tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34302171571875767192024-03-13T00:46:10.866+00:00Lapin d'Or and MoreMiscellaneous rabbitings from a chocolate lover in North Devonlapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.comBlogger156125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-38608290178704024392019-08-04T19:34:00.000+01:002019-08-04T19:34:55.507+01:00End of Holiday Celebration with Turbot for DinnerWe recently had a two week break where we headed up to the North of England and were spoilt by glorious weather. There was plenty of interesting food too, but the weekend we came home a local fishing boat was selling direct from the quay in Appledore and we picked up a beautiful whole turbot weighing just over 2kg.<br />
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This beauty provided the two of us with three perfect dinners, though the final meal of curry did have some prawns added for variety. I needed to rummage around for my largest chopping board and strongest, sharpest knives to make cutting the whole fish up a little easier. The fish was divided into a combination of two thick steaks on the bone, two good fillets off the bone but skin left on, and the rest of the turbot flesh removed from the bone and skinned to use in the curry. The head and bones were all used to make fish stock with some of the tastier morsels from the cooked head being quietly reserved for cooks perks.<br />
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The first meal we had used the bone in steaks. I served them with a gratin of potatoes and baby turnips flavoured with garlic and thyme. The dish was a much simplified version of a Nathan Outlaw recipe reproduced on <a href="https://www.cooked.com.au/Nathan-Outlaw/Quadrille-Publishing/Fish-Kitchen/Baked/Turbot-steak-with-seaweed-butter-turnips-and-potatoes-recipe">cooked.com</a> and printed in Nathan Outlaw's Fish Kitchen cookbook. I did not make the seaweed butter but added plenty of plain butter.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEIfAOeUKh4F3Ez-zArCOz5oFAMeHQR1TWx8vPFYKCA1Sds9Xe2J3BsiKB6yqFfjGxHjuRX428z7O4nbVLCnYw8UXIZU52hZneYOD_sWeZTIAxDv2KuhOoc8PQ2nqSCUPYvXP7FZN8d-N/s1600/turbot+tranche+cooked++pxl.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDEIfAOeUKh4F3Ez-zArCOz5oFAMeHQR1TWx8vPFYKCA1Sds9Xe2J3BsiKB6yqFfjGxHjuRX428z7O4nbVLCnYw8UXIZU52hZneYOD_sWeZTIAxDv2KuhOoc8PQ2nqSCUPYvXP7FZN8d-N/s400/turbot+tranche+cooked++pxl.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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For a video clip of Nathan Outlaw preparing a small whole turbot to cook as 'on the bone' steaks do watch this 2012 Saturday Kitchen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=OkvXHGDr43c">YouTube</a> clip.<br />
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For the fillets of turbot I chose a recipe from a much treasured cookbook, Joyce Molyneux's The Carved Angel Cookbook. The Carved Angel was a restaurant in Dartmouth, Devon that was once run by Joyce Molyneux who favoured local produce and encouraged local growers and foragers to supply her restaurant. There is a quote in the book that I would wish could be part of all restaurant staff training ' ..we try to make service as unobtrusive as possible, anticipating people's wants, without constantly fluttering around them'.<br />
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There is an elegant simplicity about all of the recipes in the book and this turbot dish is flavoured with just lime and ginger.<br />
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1 lime<br />
4 x 175g turbot fillets<br />
1 tsp grated ginger root<br />
salt & pepper<br />
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Hollandaise sauce to serve ( I cheated and just served a good quality mayonnaise)<br />
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Preheat oven to 140C<br />
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First pare the zest off the whole lime with a small sharp knife and then cut each strip of zest into thin shreds removing any white pith first.<br />
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Peel the thick white pith off the whole lime and remove each lime segment from the surrounding skin. (BBC food website page showing the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/techniques/segmenting_citrus_fruit">segmenting technique</a>).<br />
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Place the turbot fillets in a buttered ovenproof dish and scatter over the lime segments, half of the shredded zest and all of the grated ginger.<br />
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Season with salt and pepper.<br />
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Cover the dish with foil and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the turbot is just cooked.<br />
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Blanch the remaining zest strips in boiling water for 1 minute and then refresh under cold water.<br />
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When ready to serve, remove the foil and scatter over the remaining zest strips.<br />
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Hollandaise sauce will go well with this dish but I find it very rich so am more inclined to serve a small portion of a light mayonnaise and have buttery mashed potato or buttered new potatoes alongside.<br />
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The final dish we cooked from our turbot was a Rick Stein curry of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/potato_and_pea_curry_19537">potatoes and peas</a> which was augmented with a small addition of turbot and prawns near the end of the cooking time. I had a small quantity of home grown french beans in the garden so took the liberty of adding those too. So apart from the spicing, I rather veered away from the original recipe. This was served with cucumber raita and a fresh mint and coriander chutney.<br />
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While we were away the weather was very warm and dry so, I was amazed that nearly all of the plants in both the garden and allotment survived. The warm weather had brought a lot of the garden plants into flower so we were welcomed home by quite a lot of flowers in bloom, some of which I picked to enjoy indoors:<br />
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Dahlias, purple verbena, lavender, purple sage leaves and greek oregano flowers</div>
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-11278866092339602162019-07-16T22:39:00.005+01:002019-07-16T22:39:51.865+01:00Meals inspired by the 2019 Women's World Cup Football TournamentThis post is a summary of some of the dishes I cooked during the 2019 Women's World Cup Football competition. The tournament was hosted by France, so I have taken French food as my inspiration for many of the meals we prepared while the tournament was on.<br />
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I learnt to cook in the 1970s and I look back on that period of my life with great fondness. French classical cooking was very in vogue and I still believe many of the classical dishes that I learnt to prepare stand their culinary ground today. It wasn't all butter sauces and elaborate garnishes, but they did feature rather strongly. The food I was really in awe of though was France's bistro style cooking, and the breads and viennoiserie rather than the elaborate cakes and tarts.<br />
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The unique flavour of so many dishes relies on quite specific ingredients so I am always delighted when I come across a supplier that sells specialist ingredients by mail order, and my most recent discovery in the UK is <a href="http://frenchclick.co.uk/">frenchclick</a> where among the many things you can order they have french cuts of meat and a superb range of french cheeses.<br />
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I think of french cheese shops as quite magical places where I could spend many hours studying all of the fascinating cheeses - so many shapes and textures created by such skillful cheese makers and affineurs. So a cheeseboard was the very simple way we celebrated french food for the opening game of the tournament.</div>
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The three cheeses above are Port Salut, Corsica Fromage de Brebis and Tomme de Savoie.<br />
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Another simple but perfect lunch is a plate of terrine or pate with a bitter leaf salad and toast. The salad on this plate is chicory, walnut and slivers of dry cured ham. The terrine is rabbit and prune and the pate is chicken liver and brandy. Both of these were bought ready made.<br />
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The above dish may look rather British, but casserole is a saute of french veal kidney and mushrooms which was my first time cooking veal kidney. The kidney was ordered from the frenchclick supplier mentioned above and it came vacuum packed in its full casing of veal fat. I must confess to throwing away the veal fat but I need to research a little more how to use it as it seemed a terrible waste not to.<br />
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The weather really has been rather warm for 'meat and two veg' meals so the next dish was back to salads with the very classical salad ni<span style="background-color: white; color: #6a6a6a; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold;">ç</span>oise. I have managed to grow some quite flavoursome new potatoes in large tubs on the patio at home, so these were put to work and this dish really does benefit from using ingredients at their best.<br />
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Now for a dessert, or this could equally be breakfast: French Toast (Pain Perdu) with Strawberries, blueberries and thick plain yogurt, maple syrup if you wish. We enjoyed this while watching Canada play Cameroon.</div>
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There are not many perennial vegetables that I grow in the garden but sorrel is one that I would not want to be without. It is often the first 'crop' of a new year. I have a large patch of the small leaf buckler sorrel and a small area of broad leaved sorrel. The buckler leaf sorrel is really welcome in spring salads and the broad leaf I use for soup. The colour of cooked sorrel can be a tad grey and if this annoys you then you can always mix in some fresh spinach to punch up the green colour.<br />
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Rarely able to resist a bargain cookbook purchase this lovely book '<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0857834983/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0">Cooking South of the Clouds</a>; Recipes and Stories from China's Yunnan Province by Geogia Freedman, was snapped up from amazon at £6.36 back in early June 2019. The above, rather beige looking soup is a chicken and chestnut soup flavoured with black cardamom. This works well as a summer soup if you cheat and use vac packed chestnuts rather than fresh ones, which I only see available in late autumn and winter. The recipes include a wide range of ingredients such as carrot greens, thai chillies, banana leaves, potatoes, squash leaves, and flatbreads, as well as the more ubiquitous chinese flavourings. We had this on a day the Chinese team were battling against Spain.<br />
