Traditional British Food, Part 35: Fast Food/Slow Food

Lamb Lickety-split

I know this blog isn't exactly 30 Minute Meals, but I do occasionally make things that don't take two hours and thirty pans. This is a super-fast main dish that only takes about 15 minutes total after you've marinated it. This recipe originally used redcurrant jam (but I couldn't find any here in middle America) and is adapted from Favourite Dorset Recipes.

Lamb Chops with Blackcurrant Sauce

serves 2

2 lamb chops (about an inch thick)

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 small onion, peeled and roughly chopped

Several sprigs of rosemary

Handful of peppercorns

1/4 cup dry red wine

2 tablespoons blackcurrant jam

Place the lamb chops in a single layer in a shallow dish. Drizzle over olive oil and add the onion, rosemary and peppercorns. Pour the wine over. Cover and refrigerate 4 to 24 hours.

Take the lamb out of the fridge and place a skillet over medium-high heat. Add a glug (scientific measurement!) of olive oil. When the oil gets nice and hot, add the lamb chops to the pan and season with kosher salt. Cook for 3 minutes on each side and remove to plates to rest.

Pour out any oil and fat from the pan, place it back on the heat and deglaze with the strained marinating liquid. Stir in the blackcurrant jam and reduce as desired. Pour over the lamb chops and serve immediately.

Goes really well with this asparagus recipe.

Beautiful lamb in marinade:

A Pie Requiring Patience

It's a lot of work in one go, but it serves eight (lots of leftovers!) and there's no worry about reheating it, because it's meant to be served cold. This was my first time to make hot water pastry and I was a bit terrified. I haven't quite figured it out, though, because the whole shell had to be pretty much pieced together. Maybe it gets easier with practice. I used this recipe and only changed a couple of things. First, I used a Kaiser 12 1/2" x 5" Springform Loaf pan (much much cheaper than a raised pie pan) which left no room for the jellied stock, I used bacon, and I didn't have any allspice, so I went in a totally different direction and used Old Bay Seasoning instead. Don't ask me why, but it did turn out well. Oh and, in case you were wondering, 3 ounces of butter are 6 tablespoons and 4 ounces of lard are 8 tablespoons. I might write out my own version of the recipe once I've really figured out what I'm doing with the hot water pastry.

Thankfully, the pie was awesome, because it took most of the day to make. I served it with frozen peas & carrots because I totally neglected to buy any vegetables at the grocery store and happened to find the bag of them when I was rummaging around in the freezer. They're actually not nearly as retirement-home-cuisine as they appear--as long as you a) don't overcook them, b) salt & pepper them, c) add some butter and d) add a bit of sugar.

Traditional British Food, Part 34: June is Bustin' Out All Over*

Well, warm weather has finally settled in for good (at least until October). I suppose I should feel glad after the winter we had, but I wish we'd had more spring weather. I was looking forward to highs in the upper-60s, low-70s, but those days didn't last very long! I'll just have to look for culinary compensation. Believe me, I am looking forward to berries and stone fruits.

Paul and I went to Dillon's Sunday morning and there was already a display of peaches out. Peaches that were as hard as rocks and will never ripen, most likely! However, there were also nectarines, which have an earlier season than peaches and they're perfect for the following recipe, which is simple and quick and doesn't require a lot of dishes.

Broiled Pork Chops and Stone Fruits

adapted from this recipe

serves 2

2 bone-in pork chops, around 1/2" to 3/4" in thickness

Olive oil

4 ripe-ish stone fruits (nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums, whatever is in season), halved and pitted

pinch dried red pepper flakes (the kind that go on pizza)

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon butter

Place your oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat your broiler.

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place the pork chops and halved fruit (cut side up) on the sheet. Brush the pork chops with a light coating of olive oil and season well with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle the pepper flakes and the brown sugar on the fruit then top with the butter.

