In 2010 we were asked if we could put on a demonstration at the county showground in Stafford. For his live performance Chef Daniel did a main course and a dessert. Today, we would like to bring you the video of the dessert:

Chocolate Truffle with fresh Raspberries & vanilla flecked cream

If you want a copy of the recipe then right click here to dowload the PDF copy of the show handout

In 2010 we were asked if we could put on a demonstration at the county showground in Stafford. For his live performance Chef Daniel did a main course and a dessert. Today, we would like to bring you the video of the main course dish:

Rack of New Season Lamb, with a warm salad of new potato’s &
asparagus with a mint & red wine dressing

If you want a copy of the recipe then right click here to dowload the PDF copy of the show handout

This Christmas we thought we would treat ourselves with a different bird and something that we could see all year round. So, on the 23rd of December, we went down to visit our pals at Brown and Green in Trentham to pick up Finbar (the cockerel reared by Packington Poultry). After getting him home and looking at the recipe, I just knew I had to tinker and come up with something quick, easy and stress free for the day itself. So after a little thought, this is what we came up with:

Ingredients

1 Cockerel approx 7 1/2 pounds (or 3.5kg)
1 Very large leek, cleaned and chopped
3 Carrots, washed, topped and tailed, but not peeled, chopped
1 Bulb of garlic, cloves removed and slightly crushed to split the skin
1 Twig of rosemary
1 Bunch of thyme
Water
Oil, salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to GM9 (250C/475F).

Put chopped leeks and carrots in base of large roasting dish. Top up with water to height of veg only. Place bird on top, gently wipe with oil or butter and then a dash of salt and ground black pepper.  Place tray in oven for about 20 mins (larger bird maybe 30 mins). This stage is to get some colour and crunch on the surface of the bird.

Remove from oven, drop temperature to GM6 (200C/400F) and leave oven open a couple of mins to help it get down a few degrees.
Add the loose garlic cloves, some on the bird, some in the water, thyme and rosemary. Baste the bird and then cover with a doubled over layer of foil.  Put back in oven for 75-80 mins.

The ideal, overall cooking time  is 12 – 15 mins per pound. If you are doing any form of stuffing, cook it seperately, different cooking properties from the bird and the result would be inconsistent if cooked as one.

Test the cockerel with a skewer in the thickest part of the breast to make sure that the juices coming out are clear. If they are pink or red, put the bird back and keep checking every 10 mins.  If you have a probe thermometer then look for 180F of 80C as a guideline.

Once you are happy the cockerel is ready, allow to rest for about 20 mins. During this time, take the juices from the roasting dish and make gravy. The garlic cloves can be taken out and squeezed as a side treat or into softened butter for a flavoursome spread. If you seperate the fat then all the better, but try not to add any additional salt until you know it is cooked down enough. A quick glug of wine is always helpful, even if you put some in the gravy pan.

This has nothing to do with some lager fuelled hallucination about poultry performing great acts of bravery, first things first. It’s over the Christmas Day and you realise you have got the maths wrong on how big the bird should be, you need more. In just over thirty mins, you can have a freshly cooked chicken ready to go. This is simple, stress free(ish) and only needs a couple of ingredients, ohh and a pressure cooker.

Turn heat on oven to high or find room if it’s already in use at such a temperature. Take a 3-4lb chicken, wipe with vegetable or rape seed oil, quick couple of grinds of black pepper and a pinch of salt. In the pressure cooker add about a pint of water, a couple of bay leafs and a few black peppercorns. You should have one of those little perforated veg dishes with the set? Find it, turn it upside down and put in the bottom of the pressure cooker and put on the hob, without the lid on.

The chicken goes in the oven for about 5 minutes, by which time the water in the bottom of the pressure cooker should be bubbling away. Place chicken onto the upturned dish inside the pan. Lock on lid and turn valve to high if needed. The pressure indicator should pop up quite quickly. You will need about 12 – 15 minutes depending on which end of the size scale the chicken came from.

Let off the pressure, remove lid and check chicken is cooked all way through by pushing a skewer in. If juices are even slightly pink, more time is needed. Even better if you have a temperature probe in the kitchen. The juices in the bottom of the pan and anything you reserved from the roasting dish are a great base for any extra gravy that is needed.

While this is not a British dish, it probably is not an American invention either. The history of the hamburger does not seem to start with anything related to ham, but to the seaport city of Hamburg. Apparently, in the early part of the 19th century, New York restaurants tried to vie for popularity with the German sailors coming into port. The Hamburg steak, as it was called, was seen as the ideal import to welcome these hungry seafarers with flavours of home. From then on, it’s all history. This goes hand in hand with the story behind the Cumberland sausage and illustrates how dishes get adapted and integrated.

A burger can be as complex or as simple as you can make them and many countries have a variant of the meat or vegetable patty. Indian cuisine has a particular gourmet shami kebab which can contain over 100 ingredients, yes two zeroes. Our  recipe is inspired by a very down to earth chain called In-N-Out in the US and is a firm favourite in our home kitchen.

Ingredients: To make four

1lb chuck steak, cubed and then coarsely minced
4 buns, halved and lightly toasted on the centres
4 cheese slices
1 Onion sliced into rings
Your favourite sauce

Method:

Separate the meat into 8x 2oz balls and press flat with your hand, then grill or barbecue, your choice. Place cheese slice on 4 of the burger pattys to gently melt. To assemble; bottom bun,spread of sauce, burger with cheese, slice of onion, burger, another spread of sauce, top bun. To add extra authenticity, wrap each completed burger in grease proof paper and serve.