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My next dish was back to traditional french ingredients with a cervelas and emmental salad with bitter leaves. I made quite a bad job of poaching the cervelas sausage so they all ended up with very split skins and looking frankly volcanic. The neat slices the recipe called for were out of the question as what I had left after removing the skin was sausage rubble. This was my least successful dish of the series.<br />
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Although I live very close to the coast, really fresh fish is hard to buy, so I was delighted to discover this summer that a local boat will be landing and selling fish direct to the public about once a week. The first time I went along they were just selling shellfish and I came away with two beautiful spider crabs and a lobster.<br />
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The lobster was used for a recipe that I based loosely on one by the chef Georgio Locatelli in his vast book on Italian cuisine, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1841157023/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tu00_p1_i0">Made in Italy</a>, and we ate this while watching Italy play Brazil.<br />
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Later in the week I made Thai crab fried rice with one of the cooked and picked over spider crabs. Every time I buy a whole crab that I will have to pick the flesh out of myself I vow at the end of the process to never attempt it again. After about two years though I forget how tedious I found the process and I am back buying a whole crab again. We enjoyed this fried rice dish the day of the Thailand vs Chile game.<br />
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I went back to a rather English style starter for the Japan vs England game. In the 1970's just about every restaurant I remember going to had this starter on the menu along with soup, melon and fruit juice. It could often turn out to be a rather large mound of limp lettuce and salad cream with a few prawns on top but when made up with good ingredients I still enjoy eating this childhood memory dish. The sauce which is often called a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Rose_sauce">marie rose</a> sauce will in its most basic form be just mayonnaise (or salad cream) flavoured with a little tomato ketchup and lemon juice. I like a bit of chilli in mine and some cooks add a splash of alcohol to the sauce too. The many variations are discussed in detail by Felicity Cloake in her Guardian newspaper article <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/aug/20/how-to-make-perfect-prawn-cocktail-recipe">'How to make the perfect prawn cocktail'</a>.<br />
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The above salmon with cucumber and tomato is a recipe from 'My Gastronomy' by Nico Ladenis which was published in the late 1980's. The salmon is steamed with a little butter and the cucumber is cut into spaghetti like ribbons before being briefly cooked and then dressed with dill and olive oil. The dish is garnished with chopped peeled and seeded tomatoes and a butter sauce.<br />
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England vs Argentina -Griddled beef steak with Francis Mallmann's Smashed Potatoes.</div>
I am rather in awe of Argentine bbq methods and Francis Mallmann has written two really good books on the subject <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1579655378/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0">Mallmann on Fire</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1579655378/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0">Seven Fires</a>.<br />
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Germany vs Nigeria quarter final</div>
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Blue Cheese (Forme d'Ambert) and bacon salad with warm new potatoes</div>
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Sweden vs Canada quarter final</div>
A very simple rye crispbread with smoked salmon, cream cheese, cucumber and dill. I wish I liked rye crispbreads more, they seem so wholesome when I eat them, but none the less I find them rather hard work to eat.<br />
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Italy vs China quarter final</div>
Meatball and spaghetti pasta with a fresh tomato sauce and peppery salad leaves. I like to use a mixture of veal and pork mince for these and add a little parmesan cheese, dried oregano and breadcrumbs to the mix.<br />
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England vs Cameroon quarter final</div>
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Baked plaice (from our local fishing boat) with chips, mayo and mushy peas.</div>
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England vs USA semi-final </div>
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This is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carrier_(chef)">Robert Carrier</a> recipe for an omelette stuffed with a tomato and aubergine filling. Robert Carrier was a restaurant and hotel owner in England from the 1960's to early eighties who was born in the USA. He had a highly acclaimed restaurant in Camden Passage Islington, London where I was very lucky to once be treated to a meal. I always thought he achieved an ideal balance between some of the more enchanting aspects of french, english and american cooking.</div>
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<span style="text-align: start;">Dessert 1, </span>Gooseberry Fool for England, in the England vs USA semi-final</div>
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Dessert 2, <span style="text-align: center;">Blueberry Cheesecake for the USA in the England USA semi-final</span></div>
I was hoping for sweet news for England but the USA put an end to our hopes of being in the final.<br />
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Netherlands vs Sweden semi final in Lyon</div>
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Meatballs with cumin flavoured carrots and lyonnaise potatoes</div>
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Chips & Mayo for an afternoon snack during the final match Netherlands vs USA, which resulted in the USA taking the cup once again.<br />
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Finally some consolation english strawberries and ice-cream for England who lost to Sweden in the 3rd/4th place play-offs.<br />
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lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-61960719332698922592018-06-17T15:29:00.005+01:002018-06-17T20:12:40.304+01:00World Cup 2018: Spain vs Portugal<br />
The team from Portugal made drawing against Spain look easy, or rather Ronaldo made it look easy. I had hoped for a win from Spain but on the day that looked rather doubtful. Spain had sacked their manager just before the tournament started and although they may have felt this was the only option, I hope they asked the players before they did it, but some how I doubt it.<br />
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So the chosen cocktail for this match, '<b>Adios Amigos</b>', which was chosen in hope of Spain beating Portugal, turned out to have a different meaning.<br />
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To make this martini style drink you will need:<br />
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1 shot Bacardi light rum<br />
1/2 shot Martell cognac<br />
1/2 shot dry gin<br />
1/2 shot dry vermouth<br />
1/4 shot freshly squeezed lime juice<br />
1/4 shot sugar syrup<br />
1/2 shot chilled water<br />
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Shake all of the ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass.<br />
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This is rather punchy on the alcohol. I sipped mine slowly but was still feeling rather sleepy by the time I reached the bottom of my glass.<br />
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The dish for this match was a Russian salmon pie or 'Kulebiaka'. Perhaps more traditionally made with a yeasted dough, I have only ever made this with puff pastry (bought pastry at that). The pie is made up of layers of cooked rice or buckwheat, fried onion and mushroom, dill and parsley, salmon fillets and hard boiled egg, all moistened by little sour cream. It is a rather splendid thing to both look at and to eat.<br />
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It may be a rather British thing but pies and football seem to go well together.<br />
<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-61796174103112590362018-06-17T12:41:00.001+01:002018-06-17T12:41:32.419+01:00World Cup 2018 - RussiaI will be cooking my way through the 2018 Football World Cup as usual, and for this tournament I am going to be exploring the cuisine of the host nation Russia and its neighbours. Many of the cookbooks that I own on the cuisine of Russia also include many of the neighbouring regions such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Estonia and other near neeighbours where there are common food cultures.<br />
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So for each game I am going to try and prepare a dish from either Russia or a near by country, and I will also be making a cocktail that will have a link to one of the teams playing. In many cases my cocktails will have very tenuous links but I have recently bought a huge book on cocktails written by Simon Difford and I want to try out as many as I can while I have the excuse, and there are 3,000 in there to have a go at.<br />
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So for the opening game of Russian vs Saudi Arabia we had a smoked trout open sandwich on black bread with egg, dill and horseradish cream and a Sputnik #2 cocktail.<br />
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The hot smoked trout is from a <a href="http://www.blakewell.co.uk/">Blakewells</a> a local trout farm that also has a nice cafe.We often stop off to buy some of their smoked trout when we are visiting the near by <a href="http://www.broomhillart.co.uk/">Broomhill</a> sculpture gardens which are just outside Barnstaple, North Devon and well worth a visit. Broomhill also has a good <a href="http://www.broomhillart.co.uk/restaurant/about-our-food.html">restaurant</a>.<br />
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I have been trying to grow a lot of dill in preparation for this adventure into Russian cuisine but the rather fine weather we have had in the last month has resulted in the plants peaking too soon. Much of the dill I planted is shooting up and producing flowers rather than more leaf.<br />
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I realised this too late, so the rapidly sown second batch of seed will no doubt be ready to pick just as the world cup is finishing.<br />
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<b>To make a Sputnik # 2:</b><br />
