The February roundup. This month I have been mostly:
Planning…
My 40th birthday – there’s a fabulous Disney surprise in store, and we’re also planning a glamorous cocktails and dinner extravaganza with my two gorgeous girls, Foxy and Tums and their lubly men. Wehay!
Coveting…
the beautiful dresses on A Change of A Dress – the most fabulous girly website ever.
Surfing…
over to John Lewis’ new and revamped fashion pages, and wishing I could buy this gorgeous Coast Violette Dress to wear for my 40th birthday:
Baking…
a scale model of Mont Blanc made out of cake and meringue (it’s my only medium, I’m afraid) complete with sugar sprinkle contour lines for #2′s geography project. He’d better get an A:
Eagerly anticipating…
my lovely mate Keris Stainton‘s new book Della Says: OMG!
my review copy of Eat Me!: The Stupendous, Self-raising World of Cupcakes and Bakes According to Cookie Girl
Wishing…
I could get back to Ireland to participate in Dundrum Shopping Centre‘s 5th birthday celebrations (and have a chance of getting my mitts on some of their €50,000 worth of prizes).
Discovering…
Fantastic new food blogs! This month I’m loving the winner of the Cupcake Challenge:
and the frugal food week over at Icklebabe.com‘s blog.
Entering…
The Ideal Home Show‘s fabulous competition to find the UK’s next Home Baker of the Year (get entering now, just click on the link!).
Cooking…
Cobra Beer’s Ultimate Curry Sauce (sadly, I missed National Chip Week. Bad times.), but happily if you swap the morel mushrooms for something cheaper and leave out the gold leaf, it doesn’t have to cost the estimated £36 per portion to make. Find Cyrus Todiwala’s Connoisseurs Curry Sauce recipe here.
and Drinking…
well, to go along with a £36 quid a portion curry sauce, it’s got to be something pretty spesh, so Cobra sent Hubby some of their fabulously bottled King Cobras to try. He wasn’t disappointed.
Nibbling…
on Marks and Spencer’s Colin the Caterpillar coca cola flavoured jellies and Cadbury’s new Dairy Milk Caramel Nibbles. Nom nom nom.
Tweeting…
Not on Twitter yet? Get connected, the come and say hi! (I’m @EnglishMum)
Shouting ‘YAY’!…
at the news that my much-loved fellow blogger and Cousin, Moon, and his beautiful wife Mrs M are expecting a baby. Congratulations! It couldn’t happen to a nicer couple :
So that’s it for Feb, then. Onwards and upwards to March. See you on the other side xx
Healthy baked chicken burgers with help from the glamorous Turtle
So during half term, my adorable twin niece and nephew, Miss Turtle and Mr Jackson came to stay with my two chisellers. We decided to have a blow-out junk food and video night and Turtle agreed to be my glamorous assistant, tearing herself away from her mobile phone and nail file (how the girl doesn’t have stumps for fingers the amount of filing she does, I’ll never know) for just long enough to knock up some yummy chicken burgers.
These burgers are a bit of a fave in our house. Not only are they really cheap, they’re very healthy too and there are endless variations. You can make little dinner party ones to serve with a nice Thai dipping sauce, you can make them into little meatballs and serve with a tomato sauce, or you can vary the flavours, say, with coriander or chilli…
Anyhoo, onto the main event. Firstly, you’ll need:
Breadcrumbs (I whizz 2 slices in the blender of doom)
1 onion, or a couple of spring onions
1 egg
500g minced chicken or turkey
Seasoning
Firstly, then, your glamorous assistant needs to bung a couple of slices of slightly stale bread into the food processor (actually we’re using the blender – not that blender – because I broke my lovely braun Braun MR400 Plus Multiquick Handblender 300w
Next up, warn the aforementioned glamorous assistant about the perils of mixing fingers and blenders (she’s worn hers down enough as it is), then bung in the onion/spring onion and the egg. If you’re using anything else, like chilli or coriander, chuck it in now. Of course, if you don’t have an onion-phobic child and therefore don’t need to resort to this kind of stealth cookery, you could just chop them finely. Whizz until you get a strangely satisfying frothy green liquid and silently pray to the cocktail god that your next mojito won’t taste of spring onion:
Next, and this is the good bit, bung the green goo into the breadcrumbs and add the chicken mince. Season generously with salt and pepper, then roll up the sleeves of your glamorous assistant and set her to work squelching up the mixture (with clean hands and beautifully manicured nails) into an even paste:
When the mix is nicely combined, form it into about 6 patties, or smaller little cakes, or balls or whatever (and yes, they do have a slightly green tinge, but don’t let that put you off):
Put them on a non-stick tray (important that) and bake at 180 degrees/gas 4 for about 20 mins. The smaller ones will take less time, but make sure you check to see that they’re thoroughly cooked in the middle.
