you’re wondering where Bert was…

Surprised much?