Pickled Pears

I do love pears. When they are at that moment of optimum ripeness, there really is nothing to beat them. Apples are undeniably popular and this is due in part to their versatility, but the complexity of flavour that a perfectly ripe pear possesses is something that, in my opinion an apple never achieves.

Pears are wonderful used in cooking, and have something valuable to contribute to a range of sweet and savoury dishes. They are easily preserved and made into different chutneys, jams and pickles.

Pears are abundant in Autumn, although they can be a little tricky to cultivate if grown on an exposed, windy or cold site. Certainly, I have never been able to grow them successfully because of prevailing chilly winds where I live! Thankfully a number of different Irish varieties are available in supermarkets and greengrocers at a reasonable cost when they are in season. I tend to bulk buy them at this time of year and celebrate the many different dishes that I can create using them.

There’s something about making jams, chutneys, pickles and other preserves that really appeals to me. I love the somewhat romantic notion that I have developed of having food available during the “long, hard Winter” The irony of this is not lost on me given the fact that in the modern world all you have to do is walk into a shop and there are so many different foods that can be bought, but still, every year I like to bottle and preserve some fruits and vegetables.

This pickle is great and extremely easy to make. 1 kilogram of small to medium pears will yield three 500ml jars of pickled pears. I really do urge you to store the pears for at least a couple of weeks before eating them, because the flavours mellow and become almost sweeter but without being overly so. I particularly like eating these pears with cold meats at Christmas, but I recently tried them with some home-made vanilla ice-cream as a dessert and they were also delicious. In fact they made quite a sophisticated dessert and the sour acidity of the vinegar was well-offset by the sweetness of the sugar and the cinnamon.

Ingredients:

1kg pears
425g granulated sugar
400ml cider vinegar
200ml white wine vinegar
6 cloves
3 star anise
12 black peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick broken in two

4 strips of orange rind

4-6 slices of fresh root ginger root, peeled

Method:

1. Put all the ingredients except the pears into a large heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil over a high heat. Turn the heat down so that the pickling sauce is gently simmering and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and leave aside while you prepare the pears.
2. Peel and halve the pears trying to retain a small length of the stalk at the top of each pear. I find it useful to use a very small sharp knife when doing this. Use a melon baller or small teaspoon to neatly scoop out the pear cores.
3. Place the pears in the pickling liquid and heat up over a moderate heat and allow simmer until just tender. This should take about twenty minutes, but to be honest the timing completely depends on the pears that you have used.
4. Once the pears are ready, remove them with a slotted spoon and place in sterilised 500ml jars. I used Kilner Jars.
5. Continue to boil the pickling liquid until it reduces and becomes quite syrupy, but do remember that it will thicken more as it cools. Strain the syrup over the pears, but scoop out the cloves, star anise, peppercorns and cinnamon and add to the jars. Do not add the orange rind or root ginger.
6. Seal the jars and store for at least a week before eating. They can be stored for up to 6 months in somewhere cool and dark.

Makes 3 x 500ml jars.

Beef Pie with Quick Flaky Pastry

In a previous post I talked about how I like to use leftovers in a variety of ways to create meals for my family.

 

Pies are a great way to make something tasty out of food that you might have remaining from a previous meal. By making a simple sauce and including a few vegetables, you can transform what otherwise might lurk around in the fridge until you inevitably end up throwing it away. For example, if I have some of the meat leftover after making a roast chicken, I use the bones from the chicken carcass along with a few basic vegetables to make a stock from which I make a tasty sauce into which I put mouth-sized pieces of the chicken meat and add a few sautéed mushrooms or leeks.  I then pile this into a pie dish and top it with flaky, puff or shortcrust pastry and bake in the oven.

 

The pie recipe that I give here uses up some of the Beef and Guinness Stew that I have previously written about. It really does make a delicious pie and is so simple to make.

 

You can use shop-bought puff or shortcrust pastry and whilst it is a bit of palaver to make authentic puff pastry at home, shortcrust pastry is quick to make and home-made tastes so much nicer that the mass-produced versions that are available in the supermarket. To be honest, I prefer to use a puff or flaky pastry when making savoury pies, but that is just a personal preference. The whole point is that with a little planning it is actually far simpler than you might think to create tasty nutritious meals rather than resorting to ringing the take-away or sticking a ready-meal in the microwave.

