Best of British: Crab, Leek and Whisky Soup

Best of British  Grand Final Blog Challenge

Northumberland Crab, Leek and Whisky Soup

served with a seeded soda bread and a wee dram of Bunnahabhain

I am pinning this dish to Northumberland because that is where, many years ago, I ate crab and whisky soup in the Jolly Fisherman inn, in the Northumberland fishing village of Craster. It was a typical cold north east day and a tot of whisky in the soup lifted it perfectly. The Northumberland coast is really quite beautiful and this soup will always remind me of time spent there.

I have noticed a lot more interest recently in matching whisky with food, and in particular have noticed a dish where whisky butter is served with lobster. Often quite a peaty whisky is chosen which I would have been very shy of combining with a delicate shellfish. There are some very easy to follow guidelines on which foods to match with whisky on the ever-reliable Matching Food with Wine site from  Fiona Beckett. I was inspired to pair my soup with a 12 year old  Bunnahabhain, an Islay whisky.

Crab is a lifelong love for me, and I have been fortunate to never be far from its source. As a child my mother's family in Norfolk would often treat us to Cromer crab on our summer visits, and there were numerous childhood holidays down to the Devon coast. I spent many years in the North East of England where of course I found this soup, and also have happy memories of eating crab sandwiches at Pittenweem in Scotland.

I now live in the West Country where beautiful fresh crab is abundant, so long as you shop carefully. I have most recently relied on the fantastic services of Martin's Seafresh. The beauty pictured below arrived,  literally sea-fresh, from their business in Cornwall and had been expertly picked and presented, with no wayward fragments of shell. 

A well-picked and superbly fresh crab meant that all the hard work had been done for me. All I had to do was make a good stock, bake up some soda bread and assemble the soup.

You will need:

1 medium to large picked crab, brown and white meat
15g butter 
3-4 leeks
1 medium potato
about 1 pt fish Stock (see below)
small pot of whipping or double cream
small measure of Islay whisky or a whisky of your choice
pinch of paprika/cayenne pepper for garnish but omit if your spices are not very fresh.

Bread to serve

For the fish stock:

Cook gently for 20-30 minutes any or all of the following:
Leek trimmings from 2-3 medium leeks, 1 peeled chopped carrot, 1 rib celery, crab shell, any prawn shells you have available, whole black pepper, parsley stalks, water to cover, about 1 pint in my case. Once cooked, strain through a fine-mesh sieve. You could do this stage ahead.

For the Soup:

1. Gently sweat the chopped white parts of 3 small-medium leeks in a knob of butter.
2. Once softened add 1 medium potato, peeled and diced, and gently sweat with the leeks for about 5 minutes; do not allow to brown.
3. Add the stock to the leeks and potato and simmer gently until the leeks and potato are soft.
4. Using a stick blender puree the soup.
5. Now if you are going for 'fine dining' push the soup through a fine sieve to remove any coarse parts of leek that may remain. This is not essential!
6. Gently stir some of the brown crab meat into the soup. This is very much a 'to taste' stage. Brown crab meat can be strongly flavoured or you may not like the flavour yourself. I am in the like camp, and I was lucky to have been sent some  beautifully sweet crab so I added several spoonfuls but tasted all the way.
7. Now stir in the cream, again to taste, I add just enough to get a slightly more silken texture but not so much that the fresh flavour of the crab becomes muted.

Small break in the soup production while you whip up the seedy soda scones or pop some other suitable bread into a hot oven to refresh it. Once the bread is ready:

• Warm the soup through and stir in the white crab meat reserving a dessert spoonful to garnish each bowl.
• Keeping the soup at serving temperature but definitely not allowing it to boil, slowly add some whisky. This is the magic; you do not need very much, just enough to 'warm' the flavours, like a hint of sea breeze. Taste as you add.
• Now quickly check the final seasoning, pour the soup into warmed bowls, place a spoonful of reserved white crab meat in the centre and very lightly dust with cayenne/red pepper flakes to garnish.
•  Serve with your lovely hot bread and a small tot of whisky on the side which I would dilute with enough water to bring the whisky to roughly wine strength of alcohol. 

This is my entry for the December, Grand Final, of the Best of British blogging challenges organised by Fiona of London Unattached. The challenges have been great fun so many thanks to Fiona and the sponsors The Face of New World.

We Should Cocoa: Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Bun Rounds

I had been prevaricating over just what to bake up for the November We Should Cocoa challenge and as this weekend is the last before the deadline it was time to knuckle down. The host for this month's challenge is Nazima of Franglais Kitchen and the guest ingredient for this month is bread; so a bit of a workout was in order and perhaps that is why I had been putting it off.

I love the flavour combination of milk chocolate and hazelnut but have never quite fallen for the allure of Nutella. I had been thinking along the lines of making a loaf with chunks of chocolate and chopped hazelnuts when I came across this wonderful 250g Ritter bar of Hazelnut Milk Chocolate.

Well it fair jumped into my basket. I felt instant relief at knowing there would be no tricky roasting of hazelnuts which sneakily turn much darker brown on the inside before they are nicely brown on the outside, and no messy rubbing outer skins into a tea towel that never seems to get more than half the husks off anyway.

