Author: Alex

Lemon Polenta Cake

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lemon & polenta cake

Last week I was asked about how many of my recipes I make up and I realised it’s been a while since I’ve done any of my own ‘recipe development’.

On Sunday I was going to make a lemon and olive oil cake. As Andy headed off to the shops he asked if I needed anything. Oh no, I had everything I needed. Half an hour later, I discovered that I barely had enough olive oil for the recipe and, if I did, I’d be leaving us with none.

However, I took this as an opportunity to create my own cake. Initially that opportunity was not grasped entirely gracefully – there was a lot of muttering about not being able to find a recipe that suited exactly what was in the cupboard. But the end product was lovely!

Begin by preheating the oven to 160°C fan and grease and baseline a 23 cm springform tin. Using a 23cm tin gives a thinner cake – if you want a deeper cake use a 20cm tin, but remember you’ll need to cook the cake for a little longer.

In the trusty MagiMix, cream 200g of unsalted butter with 200g of caster sugar. Add 100g of almonds and 100g of fine polenta. Make sure you use fine otherwise rather than “texture” you’ll end up with gritty cake! Beat in 3 eggs and 2 tsp of baking powder.

At this point the mixture will be really stiff.

Now grate in the zest of 2 small lemons and add the juice of one (about 1 tbsp) and mix well. The mixture will be quite loose now. Pour it into the prepared tin and bake for 55 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. I also had to cover my cake with foil for the last 10 minutes or so, as it was starting to take on too much colour.

When you’ve got about 10 minutes of cooking left, start work on the syrup. In a small pan, place 100g of caster sugar along with the juice of 2 lemons and 1 tbsp of rum. Heat this up to create a syrup – you may need to add a splash or two of hot water along the way. When the sugar has fully dissolved, you are good to go. Ensure you don’t heat it so much that it boils and starts to turn into caramel!

Remove the cake from the oven and, while it’s hot, prick all over with a skewer or toothpick and then spoon over the syrup. You probably won’t need all of it (I had a tablespoon or two left). If you have a silicon brush, even better because you spread the syrup out over the cake a lot more evenly.

Leave the cake to cool, and absorb the syrup, in the tin. When cool, remove the tin and baking paper. Serve with cream.

It keeps well: the syrup and almonds keep it moist and the texture of the polenta does soften a little over time.

Note that as this cake is made with polenta and NO flour, it is gluten free (suitable for coeliacs).

Simple Pork Terrine

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terrine

I made this terrine ages ago now and it’s taken me a long time to get around to writing it because I suspect this is going to be quite a lot of effort. Which is surprising, because making the terrine was actually very easy. When the title says “simple” I do mean it. Before this, I’d never made a terrine so I was a little apprehensive (especially as I was making it for a dinner party, so there was very little wriggle room!) but it turns out that this is perfect party food.

There are a couple of great things about terrine. Firstly, you have to make it in advance – thus guaranteeing that on the day of whatever event it is, you won’t be flapping around, trying to whip something up last minute. The finished product looks impressive and is easy to serve. And because terrines are so meaty and dense, unless you are entertaining a horde, you are more than likely to have leftovers for snacks and lunches. They are also relatively cheap.

This recipe is from Damien Pignolet’s French. Now with some terrine making expertise under my belt, I do feel that this is the type of dish that, with a little experience and commonsense, you can really make up as circumstances dictate.

You do really need some specialist kit though: a terrine dish (for this terrine, approximately 1.5L in capacity). And if your oven has a built in meat thermometer … well, even better.

The first thing to do is to place an order with your butcher. You will need: 12 rashers of bacon (if you can get streaky, so much the better), 400g pork shoulder, coarsely minced, 300g chicken mince, 300g pork back fat, coarsely minced, and 200g chicken livers.

Preheat the oven to 160°C and line the terrine dish with the bacon, making sure that it hangs over the sides (when you’ve filled the terrine dish you’re going to fold the bacon over the top). You don’t need to grease or oil the terrine dish in any way: the bacon and the terrine filling both provide plenty of fat!

To make the filling, combine your meats (roughly chop the chicken livers first!) and add about half a cup of cooked, chopped spinach. If you use frozen spinach for this you’ll save yourself a lot of time and hassle. You want to defrost and cook it off in a fry pan to get rid of the excess water: job done. Add 1 clove of finely chopped garlic, plenty of black pepper (ground), 50mL of Cognac (or Armagnac or brandy), ½ cup of chopped parsley, 4 sage leaves, finely chopped, and the leaves from 4 sprigs of fresh thyme.

And if there is ever a time to suck up the exorbitant cost of fresh herbs in the supermarket … it is now. Really, do not go substituting dried ones. You won’t have a good idea of the balance of flavours until it’s too late and the long, slow cook that the meat is about to enjoy really means you need to choose fresh.