 

Given my liking of puff pastry but my hatred of the time that it takes to make puff pastry, I was delighted to discover this recipe for quick flaky pastry many years ago. I can’t remember where I got it from, but I suspect that it may have come from a “Delia” book!

 

Ingredients:

225g plain flour
155g butter, put in freezer to get really cold about an hour before you want to make the pastry
4 tblsp very cold water
1 egg beaten with a fork
 

Method:

1. Put the pastry into a large bowl. Using the coarse side of a grater, grate the cold butter into the flour. Do not rub in the butter but make sure that it is gently mixed through and coated in the flour. Add the water and bring everything together until it just forms a bowl. You will still be able to see flakes of the butter in the dough, but don’t worry this is the way that it is meant to be. Briefly knead on a lightly floured work surface.
2. Wrap the ball of pastry in cling-film and leave in the fridge to rest for at least half an hour.
3. To make the pie, preheat the oven to 220C/Fan 200C/Gas Mark 6.
4. Pile your pie filling into a pie dish. Roll out the pastry until it is about 5mm thick, working it as little as possible.
5. Cut a thin strip of the pastry, about 1.5cms wide and place on the rim of the pie dish. Put a thin strip of pastry around the rim and using a pastry brush, paint with a little of the beaten egg. Next place the rest of the pastry on top of the pie and the pastry rim. Trim with a knife to give a neat finish and crimp the edges. Any leftover pastry can be quickly cut into leaf shapes and used to decorate the top of the pie.
6. Place in the preheated oven for approximately half an hour until the filling is piping hot and the pastry risen and golden on top.

 Serves 4
 

Beef Stew with Guinness and Herb Dumplings

Everyone has a dish or something that they eat that manages to transport them back in time and which represents so much more than the actual food that is being eaten. There are several dishes that manage to do this for me but the recipe that I give here probably achieves this more than any other. Whenever I eat this stew it evokes memories of when I was a child and of the family sitting around the table eating together on Wintry evenings when everyone had arrived in hungry from work and school.

This is my version of the beef stew that my grandmother regularly cooked for us and I just love the way the beef melts in the mouth, the sweetness of the carrots and onions and the beautiful rich sauce that brings everything together. She would serve the stew with some boiled or mashed potatoes and cooked green beans.

I have recently started including little herb dumplings which I plop into the stew about half an hour before the end of the cooking time. Although this is not something that my grandmother did, I have to admit that I love them. They puff up during cooking and take on some of the richly flavoured Guinness sauce and are not in the least bit stodgy. The dumplings use beef suet which adds another subtle but very savoury meaty element that complements the beef so well. The dumplings are incredibly easy to make and I would definitely recommend including them. Use whatever herbs you have to hand – I used chives, thyme, rosemary and parsley and they were delicious.

Once you initially prepare the ingredients and put them in the casserole dish, the stew can be quite happily left in the oven to cook away slowly at a moderate heat for a few hours. In fact, this dish actually improves if made in advance and re-heated. I often make it the day before I am going to serve it and then re-heat it for about an hour in the oven. If there are any are left-overs, I use them to make a puff- or shortcrust pastry- topped pie, where I put the remaining stew into a pie dish, top it with the pastry, brush it with egg wash and put into a hot oven for about 25 minutes. This is delicious served with some boiled potatoes and a green vegetable such as broccoli or peas.

This dish is a celebration of Irish beef and Irish stout. I honestly believe that we have some of the best beef in the world. Often when I complain about the amount of rain that falls in Ireland, I remind myself that if it wasn’t for all the rain, we wouldn’t have all the rich green pastures on which our cattle and sheep graze and which provide the perfect conditions for our dairy and meat industries.

What I particularly like about this recipe is that it demands the use of cheaper cuts of beef which have to be slow-cooked… Don’t get me wrong, I love fillet and sirloin beef but they can be so expensive and are by necessity mostly reserved for special occasions. Truthfully, although cheaper cuts of meat can be tough if not sensitively cooked, they do have so much flavour. Because of the slow-cooking involved here, the meat literally melts-in-the mouth and is oh so comforting to eat.