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Shake the following over ice and strain into an ice filled 'Old-Fashioned' glass<br />
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1 shot Bacardi light rum<br />
1 shot Martell cognac<br />
2 shots freshly squeezed orange juice<br />
1/2 shot sugar syrup<br />
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Russia had a fairly easy first game against Saudi Arabia though it was far from dull as had been predicted in the press. No surprise though that the second days match of Spain vs Portugal was rather more entertaining.lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-32474314347020664832016-07-11T19:53:00.001+01:002016-07-11T19:53:25.921+01:00Cheese & Football Feast the Final: Portugal I cannot hide my disappointment, I wanted France, the Euro 2016 football tournament hosts, to win last night against Portugal, but it was not to be.<br />
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It seemed a struggle for both teams, even with Ronaldo taken off early following a knee injury France did not seem to gain any edge. Goal less at full time, the extra time was looking nearly over when Portugal scored. France appeared to liven up for the last few minutes but to no avail.<br />
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So although I was disappointed with the football outcome, the Cheese Feast has been a lot of fun and I have discovered many new dishes and beers along the way. My dish for the final match, Cheese Stuffed Pork Tenderloin, was one published by the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/recipes/cheese-stuffed-pork-tenderloin/11127/">Washington Post</a> and is an adaptation of one by David Leite for his book <a href="http://leitesculinaria.com/the-new-portuguese-table">The New Portuguese Table</a>. The meat is marinaded in a hot pepper paste which they give a recipe for, but you can also buy suitable pepper pastes from Portuguese or Turkish delis, which is the route I took. I stuffed the tenderloin with Portuguese Jorge cheese which is quite a full flavoured one. The cheese did ooze out a little while it was cooking and even more when it came to carving the tenderloin to serve, but some stayed inside!<br />
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It was served with home grown new potatoes and sugar peas. The meat stayed very succulent which does not often happen when I cook pork tenderloin. The stuffed tenderloin is browned in a pan and then finished in the oven. With all the pepper paste it is impossible to see if the meat juice is pink so I used a thermometer to check the temperature. I think spinach would have been a good vegetable to serve with this but I had freshly picked peas in the fridge so we had those.<br />
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I found a similar style of recipe for a cheese and ham stuffed pork loin served with a port and onion sauce on <a href="http://portuguesediner.com/tiamaria/presunto-stuffed-pork-loin/">TiaMaria</a>'s Portuguese food blog . Her dish is lighter on the paprika/red pepper flavouring which whilst I love smokey pepper flavours, they are not to everyone's taste.<br />
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So that is the end of Cheese and Beer/Booze Feast (although I still have a few beers and remnants of cheese to finish up). I hope you have seen one or two dishes you might like to try, or perhaps have been reminded of an old classic you have not made for a while.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-76982967056983888302016-07-10T11:40:00.001+01:002016-07-10T17:45:46.700+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 22: GermanyThe second semi-final in the Euro 2016 football championship was a hard fought game between Germany and France. Germany started in good form, but not for so long, and after an early controversial penalty in which France scored they seemed to lose their confidence. England supporters are used to seeing their team fluff it on the night, but I think Germany's performance in this game came as more of a surprise to us all.<br />
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My cheese feast for the night was Käsespätzle, or Swabian cheese noodles, served with a Franziskaner wheat beer. This cheese noodle dish is very filling food, so I served it as a side dish rather than a main course on its own. The chicken breasts were roast in a mustard and lemon marinade and went well with the noodles but I doubt there is any tradition of serving the cheese noodles with a roast meat in the Swabian area of Germany where Käsespätzle originates.<br />
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You can buy the ready made dried egg noodles, and that is a lot easier than making your own, but they are not quite the same. The noodles can be made by spreading the dough onto a small board and scraping it into a pan of boiling water using a knife or by pushing the dough through a special spätzle press, or colander. I have tried two different press designs and found both hard to work with but as one rusted in the cupboard I now just have this one.<br />
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There are some helpful photos and instructions for making the noodles on this step by step guide at <a href="http://germanfood.about.com/od/potatoesandnoodles/ss/spaetzle.htm#step1">germanfood.about.com</a>.<br />
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Here is a link to a recipe from <a href="http://germanfoods.org/recipes/kaesespaetzle/">germanfoods.org</a> for a very basic version of how to make this dish. This recipe for <a href="http://germanfood.about.com/od/potatoesandnoodles/r/Kaesespaetzle-cheese-noodles.htm">Kaesespaetzle</a> , again from the <a href="http://germanfood.about.com/">Germanfood site</a> is much more detailed but like me you may still get yourself in a bit of a tangle trying to make the noodles. I imagine the amount of liquid added to the dough is the critical part, not too thick and not too thin but only practice will tell you what that magic spot is.<br />
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Now France play Portugal in the final and I shall be making a Portuguese Jorge cheese stuffed fillet of pork and cheering for France.<br />
<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-69143534721886214682016-07-09T19:51:00.000+01:002016-07-09T19:51:12.694+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 21: WalesWales played Portugal in the first of the semi finals for Euro 2016 and sadly they did not go through. I am not football savvy enough to know if Portugal raised their game from earlier shows, or if Wales lost their spark, but it never looked like Wales had much of a chance to win.<br />
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My cheese feast dish was 'Glamorgan Sausages' which have no connection with sausages other than the shape. These are in effect croquettes of cheese and leek, and very tasty so long as you are not expecting anything resembling sausages. The mixture includes breadcrumbs, egg, leek, cheese and herbs such as parsley and thyme with an egg and breadcrumb coating. You can shallow fry them quite successfully and then finish off under a grill or hot oven.<br />
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I looked at a recipe I had used many years ago from a book by Sophie Grigson and was reminded how portions have changed somewhat over the years. The recipe stated it served 4 as a supper dish but only had 150g each of cheese and breadcrumbs and 2 eggs. In my world that only serves 2.<br />
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The recipe is reproduced online <a href="http://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/recipe/glamorgan-sausages/">here</a> but I am afraid there are pretty irritating adverts on that website too. So many of the websites I used to look at regularly for food articles are clogged with video adverts now. My broadband speed is pretty slow where I live so now I just crash out as soon as I find they have trashed their sites with this stuff. <br />
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For the beer we returned to the Welsh Brain's Brewery and enjoyed a bottle of the Rev James.<br />
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Next up is the semi final between Germany and France and a dish of cheese noodles.lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-6399925936372874832016-07-08T22:50:00.002+01:002016-07-08T22:50:19.465+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 20: France<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The last of the quarter finals in the Euro 2016 football tournament was France vs Iceland and whilst Iceland had what seemed to be the entire Icelandic nation cheering for them it was to be their last game. The dish I chose for my cheese feast was French Tartiflette. Great cold weather comfort food, so in keeping for a game against Iceland. This is a glorious mixture of potatoes, smoked bacon, white wine, fromage frais and Reblochon cheese.<br />
I found a french bottled beer with a picture of Eric Cantona on the label, and in the same week read a rumour that Cantona has voiced an interest in being the England team's next manager. Now that would be a change for us, but I suspect it was just gossip.<br />
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I was delighted to have home grown potatoes ready in time for this recipe which made it all the more special. I am growing some potatoes in large pots at home as well as a few on the allotment. The pot grown ones were ready first.<br />
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It took me a while before I realised why there were no Tartiflette recipes in my old classic french cook books. It was apparently <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartiflette">invented in the 80's</a> to help sell Reblochon cheese. I looked at quite a few internet recipes, many of which had a large amount of cream, which I did not want. Some fried the potatoes, which gain I was happier to avoid.<br />
So in the end I just made a couple of changes to the recipe published here: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/feb/27/how-to-cook-perfect-tartiflette">Guardian's Tartiflette</a>. I did not fry the potatoes after boiling them and I used 2 heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche in place of all of the double cream. If you use more cream you would get more sauce, but my version did not taste dry and a small left over portion reheated very well the next day.<br />
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This was the first time I had cooked reblochon cheese and it worked really well. This has been one of our favourite dishes of the cheese feast so far and I am looking forward to cooking it again. I think you need well flavoured waxy potatoes to make the dish special so take some care in selecting them.<br />
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Next, onto the semi-finals, the fisrt of which was Wales vs Portugal and I made Glamorgan 'Sausages'.<br />