I chose to make a quite plain bread dough and as I am trying to learn how to work with much wetter doughs than are common in domestic baking books I went for 350g of strong white flour, 150g rye flour and 300g water, 1 egg, 50g butter, 50g sugar and a small tsp. of salt. Sadly it did not quite work and there was a hint of gumminess to the finished crumb even though it had kneaded up quite well and had risen without collapsing.

I made a sort of tear apart round based on 75g balls of dough, each rolled out flat and filled with 15g of chopped chocolate and hazelnut bar and then formed back into a dough ball and placed in a round deep tray.

The buns were left to prove and then washed with egg glaze. I baked the bun rounds at 180c and pulled the trays out to re-glaze after about 15 minutes. After another 5 minutes @ 180c the 

base of the bun rounds had still not fully baked so I had to tip the rounds out and bake them without the tins for a further 5 minutes before taking out to cool on a rack.

Finally; here is a bun cut in half to reveal the chocolate hazelnut centre. The crust is nice and thin and the filling plentiful, I just need to work on the crumb texture a bit more.

If you want to make your own and you have a favourite sweet dough recipe then I would just follow that but scale back a bit if it uses much more than 500g of flour. Or of course buy more chocolate so you can still put in a good proportion of filling per bun.

These make a really good weekend breakfast bread or mid morning snack and you could almost convince yourself you were eating a very healthy pain chocolat.

The We Should Cocoa Challenges are run by Chocolate Teapot and Chocolate Log Blog and a round up will appear on Franglais Kitchen's blog by the end of the month.

We Should Cocoa - Pumpkin

So this is what I made for the October 'We Should Cocoa' challenge:

Not very pretty, and not obviously anything to do with chocolate but I went for Roasted Pumpkin with Mole Sauce. I dressed it up a bit with some chopped fresh tomatoes and a poached egg dusted with mild chilli flakes.

I chose the savoury route as I am not very fond of pumpkin in sweet dishes and could not think of anything sweet with pumpkin and chocolate that I was inspired by.

I have been growing chillies at home this year and they have been my only 'glut' so I was keen to get using them. They are also far hotter than I was anticipating so I cannot use them in large amounts at a time.

I picked the larger ones earlier as the plants were all getting quite ragged. The picked chillies are holding up well just kept like fruit in a bowl and I am going to try and dry some of them too.

The smaller size chillis are still surviving in my unheated conservatory but I think I will need to pick them soon.

My mole sauce was based on a recipe I found on the David Lebovitz web site for Chocolate Mole. He serves the sauce with meat or chicken but it worked very well with the chunks of roasted pumpkin.

I substituted my fresh chillies for the dried poblanos he calls for, and used ground almonds as the thickener. I skipped the dried fruit as I felt it was going to be sweet enough and I don't have unsweetened chocolate but I do have a 90% dark so that was close enough. The colour does change to a bit of a muddy hue once the chocolate is added which was a little off putting but the flavour was very deep and rich.

I had quite a lot of mole sauce and roasted pumpkin left over so did another version a day later with melted cheese, yoghurt and lime but I preferred the first version.

The We Should Cocoa Challenge is hosted by Chocolate Teapot  and Choclette, and the October challenge is being guest hosted by Hungry Hinny, a round up of this challenge will appear on their blogs at the end of the month.

Best of British - Dorset

This month the Best of British challenge moves to Dorset and is hosted by  Lavender and Lovage where the challenge is introduced with lots of inspiration for foods that are good in Dorset. I chose to base my dish on ingredients from Dorset rather than a traditional Dorset dish and so I have found some Dorset beer and bacon with which to put together a dressed up meal of Dorset Rarebit, bacon and mushrooms. A perfect autumn lunch. 

There is a fascinating review of what makes a perfect rarebit which appeared as part of a series on 'perfect' renditions of favourite foods in the Guardian paper. Their recipe calls for stout and Lancashire cheese but I was very happy with my substitutions of Hall and Woodhouse brewery Badger Champion ale and a Somerset cheddar. I ventured as close to the Dorset border as I could with my choice of cheese, based on what I could actually buy easily, and the Wookey Hole cheddar worked really well.

I based my recipe loosely on the one at the end of the Guardian article. The topping is made up as  a sort of sauce out of the beer, mustard, cheese, egg and butter which is poured over the bread and toasted until golden.  I only had whole grain mustard and not mustard powder so I used that and I used more Champion ale and less butter than the Guardian recipe calls for. I guess I need to polish my technique a little as my 'sauce' was actually rather separated and lumpy when it went onto the muffin but once it was all bubbled up and toasted it looked rather moreish and made a perfect lunch with some Dorset Denhay dry cured bacon and fried chestnut mushrooms. The remainder of the Champion made a perfect accompaniment. Cheers!

New World Appliances are sponsoring this challenge in conjunction with Fiona from London Unattached. The full round up will appear both there and on Lavender and Lovage's blog soon after the 5th November. If you have a favourite Dorset recipe do join in.