Ingredients:

3 medium sized onions, roughly chopped
750g stewing beef
3tblsp vegetable oil
2tblsp plain flour
Salt and pepper
5 carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
500ml Guinness
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
250ml water
Sprig of thyme
Dumplings:
125g self-raising flour
65g shredded beef suet
3tblsp of finely chopped herbs (e.g. parsley, rosemary, thyme, chives)
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/Fan 140C/ Gas Mark 3. Cut the beef into large bite sized pieces and trim off any large pieces of sinew or fat. You do not need to be overly worried about removing all fat and sinew, because it renders down during the slow-cooking and adds to the richness of the finished dish.
2. Sprinkle the flour over the beef pieces and season well. Heat the oil in a heavy based, oven-proof casserole dish and fry the meat in batches over a high heat until nicely browned all over. When each batch is done, temporarily remove to a dish while you get on with frying the rest of the meat. Do not overcrowd the pan or the meat will boil rather than sear and will not take on the lovely caramelised colour that you are seeking.
3. Once you have seared all the meat, add a touch more oil to the casserole dish, if needed and fry the onions until a nice golden colour. Return the meat to the casserole dish, add the carrots and pour in the Guinness. Allow to bubble for two or three minutes and then add the chopped tomatoes and a little of the water – you may not need it all at this stage, but can top up during the cooking process if the stew looks like it is drying up.
4. Season generously and add the sprig of thyme. Put the lid on the casserole dish and place into the pre-heated oven for anything between 2 and 3 hours. Check half-way through the cooking time and add a little more of the water if needed.
5. To make the dumplings, sieve the flour into a bowl and then add the beef suet and finely chopped herbs and mix through.
6. Add 100ml water and mix with a wooden spoon to a soft dough. Form walnut sized balls of the dough.
7. Take the stew out of the oven, remove the lid of the casserole dish and plop the dumplings in. Return the casserole dish to the oven, but do not replace the lid. Allow to cook for another 30 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes.
 
Serves 6 generously.

 

Orange Madeleines with a Cointreau Glaze

Madeleines are small little sponge cakes that are baked in little tins with a shell-like pattern. These tins are available to buy in kitchen supplies shops. I use metal tins, but silicon moulds are also available. Madeleines are a traditional French cake and hail from the small towns of Commercy and Liverdun in the Lorraine region.

The finished cakes can be dipped in melted chocolate or a sugar glaze; both of which are delicious. Alternatively, they can be left plain and eaten just as they are. I love the sweet tang of oranges so I have made an orange flavoured version here where the sponge is flavoured with orange zest and each indivdual cake is covered in a Cointreau sugar glaze. As you are probably gathering by now, I love using liqueurs and other spirits whenever I can in my cooking and baking and this seemed like a great opportunity to use the wonderfully orangy Cointreau. But if you don’t have any to hand, just substitute the Cointreau for more freshly squeezed orange juice! These cakes are delicious and particularly tasty with a cup of tea or coffee.

Much of the madeleine’s allure comes from the highly evocative piece written by the French author Proust in his book In Search of Lost Time where he reminisces about eating madeleines and how they made him feel. I have to admit that reading this passage made me want to eat them to see what he was talking about.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs at room temperature
130g caster sugar
175g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Zest of one orange
120g butter, melted and allowed to cool slightly
Glaze:
150g icing sugar
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons Cointreau

Method:

1. Brush the madeleine moulds with melted butter and then dust with flour, tapping out an excess. Place in the fridge while you get on with making the cake batter.
2. Whisk the eggs, caster sugar and orange zest with a hand-held electric mixer until doubled in volume and a light colour. This will take about five minutes.
3. Sieve the flour and baking powder together and fold into the egg and sugar mixture. Pour in the melted butter in a steady stream and fold in. Cover the bowl and place in the fridge for at least an hour but anything up to twelve hours. This is to allow the batter to rest and helps create cakes that are light but with a denser crumb.
4. To bake the madeleines, preheat the oven to 220C/Fan 200C/Gas Mark 6. Fill each madeleine indentation with enough batter to three-quarters fill. Bake for 7or 8 minutes until the cakes feel just set.
5. While the madeleines are baking make the glaze. Mix all the ingredients together to create a smooth paste. Remove the madeleines from the oven and tip out on to a cooling rack. When they are cool enough to handle, dip each cake in the glaze, turning them over to make sure that each side is coated. Leave on a wire rack to allow the glaze to set. Place some greaseproof paper underneath the wire rack to catch any drips.

