Poulet au vinagire

Following a decision to expand the range of herbs that I cook with, I went to The Mothership's herb garden for inspiration. I hadn't used much tarragon before so I found a recipe that called for it. This is Delia Smith's adaption of 'poulet au vinaigre'.

The tarragon complemented the chicken well. Its flavour is difficult to describe, I'd say that once cooked it was partly reminiscent of lemon, raw green pepper and maybe a tiny bit of aniseed. I think the tarragon I used was Russian Tarragon which is inferior to French Tarragon. From doing some reading about this it seems like French Tarragon is a very particular plant and needs a fair amount of attention for it to flourish. The tarragon in the garden seems to be growing very happily without any special treatment, plus I think it didn't give as much flavour to the finished dish as French Tarragon should.

This version was 6/10 but I will try it with French Tarragon (and without burning it) and see if this elevates the score.

For anyone who has, or aspires to have, their own vegetable/herb garden, I was interested to read that not many pests like tarragon and growing it amongst other plants helps keep the pests away from these too.

Here is the recipe I used:

From Delia's Summer Collection: Chicken with Sherry Vinegar and Tarragon Sauce

For 4 generous portions

1.75 kg chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
150 ml sherry vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)
425ml medium-dry Amontillado sherry
12 shallots, peeled
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh tarragon leaves plus small sprigs of tarragon to garnish
1 heaped tbsp creme fraiche
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, while doing this season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.
Fry the chicken pieces until golden brown (this is best done in two batches) then remove these to a plate.
Add shallots and garlic to the pan until these are slightly brown.
Turn the heat down, put the chicken pieces back into the pan with the shallots and garlic, scatter the tarragon leaves into the pan and add the sherry vinegar and sherry. Pour glasses of sherry for the people you are cooking for and yourself too, enjoy.
Let the contents of the pan come up to a simmer, then turn the heat down until barely simmering.
Leave for 45 minutes, turning the chicken pieces halfway through this time. The sauce will reduce during this time.
Do keep checking there is still some sauce, don't leave it and go and enjoy a summer's evening in the garden with everyone else and plenty more sherry as I did, or you risk the sauce starting to 'caramelise' and yourself starting to marinade in sherry.
Remove the chicken pieces, shallots and garlic from the pan onto a warmed serving plate. Whisk the creme fraiche into the remaining sauce and season to taste. This still works if the sauce has started to catch a bit, as I found out!

Serve with new potatoes, or rice, or whatever you fancy. As the picture shows, in my slightly inebriated wisdom I had decided to add diced carrots to the rice part way through cooking the rice.

Bakewell Pudding

A camping holiday in the gorgeous surroundings of the Peak District was not going to be complete for me without a pilgrimage to Bakewell.  This was the birthplace of the Bakewell Pudding, made even more famous (particularly to masses of southerners) by Mr Kipling's Bakewell Tart.  I know their pastry tastes of cardboard.  I know you can feel the icing corroding your teeth as you bite through it.  I know the almond flavouring was what Agatha Christie had in mind every time she described that tell-tale almond scent of cyanide.  Despite all this I am quite partial to these, especially the newish Bakewell Slices they do as this equates to more almondy goodness with less pastry. 

Back to Bakewell: The Blonde and I were in an outdoor kit shop when the very friendly shop assistant started chatting to us about our plans.  She explained to us that a Bakewell Tart was the variety topped with icing and a cherry, but that 'pudding' referred to the true Bakewell delicacy.  She also told us where to go to find one, and the story behind the origins of the Bakewell Pudding. 

According to her, there was already a pie which featured a layer of almond filling topped with jam.  A maid at the Rutland Arms hotel in Bakewell once made the mistake of putting the jam into the pastry first and the almond mixture on top.  The resulting pie was serendipitously better than what was intended and the Bakewell Pudding was born.

We were also advised where to go to buy a truly authentic Bakewell Pudding- The Bakewell Pudding Shop is one of these places and off we went to get a pudding.

By the time we ate it, the paper bag it came in had turned translucent which left us in no doubt about the health credentials of this treat!  Aesthetically the pudding wasn't that impressive.  Nicely burnished on top but otherwise all the same shade of pastry beige. 

The crust was flaky pastry, rather than the shortcrust we were anticipating.  I think the jam layer was plum jam, at any rate the sweet fruitiness was complemented by a a hint of a woody/bitter note.  The almond topping was quite custardy, rather than the sponge cake-like affair used by Mr Kipling.