Place the baking sheet in the oven and broil for 8 minutes. Turn the pork chops over and broil another 8 minutes. The fruit may need to be removed earlier; it should be nicely caramelized, but not falling apart. The pork chops should be browned and cooked through. Serve with a green vegetable, such as:

Steamed Asparagus with Lemon Butter

serves 2

1/2 lb asparagus, tough ends removed

1 tablespoon butter

juice from 1/2 lemon

Steam the asparagus 5 minutes. Transfer to a mixing bowl, add the butter and lemon, season with salt and pepper and mix to combine (and melt the butter). Divide between two plates and serve immediately.

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*

Traditional British Food, Part 33: First Anniversary

It's been a little over a year since my first "Traditional British Food" post and I'd like to celebrate with an extremely British meal: Toad-in-the-Hole with Buttery Cabbage.

Toad-in-the-Hole

Funny name for sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding batter and then covered in oniony gravy

serves 4

12 ounces breakfast sausage links (try to get some that are nice and sage-y)

about a dozen fresh sage leaves, chiffonade

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 cup milk

1/2 small onion caramelized using 1/2 tablespoon olive oil or

1/4 cup caramelized onions

1/2 cup beef stock

1/2 cup dry red wine

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and place a 1-quart casserole in the oven.

If you are caramelizing your onions, do so while the oven preheats. Feel free to make as much as you'd like, because caramelized onions are really tasty in other things, as well. Instructions here.

When the oven has almost come to temperature, heat a medium-sized skillet over medium-high heat. When heated, add the sausages and sear on all sides. Turn the heat down to low and cook the sausages, turning occasionally, while you prepare the Yorkshire pudding batter.

In a mixing bowl, add the flour and salt and make a well in the center. Add the egg and a bit of the milk. Whisk well, adding milk gradually, until batter is smooth. Stir in the sage.

When the oven comes up to temperature, pour the sausages into the pre-heated casserole along with any fat they've yielded. Set the skillet aside. Cover the sausages with the Yorkshire pudding batter and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until batter is puffed and lightly browned. Don't open the oven door!

To make the gravy: place the sausage skillet back on the hob over high heat. When it has gotten hot, pour in the stock and wine and deglaze the pan. Reduce as desired and turn down heat to low. Stir in the 1/4 cup of caramelized onions.

Serve Toad-in-the-Hole immediately (leftovers won't do so well) covered in gravy (or maple syrup, Paul's favorite).

Buttery Cabbage

Try this even if you "don't like" cabbage. It's too buttery and lemony to be icky.

serves 4

1 head green cabbage, outer leaves discarded

4 tablespoons butter

juice from 1 lemon

salt and pepper

Add water to your steamer pot and put on the stove over high heat. Quarter the cabbage and place it in the steamer basket. When the water in the pot has come to a boil, place the basket over the pot, cover and steam for about 8 minutes, or until cabbage can be pierced with a fork but isn't falling apart.

Meanwhile, melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan. Add salt and pepper to taste. When the cabbage is done, place each quarter on a plate (like a wedge salad), stir the lemon juice into the butter, and pour over the cabbage.

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Reading/watching recommendations:

• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene- wryly humorous yet suspenseful; smart escapist reading
• Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)- rather sympathetic portrayal of man who bumps off inconvenient aunts, uncles and cousins who stand between him and a dukedom
• The Country Wife (Donald McWhinnie, 1977)- stars Helen Mirren and Anthony Andrews, well-done adaptation; you know, it's really difficult to find Restoration comedies on DVD, so you should take advantage of this one, which is part of the Helen Mirren at the BBC DVD collection

Traditional British Food, Part 32: Two Georges

First up, we have St. George, the patron saint of England. St. George's Day was Friday, April 23rd, so I made a Treacle Tart to celebrate. Honestly, any holy day is a good excuse for a tart. This recipe is derived from The Cooking of the British Isles, Harvest Traditional British Cooking, and my own imagination.

Paul is constantly teasing me about how cheap I am, but if I hadn't saved my breadcrumbs, I couldn't have made this tart. It's really important to use breadcrumbs from actual bread rather than the breadcrumbs that come ready-made from the grocery store for this recipe, because the grocery store breadcrumbs are too dry.

Treacle Tart

Download PDF version of recipe here!

serves 8

Short crust pastry:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

6 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into small cubes

2 tablespoons milk

Cold water, as needed

Filling:

1 1/2 cups golden syrup

1 1/2 cups white breadcrumbs

juice from 1/2 small lemon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 egg, lightly beaten

For the crust:

In a large bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Add the butter and cut it in until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Add the milk and enough water so that the mixture forms a ball. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for half an hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grease a 10" fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Place it on a baking sheet and set aside.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the pastry out to 1/8" thickness. Roll it over the rolling pin and place on top of the tart pan. Picking up the dough as you work around the pan, lightly press (don't tear the dough!) the dough into the tart pan. Use the rolling pin to roll over the top of the pan, removing excess dough. Set remaining dough aside.

In a bowl, combine the filling ingredients. Then, pour the filling into the tart pan. Use the leftover dough to decorate the top of the tart. You can cut it in strips for a lattice design, or use a cookie cutter to make decorative shapes.

Bake the tart (leave the tart pan on the baking sheet) in the middle of the oven for 3o minutes, or until filling is set and has puffed up a bit (it will fall back down when you cool it).

When the tart is ready, remove the outer ring and place the tart on a cooling rack. Cool for a few minutes and then serve. Leftovers can be kept, covered, in the fridge.

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Our second George is George Sanders, the actor. I enjoyed what I have inaugurated the First Annual George Sanders Film Festival this weekend. (Yes, I did watch a lot of movies. However, I was knitting most of the time, so that makes it OK.)

• Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)- Sanders plays newspaper reporter Scott ffolliott ("both small 'F's"), who helps Joel McCrea uncover a sinister plot to drive Europe to the brink of war; Hitchcock's plea for American support; great film that foreshadows Hitchcock's later work with James Stewart and Cary Grant
• Sundown (Henry Hathaway, 1941)- another propaganda film about British army officers who discover a German plot to arm tribes in Africa
• The Lodger (John Brahm, 1944)- Sanders, as Inspector John Warwick, sets out to capture Jack the Ripper and the heart of Merle Oberon (who didn't annoy the crap out of me for once); this film was a nice surprise--it doesn't fall into the trap of hokeyness, the cinematography is perfect, and Laird Cregar, who plays titular character, does a fantastic job
• A Scandal in Paris (Douglas Sirk, 1946)- Geroge Sanders--thief, lover, police chief?; fun popcorn movie; perfect for St. George's Day, because escaped convicts Vidocq (Sanders) and Vernet (Akim Tamiroff) pose for a painting of St. George and the dragon and abscond with the painter's horse!
• The Strange Woman (1946)- George Sanders as a lumberjack?!
• All About Eve (1950)- the only film I watched this weekend where Sanders actually plays a rotter (to perfection) in his Oscar-winning turn as Addison DeWitt, theatre critic and all-around stinker

All are available on DVD.

Link to Sundown (entire film) at Internet Archive
Link to The Strange Woman (entire film) at Internet Archive

Traditional British Food, Part 31: Soup Kitchen

Since we might have a few days left of rainy, not-too-hot weather, I thought it would be a good time to post my favorite (British) soups that aren't overly wintry. If Tomato Soup doesn't sound like comfort food to you, you're probably an alien. Or a cyborg. Or both. Or something equally unpleasant.



(Cream of) Tomato Soup

serves 8

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2-28 oz. cans tomato puree (or diced tomatoes, if you like a chunkier soup)
2 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup heavy cream, optional, but it makes everything better!

Soften the onion in butter over medium heat until the onions are soft and translucent, but not browned.

Add the remainder of the ingredients, except the cream, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer one hour.

Stir in one tablespoon of cream into each bowl of soup just before serving. (You could also use sour cream.)





I prefer this recipe to Potage Parmentier, because I don't have to put it though the food processor. Smooth soups are overrated. However, what is not overrated is heavy cream, which you could also add to this soup.

Leek and Potato Soup

serves 6

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3 large leeks, finely sliced
2 small onions, finely chopped
2 lbs potatoes, peeled and chopped
5 cups chicken stock
1 cup dry white wine
salt and pepper

Over medium heat, cook the leeks and onions in the butter until softened and translucent but not browned.

Add the potatoes and cook for 2-3 minutes before adding the chicken stock and wine. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 30-35 minutes. Season to taste.


Adapted from Traditional British Cooking.

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Two old Brit mysteries I've read recently and were great crappy weather reading and would go really well with soup (or tea, for that matter):

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey- it's unconventional in that no crime occurs in the book and the detective is hospital-bound and attempting to solve the mystery of Richard III and the "Princes in the Tower"

The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin- Oxford professor solves theatre-world murder; overall too much pompous use of phrases in French and Latin (even for snobbish moi) but has some great humorous moments and is a pleasant read

Traditional British Food, Part 30: Easter Biscuits

According to The Taste of Britain by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown, an Easter Biscuit is: "a circular biscuit with a fluted edge, 50-90mm in diameter, 5mm thick; Weight: 12-20g. Color: pale gold irregularly flecked with currants. Flavor: sweet, lightly spiced. Short texture" (40). My Easter Biscuits (cookies) are sweet and lightly spiced and contain currants. However, I didn't want to bake them all at once, so I turned them into slice-n-bake cookies and the source recipe I used makes much thicker cookies than 5mm.

The use of brandy in the recipe makes these Sedgemoor Easter Biscuits. Using lemon instead would make these London Easter Biscuits (41).


Easter Biscuits

yields 24

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick (4 ounces) butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup (4 ounces) dried currants
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1 egg
1/4 cup brandy

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, add the flour and butter. Cut the butter into the flour until mixture resembles moist sand. Stir in the sugar, currants and spices.

Add the egg and brandy and stir until all of the dough is moistened. If baking entire batch at once, roll the dough out to a half-inch thickness on a lightly floured surface and cut with a cookie cutter. If you'd like to bake just a few at a time, use a large piece of parchment paper to form the dough into a 12"-long roll and slice off as many half-inch-thick cookies as you'd like. (Store remainder, wrapped in parchment, in a plastic bag in a freezer.)

Bake cookies (biscuits, whatever) on an ungreased, unlined baking sheet in the middle of the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Recipe adapted from "Sedgemoor Easter Cake" in Good Things in England by Florence White.

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I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to post today. The computer was acting up and refusing to start up. Thankfully, Paul came home and fixed it. It's aggravating that he basically tried the same things I did and the stupid thing worked for him. I am maintaining my uneasy peace with technology.

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Books that I've read and liked recently:

• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (I absolutely adore Flavia de Luce!)
  
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers (Much more subversive and sinister than the Disney version.)
  
• The Country Wife by William Wycherley
• Love for Love by William Congreve
• The Confederacy by John Vanbrugh (really wish I had my own comedy troupe right about now)
  
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

TV/Films:

• Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith, 1952)
• Joseph Andrews (Tony Richardson, 1977)
• I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, 1945) (This really is a rather silly movie, but it has Roger Livesey in it, way before he played the Duke of St. Bungay in The Pallisers.)
  
• Terry Jones: Medieval Lives (TV, 2004) (Great fun. Not just for Monty Python fans.)
  
• Gosford Park (Robert Altman, 2004) (The first time I saw this was in the theatre and the sound was so low that no one could hear any of the dialogue. It is impossible to appreciate this film without being able to hear all the snide comments uttered by the various characters!)
  
• The House of Eliott: Series 1 (TV, 1991)
• Mad Men: Seasons 1-3 (TV, 2007-2009)

Until next time, dear readers!