<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-83557203527881158262016-07-03T15:11:00.001+01:002016-07-03T15:11:34.772+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 19: Italy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The third quarter final of the Euro 2016 football championship saw Germany beat Italy by the narrowest of margins. Decided on penalties but with both sides making mistakes the outcome was far from clear as player after player gave the other team a chance. But Germany are through and Italy now go home. I will miss watching the Italian keeper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianluigi_Buffon">Buffon</a> who must be such a great role model in a sport that is much criticised for its prima donnas.</div>
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The cheese feast was Italian ricotta and spinach cannelloni, with a German Beck's beer. Provided you start with frozen spinach and have a large disposable piping bag to fill the the pasta tubes this is a very simple dish that can be prepared a day ahead, or even frozen. For the recipe follow next link to <a href="http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/spinach-ricotta-cannelloni/#564QC2BTB1pkyXeU.97">Jamie Oliver's</a> site. I like to add a little mild chilli to the tomato sauce and will often just make this sauce with reduced down passata and a little olive oil and chopped garlic. If you don't have mozzarella for the topping a mild cheddar melting cheese will work. Ricotta has a distinctive flavour which although mild I think is not readily substituted with other soft cheese, so I would definitely use ricotta. If you have a good Italian deli near you they may buy in whole fresh ricotta cheeses that they sell by weight. I first saw these when I was a student in Bristol and a frequent shopper at the Licata deli in Picton Street. That was over 30 years ago but I still remember how helpful the staff were when I asked about produce I had never seen before like coppa and persimmons. It was never any trouble to them to slice small amounts or weigh out tiny portions for me.<br />
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For the last of the quarter finals France play Iceland and I am cooking Tartiflette; potatoes, smoked bacon and reblochon cheese all baked together. Perhaps more a winter dish but our weather is not too hot for baking in the oven just yet.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-45222222790522511632016-07-02T18:24:00.001+01:002016-07-02T18:24:36.007+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 18: Belgium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Slow roast pork shoulder is one of my favourite roast dinners. The joint can be cooked at a low setting for the whole day so you can go out in the morning and come back to the delicious aroma of roast pork when you return. If I am cooking a small joint just for the two of us on a work day I set the oven to 80C in the morning, cover the joint with foil, and let it cook at that temperature until I return. The oven can then be turned up to 180 to finish the cooking. I prefer mashed potato to roast potato, which may be a strange choice, and is most likely because I am not so good at cooking roast potatoes, but if they are not really good, I don't think roast potatoes are worth the calories.<br />
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The gratineed onions idea comes from my Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook but whereas their recipe was in a cream sauce I chose to braise the onions in a beer sauce which went very well with the roast pork. I think this dish is best cooked with smaller sweeter onions like shallots or large spring onions. The peeled onions were placed in a single layer in a heavy based saucepan with a good pinch of salt and a knob of butter, and beer to a depth of about 2cm. I then cooked them gently, turning occasionally, until they could be easily pierced with a knife. The cooked onions were transferred to a gratin dish and the remaining cooking juice boiled down to a thick syrup. The syrup was drizzled over the onions and they in turn were covered with a good layer of a 50:50 mix of fresh breadcrumbs and grated mild cheddar like cheese. The dish was then put in a hot oven until heated through and golden brown on top.<br />
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For the third quarter final game of Germany vs Italy I am serving ricotta and spinach cannelloni.<br />
<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-76276176570562796692016-07-01T17:18:00.002+01:002016-07-01T17:18:41.032+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 17: PortugalThe first quarter-final game in the Euro2016 tournament was Portugal vs Poland and for the cheese feast I made my best attempt at a Portuguese <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesinha">Francesinha</a> sandwich. This has a grilled cheese top and a cheese middle layer but also a huge number of other meat and egg fillings that made me think of the expression 'everything but the kitchen sink'. The dish is served with a beer and tomato sauce so that fitted my euro cheese and beer theme very well. Potato fries are the usual accompaniment but I just served a few saute potatoes.<br />
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We drank a Polish beer from my local Polish deli which seemed to have been packaged just for the Euro tournament.<br />
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The recipe that I tried to follow came from blogger 'Tia Maria's' blog at <a href="http://portuguesediner.com/tiamaria/francesinha-frenchie-portuguese-sandwich/">portuguesediner.com</a>. I did not manage to include quite as many of the fillings as specified. The most notable omission was the fried egg which should have been added at the end. The sandwich was looking quite chunky enough by then, as it already had layers of cheese, ham, cured sausage, fresh ham and steak. I will try the egg addition when I have a bigger appetite.<br />
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The tomato sauce is really quite different to any I have tried before as it includes beer, whisky, milk and meat stock along with the tomato. I think the beer I used was a little too strong on hop flavour as the finished sauce had quite a bitter aftertaste to it. It was however quite a good accompaniment in smaller condiment size portions.<br />
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A lot of pictures I found on the web of this dish were much taller, and clearly packed with meat fillings. This one was still pretty filling though.<br />
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For the second quarter final I move to Belgium and will be serving Roast pork with gratineed beer braised onions and mashed potato.lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-83537827557448735622016-06-29T17:08:00.001+01:002016-06-29T20:12:08.036+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 16: Italy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
For the last of the 1st round Euro2016 knockouts I returned to Italy for the cheese feast and chose Smacafam. There are so many Italian dishes that incorporate cheese that I have to nominate Italy as my favourite cheese feast nation. I was very happy that they went through to the quarter-finals as it will be very easy to find another cheese dish for their next game.</div>
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Patrica Michelson's Smacafan or 'Hunger Breaker'</div>
Smacafam is a rather delicious dish comprising layers of polenta, sausage and onion sauce, and cheese. The dish is based on a recipe from <a href="http://the%20cheese%20room/">The Cheese Room</a> by Patricia Michelson. The author runs <a href="http://www.lafromagerie.co.uk/about">La Fromagerie</a> in London with 2 lovely cheese shops/delis/cafes. I have only shopped at the Marylebone store but it is an absolute delight to visit. The Cheese Room was her first book published in 2001 and has an eclectic mix of recipes, reference information and anecdotes related to her love of cheese. There are even some notes on making your own soft cheese at home.<br />
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I have a whole shelf of Italian cookbooks but could only find reference to this dish in two of them.It wasn't even included in my book of polenta dishes. Many of the internet recipes/pictures I found looked a little different or even used a buckwheat polenta rather than cornmeal so I give you this knowing there may be many variations. The recipe apparently comes from the Trentino-Alto Adige region in the north of Italy where polenta is a staple dish.<br />
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Try to use Italian 'fresh' sausages if you can, these have no rusk or cereal added and are made with coarsely ground pork and can be flavoured with fennel seed, garlic and mild chilli flakes. I could not find any this time so I just used a high meat content coarse ground pork sausage and added some fennel and chilli flavouring to the sauce. The dish can be prepared a day in advance.<br />
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I used less polenta than given in the recipe below and just did a top and bottom polenta layer with all of the sauce in the middle. I used a wide dish so there thin layers and plenty of crispy topping. It would have been easier to spread the polenta into a smaller dish giving a thicker layer. Polenta can set solid so quickly.<br />
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I am omitting the author's instructions for cooking the polenta as they involved an hour and a half of simmering. I am sure you would be able to tell the difference between my quick cook polenta and a traditional method but I have yet to summon the patience to try the traditional method. My totally lazy cook method is to have the polenta and boiling water in a large jug in the microwave and just keep cooking on high for a few minutes at a time stirring well after each blast, until it tastes cooked and is the right consistency. I add any extra water I think it needs as I cook, and add the salt at the end.<br />
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For detailed information on polenta and how to cook it the <a href="http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/05/how-to-make-the-best-polenta.html">serious eats</a> site has a good reference article.<br />
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For full recipe: 500g polenta cooked in 2.5 to 3 litres water and 2 tsp salt. If you are using 'instant cook' polenta follow the packet instructions for the amount of water and cooking method.<br />
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I only used 150g of polenta but will up this to 250g when I next make the dish so the polenta layers are thicker.<br />
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<i>For the Fillling</i><br />
cooking oil<br />
2 large mild onions thinly sliced<br />
200g fresh (soft) pancetta (you can substitute a good dry cured streaky bacon) cut into small cubes<br />
250g fresh Italian sausages or other fresh continental style sausages - I used more than this as the pack size was larger.<br />
2 large cloves garlic chopped<br />
250g of either young asiago, Montasio, young gruyere, or mozarella, coarsley grated<br />
