First Thursday, 2013

For nearly a decade, I have spent Thursday nights in the company of two other gentlemen.  We have wined, dined and entertained each other, through thick, and through thin.  In the face of broken romances, work pressures, financial woes, relocations, and great successes, new joys and good times,  we have found the time to commune together.  Some weeks, it's all Grand Baroque and home preserved, duck meat,  shot by the fair hand of the chef, other weeks, it might be homemade pizza or a menu inspired by travels or imagination.  The running theme has always been an opportunity, just once a week, to enjoy the company of others, the pleasure of someone taking the effort to prepare a proper meal, and the adventure of trying something new, for what you know will be an appreciative and supportive audience.  Otherwise known as "Survivor Night", because originally we started out by arranging to watch the foresaid reality TV show together, it has evolved into a very different "Survivor Night", and it is truly a highlight of each and every week for me.
Since I feel unable to invite you to join us for dinner of a Thursday (which is an honour very rarely bestowed), I plan to at least record the key culinary highlights of each week for our 10th anniversary year.....what, with my new camera and all (thanks Davey!)

Here was our Bill of Fare for Thursday, January 3rd, 2013:

Cocktail - sparkling rum and pomegranate punch (for this I can take no credit....thanks Davey (via CHOW).  Easy, very "more-ish" and readily adaptable for the grape-allergic (substitute sparkling cider for the sparkling wine - equally delicious.)
Soup: Cream of Celery - courtesy of BBC GoodFood.  Well received, and well presented - SUPER EASY!  Definitely one to make again. If only I had the foresight to make a delicious 1 hour, soft pretzel to go with it....need to ask Andrea for the recipe!).

Delicious Celery Soup, with a sparkling rum and pomegranate punch in the background ( just to set an edge on the appetite, you understand.)

Main course:  A classic, which we have enjoyed together several times before.  Fruity lamb tagine (again, see BBC GoodFood, with a few customizations based on what was to hand....i.e. substituting left over Christmas dates for the apricots, stewing beef for the lamb).  Served, this time, served with bulgar wheat, because no couscous was to be found.

Dessert: after all the over-indulgence of the last couple of weeks, I thought fruit salad might be welcome.  Persimmon, grapes, kiwi, banana, pomegranate and out of season rasps made for a palate-invigorating mix.  I managed to restrain myself from topping it off with some vanilla ice cream from Sweet Olenka's.  Maybe next time.

Ham, eggs and homemade tomato ketchup

I was on a pickling, canning and bottling frenzy this weekend.

Ham steak and eggs for breakfast this morning - not a normal Monday breakfast for me, but definitely a good one for a long weekend.  And the real highlight?  Tasting the homemade tomato ketchup that I made on Saturday!  It was surprisingly little effort (although it didn't half make the kitchen hot!!), and the results are amazing.  I can highly recommend it if you have access to some good, ripe tomatoes.  I followed a recipe from delectablemusings.com, which was a real cinch.  I may make another batch on a cooler weekend in the fall to give away as presents.

Following a tip on delectablemusings.com, I broiled my tomatoes to remove the skins, before canning them.  Much easier and quicker than the boiling water method.

I was also very pleased with a previous auction purchase this weekend.  A year or two ago, for no particular reason, I bought a massive copper pot in an auction.  The interior tin lining is still there, but probably not intact enough to be safe to cook in directly, and it's so gargantuan, it didn't seem worth the money to have it relined because I don't intend to boil 10 chickens simultaneously at any point in the near future.   However, when I discovered that my normal process of using my stock pot as a boiling water bath when canning wasn't going to work with quart jars because they are just too big, I suddenly remembered that old copper pot.  It weighs a ton, and by the time I had filled it with water, it took two of us to get it on the stove, and about an hour to get the water to a rolling boil, but it did the trick admirably.  I knew I must have bought it for a reason!

I don't know how many litres this copper pot holds, but you could boil about 10 chickens in there, and probably half a sack of potatoes as well.

For a sense of scale, to the left is my standard stock pot, which I normally use when canning....don't normally do anything larger than a pint jar.

Lemon Meringue Cake for a birthday

Last night we had a little low key gathering of friends for drinks to celebrate a birthday.  I hadn't baked anything for ages, so decided this would be a good opportunity to get some practice in, by volunteering to bake the cake.  I turned to what has become an old standby, both because it's simple and quick to produce, and because the results are quite frankly fantastic!  Nigella's lemon meringue cake is a real winner!  It would have been even easier had I been able to use a good store bought lemon curd, but on my travels yesterday, I visited 3 different supermarkets to no avail, and ultimately had to make my own instead.  Not that this was a hardship, since now I have an extra jar of luscious curd in the fridge, waiting for me to indulge with breakfast toast!  I followed Nigel Slater's recipe for the lemon curd, and the accompanying article is a good read too.

PS - I cut the sugar in Nigella's meringue recipe by half, to very good effect.

The cake and meringue are baked in a single operation, making things much quicker and easier than classic lemon meringue pie.  Sandwiched together with whipped cream and fresh lemon curd, the results are nice and fluffy and light in character, if not in calories!

I know it looks like a bit of a "hot mess" (the cake, not the recipient!), but that doesn't diminish how fabulously rich, and creamy and luscious the taste is!

Comfort Food: Toad in the Hole aka Clafoutis aux Saucisses

Other than some overnight frosts, we've barely had a cold day so far this December.  Last Thursday, we had a high of 12 degrees, and other than a bitterly cold and windy day on Saturday, we are back up in the high single digits today.  This is, of course, not what my garden needs.  The japonica quince I planted a couple of years ago is quite confused and has been sending out pretty coral coloured flowers with abundance, only to have them nipped at by overnight frosts.  I hope there are some buds left for the spring!

None-the-less, it's perfect Christmas shopping weather, and I've taken the day off work to finish off that task.  Despite the rather unseasonably mild weather, for some reason, this weekend has served an abundance of hearty comfort food and toasty log fires.  There's been a gingery sweet potato soup with chunks of crusty bread, pork chops baked with sauerkraut, onions and bacon, and mounds of fluffy mashed potatoes.  Sticky pear and ginger parkin with custard, and the charmingly named British standard, Toad in the Hole.  I made a decidedly delicious version, with upmarket pretensions, following a Nigel Slater recipe, where the sausages are stripped of their skins, and re-wrapped in proscuitto.  I think it could be renamed quite fairly as Clafoutis aux Saucisses, but I might be getting carried away.  Nigel calls for strongly flavoured, herby sausages, which makes me think of lovely Cumberland sausages, but in Mimico at 5pm on a Friday, the best I could come up with were some mild Italian Sausages, so I boosted the flavour by chopping up fresh sage and rosemary, and rolling the naked sausages generously in that mix before applying the prosuitto.  The result, although not exactly calorie light, was quite delicious.  Accompanied by some onion gravy, made rich with Marsala, it was just the thing to stick to the ribs and keep out any draughts......even if we've been spared the big chill so far!

Toad in the Hole, also known as Clafoutis aux Saucisses, or Virtue in Danger