I enjoyed it, and think it merits 7/10.  It was quite aptly less synthetic and more subtle than the tart version.  It was also more filling, due to the fat content no doubt! 

In the course of researching the Bakewell Pudding further for this post, I've discovered that it should be served warm.  As with most pastry dishes this would make the pastry seem lighter; it would also make the filling less dense and I think maybe elevate the Pudding up to 8/10.

Lindt's Sea Salt Dark Chocolate

I was very excited to see a new variety of Lindt chocolate on sale.  It's from their Excellence range and the full name is 'A Touch of Sea Salt.'  Of course I had to buy it and see what it was like.  It's available from Whittard's and from Lindt online.

I'm going to keep this one brief after the white chocolate dissertation.  The bar is presented in the standard Lindt format, big squares.

As with all the Lindt falvoured dark chocolates the cocoa content 47%,  so it hits the balance between sweetness for those who don't like chocolate too dark, and intensity for those who do.  The salt is in evidence as fair sized sea salt crystals throughout the bar.

It definitely one that benefits from savouring rather than chomping, as both the chocolate and the salt melt but at different rates.  The interest came mostly from the fact that I found I was oscillating between tasting the salt and tasting the chocolate, rather than tasting the two simultaneously as a blend of flavours.  I think sea salt would work better with a sweeter, milkier chocolate as this would bring it closer to the idea of a salted caramel, where the flavours do blend.  Another point of note was that I found the salt somehow made the rest of the bar- ie the chocolate- seem oilier than normal by comparison.

This is getting 7/10:  it's interesting to eat, rather than being delicious, and hasn't usurped any of my favourites but Lindt have impressed me by marketing an unsual flavour.

White 'Chocolate'

Recently I went on a chocolate buying spree.  This was mostly because The Mothership's stocks needed topping up/completely replacing after The Geek God and I had done our worst, but I also got inspired by the range of chocolate available, and decided to do some taste testing. 

I thought I'd try something I don't normally buy, white chocolate.  I don't buy it because I don't like it.  Urban myths claim there is a certain number of times one has to try a new food before learning to like it, and it's definitely true that I had to go through a stage of making myself consume certain food and drinks before learning to love them: tea, coffee, wine, beer and ginger (the token food in that list) all spring to mind. 

Back to white chocolate.  I decided that the best quality chocolate was the most likely to introuduce me to what is good about white chocolate, so I bought Sainsbury's Taste The Difference Swiss White Chocolate and Green and Black's White Chocolate.

The 'Taste the Difference' chocolate didn't taste any different.. to milkybar- I subsequently bought a milkybar so I could compare them at the same sitting. 

The difference I did find, however, was that the Taste the Difference chocolate had a very smooth texture whereas the milkybar texture was grainy.  The blurb on the Taste the Difference packet focussed on how the 'mouthfeel' was smoother because the chocolate had been conched for longer.  Usefully it even tells you what a conche is- "a container which grinds the ingredients together."  Looking into this in a bit more detail, it turns out that conching achieves a smooth texture by making the particles very small (so small your tongue doesn't perceive them as individual particles anymore) and evenly distributing the solids within the cocoa butter. Conching also allows flavours to develop because it generates frictional heat which releases volatile compounds in the choclate which we can taste.

So that's the thoery.  In practice no flavours to developed other than sugar, and maybe a hint of cream but this was mostly blugeoned out by the sweetness.  It was also a bit off-putting tasting something so ridiculously sweet yet totally smooth.

Sainsburys did well to focus on the texture for their marketing on the packet because the flavour is so unremarkable.  It gets 3/10, and that's only because if you're after a sugar hit, it would do the job.  It's not revolting, just too sweet.

The rest of the bar got experiemented on- I melted it down then mixed instant coffee granules into it.  This was more of a 5/10 but the amount of coffee granules it took to make it taste good meant you'd have serious caffeine overload if you ate more than a tiny bit!  You could also probably use this chocolate with eggs and coffee to make an easy coffee mousse for friends who like coffee but not dark chocolate.

The Green and Black's effort had a speckly appearance because it contains "fragrant Madasgascan vanilla for a creamy taste."  It was definitely "fragrant", reminding me of what happens when you're baking and you accidentally use way too much vanilla essence.  I'd also argue that it is the whole milk powder and cocoa butter that gives the creamy taste, not the vanilla as they claim.  I was unimpressed with the taste.

The texture was more fudgy than the Taste the Difference chocolate; presumably Green and Black's aren't such big fans of hardcore conching, and I preferred it that way because if you're eating something that is mostly sugar it makes sense if you can tell this from the texture.  Another 3/10.