120g young grana padano or young parmesan (not too dry) finely grated<br />
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<ol>
<li>If cooking to use straight away preheat the oven to 180C.</li>
<li>Lightly oil a deep sided baking dish.</li>
<li>Start cooking the polenta as per packet instructions or your preferred method. </li>
<li>If you are happy watching 2 pots at a time you can start to make the sauce while the polenta is cooking. If you are using instant polenta then I would make the sauce first then do the polenta.</li>
<li>In a large heavy frying pan cook the onions in some oil until translucent the remove and place on some kitchen paper to absorb some of the oil.</li>
<li>Add a little more oil to the frying pan and cook the pancetta until golden, remove from the pan and place on kitchen paper.</li>
<li>You may need to wipe the frying pan out with kitchen paper now to remove any burnt or sticky pieces, Then add a little more oil and cook the sausages until golden brown, crispy and cooked through. Remove from the pan.</li>
<li>Clean pan again if there are burnt pieces and drain off any excess oil. Gently cook the garlic for 2-3 minutes but take car not to burn.</li>
<li>Take the pan off the heat and drain off any excess oil.</li>
<li>Chop the sausages into cubes and add to the garlic in the pan along with the cooked pancetta and onions, stirring everything to mix well.</li>
<li>Pour some of the cooked polenta into the baking dish to give a layer of about 1cm.</li>
<li>Sprinkle over half of the asiago or other cheese of your choice.</li>
<li>Cover with half of the sausages filling.</li>
<li>Repeat the layers again - polenta, cheese, sausages.</li>
<li>Add a final layer of polenta to the top and sprinkle the parmesan cheese over.</li>
<li>At this point the dish can be cooled down and stored in the fridge or baked off in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.</li>
<li>When heated through if the dish still looks quite pale put under a hot grill to brown and crisp the top. To cook from cold the dish will take longer to heat through.</li>
</ol>
The first of the semi finals sees Poland play Portugal and I shall be doing my best to recreate a Portuguese 'sandwich' known as a '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesinha">Francesinha</a>' or Little Frenchie.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-5536393222533885102016-06-27T17:19:00.002+01:002016-06-27T17:19:35.983+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 15: Germany<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you have just arrived on my blog and are wondering what these posts on 'Cheese and Football' are all about it is just a but of fun whereby I try to match the food we eat to the countries that are playing while we are watching one of the major football tournaments on tv. I get to pull some of my more obscure cookbooks off the shelves and learn a little bit more about national cuisines. I have been running with the theme of cheese dishes. We have reached the knockout stages so some countries are starting to feature for the second time. I try to do as many different nations as possible but also try to not make things too much of a challenge. So this is my second dish for Germany and I have played a little fast and loose with a take on Käsekrainer sausages.<br />
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As you can see there is not a sausage in sight, but a meatloaf, which has most of the flavourings of the smoky meat and cheese Käsekrainer.<br />
The cheese cubes melt into the meatloaf as it bakes but you can see a little evidence of them on the outside of the loaf and a few pieces inside if my photo was a little more in focus.<br />
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I never follow a recipe for meatloaf but tend to keep the number of flavourings to a just few. This loaf was made with:<br />
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500g high meat content plain pork sausages<br />
500g lean finely minced pork<br />
100g finely minced smoked German ham (or use finely minced smoked bacon)<br />
150g mild cheese like Tilsiter, or a young cheddar, cut into 1cm cubes<br />
large pinch of celery salt<br />
salt & pepper<br />
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<ol>
<li>Preheat your oven to 160C</li>
<li>Take the sausages out of their skins</li>
<li>Finely chop the smoked ham or bacon</li>
<li>Mix the sausagemeat, minced pork, celery salt and a little salt and pepper well together in a bowl. I do this with my hands as it is easier, but messy, so use a large strong fork or other implement if you would rather.</li>
<li>Gently mix in the cheese cubes.</li>
<li>Form the mixture into a smooth rounded oval /loaf shape and place in a small roasting tin or pyrex type dish.</li>
<li>Cover with foil and bake for approx 90 mins at 160C</li>
<li>Check if the loaf is cooked. I use an internal cooked temperature of 75C as a guide which is over the '<a href="https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/mintemp.html">official temp</a>.' but thermometers can vary so safer to go over. With minced pork it is actually quite hard to tell if the juices are running clear. </li>
<li>Turn the oven up to 200C fan or a turbo fan setting and return the loaf to the oven without the foil and cook just long enough to brown the outside. A grill setting may also do this.</li>
<li>Turn the oven off and leaf the meatloaf to sit for 5-10 minutes before cutting into slices.</li>
</ol>
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This is good served with boiled new potatoes or mashed potatoes potatoes.<br />
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For those in the UK proper Käsekrainer can be purchased online from the <a href="http://germandeli.co.uk/">German Deli</a> where you will also find a selection of German mustards to go with them.<br />
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For the last of the knockouts I move to Italy and will be cooking 'Smacafam'. This is a glorious mix of polenta, cheese, onion, sausage and pancetta.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-39469812815023343242016-06-26T14:01:00.001+01:002016-06-26T14:01:15.390+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 14: WalesFor the first day of the Euro2016 football tournament knockout games my cheese feast returned to Wales. The title of this dish is Anglesey Eggs, but it is as much about the leeks and cheese as the eggs.<br />
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The mashed potato is mixed with a large portion of cooked leeks and some cheese is added too. This forms the base and edges of the dish. Eggs are placed in the centre and then topped off with cheese sauce and extra cheese on top for the golden finish.<br />
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I did manage to source some Welsh cheese for this dish, a Welsh Cheddar from the Snowdonia cheese company called Black Bomber. This is a mature cheddar with plenty of flavour. It is sold coated in black wax, hence the name. The beer to accompany the meal was Skull Attack Gold from <a href="https://www.sabrain.com/our-beers/the-classics/">Brains Brewery</a>, based in Cardiff.<br />
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I based my recipe from the late Keith Floyd's book on Britain & Ireland which was a part of a tv series on British food.<br />
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I thought his portions were a little mean though, so I used rather more cheese and potato than in the book. This <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/angleseyeggs_92117">recipe</a> from the Hariy Bikers is closer to how I made my dish but I didn't add any cream to the mashed potato and we didn't serve any bacon with our dish.<br />
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This is how much dish looked before going into the oven. It was heated through at a fairly low oven temp (160C) covered in foil, and then at half time the grill turned up high to brown the top.<br />
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The cheese which I bought at a Devon cheese shop/deli came wrapped in its own 'strip' which was quite fun and I have to show you the bottle top on the SA beer, as I love dragon images.<br />
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I wouldn't say they Welsh team were on fire but they won so well done to them.<br />
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The next dish on the cheese feast is a my very anglicised version of a German Käsekrainer sausage. Instead of a smoked pork sausage containing cheese I shall be cooking a pork meatloaf made with minced pork, smoked ham and cubes of cheese. The beer will be more authentic.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-72841284495977965272016-06-23T17:22:00.000+01:002016-06-23T17:22:06.753+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 13: ItalyFor the final games of the first round in the Euro2016 football tournament I chose Italy for my cheese feast, and the not so common 'quattro formagii' pizza. Four cheeses on a pizza; the perfect cheese feast tv supper.<br />
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This is sometimes made as a 'white' pizza with no tomato sauce, but I like the sharpness of the tomato with such a rich topping. My four cheeses were gorgonzola, mozzarella, pecorino and a small amount of a soft white cheese (intended to use ricotta but missed it off the shopping list). I went heavy on the gorgonzola and mozzarella and light on the pecorino and soft white cheese. My tomato sauce is just passata reduced down a little with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Just a thin layer of tomato sauce and then the cheese and then a sprinkle of dried wild oregano.<br />
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<a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0624/9853/products/Uuni-20160127-7306_grande.jpg?v=1457419476" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0624/9853/products/Uuni-20160127-7306_grande.jpg?v=1457419476" width="200" /></a>This is my new <a href="http://recipes.uuni.net/recipe/classic-pizza-dough-recipe/">classic pizza dough recipe</a>. It is from the Uuni pizza oven manufacturers blog.<br />
I bought one of their pizza ovens a few weeks ago and am quite in love with the pizzas I can make in it. It burns wood pellets and once fully up to heat can cook a pizza in a couple of minutes. Sadly the weather was too rubbish to use it for the cheese feast pizza, so the kitchen oven was cranked up to its hottest setting. I have now bought a lot of Italian 00 flour so I am hoping for plenty of outdoor pizza cooking weather.<br />
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I am also trying out these aluminium pizza screens for baking the pizzas on. They come in a range of sizes and once you have shaped the dough you just transfer it onto the screen and build your pizza. I thought the dough might creep into the metal grid and stick but it didn't at all. I guess the oven heat sets the dough pretty quickly and the dough is not on the screen for very long before it goes in the oven.<br />
