Recipe XLIX (1st Anniversary Edition) - Grated Cheddar (with Penne al Tonno)

To celebrate one whole year of RRotW, I would like to do something extra special - to dedicate this edition to the greatest, tastiest and most versatile of all the world's cheeses, Cheddar. Real Cheddar that is, not that revolting stuff they stick on top of burgers in some plastic-and-white-tile fast food joint. There are many foodstuffs that have been "copyrighted" through the EU's Protected Geographical Status scheme, like Gorgonzola, Brie, Feta, etc... Cheddar has not. It is seen as a generic name. For that reason, it is much maligned and many cheap imitations have arisen, particularly in the US, New Zealand and even China. Not so much in continental Europe, where there are some other hardened cheeses, like Pecorino, Manchego, Maasdamer and Emmental, all with distinct flavours. What marks Cheddar out from all the others, is it doesn't try to be cool or quirky, pretentious or arrogant. It is what it is - Cheddar, and I for one am so glad my local supermarket here in Germany stocks it.

Ingredients:
250g Cheddar
A grater



Instructions:
Put one of the longer edges of your cheese against the grater on the side where the smallest holes face upwards. With short pressing movements, grate the cheese until you have enough to put over your pasta dish, details below.

To go with your Cheddar, there are many possibilities from a cheese & tomato sandwich (with fresh ground pepper and mayo), to a topping for your dauphinois. I have chosen an Italian number, a variant on the Puttanesca recipe. Puttanesca is a sauce made by the prostitutes of Sicily to serve their customers after they'd... well... exerted themselves somewhat, and needed a pick-me-up. Lots of Italian recipes come out of cans and packages, which is why the ingredients photo is a bit odd this week...



Ingredients:
500g penne rigate
1 can of tuna
1 onion, sliced into large-ish pieces
4 or 5 cloves of garlic
250ml tomato passata
Some olives (usually black, but I'd eaten them all, so green will do)
Some ground black pepper (10 peppercorns or so)
Half a teaspoonful of chili powder
Some oregano (preferably fresh, but out of season, dried will have to do)


Instructions:
Heat up a saucepan with salted water. Once boiling, put in the pasta. Take a deep-sided frying pan and put in some olive oil. Once hot, sweat the onions for a couple of minutes. Add the tuna, olives, pepper and the chili powder, then just a minute before the passata, add the garlic. The garlic releases its aroma very quickly, but putting it in in the beginning burns it, ruining the flavour and consistency.



Add the passata (and if you like, some red wine), and put on a low heat for ten to thirty minutes, depending how much you would like your sauce reduced. Mine was only 10 minutes, because I like my pasta moist.



Once the pasta has cooked (TIP: don't believe boiling times on pasta packs - if you like it al dente, try a piece of it a couple of minutes before recommended cooking time) drain the water and pour the pasta into the sauce. Stir all the ingredients into each other.



Add it to the Cheddar by putting it into a bowl, carefully placing the cheese where it should be: on top, in pride of place.

Recipe XLVIII - Roast Cauliflower, Potatoes and Turkey Breast

The cauliflower, one of Nature's worst-treated vegetables. People boil the blessed thing until it becomes pulp. Wrong. Steam it with some fresh mint, at least, please... I love cauliflower cheese, and can still taste the skin from the cheese that formed on the top of (my old school cook) Diane's oven bakes. She could seriously cook. There were only about 75 to 80 pupils in my school, and Diane never failed to nourish us with the finest food. In this recipe, however, I have left the cheese off, partly because I'm trying to lose weight, and due to this, I haven't got the strength to make a seriously big effort this week...


Ingredients:
400g-500g turkey breasts
2 onions
1 whole cauliflower, chopped into stalks
250g new potatoes
300ml chicken stock
5 cloves of garlic (2 cut into slices, the others just into 3 pieces)
Herbes de Provence (a decent tablespoon's worth)
2 glasses of white wine
Olive oil and butter
A handful of chopped chives (if in season)





Instructions:
Heat the oven to 160°C. Take a high-sided pan and fry the turkey, 2 cut cloves of garlic and onion until the meat is sealed and the vegetables are soft. Put in the chicken stock, herbes de Provence and wine, and let it heat up on a low flame. Take the turkey out of the liquid and cut it into bitesize pieces. Cut the new potatoes in half and parboil them for 7 minutes or so. In a baking tray, spread the cauliflower (still raw), potatoes and turkey around, and put in the other cloves of garlic at intermittent places. Pour olive oil over the combination, and put some slices of butter on the top.
Cook for 30 to 45 minutes in the oven, or longer, depending when you want to eat. When nearly ready, reheat the chicken stock from earlier and pour it over your creation, either on the plate or while it is still in the oven dish. Put the chives on top and serve immediately. It would accompany some peas and (baby) carrots really well.



If you have worked really hard (like me), indulge yourself with some mayonnaise or mustard.