Now just assemble your burger. We used fresh crusty rolls and garnished our burgers with crunchy lettuce, grated cheese and a little spicy tomato salsa, but feel free to experiment.
Finally, we got out every single fattening thing we could find, including ice cream, whipped cream and a variety of chocolatey stuff, and set about having an ice-cream sundae competition (#1′s is the one that’s just a sundae dish full of chocolate):
And the winner is? Yup, you guessed it:
The really quite fabulous human blender theory
My husband, bless his cotton ones, doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He’s a ‘take no prisoners’ kind of chap, and his politics are, as my Disreputable Dad would say, slightly left of Attila the Hun.
I admire this quality enormously. Especially as I’m the kind of person who apologises when someone treads on my toe. Take his blender, for instance. It’s not a real blender, it’s kind of a standing joke in our house: a human-sized blender reserved for the total and utter tossers in this life – you know the ones, the real wastes of skin we come across all the time.
Recently, we were discussing the two awful brothers who attacked the two little boys in Edlington. Some bobbly-jumpered ‘expert’ with huge bottle-bottomed glasses was busy on Sky News telling us how it might even be possible for them to be rehabilitated enough that they could slot back into normal life.
‘Pah’, said Hubby. ‘They should get the blender’
And the more we think about it, the more people there are that we’d toss in to join them: how about the little buggers’ parents for instance? Then there’s any number of arrogant ‘me me me’ celebs… those drunken dickheads hurling haywain punches outside any high street pub on any given Sunday morning. Oh, and the adorable Nick Griffin – I’d love to give him a whizz on high speed. Oh god and then there’s Katie bloody Price. Wouldn’t we all love to whip up a quick Jordan smoothie? I know I would.
And imagine the money we’d save on prisons: Terrorists? Blend ‘em. Murderers? Chuck ‘em in too. I reckon we’re on to something – maybe I should write a letter to Number Ten?
Over to you then. You’ve got one person to hurl into the blender. Who’s it to be?
The Great Valentine’s Day Cupcake Challenge: the results
UPDATE: Okay, so the results are in. And yes, I know, I know, this is just a bit of fun, not a competition, but Toria has chosen her faves:
1st Heather’s from Eggs, Cream and Honey. They look mouthwateringly gorgeous and I want to stuff my face with them! Yum
2nd Mummy Limited’s heart cupcakes. Loving the sparkliness with the glitter and hearts that look fab on the cream frosting. Too pretty to eat so that’s why 2nd
3rd Rosie Scribble’s cupcakes for their drizzley randomness and nowt to do with the subliminal cakes. Promise
Happy Valentine’s Day! Romance is alive and well at English Towers this morning and after swearing blind that we weren’t going to do anything for V-day, I was woken from my slumber with a kiss and an armful of beautiful rosebuds.
On to the challenge then. Luckily, my beautiful mate V from Scrummy Cupcake has volunteered to judge. I’ll keep adding them on as fast as I can so you can see every single entry. Apologies for the differing sizes, but if you try and enlarge the smaller ones, they just get all distorted. Let’s roll ‘em out then…
First up, we have Amy Lane’s beautiful Valentine’s cupcakes:
Jelly Monster’s gorgeous red velvet cupcakes with marshmallow cream cheese frosting:
Drina’s cute pink little cupcakes:
2nd (too good to eat)!!!:
Mummy Limited’s fabulous heart cupcakes:
Working Mum on the Verge’s frankly stunning cupcakes made for Bloggers for Haiti (she raised £100!):
Special prize for being the youngest competitor!:
Little Miss Working Mum on the Verge’s beauties too:
Knackered Mother is next with her beautifully decorated little babies (I’ve got my eye on the marshmallow ones at the back):
Snaffles Mummy added Lovehearts – perfect!:
Tara at Sticky Fingers made these stunning cupcakes with her daughter:
And so did Rosie Scribble:
and here’s Madame Scribble’s less than subtle attempt at subliminal messaging for the judge:
Winner!:
And here are Heather’s from Eggs Cream and Honey – I love the texture on these :
There are from Hannah at HomeBaked online (whose red velvet cupcakes were much redder than mine!):
and here are Not such a yummy mummy’s beautiful bunch of cupcakes:
And here are Jo’s stunning pink cupcakes (no boob jokes, Jo, I promise):
and these gorgeously coloured cupcakes are from Lucy over at Teen Baker:
and these heart-shaped beauties are from Erica at Little Mummy:
These are from Me, The Man and The Baby (I love that your hubby thought you’d cut yourself!):
And these are from fellow Disney blogger and all-round good egg, Exmoor Jane (I want some of that food colouring stash you’re hiding!):
These are from Helen (@ChepstowCupcake) via Twitter:
These lovelies are from Audrey, c/o SWSurreyHomeEd.co.uk
And these gorgeous sparkly heart-adorned babies are from Little Dude’s Mummy:
And this enormous great beauty is from the incredibly talented daughter of Toyjeanius:
In which my mojo returns and I make ganache with Green & Black’s
So as you know, I kinda lost my blogging mojo.
