Chicken and Leek Pie

This is the first in a series of 4 -  February is Pie Month! I am going to cook a pie a week and have invited friends over each week to help me eat them. This week, a classic chicken and leek, called for some reason, leek and chicken. (From Reader’s Digest Cookery Year (1976), from the March chapter by Katie Stewart.)

Recipes

Notes

• This is very simple. I had no problems at any point. This is such a wonderful, reliable book, I feel I know what I’m doing at all times.

• I used a 1.8kilo chicken.

• I don’t own a proper pie dish and decided to use a casserole dish but this necessitated using a pie-steam-releasing-whatnot.

• I have never cooked with lard before! I intend to freeze the leftover lard in portions so I don’t feel obliged to use it all up in the next 2 weeks. Keep solid fats to a minimum, kids!

• I decided to go off-recipe when I came to decoration and side-dishes. I made mashed potatoes and squash with caramelised onions and spring greens with bacon.

Results

I was just a little bit proud of this as I have never made shortcrust pastry or poached a chicken before – the pastry was light and finely crumbly (claggy pastry was my biggest fear) and the leeks and chicken were perfectly cooked and as flavoursome as one would hope, given the small amount of seasoning. The recipe suggests too much cream – there was some leftover at the bottom of the dish – I think about half the amount suggested would be fine. The pie was served to 3 peckish friends who demolished it and whose only criticism was that a bit more flavour, in the form of more herbs in the stock, would be welcome. When I cook this again, I will certainly do this, as well as adding some wine when I poach the chicken.

Next week: Limoges Potato Pie

Edit: Limoges Potato Pie cancelled due to illness. Alix is pie-ing instead! Also, our friend Miss South, at North/South Food, had a go at the same recipe.

Pied by Elly

Jelly marmalade recipe card

I see the relevance of the weights, but the keys?

January’s resolve..

Hello readers! It’s been an awfully long time since I posted anything, for which I apologise. It’s been a combination of moving house, being in South America and being a terribly lazy person.  I can only promise to try to be better in 2010.  I shall try to get my contribution to the VCBT Children’s Party we had back in October blogged and I’ll scan in some more recipe cards and Brillat-Savarin excerpts,  and and and MAYBE I’ll even cook some new (old) stuff.

2010  is also going to be the year of badly translated Spanish recipes, as I couldn’t resist bringing some back from Buenos Aires, so Acelgas con Queso (Cheesy Chard!) Princesitas (?), Torta de Navidad (Christmas Cake!), Merluza de Fiesta (Party Cod?),  Papas con Leche (Potatoes. With MILK),  Rosca al Ron (Something with rum), Apios Rellenas! (Rolled….Apes?!) , Nutria al Horno! (Baked, er, Coypu?). I have a GCSE grade B in Spanish, but as has been repeatedly proved whilst in Spanish speaking countries this qualification is basically useless.

Finally, here’s  a picture of something I will blog at some point. I’d like to hear people’s guesses as to what the hell it is/ what’s in it…so, get to the comments!

Cobbled together by Alix

Savoury sputniks recipe card

These are sausagemeat balls, breadcrumbed and fried. With potato sticks stuck in them. Serve with a train.

Strawberry cream slices recipe card

Ideal for father’s day? Don’t you mean Farthers Day?

Mustard (reader request)

Today, the Vintage Cookbook Trials solves your culinary conundrums!  First, Kake has some wholegrain mustard which needs using up sharpish.

The Reader’s Digest Cookery Year (Katie Stewart, Margaret Coombes, Suzanne Wakelin, Reader’s Digest, 1976)

• Blend 1tbs mustard with 4oz butter – Serve meat or fish.

• Add 1tbs mustard, 1tbs wine vinegar and 1tsp sugar to white sauce made with 1.5 oz butter, 1oz flour and 3/4pint milk (i.e. enough for 4) – serve with crumbed, baked herrings.

[I think both of these would be great on steamed dark green veg - broccoli, kale.]

Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (Penguin, 1976)

• Add mustard to taste, to béchamel, velouté or mornay sauce. The sauce should not be allowed to boil after the mustard has been added. Serve on Swiss chard or cauliflower.

• For ‘middle-aged’ carrots [Jane, I love you]: Slice and steam, place in heat-proof dish, top with  mustard sauce (see above) and breadcrumbs and (optional) a little grated cheese. Place under grill or in oven until golden.

Scandinavian Cooking – Beryl Frank (Evans Brothers, 1978)

• Mix 3tbs sharp mustard, 1tsp dry mustard, 3tbs sugar, 1tbs light wine vinegar together in a bowl. Add 3tbs brine slowly and stir to a thick sauce. Serve on cured fish. [Or perhaps, roasted veg - roasted parsnip having been served as 'mock lobster', in the distant past, when frozen lobster wasn't available in Lidl for a fiver.]

I think all of these would freeze acceptably, in portions  – although no promises!

Mustered by Elly

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.

Edit: The following day the topping had softened considerably and was crisp, rather than crunchy!

Strewed by Elly

Christmas wreath cake recipe

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!