Yammy Turkey

Yes, I still had leftover turkey yesterday. I hadn’t cooked anything from Potluck Cookery (Beverly Pepper, Faber and Faber, 1955) for a while – but this American cousin of shepherd’s pie seemed the perfect thing. The author cunningly avoids interpretation issues by not specifying this as a casserole, bake, pie or hot dish.

Notes

• I didn’t have any sweet potatoes so I used a mix of mashed potato and pumpkin, on the grounds that this would be both sweet and potato-y.
• The asterisk in the recipe states that if one has no sherry, a little orange zest and hot orange juice can be used [or not].
• After adding the turkey and thickened bouillon to the onions, I brought the mixture to the boil, to minimise any possibility of food poisoning.
• The pineapple variation scares me.

Results

It may not be a beautiful photo, but the dish itself was delighful. I ate it with some brocolli, which offset the sweetness of the topping. If you are even less keen on washing-up than me, you could make this a balanced one-pot dish by sweating  diced carrots or peppers with the onions, or adding finely chopped green veg  along with the turkey and gravy, before baking. (Any leftover bacon or sausage could also be included.)

Turkeyed by Elly

2009 Stocktake and 2010 Shopping List

Thank you so much to everyone who has read the blog over the last 12 months  – we really appreciate it.

Please consider the comments section below a place for suggestions and requests for 2010.

• Do you want to see more recipes of a certain kind – Savoury? Sweet? Luxurious? Thrifty? Ambitious? Simple?

• Would you like to see us attempt more food from other countries or do you want more British dishes?

• Can we consult our vintage cookbook collection for you?  Do you remember a certain dish but have no recipe for it? Do you love a certain ingredient and would like inspiration for something new (or, in fact, old) to do with it?

• Anything else? No really, anything else (as long as it’s completely legal and fairly relevant)?

We would love to hear from you.

Coffee Cake with Strudel (Streusel) Topping

There is something interesting going on linguistically with this cake, and by interesting, I mean wrong. The topping is called ’strudel’, but is in fact ’streusel’. Strudel is German for ‘whirlpool’ and refers to a layered pastry, whereas ’streusel’ is German for ’sprinkle’ and refers to a sugar-crumb-spice mixture which is used as topping. Take that, Good Housekeeping  Cookery Compendium (volume 3: Picture Cake Making, chapter 11 ‘Large Cakes and Gateaux’, Waverley, 1956)! Your reputation is no match for my pedantry and German A-Level!

Notes

• Very easy and light work to put together.
• This makes a lot of  fairly sticky streusel. I used brown bread crumbs (I rarely eat white bread)  but white sugar as brown wasn’t specified (but is in other recipes). There was a half-inch thick layer of small chunks by the time I had sprinkled it on top of the cake.
• In lieu of coffee extract, I used 2 tsp of instant, dissolved in 1tsp of hot water.
• It needed a lot more that 40 minutes. I preheated the oven properly and gave it an hour by which time the centre was just cooked and the top was starting to burn. (Yay.)

Results

Ass you can see, the cake buckled the sides of my silicon loaf tin, failed to rise properly, cracked in the middle and did not cook evenly. It tastes strongly of butter and the top is as hard as toast crust. It’s very nice. When I bake this again, which I will, I think a better plan would be to use a round tin and marble some of the streusel through the batter.

Strewed by Elly

Christmas wreath cake recipe

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Noodle stuffing recipe card

How can something savoury be unsavoury? Here’s how:

Sticky pear gingerbread recipe card

Nice cake, shame about the terrifying dolls.

Victoria Sponge Cake and Spiced Victoria Sponge Cake

No birthday party is complete without a cake. I gamely volunteered to make one and by volunteered, I mean insisted. It seemed only right and proper that I should choose one from the Sandwich Cakes chapter of Good Housekeeping’s Picture Cake Making (Waverley, 1955) but as I realised I hadn’t baked a sponge cake for atleast a year, something simple would be advisable.

As we had a range of guests attending. I decided to make a two sorts of cake based around the same recipe – a classic Victoria sponge and a spiced Victoria sponge.