It all started to really bug me. I mean, what am I exactly? A foodie blogger? In which case, should I concentrate on food, and not talk so much arse? Or am I a ‘mummy blogger’ (how I hate the term)? A foodie mummy blogger? A foodie blogger who’s also a mummy? A doggy blogger? A foodie doggy mummy blogger? A blogging mummy foodie… er… dogger?
I think I’m kind of ‘none of the above’, really. I’m a blogger who happens to be a mother of two ridiculously fantastic and hilariously funny boys of whom I’m immensely proud. And I’m a foodie. But I’m also a wife, a very occasional journalist (One article this year so far, count it: one.), and a daughter of quite the most spectacularly mental parents you could wish for. I write about food, yes, and I write about kids, but then I write about all sorts of old rubbish besides those two things and an awful lot more besides: greyhounds, chickens, ‘bollocks’ pies, sexual gymnastics…
So I decided I wouldn’t pigeonhole myself. I would let my verbal vomit run free. I would practice ‘no holds barred’ blogging – ‘blogging sans frontieres’, if you would. And do you know what? My mojo came back.
The return of the missing mojo was also partly due to the lovely chaps at Green & Black’s sending me a mahoosive parcel of chocolate. I mean, whose mojo could remain missing when surrounded by about ten different flavours of the most fabulous chocolate in the world?
And seeing as we’ve got the ginormous Cupcake Challenge in the offing, I thought I’d say a few words about chocolate and a few more about ganache:
A few words about chocolate
Chocolate, especially decent chocolate like Green and Black’s needs gentle treatment. That means that melting it in the microwave is a bit of a no no in my book, as the microwave can create hotspots and burn the chocolate or turn it grainy. The best way is to place it in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Make sure the water isn’t touching the bottom of the bowl, and when the water starts to bubble, just turn it off and allow the chocolate to melt gently. I’m a bit anal, but I don’t like to stir until it’s completely melted:
Furthermore, there’s no point in bunging in a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (as nice as it is) – you need something good quality with a high cocoa content, and for cooking, good cocoa butter content will make for easier melting. I tried Green and Black’s Milk Cook’s Chocolate (one of many in my stash) and was really pleased with the result: melted easily? Check. Nice milky taste? Check. No hint of graininess? Check. Furthermore, each little square weighs exactly 5g. Magic!
A few more about ganache:
There’s some kind of ridiculous snobbery about ganache. I mean, just because it’s got a poncy French name it doesn’t mean it has to be poncy itself: it’s just cream and chocolate for goodness’ sake. If you make it runny you can pour it over things as a glaze, or if you make it stiffer you can make truffles, you can chill it and whip it and then pipe it on things too, but it’s still just chocolate and cream.
Anyhoo, so just whisk your cream into your melted chocolate until you get the required consistency (as above), then pour or spread over your cake as required. For piping, bung it in the fridge, then give it a whisk before filling your piping bag.
Et voila. Ganache. Magnifique, n’est-ce pas?
(Oh and these little beauties are red velvet cupcakes, taken from an awesomely, beautiful new book called ‘Eat Me’ by Xanthe Milton which is due to be published on Mar 4th – and guess who’s getting a review copy?!)
The Great Cupcake Challenge
So I’m a bit bleurgh about blogging at the moment.
I have no inspiration.
I’ve lost my mojo, as it were.