Makes 24 small cakes.

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.

—Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Traditional Battenberg Cake

I am delighted with the Battenberg Cake tin that I recently purchased. The tin has removable dividers that easily create the different coloured/flavoured strips that are required when baking a Battenberg.

The tins are manufactured by Silverwood and can be purchased online from www.alansilverwood.co.uk but I bought mine in Kitchen Compliments – a kitchen supplies shop located on South Anne Street in Dublin.

Battenberg Cake is believed to have been originally made to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s daughter to Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1884. Essentially Battenberg Cake is a light sponge cake, which may or may not include ground almonds in the cake batter. The cake is covered in marzipan and when cut into slices displays the distinctive pink and pale yellow checkerboard pattern for which it is famous. This pattern is achieved by sandwiching contrasting layers of coloured sponge together with jam. Strictly speaking apricot jam should be used throughout, but I prefer to use raspberry jam to sandwich the layers together because I like the more defined cross that is created by the darker jam and which separates the coloured sponges, but I do use apricot jam to help the marzipan stick to the outside of the cake.

Battenberg Cake is one of those cakes which have an instant visual appeal, but all too often shop-bought versions are disappointing and cloyingly sweet. Home-made versions really are far superior.

Being a fan of almonds, this cake really appeals to me with its thick coat of marzipan. The recipe that I give is for a cooked marzipan, but many recipes for Battenberg Cake also use uncooked almond paste. The reason I use cooked marzipan is because I find that it is less crumbly and easier to roll out and mould against the cake. Alternatively, you can use shop bought marzipan, but it often has quite an artificial taste. Any left-over marzipan can be stored for up to a week wrapped in cling film in the fridge, but I tend to use it up immediately to form small little discs about 4cms wide which I dip in dark melted chocolate and then allowed to cool to create little sweets to treat myself with.

I have recently been thinking of variations to the basic Battenberg theme. I am quite intrigued by the idea of making marzipan using different nuts and I have mentioned elsewhere that I am keen to experiment using the Frangelico – a hazelnut flavoured liqueur that I recently bought. I would love to make a hazelnut and chocolate sponge variation and introduce a pear flavour somehow. I also think that a pistachio marzipan encasing an orange or lemon/pistachio sponge combination could be interesting.

Ingredients:

Cake:
175g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
½ tsp vanilla paste
A small amount of red/pink food colouring paste
6 tblsp raspberry jam
Marzipan:
225g granulated or caster sugar

75ml water

175g ground almonds

½ tsp almond extract

1 egg white lightly beaten

To assemble:

6 tblsp apricot jam, warmed and sieved

A little icing sugar to dust your work surface

 

Method:

Cake:
1. Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan 170C/Gas Mark 5.
2. Base line your Battenberg tin with some baking parchment cut to size. Grease with a little of the butter and then lightly flour, shaking out any excess.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and a paler colour. Add the eggs a little at a time and beat well to fully incorporate. Add in the flour and mix again briefly until just combined.
Remove half of the batter to a separate bowl, using a scale for accuracy if you wish and add the food colouring. Fold into the batter until combined.
4. Spoon the plain batter into two sections of the Battenberg tin and the coloured batter into the remaining two sections, smoothing out evenly. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 20-25 minutes until the sponges have risen and are shrinking back slightly from the edge of the tin. Allow to cool in the tin for about five minutes and remove from the tin and allow to cool completely on a wire cooling rack.
5. You should have four strips of cake; two plain and two pink. When completely cool trim, if necessary so that they are all a similar size.
6. Warm the raspberry jam in a small saucepan and then pass through a fine sieve into a small bowl to remove the seeds and smooth any lumps.
7. Brush the long side of one of the sponges with jam and sandwich together with a sponge of a contrasting colour. Do the same with other two sponges. Sandwich the two pairs of sponges together to achieve a checkerboard pattern and set aside whilst you make the marzipan.
Marzipan:
8. Put the sugar and water into a medium sized, heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil. Allow to bubble until the mixture reaches the “soft-ball” stage (116C on a sugar thermometer). Remove the saucepan from the heat but continue stirring the mixture for another minute or two until it turns cloudy. Tip in the ground almonds, almond extract and egg-white and mix well until all the ingredients are well-combined. You should have a very stiff past-like mixture at this stage. Allow to cool completely and then knead briefly into a ball. Cover with cling-film and refrigerate until required.
To finish the cake:
9. Lightly dust your work-surface with icing sugar and roll out the marzipan into a rectangle approximately 40cms x 20cms, about 5mm thick – it should be large enough to wrap around the cake completely, leaving the ends exposed. Lightly brush the outside of the assembled sponges with the prepared apricot jam and place on the marzipan. Carefully wrap the marzipan around the cake, pressing the edges where both edges of the marzipan meet so that they firmly encase the cake.
10. Turn the cake over so that this seam/join is on the bottom. Neaten the ends of the cake by trimming a thin slice off each end. Place on serving plate.