Recipe XLVII - Beef and Ale Pie

The French often sneer when it comes to the cooking of that island off its northern coast, yet they only have one word for dough, pastry, batter and paste: la pâte. The British can distinguish between all different types of flour-based substance, and in this one, they're coming up with one of the finest examples of traditional cooking anywhere. The method is so simple, very little needs to happen, but it requires a little timing. And at the end, it will provide your stomach with all the satisfaction it needs.


Ingredients:
900g of steak, diced into bitesize pieces
2 large onions, sliced into rings
10 button mushrooms
6 carrots
75g butter
40g flour seasoned with salt, ground black pepper and dried herbs
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
2 250ml bottles of Guinness or other stout
275g puff pastry
1 egg



Instructions:
Cut up the vegetables and roll the beef in the seasoned flour.



Put the majority of the butter in a high-sided pan and when melted, fry the beef in it. Once sealed, add the vegetables.



Sweat them for a few minutes, then add the bay leaves and pour the ale in. Put on a low heat and simmer for an hour or more.



Towards the end of the beef's time in the pan, turn on the oven to a little over 200°C. Get your puff pastry and put your baking dish on top of it. With a knife, cut round the outside of the dish to make the top of the pie. Leave it aside until needed. With the rest, roll it into a ball and use it to make a base. Or if you prefer, to make some decoration on the top. I used mine for a base, because I absolutely adore stodgy pastry. Then, with a ladle, pour the contents of the pan into the baking dish.



Then put the top on, and with a fork, pinch the edges of the pastry onto the baking dish to seal it. Brush the egg onto the top of the pastry to glaze. Put it into the oven for 20 to 30 minutes.



Take the pie out of the oven and leave it for a few minutes to cool.



To take it out of the baking dish, cut through the middle with a knife and put the pastry upside down on a separate plate. Spoon the interior out onto the plate and put the pastry on top.

Recipe XLVI - Yorkshire Pudding (with Roast Beef and Roast Potatoes)

One of the single most delicious things only an oven can make is the simple Yorkshire pudding. It is one of the iconic objects of traditional English cooking. It goes so well with roast beef, it is almost as if the cow was created in case Humankind should invent the Yorkshire pudding.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
280ml milk
120g flour
some animal fat or lard (for the bottom of the moulds)
a pinch of salt

Instructions:
Put the flour and salt into a large bowl, crack the eggs into it and pour in the milk. Stir in the ingredients until it makes a consistent, runny batter, not dissimilar to pancake mix. Use an electric whisk if necessary.



Once the batter is ready, put it into the fridge for between 1 hour and 10 hours. The air needs to leave it before it is ready for baking. Before you cook, switch on the oven to 220°C. In your baking mould, put the fat, making sure you cover all sides. I used simple butter. Even ordinary oil from a bottle will do.



Put it into the oven. When piping hot, take it out and pour in your batter.



In the end, there should be roughly the same amount per mould.



Put it back into the oven for between 20 and 25 minutes, or until it has risen. I unfortunately left mine in for a couple of minutes too long and they ended up a little too well-cooked, but they were still tasty.



I roasted them before I put the beef into the oven. So, now turn your oven down to 160°C.

To make the roast beef:
Ingredients:
1 piece of roasting beef
2 spoonfuls of Colman's English mustard
10 peppercorns
1 onion
2 carrots
Salt to taste
6 potatoes

Instructions:
Put the beef on a preparation plate. Cut off the various pieces of fat and cover it in salt. With a spoon, spread the mustard evenly over the beef, then with the crushed peppercorns do the same. Put the beef into a frying pan and seal the outside. Put it to one side.



Cut the two carrots and the onion into slices, rings or lengths. Put them into the cold baking tray, in the oil you will roast the beef with.



Put the beef on top and place it into the oven. As it's on a low heat, it can stay there for a while if necessary.
In a saucepan, boil the potatoes for ten minutes. Save some of the water for making the gravy.



Remove the water and add them to the roast beef now, placing some garlic on top of the beef. They should stay here for a minimum of 20 minutes, with no real maximum. Five minutes before you want to remove it, turn the oven up to 200°C to crisp up the potatoes. Serve up the food.



Using the potato water and the juice at the bottom of the baking tray, make some gravy. The photo above shows the meal before the gravy went on.
A nice bottle of Bordeaux just under room temperature would go nicely right now.

Recipe XLV - Mascarpone Chocolate Trifle, or Mach-3

Sorry I missed last weekend. I needed a week off to recover from the buzz I got from the mascarpone. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I had another tub of it in the fridge, so I decided to make another recipe with it this week. This is a totally made-up recipe again, one I made for February, the month of love, which I am calling Mascarpone Trifle, or Mach-3 (Mascarpone + Chocolate on 3 layers) because it'll create a sonic boom in your mouth. I know the reason's a little over the top, but it's the best I could do...