We Should Cocoa Challenge - inspired by Kir Royale

This month's We Should Cocoa challenge was to conjure up a chocolate dish that had been inspired by a cocktail.

Well after much procrastination and initial thoughts about eggnog cupcakes I decided to take my inspiration from the Kir Royal drink of cassis and champagne. 

I have attempted to morph this famous french tipple into a cake by making a swiss roll and filling it with home made blackcurrant jelly and a marc de champagne white chocolate ganache.

I have never yet made a good swiss roll sponge and today was no exception. They always end up with a grainy texture. I even whisked this one over a bain-marie in the hope that this would produce a more homogeneous batter but no, once again the sponge came out a little too coarse and grainy. Just as well then that I had a good thick layer of blackcurrant jelly and champange ganache to distract from the texture. If anyone can offer an explanation for the grainyness I would be very grateful.

I was quite pleased with the flavour though, particularly the wonderful intensity of the blackcurrant layer, and after allowing the ganache to set the roll was producing far neater slices when cut.

The swiss roll recipe was the usual ratios of 1 egg to 1oz of flour and 1oz of caster sugar with a few tabs of hot water and I used a 3 egg mix.

The blackcurrant jelly was made from home grown blackcurrants that had been simmered until soft and then sieved to remove the pips before adding just enough sugar to get a soft set gel when boiled.

The ganache was a tinker as you go along affair but the ingredients were white chocolate, butter, marc de champagne and a little hot water. I wanted a relatively soft ganache and not too rich hence adding water instead of cream.

I am submitting this to the organisers of the We Should Cocoa challenge Chocolate Teapot and  Chocolate Log Blog

Random Recipes - Rock Cakes

This month the Random Recipe Challenge teams up with Tea Time Treats so we are looking for a randomly selected tea time treat. The instruction to 'select a book or collection of books that best represent what YOU think of as tea time food' was the hardest part for me.

I have a very constrained idea of what counts as a Tea Time food largely influenced by early childhood tea time memories. At home tea was the early evening meal we would eat on a Saturday and Sunday. Often a very plain salad, think limp lettuce and tinned ham, with bread and butter followed by bread and jam and a plain cake and of course pots of tea. 

Then there was the charming afternoon tea served at a local bakery/cafe, Peter's where delicate cream cakes would be presented on a tiered cake plate along with fine leaf tea served in traditional cups. Visits here were a great treat. You can read some lovely recollections of Peter's Bakery here at the Baker's daughter.

So my solution to making the random choice was to get out my box of recipe clippings and select a good handful that for me were tea time treats (sausage rolls, pork pies, scones, gingerbread, sponge cake...)  and then to ask my other half to give me a number and we ended up with Rock Cakes:

To make 12

• 200g self raising flour
• pinch salt
• scant half tsp mixed spice
• 75g butter
• 75g caster sugar
• 80g mixed dried fruit
• 1 standard egg
• few tbs milk
• demerara sugar to sprinkle

1. Set Oven to 200C Gas 6
2. Sieve flour, salt and spice into a bowl
3. Rub in the butter to resemble fine crumbs
4. stir in the sugar and dried fruit
5. Stir in the egg a 1 or 2 tablespoons of milk to get a stiff rough textured dough
6. Divide into 12 portions onto a greased or lined baking sheet
7. Using a fork lightly rough the outside of each bun and sprinkle with the demerara sugar
8. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Absolutely delicious whilst still just warm.

This recipe is being submitted for the September 2012  Random recipe #20 Challenge. There will be a full round up at the end of the month over at Dom's website so do look back Here, or take a look at Lavender and Lovage or What Kate Baked

Best of British - London

This month the Best of British blog challenge is being hosted by Fiona of London Unattached and of course the area is London.

Not an easy one; and whilst I cannot pretend that my chosen subject of pigeons 'shows the best of London' the pigeon is certainly a lasting image for myself and many other visitors. The pigeon must be a good 'wooer' as so many people want to feed them resulting in no feeding signs appearing in multi lingual form.


So I have found my London icon but what to do with it? I was all set for a traditional rare cooked roast until the charming butcher I collected the birds from at Piper's Farm, Exeter proposed his favourite pigeon dish of a braised pigeon pie. The idea did not sink in until I sat down for lunch an hour later. Perhaps the morning coffee from the wonderful Exploding Bakery had finally woken me up but now Pigeon Pie and Mash were on the menu.

Pipers Farm Shop had some very fine looking meat on display and I was delighted to see how the birds I was buying were wrapped and tied up so elegantly, for a moment I felt I could have been in France.

So I braised the birds gently with some wine and herbs; pulled the meat off the carcass and then used the braising juices to make a well flavoured gravy along with some mushrooms, bacon, carrot and onion. I like my pies to be quite plain so I just made up a shortcrust pastry top.
Here is the pie about to go into the oven:

And here it is freshly out of the oven:

For a London challenge it had to be served with mashed potato and some rather fine carrots from my veg box. Not a pretty dish but a very tasty one.

For the round up of the Best of British London Challenge see The Face of New World at the end of September or London Unattached blog site.