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There are a couple of days break in the football before the knockout stages begin and I'm still working on the cheese menu so that is all for now!<br />
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lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-62864600361781318692016-06-22T19:35:00.001+01:002016-06-22T19:35:47.030+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 12: Czech RepublicNow this fried cheese (syr smazeny) dish may not appeal to all cheese lovers and it is not something I would make a habbit of eating but I saw it on loads of menus on a visit to Prague so it seemed a clear choice for my cheese & beer football feast. The beer of course had to be Budweiser.<br />
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It isn't really a recipe. Portions of cheese are coated in flour then dipped in beaten egg, then fresh white breadcrumbs and then fried. I think I may have been cooking mine a little too slowly as I'm not sure they should have melted quite so much. I used a mild cheddar like cheese but other options are gouda or a swiss cheese. Other Eastern European countries have their own versions using different cheeses and in some cases just dipping the cheese portions in flour. I shallow fried mine but I have seen some recipes where the cheese portions are deep fried. The dish can be served as an appetizer or with potatoes and vegetables for a main course.<br />
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Some of my travel companions in Prague were less than wowed by the food but I came away with very happy memories of some fabulous roast duck dishes and more sweet bread buns that I wanted to eat than would be good for anyone. We also had an incredible meal at restaurant called <a href="http://www.fieldrestaurant.cz/en/">Field</a> where the set price lunch was quite a bargain, but it appears they no longer offer this. Perhaps now they have a Michelin star they do not need to. The <a href="http://www.tasteofprague.com/pragueblog/prague-michelin-star-restaurants-guide?rq=field">Taste of Prague</a> website recently compared all of Prague's Michelin starred restaurants and said if Field was a celebrity it would be David Beckham; I think that is good! All of the places we ate at were so friendly and hospitable and I was made particularly welcome at small wine shop/bar one afternoon. I wanted to try some local white wine and they took great care to select something I would like and served it on a beautifully tray laid with a huge plate of cheese cubes and a jug of water.<br />
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Blessed are the cheese makers, sellers ,and anyone who offers cheese with beer or wine!<br />
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Next up for the final day of the first round and I move to Italy for Pizza Quattro Formaggi.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-70506566357110013132016-06-21T17:34:00.001+01:002016-06-21T17:34:45.100+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 11: WalesThe Euro2016 football tournament has almost reached the end of the first stage and there have been some big surprises along the way. Not least of these surprises has been Cristiano Ronaldo's rather 'bad day at the office' against Austria. Gareth Bale, however, has kept the Welsh supporters very happy, and has managed to look pretty chuffed himself, but in a very un-superstar way. I suspect he had something more fancy than cheese on toast to celebrate Wales being top of their group, but this is pretty good 'cheese on toast' none the less. The <a href="http://www.felinfoel-brewery.com/our-ales/">Double Dragon</a> ale is rather special too.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit">Welsh rarebit</a> is rather more than just cheese on toast. The grated cheese can be mixed with eggs as in this recipe or sometimes <a href="http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1500641/welsh-rarebit">ale</a>. Mustard is usually added to the cheese mix and some add Worcestershire sauce. The cheese 'sauce' is then spread over the partly toasted bread and put under a hot grill. The recipe I like comes from a book I have written about before called <a href="http://lapindorandmore.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-baking-memoir-bakers-daughter-by.html">The Bakers Daughter</a>. The cheese mix is best made ahead as it thickens while resting, but if you need it straight away you may need to add extra cheese to get a spreadable consistency.<br />
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For this occasion I used a mix of <a href="https://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/cheese/gorwydd-caerphilly/">Gorwydd Caerphilly</a> and Quicks Cheddar cheese. Much to my disappointment the Caerphilly does not come from Wales, though the makers were based there for a short time. It seems most Caerphilly is now made in Somerset or Wiltshire.<br />
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<b>Welsh rarebit - for each person you will need:</b><br />
1tbs milk<br />
1 medium egg<br />
65-70g grated cheese such as a young cheddar, lancashire, cheshire.<br />
1/4 tsp mustard<br />
1 thick slice of white bread, crusts removed.<br />
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In a bowl mix the egg and the milk with a fork and then add the cheese and the mustard.<br />
Stir well and leave to sit in the fridge for a few hours or <i>preferable overnight</i>.<br />
Toast one side of the bread under a hot grill. (you can toast both sides if you prefer)<br />
Spread the cheese mixture evenly over the un-toasted side and place under the hot grill until nicely browned and bubbling.<br />
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Enjoy with your favourite beer or a cup of tea.<br />
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Next up is Czech 'Fried Cheese', I had never seen this dish until a trip to Prague last autumn, there is nothing frivolous about Czech cooking!</div>
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As I write this the UK are just over a day away from voting in the referendum that will decide if we stay in the EU. Voting is very much an act of faith and all too often an act of hope; hope for better things. There has been a huge discussion re how the current system is not working, is not 'good enough' for us, and that we can look after our futures better on our own. The EU is talked about like a bad marriage, something far removed from what we thought we had signed up for.<br />
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I am not pretending the EU is perfect; that the UK and many of its member states are not going through a rough patch, but I hold its values dear.<br />
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Values it is impossible to put a price on.<br />
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So whether or not the UK pay over more than they get back , whether or not the average UK person's standard of living would be better in or out, I shall be voting to remain.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-31739224153796796352016-06-20T16:33:00.002+01:002016-06-20T16:33:59.665+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 10: FranceFor day 10 of the Euro2016 football tournament my cheese feast moved back to France, but with a hint of Switzerland in the cheese itself. It is of course the Croque Monsieur.<br />
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The two games for the day were Switzerland vs France, and Romania vs Albania, both playing at the same time. We had a Romanian beer with the Croque Monsier, but I did not manage to include an element from Albania.<br />
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Croque Monsiers seem to come in many different forms with the name being used for many a version of a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. I took my recipe from the Guardian newspapers online article <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jul/05/how-cook-perfect-croque-monsieur">How to cook the perfect croque-monsieur</a>. This is quite a detailed account of all the permutations, so zoom down to the bottom for the actual recipe. It was the first time I had made this with a bechamel sauce topping but I would recommend keeping that in your recipe as it really made the dish more interesting to eat. But it did mean you needed a knife and fork to eat it with. I used a mixture of Gruyere and Comte cheese, and a soft white sandwich loaf but cut the butter down to 40g.<br />
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You could make the sauce in advance and cover with cling film to make this a really quick dish to put together. My ham was a tad thinly sliced so I used more than 1 piece.<br />
The Romanian beer was also very good. We have had a lot of fun drinking our way through our mixed case of european beers, and this is the Romanian 'Timisoreana'.<br />
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Next up on the cheese feast is Welsh Rarebit, which is another version of the somewhat universal cheese toastie. Wales play Russia and England play Slovakia. My toasties will have some English cheese in to mark the occasion.<br />
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This week I shall be voting for the UK to remain in the EU. Membership of the EU has given our young opportunities to freely choose to work and study throughout this large community. I have also been able to work and study alongside citizens of other EU countries who have opted to come to the UK; and that has greatly enriched my life. I cannot comprehend why we would want to risk taking these opportunities away by leaving the EU; even less can I comprehend how this risk can be justified in the name of freedom.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-75378281772652468902016-06-19T16:17:00.000+01:002016-06-19T16:17:03.157+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 9: HungaryDay 9 of the Euro2016 football tournament and the early evening game was Iceland vs Hungary.<br />
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The cheese feast recipe I chose was Lipto Cheese Spread which is quite similar to the Austrian Liptauer cheese spread. Lipto is the name of the Hungarian sheep's milk cheese it should be made with which is apparently similar to Romanian Brindza but I could find neither so I had to settle for using a Greek soft sheep's milk cheese instead.<br />
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I have a couple of books on Hungarian cuisine but this one by the late George Lang is the most comprehensive and well written.<br />
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It's 'old school', 400 pages of close text, no recipe pictures, but some line illustrations and a detailed English, and Hungarian language index plus a detailed bibliography. It was first published in 1971, and my paperback version appeared in 1985. As it was written long before word processors were common it must have taken a monument of paper drafts to complete. The recipe for caraway soup is a reminder of just how little there sometimes was to make meals from as it is composed of no more than lard or butter, water, bread, garlic and caraway seeds, with an egg if one was available. This reminded me of the Spanish garlic and bread soup Sopa de Ajo.<br />