Ingredients:
250g mascarpone
2 to 4 eggs
2 bananas
2 x 200g cooking chocolate (one from milk, dark or white - I used dark and white)
180g to 200g biscuit (powdered)

Instructions:
Take the biscuit and put it in the blender, pulverising it until it is no more than powder. Put it to one side.
In a bowl, spoon the mascarpone. Separate the eggs, putting the yolk in the mascarpone and the white in a separate bowl. Fold the yolk into the mascarpone. Whisk the egg white until it is frothy and removing the mixer makes little mounds out of it. I know the photo below lakes the mascarpone look like egg mayonnaise, but it was truly mixed in.



In a saucepan, heat up the dark chocolate until it has fully melted. Take about a third of the mascarpone and put it tinto a third bowl. Pour the chocolate into it and stir until it is totally brown. Put it in the bottom of your presentation bowl.



Take the biscuit crumbs and make a layer on top, flattening it nicely. Then put a layer of sliced banana on top of that. I had a photo but it deleted itself, strangely enough...



Repeat the same thing with the white chocolate and finally the top layer with simple mascarpone, like below. No bananas this time, just a layer of biscuit as above.



Put it in the fridge to set and to give yourself time to realise that this evening you're probably going to have several out-of-body experiences!

Recipe XLIV - Wild Strawberry and Mascarpone Flan

Following a message from someone calling him/herself AnonymousCakeEater, who wrote: "Raymond, where's my bloody dessert?!" I decided to make my own recipe to prove I'm not a one-trick pony.

Mascarpone is and has always been in the Number One slot in my list of Favourite Things I like To Put In My Mouth (Edible/Decent Category), and this recipe has resulted in the need to find a whole new set of fantasies for myself. Each time I typed the word "mascarpone" below, I got a little bit hot...



Ingredients:
For the base:
300 g of biscuits (I used Dutch shortcrust Pepernootjes, but anything like that is fine)
100g butter

For the filling:
200g wild strawberries (but any kind of red fruit/berries will do)
4 tablespoons of marsala wine or alcohol of your choice
250g mascarpone
1 sachet of vanilla sugar
1 egg (which you need to separate)
1 tablespoon of sugar

Instructions for the base:
Take your biscuits and put them in the blender, making a fine powder.
Heat up the butter in a saucepan and once melted, pour it over the crumbs. Stir thoroughly until the whole thing is dripping in the butter.



Using a flan base, spread it evenly over the mould, putting it in the fridge for a good hour to cool and harden. If necessary, use a rolling pin to get it properly even.



Instructions for the filling:
Separate your egg into two different bowls. With the yolk, add the sugar and mix into a paste.



Add the mascarpone and mix into a smooth, consistent paste. At this point, add the vanilla sugar. With the egg white, beat it until it turns frothy and you can make lumps on it with the whisk. Fold it into the mascarpone.
In a saucepan, put the fruit and the alcohol on a relatively low heat. Once boiling, put it into a blender and turn it into a thick paste.



Take the base out of the fridge. Very carefully remove the mould onto a large enough flat surface. Pour in the mascarpone and let it flatten itself out in the mould.



Spoon the red fruit onto the top of the mascarpone and make it into a pretty pattern. I'm hopeless at this, hence the terrible photo below, but you could alternatively mix it into the mascarpone before you pour it onto the mould. Put it into the fridge to set, removing it fifteen to thirty minutes before you want to eat it.

Recipe XLIII - Salmon with Stir-Fry Noodles

Can you believe it? It's been about 10 months since I started these recipes, and in that time, no fish. So I'm putting this right with this post. To be frank, I am not a fan of fish, but fresh river salmon I can handle.
The Japanese are probably the best in the world for their imagination with fish dishes, and this one is like a bad detective novel - it starts off pretty slowly and remains rather uneventful until the very last part, when everything happens at the same time.

Ingredients:
500g fresh river salmon
1 long red pepper
2 onions
7 button mushrooms
4cm ginger
7 cloves of garlic
4 tablespoons of brown sugar
4 tablespoons of sake or white wine
4 tablespoons of soy sauce
400g egg noodles




Instructions:
Slice the salmon into appropriate pieces. To cut it, you need an incredibly sharp knife. Slice the fish with the skin facing upwards.
Slice half the ginger and 4 cloves of garlic, and put them in a bowl along with the sugar and wine. Stir it until the sugar has dissolved and then pour it over the salmon.



Marinate it for about an hour.



In the meantime, cut up the vegetables.



Take the salmon out of the marinade and fry it in butter. Keep the marinade for later. In another frying pan, fry the vegetables. Cut up the rest of the ginger and garlic and fry it too.
Put the noodles in boiling water, take it off the boil and let it rest for 5 to 7 minutes. Taste it to be sure the noodles are ready, then pour them into the vegetable mix.



Take the salmon out of the frying pan and cover it to keep it warm for a few minutes while you finish the rest off. Pour the remaining soy sauce from the marinade into the frying pan. Once it thickens, pour it into the pan with the noodles and vegetables, giving the whole thing a good toss.



Finally, serve up the noodles and put the salmon on top.



Enjoy!