Author: Notnick

Cinder Toffee

50g salted butter
300ml water
4 teaspoons malt vinegar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
450g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Grease a large baking tin with butter (mine was 11 x 7 inches). Heat the butter, water and vinegar together in a large saucepan with a jam thermometer (the saucepan should be larger than you think necessary – remember that this recipe will froth and swell) until the butter has melted. Stir in the sugar and golden syrup over the heat until they dissolve. Stop stirring, and bring to the boil. Keep boiling without stirring until the toffee reaches the hard crack stage on your thermometer (if you don’t have a jam thermometer, a teaspoon of the molten toffee dropped into a saucer of cold water at hard crack stage will form brittle into strands and crack when you try to shape it). ***Update – it is incredibly important that your toffee really does reach hard crack stage, which is 154°C, or else it may sink after rising.*** Be careful – the mixture will be unbelievably hot, and very dangerous if there are children or pets around. Remove the toffee from the heat, and gently stir in the bicarbonate of soda.

Startling frothing will occur. Keep stirring gently until the bubbles settle down a bit, then pour the mixture into your greased tin. Wait for between ten and twenty minutes until the mixture is set up but still warm, and break the toffee into pieces. Lay these pieces out on a wire rack until the sweets are cool, then transfer to an air-tight container (or your mouth).

Butterscotch

150ml/1/4 pint of water
450g/1lb Demerara sugar
50g/2oz butter

Poor water into pan and bring to boil add sugar and butter, heat slowly stirring till sugar dissolves and butter melts, bring to boil and cover pan and boil gently for 2 mins

uncover continue to boil with out stirring for about 12 mins
(or until little of mixture dropped into cold water separates into threads)
Pour into a buttered tin.

Everton Toffee

4 tablespoons water
100g/4oz butter
300g/12oz Demerara sugar
2 level tablespoons golden syrup
1 level tablespoon black treacle
Put all ingrediants into pan, heat slowly, stirring, until butter melts and sugar dissolves.

Bring to the boil, cover pan and boil gently for 2 minutes.

Uncover, continue to boil, stirring occasionally for 10/ 15 mins (or until a little of the mixture dropped into a cup of cold water separates into hard and brittle threads.)

Poor into a buttered tin and leave until hard.

Irish Stew (Lamb)

I never tried this until meeting Deird & Denise. Denise used to cook a bucket of this at a time. Denise likes this cooked down, so that the potatoes are mushed in to the juices. I like it a little less cooked, with a thin ‘gravy’ and firmish potatoes. To get it right, stew the lamb for an hour or so before the veg goes in.

1/2 Leg of lamb

2lb potatoes

1lb carrots

a handful of rosemary

Cut the meat from the bone, and dice.  brown the meat a little in a big pan

Add water to cover, and simmer gently for an hour

Add the potatoes and carrots to the pot

cook till the potatoes are cooked, and falling apart.

salt, to taste

Lamb Quorma

750g Lamb, trimmed and cubed
125g sliced onions
3 cloves garlic
2tsp ginger root, bruised and finely chopped
3 black cardamon pods
5 cloves
4cm stick of cinnamon
1/2tsp turmeric
2tsp ground cummin
2tsp ground coriander
2tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp garam masala
300ml water
150ml plain yoghurt
1 1/2 tsp salt
185g cream of coconut
125g canned chopped tomatoes
2tbls coriander leaves, chopped

Fry the onion, garlic and ginger, until the onion is soft, add the spices (except Garam masala).

Cook gently for about 20 minutes. 

Add the meat, increase the heat a little to cook off until the meat has a little colour. 

Add the water, and simmer for at least 40 minutes, longer for tough meat.

Add the coconut, tomatoes, salt and garam masala. 

Simmer until the sauce has reduced. Add the yoghurt and coriander leaves and serve!

Roast Beef

Roast beef is soo English, it’s what the the French still call the English as a nick-name/ insult- “les rosbifs”- although wikipedia believes this may be because the English have a reputation for turning up in the France, and burning their lilly-white skin in the hot sun.

For a few years, you couldn’t get beef on the bone. You can now, and it’s worth tracking down, because it adds to the flavour of the beef. The other thing you need is some fat on the meat. Without the fat it just doesn’t taste, well, of beef. 

The other thing it needs is a little bit of colour. Perfect beef, for me, is on the bone (beef rib) with some fat marbled through it, roasted in a hot hot oven for not quite long enough. It needs to be dark on the outside, and pink and juicy in the middle.

To the outside of the beef, before it goes into the oven, run in a mix of salt, dijon mustard and worcestershire sauce. To rest the beef on, under the beef, throw in some whole garlic cloves, 1/2 or 1/4 onions (2). This’ll help the stock flavour up as the beef roasts. Roast for 20 minutes in the hottest oven you can (240C ) then for 20 minutes a a kilo, at 190C . Less for Rare beef, and more for well done. 

Once the meat is roast- AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT- let the meat rest for at least 30 minutes. It will be mildly warm when you carve it. If you’re serving it with gravy then carve it nice and thin- it should be mild pink and tender. 

Lemonade

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 cup sugar (can reduce to 3/4 cup)
  • 1 cup water (for the simple syrup)
  • 1 cup lemon juice (4-6 lemons)
  • Grated rind of a lemon
  • 3 to 4 cups cold water (to dilute)

METHOD

1  Mix & heat the sugar, lemon rind and water in a small pan until the sugar has dissolved.

2 Extract the juice from 4 to 6 lemons- enough for a cup of juice.

3 Add the juice and the syrup to a jug. then dilute with 3 to 4 cups of cold water, add ice.

 

Gratin Dauphinois

Potatoes, cream and cheese- what’s not to like.  Whenever I make this I make more than I need, because it’s just sooo more-ish. It’s a cheesey potato side dish that goes really well with rich food or a steak. It takes a little time to prepare and cook up, but worth the wait.

Once cooked, the cheesey browned topping just looks great. Deird usually eats the toppng off any leftovers before it gets a chance to make it to the fridge. Dang.

Sometimes restaurants make this with a lot of cream and not a lot of potato- so there’s potato swimming in cream. I make it drier, so that you slice out a portion from a big dish, and it just about holds it’s shape.  Mmmmm. 

The best advice for making this is to cut the potato slices as thinly as you can. Use a mandolin if you have one, buy one if you haven’t.

1kg floury potatoes
2 Cloves garlic, crushed
Pinch nutmeg
75g gruyere, grated
300ml double cream
100ml milk

Slice potatoes thinly on a mandolin,
Butter a “lasagne” dish and layer in potatoes, with some garlic, nutmeg and cheese between layers.
Pour cream and milk over, so that it fills in the gaps, ans just covers the potatoes.
Sprinkle on remaining cheese.

Bake, for about 45 minutes- although it depends on how big a dish, and how deep it all is.