In conclusion, I still don't like white chocolate, and I have new theory on the 'trying new foods' thing.  This probably works for complex flavours, e.g. getting a toddler to grow into an adult who likes black olives and anchovies and red wine.  But I reckon it doesn't work so much with tastes that are arguably childish to begin with.

An experiment

1989 was one of the best vintages for Crozes-Hermitage.  The Mothership recently discovered that she had a case which had been forgotten about at some point in the last 21 years, so we decided to open some and see what it was like.  It turns out that while I can claim to have tasted this vintage, I am none the wiser about what a good Crozes-Hermitage would be like, because it was very much past its prime.  It smelt like seaweed, all iodine and decomposition, and not in an exciting whisky kind of way, but in a 'yuk, what IS that?' kind of way.  It tasted like vinegar, which is exactly what it is.  The only person to benefit from this is The Geek God, who being an '89 vintage himself can keep some unopened bottles for posterity, safe in the knowledge that none of us will want to drink it.  I might plough through the rest of the case on the very off-chance that there is a bottle that is still ok, it's all going to get poured down the sink anyway.

Raspberry Cheesecake Perfection

This is one of a few blogs about my time working on an island with a group of people as enthusiastic about food as I am.  It was also a time when the workload for the day job was about to significantly increase, so we were all in procrastination mode.  This meant that we were all extra happy to spend a lot of time in the kitchens, preparing food, enjoying what other people had made, plus generally chilling and having some good chats.  There was also an element of raising the stakes, thus "the kettle's on, come over for tea and scones" became "the kettle's on and I've made cheesecake" then naturally progressed to several full-on dinner parties.  Good times.

Returning the focus to the cheesecake, this was made by The Panorama, and I will post the recipe as soon as I have it because the foodlove deserves to be shared.  The picture doesn't really do it justice.  It is a baked cheescake with a biscuit crust.   

I was on my way to the shops to buy ingredients for supper when The Panorama leant out of his kitchen window and asked me if I wanted tea and cheesecake. 2 hours and 3 slices of cheesecake later, it was apparent that I wasn't going to need any supper.  Normally I can only manage one slice of cheesecake but in this case I was aware that a cheesecake this good may never come my way again.  I'm salivating at the memory.  This cheesecake meets the criteria for a perfect 10/10.

Common pitfalls for cheesecakes are: cloyingly sickly, not sweet enough, too rich, too bland, too much vanilla essence and too dry.  The Panorama had deftly navigated his way amongst these and avoided them all.  The filling was rich and sweet with enough sharpness from the cheese to keep it balanced.  It was moist and there was enough grainy texture to stop it from being gooey.  The rapsberries complemented the creaminess well, by adding a slight bitterness from the seeds as well as fruity acidity.  It was definitely a chesecake with raspberries in, rather than becoming fully raspberry flavoured, and it was all the better for it.  The next challenege will be getting the recipe and seeing if I can replicate The Panorama's result.

Teatime

Culturally and genetically I am conditioned to believe that there are very few situations that can't be improved by a cuppa. 

When it comes to black tea I often like it strong with a little milk.  This is something that can be achieved in a mug with PG tips.  For a bit more attention to detail, a single variety teabag can be used, or even tea leaves.  I had tried this once with Assam leaves and found that the tea which resulted had a fuller taste than tea made with an Assam teabag of the same brand (Twinings, for anyone who wants to try this.)  I didn't do a blind tasting, however, so it could just be that I wanted the leaf tea to taste better.

I had forgotten the ways of leaf tea until I spent the past month living on an island with The Teaboy and The Panorama, who are very serious about tea. They use loose leaf tea, and had several varieties of leaves with which they make different blends.

Their English Breakfast blend was 2 parts Assam: 1 part Kenyan: 1 part Ceylon.  It ticked the box of being strong, but managed to retain flavours from the individual components.  The 'best cup' was particularly good.

My 'best cup' of tea is when a teapot is being used, you have drunk half your cup of tea, and then top up your cup from the teapot.  You might think the same effect can be achieved by starting off with less milk in the first cup of tea but for some reason it doesn't seem to work like that.

Also of note from the afternoon teas with The Teaboy and Panorama were the generous provision of biscuits.  Hobnobs with their English Breakfast blend was especially tasty.  I also managed to consume an indecent amount (Teaboy, I apologise) of Lotus caramelised biscuits.  This was partly because I was trying to see if they go as well with tea as they do with coffee- they don't- but also because they are so tasty!