A gentle barbecue sauce or marie rose which is ketchup and mayonnaise is ideal or even both (one top, one bottom) Very quick and easy to prepare. This is the kind of home recipe that ideal for little helpers, the children will enjoy making the pattys, especially when they get to try them

This is listed as an old Staffordshire pudding and is even mentioned in the song Yankee Doodle:

Fath’r and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Goodin’,
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty puddin’

The US version does appears to be almost like a porridge, whereas our version below could be accused on being a set custard.

Ingredients (serves 2)
1 heaped tablespoon of unsalted butter
1 heaped tablespoon of plain flour
3/4 pint of milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon of brown sugar

A key in getting this pudding right is in the basics of cooking the roux and creating the white sauce as a base. Other ingredients can be added before the egg gets introduced such as jam, more sugar and vanilla. It’s called hasty for a reason, because it’s hasty to make, so plenty of variations can be tried in a short time.

Method:
Warm butter in pan and once melted add the flour. Stir with wooden spoon until it completely combined. Slowly add milk, very little to start with as it will practically go solid at first. Add more milk and keep stirring, the consistency of the sauce will start to come through. Ideally, once all the milk is added, the base of the pan should be briefly visible when stirring. Add egg and mix quickly, this should thicken the sauce without curdling. Pour into ovenproof dish and sprinkle with sugar. Under the grill t brown the top and it’s done.

If you come across any other tweaks or ingredients for this recipe, please drop us a line.

This is one of those easy to cook / easy to get wrong dishes. With simple ingredients, it is all to easy to add extra items or tweak the method. Buttery potato cake makes a great side dish, especially with stews, rich sauces or pot roasts. A potato halfway between waxy and floury is best for this, probably Maris Piper is the more available choice.

Ingredients:

2lb potato
2oz butter
Seasoning

Method:

Preheat oven to GM5. Peel and slice potatoes as thinly as possible. Set potatoes aside in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes while the oven heats.

Gently grease a cake tin or oven dish of appropriate size. Thinly layer potatoes and dot each layer with butter. Once complete, seal with a disk of greaseproof paper. This needs to go into the oven until they can be gently pierced with a skewer, probably about one and a half hours.

Serve in slices.

A couple of things to avoid are: par boiling the potatoes, not soaking the potatoes, overpowering with salt or cooking at too higher temperature.

This recipe was inspired by a German recipe that was inspired by my dear friend Rob Watson, who has spent a large part of his life working and living in Germany. This particular recipe is ideal as something to go alongside a rich game dish.

Ingredients

1 knob of Butter
1 Red cabbage sliced
2 Dried juniper berries – crushed
1 tsp crushed black peppercorns
1 small glass red wine
1 cooking apple (cut to dice)
Salt

Method:

First melt the butter in your pan and add the red cabbage and apple to soften up slightly. By the time the apple is started to take on a slight brown tinge, add the red wine, juniper berries and pepper corns. Check the seasoning and add salt if needed. When cabbage has a soft feel to it, but is not mush, this is the time to serve. This dish can be used hot or cold. If you want to add a further piquancy, you can substitute about a tablespoon of your wine with some cide vinegar.

I asked our friend Farmer Phil from Lower Blakemere Farm in Herefordshire for some of his tips on preparing sloes. Before either of us could get a word in edgeways, his good lady wife Heather of Wiggly Wigglers Farm gave us her tip. This was something very traditional and also requires lots of patience. Take a pin and try prick each sloe several times to allow gin and fruit to get to each other.

Phil came back with putting the sloes in the freezer to burst them and then, if needed, use an old fashioned box grater to roll them. The latter is certainly something I will try on batch two, like all good ideas, simple in principle. This was completely unlike what I had proposed, a £50 fibreglasser’s roller (lots of fine spikes all over it).

After all, the grater can be used for many other kitchen things and maybe also for bees wax when I get round to treating the beam in the porch. Thanks for the tips folks

This is certainly an experiment for us, never made it before, have no idea what to look for, but know where to pick the sloes. So, Sunday afternoon after the first frosts of the year, armed with a carrier bag and a 3 year old, we went foraging. Much of our “secret location” had already been picked, but a bit further up the trail, we hit the jackpot. So complete with our bag of fresh fruit, it was off to the playground before heading home.

Why is the first frost so important? Well two reasons, the fruit is at an age where it is at it’s best and also because the freezing tenderising the inside of the fruit by damaging the cell walls through fluid expansion. Remember milk bottles on the doorstop, when the winters morning would push the frozen cream out of the top? This is the same thing happening on a small scale inside the sloe. It also helps with preparing the fruit as they can be rolled rather than pricked to allow the gin to penetrate.

OK, now for the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 litre of gin
1 pint of cider
700g of sloes
300g of white sugar

Method:

First either prick each sloe with a pin, roll them or wrap in a tea towel and hit against a hard surface. Find a clean bottle of 2 or more litres in capacity. Add sloes, sugar and gin. At this time of year, the sloe gin should be ready for Christmas with maybe some left over for New Year.

Oh and the cider? After all the fresh air and foraging, that’s all yours