So I thought ‘ooh, I know, I need a little bit of reader interaction’. And so I went in the bath (mango and lime bubbles, if you must know) and had a think. And here’s the plan. I’m setting you a challenge.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make me some cupcakes (well, not me exactly, I don’t want you to post them to me or anything). Seeing as Valentine’s Day is coming up and it’s always a huge anticlimax, I thought you could make Valentine’s Day cupcakes. I want real effort here, now – none of this watery icing and sprinkles nonsense - proper, beeyootiful cupcakes.
If you’re a blogger, then you can post a picture on your blog, or if you’re not a nerd you can just email me a picture to be posted, proudly, on englishmum.com on Valentine’s Day.
What do you think, then? You up for it?
Oh and while you’re at it, if you’re truly proud of your pic, you can enter it in this month’s Home Baked Challenge, the theme of which is ‘love’ and of which I happen to be a judge. I won’t be biased. Honest.
Sunday lunch: slow roasted shoulder of lamb with red wine gravy
I have my friend and fellow blogger Mrs Wallop to thank for this one. I was at the butcher’s a couple of weeks ago, and was rather taken by a whole shoulder of lamb, which I bought on a whim because it was cheap. Shoulder has by far the tastiest meat, but isn’t a pretty joint. Still, it has… erm… ‘character’, shall we say.
Anyhoo, later, when it was sitting staring at me from the fridge, I completely ran out of inspiration. One Tweet later and lovely Mrs Wallop came to the rescue with a suggestion for slow roasting with rosemary and garlic. Nom. It’s just so scrummy I’ve made it again twice since then. It’s dead easy too – all you need is:
1 lamb shoulder (the lovely ’hog bloggers’ and master butchers The Ginger Pig suggest that you ask your butcher to remove the rib bones but leave the collar bone in place as this acts as a bridge for the fat to run away from the meat).
3 cloves garlic
Couple sprigs of rosemary
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
First, take a sharp knife, and jab the fleshy parts of the meat all over. Slice the garlic into little shards, and jab the pieces into the holes in the meat, along with little sprigs of rosemary. Season generously with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil:
Place the lamb in a roasting tray and completely cover with foil, folding it right over the edges of the tray to make a tight seal.
Now just place in a low oven (160 degrees C/gas 3) and forget about it for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. When it’s ready, cover in foil and reserve somewhere warm while you make the gravy.
Bung the roasting tray on the hob (you can pour off some of the fat if there’s a lot), then sprinkle over a tablespoonful of plain flour. Stir it around with a wooden spoon, then add in a glass of red wine. Bubble that away and really scrub at the bottom of the pan to pick up all the little sticky bits where all the flavour is. Now, just pour in about 500ml stock and reduce until the gravy has thickened slightly.
I served this lamb with minted new potatoes and plenty of steamed veg and it was just scrummy. Instead of carving, it’s really best to just pull this apart, discarding the really fatty bits, then just sharing out the lovely, soft chunks of lamb. Admittedly, this picking about means that it’s probably not a dinner party dish, but it’s fab for a family Sunday lunch, and the meat is just so gorgeously soft and sticky.
If you’re lucky enough to have some left over, it makes fabulous sandwiches, with a handful of rocket and a dollop of mayo that’s been mixed with a little mint sauce. Heaven.
Disclaimer: Yes, these photographs are terrible, but I blame my good friends, Foxy and Tums, who took me to a quiz night and forced me to drink vast amounts of alcohol, thereby bestowing upon me a hangover of such epic proportions that it took me two days to recover. Not my fault at all, then. *cough*
Grapefruit, orange and apple marmalade with English Grandma
My Mum’s a great cook. If I ever want to try something, nine times out of ten she’ll know: cakes, casseroles, weird Australian fruit cakes, Scotch eggs… you name it, she’ll have a recipe.
I’ve been wanting to make marmalade for ages, so when Hubby appeared back from the farm shop with a big bag of Seville oranges (in season now, folks!), it seemed a good time to kidnap her and force her to show me how to make it (not really, she was quite willing, honest).
I was really rather taken with the recipe for ‘Windfall Marmalade’ from the Hairy Bikers’ Mum Knows Best series, so this was the starting point for our marmalade, although we tinkered with it quite a lot.
First things first, then, you’ll need a few bits and bobs that you might not normally have, namely:
1. A mahoosive saucepan or preserving pan
2. A large piece of muslin
3. Lots of clean jam jars with well-fitting lids
4. A jam thermometer (although you can do it the old fashioned way too)
5. A set of wax discs, cellophane covers and rubber bands
6. A clean pair of rubber gloves, or skin like teflon
7. Time. Set aside a good few hours.
So, to make our rather unusual combo, you’ll need:
2 grapefruits
6 Seville oranges
About 900g Bramley apples
3 litres water
2kg granulated sugar
Sterilising the jars:
Wash your jars in hot, soapy water. Rinse well, then without touching the insides, stand them on a board and put them in a very low oven to dry thoroughly.
Preparing the fruit:
For the oranges and grapefruits:
Wash and rinse the fruit well. Peel off all the rind – just press gently , don’t take the pith (haha), then cut it into fine shreds.
We found that the oranges were firm enough to grate, which was much easier:
Now, with a sharp knife, cut away all the pith and remaining outer skins of the citrus fruits (keep these separate in a bowl as you’ll need them). In the recipe it says chop the flesh roughly, but we found there was too much tough stuff left, especially with the oranges, and it was easier to run the knife down the edge of each individual segment and just pop it out, leaving the central ‘core’ surrounded by a fan of segmenty skin (not sure what the technical term is for that bit, probably ‘segmenting’ which is boring, if accurate). If there are any large segments, chop them into two or three pieces:
For the apples:
Wash and rinse the fruit well. Peel, core and chop, chucking all the cores, pips and skin etc in with the citrus pith and stuff.
Off to the hob:
Put the chopped/grated citrus rind into your huge pan with the flesh and chopped apples, and pour in the water:
Now, take all the yucky bits: the apple and citrus peel, the pith, the cores etc, and tie them all up tightly in the square of muslin:
Add this gently in to the top of the pan. DON’T ADD THE SUGAR YET! (as you can see, even my mahoosive pan was not really big enough and had to be carefully watched initially so that it didn’t boil over):
So just simmer gently until the peel is tender (make sure you test it – if you add the sugar too early the peel will remain hard) and the liquid has reduced by about half. Don’t be too impatient with this bit. It took a good two hours:
Now, lift out the muslin bag and, wearing a pair of clean rubber gloves (or not if you have asbestos fingers), squeeze it to ensure you get all the liquid out. Discard.
Now, having tested the peel, you can add the sugar and stir well until it’s dissolved. Then it’s just a case of leaving the marmalade to boil away (don’t let it boil over – you want a rolling boil) until it reaches setting point.
Setting Point:
You can test this in a number of different ways, the easiest of which are:
1. Do it my Mum’s way, which is to put a saucer in the fridge until cold, then put a teaspoon of marmalade on the saucer – it should wrinkle when pushed with your finger.
2. Use a jam thermometer - the mixture should reach about 104.5 degrees C
Bottling and sealing:
Once the marmalade has set, leave it to cool for about 15 minutes, then pour into the warm jars. Add a wax disc (wax side down), then lightly moisten a cellophane circle and stretch it over the rim of the jar (moistened side up). Add a rubber band and a funky label.
And that’s it. Easy. Should you, however, still feel that you need the help of English Grandma in order to perfect your marmalade, I’m happy to announce that I rent her out at reasonable rates.
Just saying.
Memory Monday: fabulous foodie memories
The lovely Jennifer, Lifestyle Editor of the Times Online and writer of The TimesOnline’s fabulous blog AlphaMummy has challenged me to reveal a deep, dark memory from my past.
Ooer.
Of course, most of my earliest memories are food-related: baking with my Mum in our shiny, lime green melamine kitchen (it’s probably come back into fashion now!): pushing the buttons on the Kenwood Chef, butterfly fairy cakes with fluffy buttercream icing, bubbly honeycomb (fabulous, fizzy magic!), real custard, the ginger biscuit and cream cake, whisking thick creamy batter for toad in the hole, fabulous frittata stuffed with sliced potatoes, crispy bacon and topped with golden, bubbling cheese…
I also remember spending happy hours helping her with the cricket teas: spreading butter (real butter, mind, none of that margarine stuff) on malt loaf and mashing up boiled eggs with salad cream for egg and cress sandwiches - being picked to take the orange squash out to the players on a hot day (what an honour!)….
It looks like I loved the kitchen so much I didn’t ever want to leave:
Happily, all my memories are pretty good. So sorry, Jennifer, I haven’t got any really deep dark ones. Unless, of course, you count…
Working that handbag, though, girl.