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The recipe below is taken the book but apparently only the cheese, paprika, onions and caraway are essential so I skipped the anchovy. Other versions can include capers and gherkins.<br />
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200g Lipto cheese<br />
100g softened butter<br />
1 tsp paprika<br />
1/2 tsp prepared mustard<br />
1/2 tsp pounded caraway seeds<br />
1 small onion grated<br />
1/2 tsp anchovy essence<br />
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Sieve the cheese and mix with the softened butter<br />
Add all of the other ingredients and mix well.<br />
Serve with wedges of good crusty bread, toast, young radishes, scallions, peppers.<br />
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This, rather off dry, Hungarian white wine went very well with the dip and has encouraged me to look closer at Hungarian wine. The supermarket blurb read ' It's a fruity blend of Chenin Blanc, Pinot Grigio and local grape varetity Kiralyeanyka that represents excellent value for money' and as it was under £5 I would have to agree.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For day 10 I am making the timeless classic Croque Monsieur.<br />
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I am voting to stay in the European Union. I strongly believe that Britain is stronger and safer in, than out. One of the reasons I want us to stay in is the European Union has set far higher levels of protection and financial support for conserving the environment than I believe any UK government would do if it was 'free' to do what it wants. Alone, we cannot control our environment.<br />
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<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-90067100279372303642016-06-18T12:50:00.000+01:002016-06-18T12:50:04.251+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 8: TurkeySo we are more than a week into the cheese and football feast of the Euro2016 tournament and I think I am getting a little punch drunk on cheese as I managed to miss report in my blogpost the result of Thursday's game of Germany vs Poland, but did get that corrected pretty quickly to a draw. Spain, however, beat Turkey 3 goals to nil, and Turkey never looked like winning that one. For the cheese feast I chose a Turkish feta and spinach filled pide and Turkish Efes beer.<br />
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This is another bread based dish in my cheese feast series and it that can be filled a number of ways, but this one has Feta cheese, onions, red peppers, hot red pepper paste, and lots of spinach. The spinach baked up quite dark in the hot oven so it does look rather more scorched than it actually was.<br />
The recipe comes from a wonderful blog on Turkish food named <a href="http://ozlemsturkishtable.com/2014/09/turkish-flat-breads-with-spinach-feta-and-peppers-peynirli-pide/">Ozlem's Turkish Table</a>. There are loads of good recipes there and information about her cookery classes and culinary tours in Turkey.<br />
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I bought my feta cheese and hot red pepper paste from a uk online Turkish foods supplier called <a href="http://www.bakkalim.uk/">bakkalim</a>. I know you can get feta in local shops but I fell in love with the tin:<br />
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It looks very authentic but 'other half' noticed it was made in the Netherlands and Gazi appears to be a German company but they sponsor a lot of football so there is still a connection.<br />
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The pepper paste was quite hot but you can get a mild version.<br />
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The breads looked a little more colourful before baking:<br />
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The base is pinched up or crimped around the edges to form a lip. I tried my 'Cornish Pastie' style crimp.<br />
The Turkish beer was Efes, may not be one of Turkey's best, it was ok, 'nothing thrilling' as my mother in law would saw.<br />
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Next up is a cheese dip from from Hungary and as I could not find a Hungarian beer we are going to have a Hungarian white wine.lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-89447110747698455392016-06-17T20:55:00.000+01:002016-06-17T22:02:53.464+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 7: GermanyThis was another tough first round clash in the Euro2016 football tournament with Germany playing Poland and the game ending in a draw (earlier error in this post corrected - woke up this morning thing they had won!!). For the cheese feast I chose Flammekueche, a wonderful social dish which is baked in large trays and served on wooden platters for guests to help themselves to, and order more as soon as one has been eaten.<br />
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The base is a made from a very thin white bread dough and the topping is a mix of a fromage blanc style soft white cheese, sour cream or creme fraîche and onion and bacon. Try to get a good dry cured smoked streaky style bacon as the bacon gives this dish much of its distinctive flavour. I may have been a little heavy handed with the bacon on my tart but it was my preference to have quite a lot of bacon. Sweeter onions are good too.<br />
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The recipe I based my dish on is from a French Alsace cuisine website here: <a href="http://www.recettes-alsace.fr/flammekueche-tarte-flambee/">flammekueche</a> and is written in French but with lots of pictures to make the instructions clearer. I used Italian 00 flour grade for the bread base and for the soft cheese layer a mix of approx 4 parts fromage blanc to 1 part sour cream but I added a little more sour cream after tasting it as the mix seemed a little flat/bland.<br />
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The beer was Warsteiner, served nice and chilled.<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">For dessert we had a baked Polish cheesecake which was nice and simple to make as no crust/base was required.</span></div>
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The recipe came from '<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Polish-Kitchen-Mary-Pininska/dp/190230456X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466192162&sr=1-1&keywords=the+polish+kitchen">The Polish Kitchen</a>' by Mary Pininska. The printed recipe serves 10 so I halved the quantity for this version and baked it in a square tin with sides approx 20cm long and 6cm deep.</div>
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<b>Sernik</b></div>
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125g butter</div>
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500g curd cheese</div>
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3 large eggs, separated</div>
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150g caster sugar</div>
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60g raisins</div>
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juice & rind of half a lemon</div>
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20g potato flour</div>
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extra butter and silicone paper to grease and line tin*</div>
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Oven 180C</div>
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Grease and line the cake tin with the extra butter</div>
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Cream the butter</div>
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Sieve the cheese if it has any lumps and then gradually mix in to the butter</div>
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Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well</div>
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Add the sugar and mix well</div>
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Add raisins, lemon zest and lemon juice.</div>
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Whisk the egg whites in a separate clean bowl to soft peaks</div>
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Fold the egg whites into the cheese mixture</div>
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Finally carefully mix in the potato flour</div>
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Pour the mixture into the greased tin and bake for 45mins or until the top is golden brown and cake is set.</div>
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Remove from oven and leave to cool before turning out. </div>
*the original recipe just called for greasing the tin but I chose to line mine with parchment to help remove the baked cheesecake from the tin.<br />
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lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-67268278272078793332016-06-16T15:54:00.001+01:002016-06-16T15:54:54.005+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 6: AlbaniaI have been trying to cook cheese based dishes to match the countries playing in the Euro2016 football tournament but there are a few countries that have been a little difficult to find authentic recipes for. I chose Albania for day 6 but I know nothing of Albanian cuisine and if I am honest I could not have even put Albania on the map until I started looking for suitable recipes. I am trusting the internet on this one but this dish did turn up on a few sites, so I give you Byrek ose Lakor - Albanian Leek Pie.<br />
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I could not find any Albanian beers or wine, so as Albania played France I have chosen French Meteor beer.<br />
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The pie is filled with finely sliced leeks, cottage/farmers style cheese, feta, and flavoured with fresh thyme. The recipe is to be found on the <a href="http://globaltableadventure.com/recipe/recipe-byrek-ose-lakror-leek-pie/">Global Table Adventure</a> site. I chose to serve mine with a roasted pepper and tomato sauce.<br />
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The recipe makes quite a lot of pie (serves 8) so I split mine into two smaller pies. I sealed the first one quite well but not so well the second. The lid is being placed on quite a liquid filling which gets a bit tricky if the pasty lid is not quite big enough!<br />
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But either way they taste good.<br />
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Day 7 sees Germany play Poland and I'm cooking a main course of German Flammekueche and a Polish baked cheesecake for dessert.lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-17830333125324529892016-06-15T17:50:00.001+01:002016-06-15T17:50:17.497+01:00Cheese & Football Feast day 5: PortugalDay 5 of the Euro2016 football tournament and Portugal played Iceland, and with heavy expectations of winning but Iceland were not to be dismissed and they fought hard for a draw. I love the low pitched 'chanting' that the Iceland fans do, which at times seems to be synced with each time the ball was kicked. For the cheese feast I took an easy option of serving a cheese and tapas supper with homemade cheese bread.<br />