Notes

• Good lord, the icing took a lot of heating before it thickened – I would estimate an hour, no joke. When it had thickened however, it was very easy to spread. I used mostly basic dark chocolate and a little bit of Green & Blacks Maya Gold. (Thanks for the birthday present of the sugar letters. You know who you are.)
• Small disaster – my spring-sided cake tin leaked slightly so the bottom layer was slightly thinner than I intended (and I had to remove a  crispy layer of cake from the bottom of my oven. Thank God my oven is self-cleaning, it just peeled away.)

Results

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, the spice cake was lighter than the vanilla layer, although both were complimented for their moistness. Following the recipe exactly meant not doing any of the tricks I would normally use to make the sponge as  light as possible  (such as swapping a dessert spoon of the sugar for golden syrup or a heaped teaspoon of  the wheat flour for corn flour). It wasn’t a bad effort though and certainly, a fair amount was eaten on the spot despite how well we had all laid into the other dishes. The icing had an amazing  texture and flavour – definitely worth the time.

Caked by Elly

And-so-to-bed recipe card

Please mummy, don’t make me drink this concoction of warm egg, milk and sugar.

Chicken Maryland

Why did I decide to make this? Pure nostlagia. As a wee thing, my mother would (sometimes) bread small pieces of chicken for our birthday party teas, a sortof non-toxic (and, ofcourse, very tasty) chicken nugget, to the approbation of our school friends. I remember one of the remarking ‘I’ve asked my mum to do some chicken, like yours’. My sympathies now lie with the mother – the little darling in question was one of four siblings (or possibly five). I then went through all my cookbooks looking for a suitable recipe in an attempt to find a suitable recipe and decided that a pared-down* version of Chicken Maryland perfectly fitted the bill.

*The full dish, according to my recipe book, involves breaded chicken, grilled banana, bacon rolls and sweetcorn fritters. (See below.)  Consequently, the bacon and bananas listed on this recipe should be ignored

Notes

• As long as you’re not a total idiot with a frying pan, this is basically foolproof. I was half-cut when actually putting it together and really, as long as you chop all the chicken beforehand, line up the bowls of egg, crumbs, etc sensibly, you’re laughing.

Results

Oh, the passing of the years… these were tasty but… a little bland. The chicken certainly benefitted from the addition of some barbecue sauce. I would definitely make again – my enjoyment of breaded chicken is undiminished, even if I normally cloak it in a more adult disguise, but I would season the  breadcrumbs more – with chilli and mustard powder at the very least.

Marylanded by Elly

Sweet Corn Bread

Ah, sweetcorn. A controversial choice to some regular readers but a very popular one in my house, as those very readers will know. This recipe is from Lousene Rousseau Brunner’s New Casserole Treasury (1970, The Cookery Book Club for Harper and Row). A book in which a great deal of care and attention has been paid to the layout of recipes  – a lovely, calm sans-serif font and  recipes arranged so that the pages need never be turned during cooking. Thanks, Ms R-B, you bring order to a troubled universe and your use of booze is epic. (Seriously, one of these days I will make Parisian Chicken and then you will see – but this will necessitate a serious trip to the offy. Until then, you’re stuck reading about ‘Things I have made with things I have found in my fridge’.)

Notes

• I made half quantities, using 2 small eggs.
• I have never added wholemeal flour to hot milk before, rest assured that it does indeed instantly turn to mush.
• I have never bought creamed corn and didn’t have any at home, but according to my understanding, it’s sweetcorn in thin white sauce. So I slaked a little white flour with milk and added this to some ordinary tinned sweetcorn.

Results

This needed almost an hour to cook. It didn’t not begin to get browned and puffy until around 45 minutes. It was still rather damp in the middle and after cutting off a wedge to eat with sausages and peas, I put the rest back in the cooling oven to dry off. It was surprisingly light, more like a thick pancake than a scone or yeast bread. A half quantity made a circular bread of 9 inches diameter and 1.5 inches deep – how much this feeds is dependent on what you serve with it (and how hungry your guests). It reheated well in a dry frying pan or warm oven and went well with everything, but especially spicy foods and anything containing onions.

Bread by Elly