Next you need to mix through ½ tsp of quatre épices. This is a blend of equal parts of white pepper, nutmeg, ground ginger and ground cloves. If you’re confident you’ll use this a lot, go ahead and make up a decent quantity. However, I knew that if I did that I’d have yet another jar in my spice drawer that would sit there … and sit there … and sit there. So I very much guestimated this one …

And finally you need to add the salt. Now don’t be scared here … you need 18g per kilo of meat. DON’T skimp on this. DO NOT skimp on this. Get the idea? Yes, it looks like a ton of salt but really, you do need to add it!

Once your meat mix is made up you need to leave it in the fridge, marinating, for at least a couple of hours. I left mine overnight.

When you’re ready to start assembling the terrine, remove the mix from the fridge, allow it to come up to room temperature (or thereabouts) and fry off a little in a fry pan. You eat this. Not for fun, but so you can check on the seasoning. Once you’re happy with the seasoning, start spooning the meat mix into the terrine dish.

Press the mix down firmly and make sure you push it out to the edges of the dish – you want to pack in as much as possible. In my case, I had quite a bit of meat mix left over – it works well fried up for breakfast.

When you’ve filled the terrine dish with the meat, place a rasher or two of bacon across the top of the terrine dish & fold over the bacon you left hanging over the edge.

Cover with the terrine lid (or use tin foil) and place in a roasting dish half filled with water (you want the water to come half way up the terrine dish) and bake in a 160°C oven for an hour. Then reduce the temperature to 140°C and cook until the juices run clear or the internal temperature hits 70-72°C. This is where an oven with a meat probe comes in handy: it gives you a good idea of how things are going. But this will take at least another hour. Remember you are dealing with a very dense meat mixture!

When the cooking has finished, remove from the oven and the water bath, remove the lid and cover with some baking paper before weighting the terrine. I used tins from the cupboard for this. Allow to cool with the weights in place. Once cool, refrigerate overnight.

See – you do need to begin this in advance!

When you’re ready to serve, remove from the fridge a few hours in advance, run a knife around the edges of the terrine and upend the terrine dish on the serving platter. You’re unlikely to get lucky and have it come out straight away. But don’t worry – leave the terrine dish upended and over time the fat will warm up and eventually the terrine will just fall out. All you need to do is leave it alone.

Serve by slicing into fine or generous portions, with good bread, and plenty of pickle. We used a green tomato pickle, but your favourite will work well!

And to drink? Well, we opted for a Grüner Veltiner, but a dry Riesling would also work a treat.

Chorizo and Pork Belly

- Alex 4 Comments

pork belly 2
Let’s face it – that just sounds unbelievably good, no? I’d only just spotted this recipe on BBC’s Good Food site when one of my UK based friends mentioned having had a similar sounding dish at Chez Bruce. Not being a position to nip over to London to try it out for myself, I suspect the dish my friend had was the “thinly sliced pork with warm summer bean salad, salsa verde, chorizo and crackling” – so a summery version of the following very wintery dish.

Although there’s a bit of shopping to be done and some long slow cooking, this is really very easy. You just can’t be in a hurry. I also recommend that you ask your butcher to remove the skin from the pork belly but to score it and hand it over. We left the skin in the fridge to dry out and then rubbed it with olive oil and plenty of salt before crisping it up in a hot oven. Absolute bliss – and perfect crackling because of the drying out time!

Preheat oven to 140°C fan.

You need a 750g piece of boneless (and skinless!) pork belly, cut into large cubes. Heat some olive oil in a large casserole (you need something both stove and oven proof) and brown the pork belly in batches, setting aside on a plate or in a bowl as you go.

Once the pork belly is all browned, fry off 3 rashers of bacon, roughly chopped. If you can get hold of pancetta easily, use that. Reduce the heat and add a chopped onion and chopped garlic to taste (let’s say 2 large cloves). Cook until the onion starts to soften and then add two roughly chopped chorizos and stir through a teaspoon of paprika (I used sweet because that’s what I had, use hot if that is to hand).

When the chorizos start to give off a bit of fat, return the pork (and any juices that have collected) to the pan and stir through one tin of crushed tomatoes and 150mL of red wine. If you need to add a little water to ensure the pork is covered, do so.

Cover the pan and cook in the oven for about 2 hours. You needn’t be too fussy about the timing here – the important thing is that it’s a long slow cook. Over two hours is absolutely fine.

About half an hour before serving, remove from the oven, stir through a tin of cannellini beans (rinse the beans first) and return to the oven uncovered for about half an hour. This will not only heat up the beans but it will also help thicken the sauce. For this reason you don’t want to go too mad adding water for the final cook … something like this needs a thick, rich gravy.

We served with mashed potato and a few steamed vegetables.

This was a big hit – if it hadn’t all been eaten for snacks and lunches the remainder would have been frozen for an emergency dinner. If you use the quantities above you’ll have enough for 6 for an easy dinner – or plenty of leftovers!

To drink: you need something reasonably big to stand up to all the rich flavours. I think a Zinfandel (or Primitivo) would work well. Or a softer style Shiraz. You want some gentle acidity but not too many tannins.