Entries tagged with recipe on I'm glad it burnt

Egg Custard Tart

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:10:12 +0000

Whenever I make something with pastry, there's always some left over. Of course I make the obligatory jam tarts with the spare pastry, but this time I decided to make something else. A personal favourite of mine are Egg Custard Tarts, and since earlier on in the day at school, I'd made another tart - I had some left-over pastry.

Some people say never to re-use pastry, but any sensible foodie would never throw it out!

Here's my recipe for a large Egg Custard Tart (not individual portions!)

What you need:

4oz Shortcrust Pastry
2 medium eggs
½ pint milk
2 tbsp sugar
Grated nutmeg
7 inch tin

Step 1. Start with rolling out the pastry on a floured surface until it's around ¼ cm thick.

Step 2. Place it over your tin and cut off the excess pastry. No, don't do that - I did, and of course pastry shrinks in the oven... so let a bit of pastry hang over the top.

Step 3. Bake blind for 15 minutes at 180°C, or gas mark 4. (FYI: Baking blind means we replace what would be the actual filling with anything that will prevent the pastry base from rising - usually dried beans, rice or lentals).

Step 4. Whilst the pastry is in the oven, we'll make the proper filling. Pour the milk and sugar into a saucepan and bring to the boil. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the eggs. When the milk reaches boiling point, pour it in with the eggs and stir well.

Step 5. Once the pastry is cooked, remove your fake filling of choice. Now your can cut the excess pastry off. Pour the egg mixture into the cooked pastry case. Cook for a further 15 minutes until the egg mixture has set.

Here's where I went slightly wrong - The pastry had shrunk a little and made gaps between the pastry and the loose bottom tin I was using. Not wanting to waste anything, I carried on pouring over the top of the pastry. Of course I forgot about the loose bottom and it went everywhere! So, my advice is to put it on a baking tray to avoid making a mess of your kitchen :)

Even after cooking the egg tart, there was still pastry left over, so with that I made Jam Tarts.

If that happens to you too - here's what to do...

Roll out the pastry to your preferred thickness
Cut out the correct size with a pastry cutter
Put a spoonful of jam in, again don't over fill - but don't skimp either!
Bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes. Simplz.

Dolmio vs. The best lasagna in the world?

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:14:31 +0100

When growing up, whenever we had tea as children we could always tell if it had come from a jar. We called this "plop", mum would say, "Sorry I'm in a rush tonight we're having plop for tea".

Stuff from a jar, especially tomato based sauces, always have a distinct flavour that you can tell straight away is not home-made. Usually it's far too sweet and salty.

In the interest of science (and because there was an offer on Dolmio Lasagna sauces at the Co-op) I thought it would be interesting to make two and compare them under strict test conditions*.

The recipe that the Dolmio was up against is only The World's best Lasagna.

Unfortunately, a certain somebody accidentally burnt the second (home-made) lasagna. However, due to the name of this blog I can't complain and it does kind of make the pasta sheets all nice and chewy...

According to the World's best Lasagna serving calculator, 115g of mince meat was supposed to be used - but that didn't sound right, so for the test we used equal amounts (400g) for each recipe.

Dolmio:
This recipe uses equal amounts of red/white sauce and despite not having any proper fresh ingredients tasted pretty damn good, and again for breakfast. It did however taste like plop, but that is forgiveable as it came from a jar :)

World's best:
A bit too salty but extremely morish. It didn't reheat very well but that's probably because we nuked it in the oven. It was lacking in the white sauce department - the combination of Mozzarella and Ricotta didn't achieve the creaminess that the Dolmio had.

Verdict

Taste-wise the World's best lasagna definitely wins, I think the Italian salami in it just makes your mouth water! If you are going to make a lasagna, I suggest following that recipe, but keep some cheddar on standby because the red/white ratio was a little off.

I've had an offer from a friend who claims his mum makes a better lasagna, so I'll write a follow up post when my taste buds have made up their mind.

*Not really strict test conditions

The best flapjack recipe in the whole wide world

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:43:49 +0100

Due to the advent of a picnic in a park and my never-ending attempts to reduce the amount of porridge oats that have accidentally accumulated over time, I thought I might as well practice making some super-tasty flapjacks.

I've never made flapjacks before, but I've heard that it's often thought that adding more syrup makes for a gooier flapjack. I've also heard that this isn't the case, and in fact adding more butter makes it gooier.

I can see the logic that more syrup could would equate to a hard flapjack. So, I figured I might as well search on Google for 'the best flapjack recipe in the whole wide world', that way I couldn't go wrong.

As expected Google didn't let me down and the first result was for this brilliant, and brilliantly simple recipe: The Best Flapjack Recipe in the Whole Wide World

Just take a look for yourself! How many flapjacks do you know that can be cut into slices like a cake without either the knife not penetrating the mixture at all, because it's way too hard, or it all crumbling to bits because it's too soft!

(If you're wondering what the layer in the middle is - it's dates, mmm)

How to make chocolate go further

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:00:14 +0100

I bought some bargain, better-than-half-price cherries from the Co-op, but disapointed they weren't as tasty as glace cherries I decided to add them to a chocolatey concoction.

After a quick trip back to the Co-op I had myself 150g of fruit and nut chocolate, 150g of dark chocolate and some condensed milk, with the intention of mixing them all together...

This is a little trick I learnt from one of those student cookbooks whilst at uni - to help make chocolate go that little bit further, but frankly it's cheaper and less effort to just buy more chocolate!

