Pork and pistachio terrine

It's never really "perfect picnic weather" in the UK, but when the wind dies down and the rain buggers off for half a day, I love to pack up some foil-wrapped parcels and head to a sunny patch of grass for some al fresco drinking. I mean dining. Following on from last month's mushroom pâté recipe (http://bit.ly/2rLw7qr), here's another hamper filler showcasing my highly intagrammable Le Creuset terrine.

I made this traditional farmhouse style pork terrine for our quarterly Barbican Life magazine - hello if you've made it here from there. Acquiring some new (secondhand) pots and pans recently sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole into the history of kitchenware style, where I learnt all about the Le Creuset manufacturing process, and made some shocking discoveries, like Catherine Holm is not an actual person... Anyway, I wrote it all down for the magazine article, which you can get here when it's posted online in mid-June: http://www.barbicanlifeonline.com/barbican-life-magazine/magazine-issues/

A few of my favourite kitchen items posing on the balcony (Don't panic, I took everything back inside straight after so they're not blocking the fire escape - Barbican resident private joke)

This recipe is inspired by one in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, first published in 1960. It's a classic pork and veal pairing, subtly flavoured with allspice, port and juniper berries, and I added chopped pistachios for some extra crunch.

Ingredients

6-8 shallots, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

500g pork shoulder, finely chopped 

450g sausage meat

400g minced veal

12 juniper berries, crushed

12 back peppercorns, crushed

1/2 tsp cloves, crushed

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1 tbsp fresh parsley and/or thyme

100g shelled pistachios, chopped

2 tbsp port or brandy

16 rashers of streaky smoked bacon

As with the mushroom pâté, if you don't have a terrine dish, rethink your life priorities and/or use a loaf tin instead.

Method

1. Gently fry the chopped shallots in a little oil until starting to colour. Add the garlic and cook for another few minutes, then leave to cool.

2. In a large bowl, combine the cooled shallots and garlic with all the remaining ingredients except the bacon. Mix well, then fry a small lump of the mixture to taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

3. Stretch the bacon rashers over the back of a knife so they are long enough to line the terrine or loaf tin with the ends overhanging (about 28cm) - as demostarted by tmy little helper in the pic-strip below:

4. Add the meat mixture to the bacon-lined dish, press down firmly and wrap the overhanging rashers over the top of the meat.

5. Place the terrine in a roasting tin with an inch of water and cook uncovered at 160C for 75 to 90 minutes, until the pâté is starting to come away from the sides of the dish.

6. Remove from the oven, cover with foil and add some weight to the top of the terrine. Most recipes recommend tinned food, but I found that the digital radio was a perfect fit - feel free to be inventive with whatever you have to hand in your kitchen...

7. Cool at room temperature, then pour off any excess fat before chilling until ready to serve; it should come out of the terrine mould quite easily.

To serve, wrap up tightly for transport to the picnic site then slice thickly - it's pretty firm in texture and shouldn't disintegrate when you chomp into it. It also keeps in the fridge for up to a week and freezes well; just thaw completely at room termperature. 

Happy picnicking!

Baked Alaska: my first Fanny classic

This week's recipe has a slightly different origin to my usual charity shop finds; it's from a pile of magazines sent to me by a very generous Twitter follower, and fellow vintage cookbook addict, Cosmic Apple Pips. The hours I've wasted on social media suddenly seem completely worth it! The magazines in question are part of Fanny Cradock's 1970 Cookery Programme, a weekly publication stuffed full of colour photos and "pic-strips", Fanny's rather severe advice and garlic pushing (we didn't like it in the 70s) and a wine column written by her husband, monocle-wearing Johnnie. 

There are so many things I love about the programme, but I think my favourite aspect is the food styling and use of crockery and props, both old and new, which Fanny name checks in the caption - "we think it looks rather nice sting on its 1/ junk shop plate!". If you like the sound of it, there's another blog entirely devoted to the programme called Keep Calm and Fanny On :)

Baked Alaska appears in issue 7, which is all about omelettes... because Fanny says it's called Omelette Novegienne and the Americans have nicknamed it Baked Alaska. And rather than being a technical challenge as evidenced by the Great British Bake Off and the infamous "Bingate" incident, Fanny assures us that it's "far, far easier to make than Yorkshire pudding". So a bit tricky then.

As usual, I've followed the basic rules, as she's very strict about that sort of thing, but added a few of my own variations. I made a fatless sponge for the base according to Fanny's recipe, but rather than using tinned pineapple under the ice cream dome, I made one of our favourite frozen puds, mango sorbet, which is unbelievably simple if you have an ice cream machine, and layered it into the ice cream. And as I've successfully conquered meringues before (http://bit.ly/2sHCZFw) I used the same recipe and technique here.

Ingredients 

For the filling

1 tin mango slices in juice

500ml vanilla ice cream, softened at room temperature

For the sponge

110g caster sugar

3 eggs

70g self-raising flour

For the meringue

6 egg whites

300g caster sugar

Handful chopped pistachios

Method

1. Make the mango sorbet by blitzing the mango slices and juice, then churn in an ice cream maker for 30 minutes until almost completely frozen

2. Line a pudding basin or similar shaped (domed) bowl with cling film. Add half the softened vanilla ice cream and press down. Add the mango sorbet to make a thick layer then freeze for about 10-15 minutes. Add the remainder of the ice cream to fill the bowl, level and wrap in the overhanging cling film. Freeze for at least 2 hours.

3. To make the sponge, heat the sugar in a hot oven for 6 minutes, then tip onto the eggs cracked into a mixing bowl. Beat until light and fluffy and almost double in size, then gently fold in the flour. Pour into a lined circular cake tin, a little larger than your ice cream filled pudding basin, and bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Cool slightly, remove from the tin and, once completely cold, wrap and chill until assembly time.

4. Heat the sugar for the meringue in a hot oven until starting to melt at the edges (this bit is optional but adds a little caramel taste). Whisk the egg whites in a very clean bowl until foamy then throw in the sugar and continue to whisk energetically until the mixture is very stiff. If you're not going to use immediately, chill in the fridge.

5. Assemble quickly: unwrap the chilled sponge and place on a baking tray; unmould the ice cream (a few seconds in hot water will help if it's stuck), remove the film and place the ice cream in the centre of the sponge base; spoon or pipe the meringue all over the ice cream down to the sponge base (I don't have photos of this as thee wasn't time!) then pop in a hot oven at 220C for 5 minutes to brown the meringue. As its too tricky to take photos and assemble a Baked Alaska, here's Fanny's pic-strip featuring the delectable Peter:

The following circumstances do not facilitate the assembly procedure:

- a blocked piping nozzle

- an audience

- very fresh eggs that don't whip as well

- not starting until 10.30pm

and since I made all of these rookie errors, I ended up throwing the meringue onto the ice cream and sponge, while it proceeded to slip down the sides as everything was getting too warm. But it made it into the oven rather than the bin and the final result didn't look too bad:

The sorbet and ice cream were still frozen and the meringue was cooked and gooey. Cutting slices was a bit messy but a handful of toasted pistachios made a good disguise! The sweet meringue and ice cream is perfectly offset by the fresh mango sorbet, and the light sponge holds it all together. Next time, I'd try making individual ones to avoid the messy serving bit, and Mary Berry says you can freeze them for an hour before cooking which might help the presentation. And I'm getting a bigger piping nozzle!

Chocotorta: an Argentine afternoon snack

Chocotorta is a simple, no-bake cake made with a few easy to find (in Argentina) ingredients, and is often eaten for Merienda - a light meal around 5pm to keep you going until dinner. I was first introduced to this delicious concoction by a young man in Patagonia called Juan Manuel - he was 9 years old at the time and as he's just turned 14 this is probably a really uncool thing to remind him of.

Apparently, this dish was invented as a promotion by the manufacturers of Chocolinas, a new range of chocolate biscuits, as recently as 1980. However, it's so embedded in the Argentine culinary repertoire it feels like it's been around forever, and I was surprised not to find it in Grandma's cookbook. Quite simply, it involves dipping chocolate biscuits in liquid and layering with a mix of dulce de leche and cream cheese. I mean, a 9 year old could do it... (he's actually a very good cook!)

The biscuit dipping liquid was originally milk or chocolate milk, but a common variation I like uses coffee; you could also add a shot of kahlua to spice things up a bit. If you're not in Argentina, Chocolinas are available in Spanish supermarkets like Garcia's in Notting Hill, or you can use Oreos instead (you didn't hear that from me). And if you can't find dulce de leche, boil a can of condensed milk to make a rich caramel sauce.

Ingredients 

280g cream cheese

280g dulce de leche 

2 packets of chocolinas

1 cup fresh, cooled black coffee (I made espresso but instant would be fine)

1 shot of kahlua (optional. I added it)

Method

 1. Thoroughly whip together the cream cheese and dulce de leche.

2. Mix the kahlua (if using) into the coffee, then soak the chocolinas one by one for 10-20 seconds so they're softened but not falling apart (note for Brits: if you're a tea dunker, you'll nail this bit). Line up along the bottom of a rectangular dish.

3. When you have a complete layer of biscuits, add a third of the cream cheese mix and spread over the biscuits.

4. Repeat the layers twice more, finishing with a layer of cream cheese mix

5. Dust the top with some grated chocolate or crumbled biscuits and chill for a couple of hours to firm up.

Best served with a sweet tooth and a hot beverage - maybe some mate for a true Argentinian experience.

Mushroom pate: for the picnic hamper

Today was the first really hot day in London this year, bringing to mind lazy afternoons picnicking on ripe cheese, crusty bread and dense, foil-wrapped pate. Unfortunately, we attempted this al fresco dining idea last week when it was still damp and wet in the city, so we put a picnic rug over the table instead...

Making pate is also an excuse to use my newly acquired Le Creuset terrine, a beautiful volcanic orange oblong dish that has been generating crockery envy on Instagram. I've made a classic pork terrine for the next edition of Barbican Life magazine, so this is a delicious vegetarian pate, equally transportable and almost as dense.

It's another recipe from Anna Thomas's 1978 cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure: Book Two. The owner of this book is a fellow Barbican resident, who has marked both mushroom pate recipes "E" for excellent. I have recreated the second version which contains walnuts for a crunchy texture and dried mushrooms to bump up the earthy taste. For the fresh mushroom content, I used a combination of half standard white mushrooms and half portabellini mushrooms which have a stronger, more meaty taste. 

This is definitely a recipe you can play about with, using different mushrooms, cheese, fresh herbs and liquor to create something new each time.

Ingredients

500g mixed fresh mushrooms

25g dried porcini mushrooms 

6-8 shallots

2 sticks of celery

100g walnuts

200g feta cheese

5 tbsp mixed fresh herbs, eg parsley, oregano, rosemary

2 slices of bread blitzed to breadcrumbs

1 tsp cayenne pepper

2 eggs

3 tbsp Madeira

Method

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in boiling water for 20 minutes then chop finely. Peel and mince the shallots; sautée in a little olive oil until soft. Chop the fresh mushrooms, walnuts, celery and feta into small chunks and finely chop the fresh herbs.

2. Combine the chopped ingredients in a large bowl (larger than the bowl I used below) then beat and add the eggs and all the remaining ingredients. Season generously and mix well.

3. Grease and line your terrine or loaf tin with baking paper, and add the mushroom mixture, patting down firmly. Cover loosely and bake at 180C for 90 minutes, until the pate is dark brown and starting to come away from the sides of the dish. 

4. When it's cool enough to handle, turn out of the dish and chill for several hours before serving.

The verdict from the picnic tasting panel was that is was "very mushroomy", which is insight you'll get (literally) nowhere else. A worthy addition to any picnic.

Crockpot Chicken fiesta: a summery chicken, pepper and olive casserole

If, like me, you relegate the slow cooker to the back of the cupboard as soon as daffodils start sprouting, this light and summery stew will have you digging it back out again. The convenience of slow cooking is obviously just as valuable in spring as it is in winter, and one can't be expected to survive on salads from April to September...

Adapted from Crockery Pot Cooking (1978) with some suggestions from a recent Good Food magazine recipe, this colourful chicken and pepper casserole is fresh and spicy, with at least three portions of your five-a-day (and I'm not even counting the wine). The final taste (and spice) will depend a lot on the chorizo you use as there are no other added herbs or flavours, so choose carefully. Also, be wary of adding extra salt: the olives and stock will be quite salty already, so I didn't add any salt until the cooking had finished.

Ingredients

(Serves 2)

100g chorizo, sliced

4 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed

1/2 onion, chopped

2 peppers, chopped into chunks

1 handful stuffed olives (I used ones in brine)

1 glass dry white wine

200ml chicken stock (from a good quality cube or fresh/homemade)

1 tbsp tomato purée

Method

If your slow cooker has a removable crock that you can use on the hob, start the dish off in that as described below. If not, use a frying pan to brown the chorizo, chicken and onion on the hob, then add them to the slow cooker along with any juices from the pan.

1. Heat the crock on the hob and dry fry the chorizo until it's starting to crisp; it will release plenty of spicy oil. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2. Fry the chicken in the chorizo oil until starting to brown, then add the onion and cook for 2 or 3 minutes more.

3. Put the crock into the slow cooker and add back the chorizo and all the remaining ingredients, making sure the liquid just covers the contents. Cook on low for 6 hours.

The end result is a light and vibrant stew; the chicken falls off the bone into the spicy broth, and is delicious mopped up with rice or crusty bread.

Three vegetarian dips to avert the hummus crisis

In recreating recipes from 60s and 70s cookbooks, there has been a distinct lack of vegetarian dishes. In fact, one of the few vegetarian meals I have made for the blog was from the Argentinian Grandma's book - the hazelnut and ricotta ravioli - as pasta is often meat-free, as is Argentinian pizza (I know, weird!).

One of the main reasons for the lack of veggie dishes is the scarcity of recipes: vegetarianism didn't begin to become popular until the 70s. One of the first cookbooks to target this growing movement was The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas, published in 1972 while Anna was still at film school in California. It sold over a million copies. I have this, and her second book published in 1978 (pictured below), on generous loan from a Barbican resident, in an attempt to redress the veggie balance!

These beautifully illustrated books focus on making delicious meals and dinner party entertaining without using meat substitutes, and letting good quality vegetables speak for themselves. As a start (there'll be more, I promise), I've adapted three dips adapted from the second book, which has more exotic recipes inspired by Anna's travels in the mid-70s.

I have a mini food processor which works perfectly for blitzing dips, but a blender or Nutribullet-type thing should work just as well. They all taste great with some toasted pitta bread for dipping.

BABA GANOUJ

Described as a salad of eggplant and sesame paste that Anna discovered on "the long, hot summer days in Cairo".

Ingredients 

1 aubergine 

1 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 tsp tahini

Half a lemon

Method

1. Either prick the aubergine several times and roast in a hot oven until tender (about 30 minutes) or cut in half and griddle for about 10 minutes. Leave to cool.

2. When the aubergine is cool enough to handle, scoop out the flesh and add to a food processor or blender with the crushed garlic, tahini and good squeeze of lemon juice. Blitz briefly to combine.

BROAD BEAN HUMMUS

A different take on the usual hummus, using broad beans instead of chickpeas. 

Ingredients

250g frozen broad beans

1 clove garlic

1 tsp tahini

Half a lemon

1/2 tsp ground cumin (optional)

Method

1. Cook the beans in boiling water for 3-4 minutes until tender. Drain.

2. Blitz the cooked beans with the remaining ingredients until well combined. Season with salt and pepper and a little water if the consistency is too thick and blitz again.

ARTICHOKE CHEESE

This is a light and tangy dip, delicious with some chilli flakes sprinkled on top.

Ingredients

280g artichokes in oil

180g cream cheese

40g Parmesan

Half a lemon

Method

Tip all the ingredients into the food processor and blitz until smooth. Add some freshly ground black pepper to serve.

Have fun dipping!

The grand Greek finale: a sticky sweet baklava

Nothing is more appropriate to complete a Greek feast than another dish with at least one 'k' in its name: baklava.

According to Joyce M. Stubbs, author of The Home Book of Greek Cookery, baklava is best made a day or two ahead to give the syrup time tostadas into all the layers and make it super sticky. I thought pistachios were the nut of choice, but the recipe in this book contains walnuts (see also the lamb - moussaka misunderstanding). While walnuts are popular, pistachios are apparently considered the "grandest" (and are still the most expensive of nuts), so I went with a mix of both - always trying to please everyone.

I expected these to be tricky to make, as the displays on stalls at farmers' markets look so delicate. They weren't - the most difficult bit was chopping the nuts. One slight addition I might make if I were to do these again (I'm doing them again) would be a drop or two of rose water in the syrup to balance the sweetness.

Here's the money shot:

More foodporn available on Instagram (@fourhobsinarow)

Ingredients

(Makes 8-10 servings)

100g unsalted butter
100g sugar
100ml hot water
150g pistachios and/or walnuts, chopped
3 sheets ready made filo pastry
Ground cinnamon

For the syrup:
100g sugar
100ml honey
100ml water
Juice from half a lemon

Method

1. To make the filling, melt half the butter with the sugar and hot water then add the chopped nuts. Melt the rest of the butter in a separate pan for brushing pastry layers.

 2. Line a baking tin with 4 layers of filo pastry, cut to size (I used a 26cm x 20cm dish), brushing each layer liberally with melted butter

3. Add a layer of nut filling, sprinkle with cinnamon, and cover with 2 more sheets of buttered pastry. Repeat until all the filling is used up (I made four layers).

4. Finish with another four sheets of buttered pastry and brush the top with butter. Score into diamonds with a sharp knife and bake at 180C for 15 minutes until golden and crisp.

  5. While the baklava is baking, make the syrup by boiling the sugar with the honey, water and lemon juice 

6. While the baklava is still hot, slowly pour over syrup, letting it seep into the layers - you probably won't need all of it but keep any leftovers to serve cold. Leave at room temperature overnight. 

Serve with a dollop of Greek yoghurt and a drizzle of leftover syrup (not the fake rose petals / actually inedible geraniums used in the money shot...) - a perfect ending to a delicious culinary adventure.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, completes this Greek tragedy, with a total absence of leftovers and some rather sticky pans to wash up. I hope your guests enjoy it as much as ours did!