Winter Vegetarian Pasta

Saw this recipe on a newspaper. Pity I didn't take it down, as it sounded quite good. So good in fact that I tried to recreate it from memory, so what follows is my recollection of the recipe.

The ingredients are a real autumn/ winter set... butternut squash, mushrooms, chestnuts (I think the original recipe was pine nuts). Plus I've been wanting to use mascarpone in a recipe for a long time...

The amounts are all very approximate. I tend to just throw in what I think looks like the right amount

Ingredients (this made enough for 3 -4)
150g mascarpone
1 clove minced garlic
2 small onions
decent sized handful of chopped mushrooms
decent sized handful of chopped butternut squash
1 tbl dijon mustard (I used maille)
1 tbl oil/ butter for frying
small handful of shelled chestnuts
Pasta.. I used
Fresh parsley to serve.

some water to loosen the mixture.

Technique
Crush up chestnuts and place in a try under the grill to toast. Careful they don't burn.
Gently fry off the minced garlic and onion in oil for about 2 minutes
Start pasta boiling in salty water. (should take approx. 12 mins)
Add butternut squash and fry for another 6 minutes.
Add mushrooms and continue to fry for another 6 mins.
Add mascarpone, dijon mustard, and some water until it is the desired consistency.
Drain pasta and throw into pan with other ingredients, and coat in sauce.
Season with salt and black pepper, add some fresh herbs to serve.

Delicious with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc

Christmas Pudding in practise

I stuck mainly to the recipe. the main divergence was I noticed there was no suet in the recipe, and I had deliberately gone out and bought a pack of dried vegtable suet for the sole purpose of making the pudding. So I put suet in. I substituated it for 1/2 the margarine.

Of course this meant that my liquid to dry ingredients was now wrong, so I had to add a bit more liquid. This was made up of extra stout, and whiskey until the pudding looked as moist as I expected it to. (which of course could be completely wrong).

My mother had leant me a pudding bowl, but the mixture wouldn't fit in so I created 1 large, and 2 small puddings.  [I only realise now as I type this in that I have the sizes  all wrong. I have 1 extra large pudding, and 2 small puddings].

At this stage the pudding tasted really good. The lemon and orange have given it a great tang. Hopefully that stays with the final version.

Boiling of the puddings now was more difficult. In these globally warmed times, I considered it far too wasteful to have 2/3 pots of water boiling simulataneously, so I came up with the genius idea of using my frying pan which was wide enough... just.. to house all 3 bowls. Of course the pan is only about 1 1/2 inches high, so I could only get that much water in,  but the recipe didn't really say how high  water in the pot should be. I figured the stream created as the lower part of the pudding heats would rise and cook the rest of the pudding.

So my 3 puddings are now done.  Probably still a bit moist. I'll leave them that way to mature for a bit. Considering I made these on Dec 14 they won't be maturing the minimum 6 weeks though. The plan is to try one of the smaller ones this week, and I'll see if the large one is fuly cooked.

Irish Chrismas Pudding

Heres a recipe for plum pudding given to me by my mother.

Sounds good. Whats not so impressive is that she got it from a newspaper recipe. I was given the  clipping to prove it.

Makes 2 1.5lb puddings or 3 1lb puddings

Ingredients

7oz plain flour

8oz currants

12oz raisins

6oz sultanas

2oz candied peel

2oz glazed cherries

1oz blanched almonds (optional)

6oz breadcrumbs (brown or white)

8oz margarine

8oz demerara sugar

rind and juice of 1/2 lemon

rind and juice of 1/2 orange

1 large peeled apple

1tsp nutmeg

1tsp cinnamon

1tsp mixed spice

2 large eggs

4tbl milk or stout (? strange choice.. I of course went for the stout)

2tbl Whiskey (note the e.. Irish whiskey)

Technique

(This is easy)

Chop almonds, apple and cherries

beat eggs

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly in large bowl

Add wet ingredients... margarine, juice and rind, apple, eggs, milk or stout.

Mix well

Leave overnight

Turn into prepared (buttered to stop sticking) bowls.

Cover (to keep out moisture)

Boil... 4 hours for small pudding, 6 hours for large

Once cooked (not sure how you know this for sure, or what consistency they should be)

Pudding should be stored for at least 6 weeks to allow the flavours to fully mature

Baklava the aftermath

Since I don't follow recipes well I deviated from the original recipe.

For a start I didn't have a square baking tin, so I used an oval roasting dish. Not a huge problem, just make sure to trim the filo to fit.

Grinding up the nuts initially proved more of a challenge than I thought it would. I don't have a big food processor, so I had earmarked my coffee/ spice grinder for the task. Unfortunately it wasn't up to it so I was forced to go back to basics. A sandwich bag and a rolling pin came to the rescue, for a chunky nut layer.

I also added some hazelnuts since i had them.

For whatever reason, the maverick in me took over for the syrup..  I didn't bother measuring anything.

 a glassful of water

 a few teaspoons of brown and castor suger. 

As I didn't have orange bossom water (who does).. I put in some lemon juice and orange juice

Stick of cinamon, and nutmeg,

honey and maple syrup.

Mine worked quite well.. I quite liked the lemony flavour, but I didn't make nearly enough.. My one pice of advice for this dish is be generous with the syrup.. You can't have too much. The whole backlava should be dripping in the delicious syrup.

We had Greek (style) yogurt with ours

Looking on the web there are a couple of other recipes

http://southernfood.about.com/od/browniesbars/r/bl30206n.htm

Might try adding some suger and honey with the nuts and grinding some of them finer  next time. might make for a better combination.

Baklava

I love Baklava, but have never tried to cook it before.

Heres a recipe for Baklava adopted from Rachel Allen, from her TV series and book Bake. I've written it down here, for my memory, before her recipe and video dissappear forever, (or until you buy her book). 

(The video is avalable here until Dec 31, episode 9)

I'll post my results later (once I've cooked it)

Ingredients

Baklava

Shop bought Filo (phyllo) Pastry

200 g butter melted

300g unsalted nuts e.g. almonds, pistachios. 

1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

Syrup/ Sauce
200 ml water
300g sugar
rind of orange
Orange blossom water (optional).
5 -6 cloves
cinnamon stick
100 ml honey

Technique

Baklava

• Whizz nuts and cinnamon up in processor until they form gritty texture. (Can use only one type of nut, but 2 types provides more variety and flavour)
  
• Prepare layers of filo
  
• Brush layer of melted butter into square baking oven (I don't have one, so I'll be using an oval roasting dish) 
  
• Layer a sheet of filo, and brush it again with melted butter.
  
• Lay approx 4 - 6 layers of buttered filo, 
  
• Spread a  layer of the crushed nuts over the pastry
  
• LAyer another 4 - 6 sheets of buttered filo.
  
• Spread nuts
• Continue until you have approx 3 layers of nuts
• Cut the pastry into diamonds (or desired shape). Do it now, it will be too hard once it comes out of the oven.
• Place in oven at 180 C for 40 - 45 mins. Turn down slightly after 20 mins
• To make syrup
  
• Mix ingredents in pot, and boil until reduced and syruppy.. approx 15min
• Once baklava comes out of over pour syrup over every bit and leave to soak, and cool down
  

Welcome

This is where I'll try to list my cooking experiences. Since I make a lot of mistakes it may help others if I talk about what problems I had. Also I tend to diverge from recipes, I suffer from delusions partway through recipes that makes me think that i know things better than the expert who write the recipe. Perhaps by writing these down, I'll start to learn to stop doing it.