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The bread recipe is just adapted from a white loaf recipe to which an egg and a mix of Sao Jorge Portuguese cheese and feta are added. It baked up to a nice light loaf with a thin crisp crust. I read that there are very few cooked cheese dishes in Portugal so I gave up looking and settled on this.<br />
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Cheese, bread and beer are a match made in heaven and tonight's beer was Sagres.<br />
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I found an online Portuguese food supplier to buy the Sao Jorge cheese from as well as a Portuguese sheep's cheese milk cheese called Quinta da Veguinha. The orange rinded cheese was gifted to me by a Portuguese colleague whose father had recently visited bringing lots of Portuguese cheese. I don't know the name but it was the best of the three and the coating has paprika in it.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1QhqsV8A25BB26uSMp3zVhrXE7lOsr_6tLRDo4emDB8DVqz0tf6W_aljY8dFo8AtSnjG8OedQcynVDK9UhSVgGAeWmnXkpXgeM6sjJGiDoX9Ic6v-u1EFR6uZ7zFOjG6eYpxXNotQQruw/s1600/sheeps+cheese+pxl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1QhqsV8A25BB26uSMp3zVhrXE7lOsr_6tLRDo4emDB8DVqz0tf6W_aljY8dFo8AtSnjG8OedQcynVDK9UhSVgGAeWmnXkpXgeM6sjJGiDoX9Ic6v-u1EFR6uZ7zFOjG6eYpxXNotQQruw/s200/sheeps+cheese+pxl.jpg" width="200" /></a>This Quinta da Veguinha sheeps cheese was very strong and our least favourite. I had maybe kept it longer than I should but it came vacuum packed so I think it started out life with a lot of 'aroma'. There is an interesting article on Portuguese cheese here on <a href="http://catavino.net/part-1-the-ultimate-users-guide-to-portuguese-cheese/">catavino.net</a> where these soft scoopable cheeses are descried as stinky with a pungent barnyard aroma. I would have to agree with that.<br />
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I was surprised just how punchy all of these cheese were, even the mild looking Sao Jorge was very characterful.<br />
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The <a href="http://delicias-uk.com/index.php/en/">delicias online store</a> also sold jars of piquillo roasted peppers which are quite delicious to eat straight out of the jar and not always easy to find. These are good added to a paella too. I also bought some tinned sardines which sounds a little dull but good sardines are quite different to the cheap ones that fill supermarket shelves. The artwork on some sardine cans is also quite beautiful and that is possibly what lured me to buying these.<br />
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They made a very nice addition to the cheese tapas menu. Tinned sardines do not often come out of the tin looking quite so beautiful and they tasted very mild too.<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">The final element was a small dish of cooked globe artichokes. These came from my allotment and whilst I envy the huge size they seem to grow to on the continent I am delighted to have any at all. They can seem like quite a lot of preparation work for not so much to eat but I am grateful to have them, and as a perennial vegetable they are no trouble to grow and are often the first vegetable we harvest each year.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">For day 6 I am venturing to Albania and serving a cheese and leek pie. Pies are such good football food and there will be a french beer as I could not find one from Albania.</span></div>
lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-81472129184673253832016-06-14T15:50:00.001+01:002016-06-14T15:50:11.806+01:00Cheese & Football Feast Day 4: BelgiumDay 4 of the Euro 2016 football tournament saw Belgium play Italy, which I think was a tough opening draw for both teams. Huge reputations and expectations at stake, but Italy took the win. I continued my cheese and beer celebration of the tournament with a classic supper of Belgian Endive au Gratin and Leffe Blonde beer.<br />
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Not much to see of the endive (or witloof chicory) as it was all hidden under a rich cheese sauce and gratin topping, but this is a fine use of the slightly bitter vegetable. I may have been a little heavy on the sauce, and many recipes include ham as well, but this one was all about the cheese. My recipe called for gruyère but I used some comté, as does Raymond Blanc in his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chicory_gratin_84963">bbc website </a> recipe.<br />
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Chicory is not so easy to cook as the chicory heads can discolour very quickly while you are cooking them, so lemon juice is usually added to the cooking water. The vegetable is produced by forcing chicory plant roots that have been lifted in the autumn and then planted out in dark, warm sheds to produce those pale tight leaved chicons. Well that is a rather simple version, as I think it is quite difficult to grow them as well as the ones for sale in the shops.<br />
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The recipe I followed, excluding the ham, was from the book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everybody-Eats-Well-Belgium-Cookbook/dp/1563054116">Everybody Eats Well in Belgium</a><br />
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Although none of the recipes are photographed for the book, there are some charming illustrations throughout and the recipes are written with lots of background information and useful tips. You lean a lot about Belgium life and culture while reading through the chapters. Vegetables that are less common in the UK like salsify, escarole and celery root are to be found and a whole chapter dedicated to cooking with beer!<br />
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Leffe Blonde is a rich and malty beer that paired well with the chicory and cheese. The brewery website suggests you drink it with white mould cheeses like brie so I shall have to try that as I always find them a bit hard to match. I love that it is bottled rather like champagne and it does have a very fine soft fizz or 'mousse', like champagne. You can buy some rather gorgeous glasses to go with your beer and I have happy memories of a short trip to Brussels where all the beers came served in their own glasses. I don't remember any good cheese, but we drank plenty of beer and ate lots of chocolate. <br />
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For day 5 I am celebrating the cheeses of Portugal, with cheese bread and a predominantly cheese tapas plate.<br />
<br />lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3430217157187576719.post-13962323450760656662016-06-13T17:06:00.001+01:002016-06-13T17:06:52.359+01:00Cheese & Football Feast Day 3: UkraineDay 3 of the Euro2016 football tournament and it was a Sunday, so something a little more formal was called for.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvi4_-2aRR450y_2eh0kQjUFYQixmP7flqskpys1rmBJqkctSqQmmCVgPCCMdFkF0OEh70H13lT4W7gOPFSn6_QFlPmGve7SnBDck-9_p5SEB5vqdEk3kbqgqe_vEO4culuFsZUDfmYoJL/s1600/ukraine+goats+cheese+potato+cakes+%2526+beer+pxl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvi4_-2aRR450y_2eh0kQjUFYQixmP7flqskpys1rmBJqkctSqQmmCVgPCCMdFkF0OEh70H13lT4W7gOPFSn6_QFlPmGve7SnBDck-9_p5SEB5vqdEk3kbqgqe_vEO4culuFsZUDfmYoJL/s320/ukraine+goats+cheese+potato+cakes+%2526+beer+pxl.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The Ukraine played Germany and I have a lovely book on Ukrainian food by Olia Hercules called <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mamushka-Recipes-Ukraine-Olia-Hercules/dp/1784720380/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465831259&sr=1-1&keywords=olia+hercules+mamushka">Mamuska</a>. I chose the 'Potato Cakes with Goats Cheese' and served them with some roast duck as suggested in the book. The 'cakes' are enriched with grated carrot, grated onion and crumbled goats cheese and held together with egg and flour.<br />
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But I'm not good at following recipes and before I had even thought to read the instructions I had started boiling the potatoes. Some minutes after they were ready I read the words 'grate the raw potato', too late, mine will have to be made with mashed potato. So if you have the book you will notice these look nothing like the ones in the picture which are much more like latkes. But they were still very good and were possibly easier to cook. The name for the dish is 'Deruny' which apparently means grated so I did get that rather wrong. I consoled myself that my other Ukraine cookbook did have a recipe for potato cakes that used mashed potato, so they are not unheard of in the Ukraine. This book is dated 1975 and I love the covers:<br />
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I visited Kiev in the mid 80s when it was still part of the USSR travelling on one of those Aeroflot package holidays. Kiev was a bright interlude between Moscow and Lenningrad. During some free time we went into a beautiful covered market where the somewhat limited produce was all beautifully arranged. The photo below is a scan of a rather old print, so not very clear, but you can see how the potato stall was organised with all the sellers in their white coats and head scarfs.<br />
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This was the Ukranian beer that we drank with the meal, a very dry larger that went well with the fried potato cakes and rich duck meat.<br />
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<b>Deruny Recipe</b> (As it should have been made!)<br />
500g floury potatoes peeled and coarsely grated<br />
1 small onion grated<br />
1 small carrot peeled and grated<br />
1 egg lightly beaten<br />
3 tbs flour<br />
30g mashed goats cheese<br />
salt & pepper<br />
<br />
2tbs sunflower oil for frying<br />
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Preheat oven to 180C<br />
Mix everything together except the oil<br />
Heat the sunflower oil in a large frying pan<br />
Drop dessertspoonfuls of the mixture into the pan and fry for 2 minutes<br />
Flip each pancake over and fry until golden brown<br />
Place fried potato cakes onto a parchment lined baking sheet & finish in the oven (5-10 mins)<br />
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I served these with some very slowly cooked duck legs. I like to cook the legs the day before serving them. I simmer them gently for a few hours, then take the meat off the bone and put this into a bowl and cover with the simmering liquid. This is then left to go cold in the fridge so all the fat can be removed. The next day it is very quick to heat up the meat, and if wanted to colour it a little in a frying pan or under the grill.<br />
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For day 4 of the Euros I will be preparing Belgian Endive (Witloof Chicory) au Gratin - more toasted cheese!lapin d'orhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02364203916127045936noreply@blogger.com0