Makes 1 cake.

Chocolate & Hazelnut Pinwheel cookies

I really do love cooking and baking, but there are certain tasks associated with it that I find incredibly tedious – skinning nuts is a perfect example! However, it is one of those jobs that for certain recipes really does make a difference.

I recently purchased a bottle of Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur which is made in Italy, and have been itching to use it in my cooking. Along with chopped hazelnuts I used a good splash of this heady liqueur in the recipe that I give here. I have also been toying with the idea of baking a pear and hazelnut Battenberg Cake sandwiched together with chocolate ganache and covered with a hazelnut marzipan. I also love the idea of a hazelnut ice-cream... it sounds like some experimenting is going to be done! More on these ideas again; but what you can see is that I am very excited about the culinary possibilities that the purchase of the bottle of Frangelico has presented.

In doing research on the liqueur, I was surprised to find that it has only been on sale since the 1980s, though the manufacturers claim that it is based on an old recipe created by a hermit monk called Fra Angelico.

 

Hazelnuts improve immeasurably if slightly roasted before being used. I always tend to do this because I like their taste to be as deeply nutty as possible. I have used finely chopped hazelnuts in this recipe; I gently roasted the shelled whole nuts for about five minutes before removing their skins. The easiest way to do this is to place them on a clean tea-towel whilst they are still warm from the oven and rub them together without breaking them up. The friction created by the tea towel and the nuts rubbing against each other result in the skins flaking off fairly easily. It’s not that difficult a task, but I still find it tiresome. You can buy ready skinned or blanched hazelnuts, but you will pay more for them and I have always found the unskinned nuts somehow more hazelnutty!

 

I think that the cookies look so pretty but what I am most pleased with is the fact that the two separate flavours come through distinctly and separately, yet complement each other so well. This is hardly surprising as chocolate and hazelnut is one of those classic combinations found in Nutella, Cadbury’s Whole Nut Bars but also in gianduja – a chocolate and hazelnut paste often used as a tempting centre in quality chocolate sweets.

 

Ingredients:

For the hazelnut layer:
150g plain flour
100g butter
35g icing sugar
50g lightly roasted hazelnuts, skinned and finely chopped
2 tablespoons of hazelnut liqueur
For the chocolate layer:
125g plain flour
100g butter
25g cocoa powder
35g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan 170C/Gas Mark 5.
2. To make the hazelnut dough, place the flour in a large mixing bowl and rub in the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the icing sugar and stir to distribute evenly. Then add the chopped hazelnuts and mix again. Finally add the hazelnut liqueur and mix with your hands to form a dough that binds together. Set aside.
3. To make the chocolate dough, place the flour in a large mixing bowl and rub in the butter as above. Sieve in the icing sugar and cocoa powder and stir well to distribute evenly. Add the egg yolk and mix with your hands to form a dough that binds together.
4. Separately roll out both doughs on a lightly floured surface to similar sized rectangles about 30cms x 20cms. Place the chocolate rectangle on the hazelnut rectangle and roll lengthways along the longer edge to create a tight roll, similar to a swiss roll.
5. Cut the dough into slices about 1cm thick and place on a parchment lined baking tray, leaving space between each biscuit to allow for spreading when cooked.
6. Bake in the preheated oven  for 12-15 minutes until they are a light golden colour. When baked, take out of oven and let them cool on the baking trays for about 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 15-20 cookies.