Break the chocolate up into pieces and place in a Pyrex bowl
Make a bain marie with the bowl and a pan of water
Add the condensed milk and a big dollop of unsalted butter if you have any
Melt. Stirring as you go...
Add the cherries - or honeycomb toffee or whatever else you fancy!
Pour into a shallow container, then when it's cool put it in the fridge.
If you are lacking in the area of shallow containers like me, instead use a glass lid from an oven dish as a substitute (see pic).

Apple and oat cookies

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:05:27 +0100

Due to some miss communication amongst the household we ended up with too many boxes of porridge oats. Thankfully this evening, some cookie making solved the problem.

This recipe was made up on the spot, and as a result doesn't make the most amazing tasting cookies you've ever had. But, I thought it might be worth letting you know what was used, so you can rustle some up (if you ever find your self with an over-abundance of oats).

300g oats
100g plain flour
2 tbsps of milled flaxseed
270g of apple sauce
(you can use more or less, we just used the remainder of what was available)
250g plain yoghurt
100g butter/margarine
75g sultanas
...and for the topping: Ground ginger, cinnamon and xylitol

The process is simple, mix the oats with the flour & flax and add the melted butter. Stir.

Add the apple sauce, and keep stirring. In fact, you can't really stir the mixture as it's quite dry and and stiff. Use your hands to make sure the butter is well combined with everything else.

Plonk in some sultanas, raisins, currents or whatever is lying around and mix one last time.

Now all that's left to do is roll the mixture into little balls, cover them with the topping and squash them down into a reasonable cookie shape. Put them in the oven for a few minutes on a high heat and bobs your uncle.

If you have any suggestions for other oat-based cookies please comment!

These would be nice crumbled up with some vanilla ice-cream, think I'll try that now...

A Fishy Thai Green Curry

Fri, 22 May 2009 19:22:26 +0100

If you're a student like me you thrive on a cheap meal, but it doesn't need to be beans on toast every night. And no doubt you certainly can't afford to get a takeaway either, it's not good for your waistline or your wallet.

I try to cook as often as i can, but sometimes it can be difficult to find the time, or even to afford to put together a proper home cooked meal. However it really doesn't need to be.

I've just put together a simple, quick Thai Curry with fresh Haddock for dinner & the whole thing cost around £4, although admittedly I had some of the ingredients already around the kitchen. This was the first time I've cooked this dish, and I mostly just made the recipe up as I went along... but everything turned out quite nicely and very tasty.

You don't need much for this dish:

Fresh fish; Haddock, Salmon or whatever you fancy. My Haddock was only £2 for a large fillet from the fish counter,
Thai Green Curry paste about £1.50 a jar that will last for ages,
A dash of Fish sauce,
Coconut Milk,
A small onion and a couple of cloves of garlic,
A stalk of lemon grass,
Fresh chopped coriander,
salt and chilli peppers or ginger as desired,
Rice.

To begin with put the rice on a gentle boil and dice the onion nice and small. Crush the garlic and lemon grass with the flat of your knife or the base of a pan, there's no need to chop or use a garlic crusher.

Gently fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes, add a dash of water so they don't burn, then add the curry paste and a little bit of fish sauce, not too much as it's pretty strong stuff. Mix all of this together in the pan then pour in the full can of coconut milk and add the lemon grass, coriander and chilli and ginger.

Turn down the heat and let it simmer while you cook the fish. The fish you choose doesn't really matter, you could do this with prawns or even chicken if you fancy it. I cut the fillet into three equal pieces and then fried them slowly in the pan. If there's skin, then leave it on and cook it skin side down with a dash of oil, rather than poking and flipping the fish just leave it alone for a good few minutes and let it cook through, then just near the end flip it and let it sear the other side.

When it's done put the fish to one side to rest for a few minutes then serve with the rice and the sauce on top. If you wish, add the lemon grass and sprig of coriander to improve the presentation!

I looked this up at my local Thai takeaway and it would cost about £9.50 and no doubt would be full of allsorts of nasty things and old frozen ingredients, this way you know exactly what's in it and how fresh it is. Plus it should only take 20 minutes, much quicker than ordering out.

Mocha Tart, a good start to a new blog

Fri, 22 May 2009 18:47:19 +0100

Hi, welcome to our fabulous new food blog. So that we get off to a good start, we thought we'd write about this delicious dessert!

We've modified this mocha tart recipe to use a strange but tasty & seemingly limited edition Chocolate Cappuccino Cereal that we found in B&M Bargains. You don't have to use this, but if you can get your hands on it - we thoroughly recommend you do! If not for this recipe, then for the fact that it contains chocolate made to look like coffee beans.

Here's what you'll need...

300g of double choc chip cookies
alternatively, use the aforementioned Kellogs Chocolate Cappuccino Cereal
100g butter
300ml whipping cream
Instant espresso powder
300g dark chocolate

Measure out the cereal, and shake from side to side to bring the larger particles to the surface, then extract as many 'coffee beans' as you'd like - used to later decorate the top.

Crush whatever you are using as the base by any means nessecary.

To save washing up, just whack the butter straight in with this and pop it in the microwave to melt the butter. Stir these two ingredients together and press into a loose bottomed cake tin. Pop it in the fridge.

Make yourself a brew, catch up on your favourite blogs and eat 100g of the chocolate.

Melt the remaining 200g of chocolate. Add 2 tablespoons of espresso powder to two tablespoons of boiling water, leave to cool (We put this in the freezer to speed things up).

Whip the cream until light and frothy, then stir in the melted chocolate and espresso. Whip again until stiff. Retrieve the base from the fridge and spoon your mixture onto it. Now all you have to do is put it back in the fridge until its set - this doesn't take long, about an hour at the most.

Decorate however you wish, perhaps with chocolate curls. We used the coffee beans procured from the cereal: