Gracie’s Life Experiment

It’s the Good Shepherd Church Summer Fete on Saturday and we said we’d make a few cakes for the cake stall.  Decided to make some smaller cupcake/muffin type things (as these tend to raise a bit more than selling off whole cakes).  So I had a browse on the internet and found a recipe for Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes on the Nigella site.  

For posterity, here’s the excerpt from the site:

Ingredients for cupcake: 125g of unsalted butter; 100g dark chocolate; 300g of morello cherry jam; 150g caster sugar; pinch of salt; 2 large eggs, beaten; 150g self-raising flour; muffin cases & tin
Ingredients for icing; 100g dark chocolate; 100ml double cream; glace cherries for decoration

How to Make:
-Preheat the oven to 180?C/gas mark 4.
-Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan on the heat to melt. When nearly completely melted, stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and chocolate are smooth and melted. Now add the cherry jam, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon and when all is pretty well amalgamated stir in the flour.
-Scrape and pour into the muffin papers in their tin and bake for 25 minutes. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
-When the cupcakes are cool, break the chocolate for the icing into little pieces and add them to the cream in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, remove from the heat and then whisk – by hand or electrically – till thick and smooth. Ice the cupcakes, smoothing the tops with the back of a spoon, and stand a cherry in the centre of each.  Makes 12.

Made a few changes to the recipe as we couldn’t find a relatively cheap cherry jam and ended up with Tesco Bramble Jelly instead (used a bit less of it as it’s quite sugary already) and we used their economy/value plain chocolate.  Also we had some cupcake cases (not muffin cases which are bigger).  We managed to make about double the number of cupcakes (fairy cake sized).  Tonight we just made the cupcakes, but haven’t made the icing yet as they’re still cooling.  Of course we had to sample a few, and they were gorgeous.  Nice and crunchy/crispy on top, soft and moist inside and the little pockets of molten jelly were to die for.  Tasted a bit like blackforest cupcakes.  Thank you Nigella - another great recipe.

Summary of the day:  Woke up at 2.30am and went to the loo, Tossed and turned all night visiting toilet for more wee breaks every hour on the 1/2 hr!!  Washed up in kitchen, Made hubby packed lunch, Went back to bed at 6am, Zonked out till 10am!  Spent rest of the day wandering round in a bit of a daze, Made Chicken Thai Green Curry for dinner, Went to Tescos to get cake ingredients, Made cupcakes!

It was my parents’ Wedding Anniversary on Saturday and all the family met up in London to go for dim sum on Sunday (except us as we are 3 hrs drive away). So unfair - I want dim sum too. Shrimp demands dim sum as well So in the absense of any dim sum restaurants in our area (there are none in Loughborough at all) I decided to have a look on t’internet to see if I could find any nice recipes. In particular I really wanted to eat Char Siu Cheong Fun, which is kind of like a steamed canneloni made from rice flour with BBQ roast pork inside and a soya sauce type sauce on it. It’s my favourite when we go out for dim sum in London. I found a fabulous blog by Lilyng with a recipe and photo instructions of how to do it.  We got a steamer for our wedding so thought I’d give it a try.  Managed to get most stuff apart from the Borax (which I think is toxic) but gave it a go.  It didn’t really work at first and came out like layers of wax and kept getting stuck in the pan.  In the end I thought I’d try it on greaseproof paper in the microwave and it worked a treat.  Wasn’t quite as fine as the stuff you get in the restaurant but certainly tasted similar.  Not bad for a first attempt - am thinking a little bit of gelatin would help next time.  I made the char siu beforehand in the afternoon.  Looking on the internet it appears there are a few restaurants in Nott’ham and Leicester that do dim sum so may have to coerse hubby into going.

Summary of the day:  Did a lot of PhD write up (yay - managed to work from about 9.30-4.30 which is good going), Made char siu, Experimented with the cheong fun

This week’s 10 things are the last 10 new meals I’ve learnt to cook/experimented with (well, at least the last 10 I can remember):

1. Pan Fried Steak (believe it or not I’d never cooked a steak before)
2. Swedish Meatballs (inspired by an Ikea craving)
3. Oven Roasted Tomatoes & Peppers and Sweet Onion Chutney
4. Toad-in-the Hole
5. Flapjacks
6. Poison Curry (hmm won’t be trying that one again)
7. Pot-stickers
8. Char Siu Soh
9. Buk Poh (BBQ Sweet Meat) - must post this recipe some time as it’s really good
10. Bread & Butter Pudding (I quite like making a Blackforest one, mmm choc and cherry jam)

Some were obviously more successful than others.   The links aren’t to recipes, but, where I could find them pingbacks to when I tried to cook.

Summary of the day: Woke up at 2.30am and couldn’t sleep till about 5.30am, Slept till 8am, Had a shower, Did Killer Sudokus, Vegged 1/2 zombified watching daytime telly (wow 2 Dr Sloans!), Made steak for dinner, Sat in the nursery for a while, Had a bath to relax

Ok, so today was my day off so I thought I’d relieve the boredom by baking something.  I decided to make some flapjacks.   So after a quick look on the internet at the items that I would need I concluded that I had most of the stuff required.  Into the pan went some oil, butter, golden syrup, brown sugar and some chocolate (I had 1/2 a bar of Dark Choc & Orange from Hotel Chocolat - yummy).  Into the bowl went enough oats to do one tray and a selection of random stale biscuit crumbs (forgot to put the lid on the biscuit barrel properly leading to soggy digestives and rich teas).  Mixed it all together, kind of looked about right, spooned it onto the tray and pressed it all down.  Baked it.  Hmm it doesn’t seem to be melting at all and the edges are going black.  Decide to add a bit of water to get the oats to swell a bit and hopefully stick together.  10 mins later it’s still not looking right.  Take it out of the oven and tip the contents back into the mixing bowl (carefully snapping off the burnt edges and giving these to the dog).  Hmm it now looks a bit like flapjacks but isn’t sticky enough so I add some more golden syrup and some margarine.  Bake it all again.  Looks right this time.  Pour a layer of melted chocolate on top.  Leave to cool.  Come back an hr later and it looks right but I try and cut it up and find it’s still a bit crumbly.  Ah well it tasted OK - think needs copious amounts of butter to work (either that or some superglue).

Summary of the day;  Caught up with the washing/tidying, Messed up kitchen trying to invent flapjacks, Made tonkatsu for dinner (at least I can get that right)

I tried to make poached eggs for breakfast this morning!  I think the only thing that could be used to describe it was - “hmmm”!  I’ve not made them before but thought, hey how hard can it be?  I boiled some water in a frying pan.  Salted the water and then swirled it round while pouring the egg in.  Well - the egg instantly decided to swirl out to the edges into millions of strands.  I don’t think that’s right!!  In the end I ended up cracking the egg into the water without swirling - kind of like frying an egg in water.  Then folding up the edges where it spread too much while spooning hot water over the top.  It didn’t look too pretty, but hey, I just grated some cheese on top and it was fine and extra runny yolks for hubby.  My egg didn’t turn out too good - I don’t like yolks so it was made of only egg whites.  Kind of reminded me of a slab of almond jelly.  Again, nothing a bit of bacon and some cheese wouldn’t fix!  Think I’ll stick to frying next time!

Summary of the day:  Tried to make breakfast,  Helped out at Sunday School, Work avoided, Played Zoo Tycoon II (again, it’s just so damned addictive)

Made a beef stew today.  It was a little bit of an experiment but it worked out really well and was quite a lot quicker.  So for posterity here is my ad hoc recipe:

- Cut up 2 stewing steaks into 1″ cubes
- Fry on high heat in a small bit of butter
- When it’s all browned off and a bit gnarly looking add chopped onions and some garlic
- When onions have gone translucent then add a big splash of wine
- Add a tablespoon of whole grain mustard
- Add a sliced up leek, sliced up carrot, some sweetcorn and some spinach
- Throw in a small handful of pearl barley
- Throw in 1/2 tin of leftover baked beans!
- Dissolve a beef stock cube in about a pint of hot water and add to pot
- Add some mixed herbs (I found some italian style ones, that would do)
- Put lid on and turn down heat
- Cook for as long as you need (yesterday I cooked it for about 35 mins before the next step - basically try one of the lumps of beef, have all the fatty bits gone gooey yet? if so then go to next step)
- 20 mins before you want to eat peel some white potatoes and cut into bite size pieces, add to the pot
- You may need to add some more water if it’s looking too thick in order for the potatoes to cook. If it’s looking a bit watery then leave the lid off while it boils.
- Serve up

Summary of the day: Got loads done at work, Had a telecon in the morning, Caught up with work in the afternoon, Made a beef stew, Stuffed ourselves silly with stew, Still had space for mango sorbet for dessert!

So what with all the leftovers from the steamboat dinner on Sunday I was pondering what to make with the various items for dinner.  Hence my new experiment…

- Put bulgur wheat in rice cooker with some butter and water. Switch on
- Sprinkle some mild chilli powder in
- Add sweetcorn and some sliced chinese mushroom, stir
- Cut the soft tofu into 1cm square cubes
- Slice the salmon into small thin layers (about the size of teaspoon heads)
- When the water has started to boil then spread the tofu cubes on top in the rice cooker
- Layer the salmon pieces on top of the tofu
- Sprinkle ground ginger and soya sauce on top of the salmon
- Leave the rice cooker to finish cooking
- About 5 mins b4 you want to eat put some beansprouts on top, put the lid back on and switch on again (this just steams the beansprouts through)

 Summary of the day: Work, Had a meeting to prepare for case study, Experimented in the kitchen, Watched CSI (ooh they saved Sarah, damn shame)

Got back from Preston at 1am.  Absolutely cream-crackered!!  We had the first of this year’s steamboat dinners.  Mostly a bit of a practice run for Chinese New Year (which is 7th Feb this year and going into Year of the Rat).  Steamboat is like an electric fondue which contain a light soupy stock (rather than cheese or chocolate).  Each person has their own little net and ladle and you lay out lots of thinly cut small pieces of raw food that you put in the net and cook in the steamboat.  It’s great fun (John is very naughty and pretends he is taking out his net, but swirls it so it knocks stuff out of other people’s nets for him to scoop out - tsk tsk).  So here’s all the stuff we had…

- fishballs (no not fish testicles, but spherical bits of processed fish)
- minced pork & chopped waterchestnut meatballs
- chicken breast marinated in rice wine
- sandwich steak marinated in teriyaki sauce
- salmon marinated in mirin
- chinese sausage (lup cheong)
- small cubes of soft tofu
- blanched rice noodles, carrot and beansprout (put in bowls not in the steamboat)

A veritable banquet!

Summary of the day: Got home in the wee early hours, Slept well, Went to supermarket to get party supplies, Had some friends over for steamboat, Played Wii.

At a loss for what to blog about today so thought I’d share a random recipe (of sorts).  Tonight we made crock pot rice.  Now ordinarily you need to have a crock pot (earthenware pot that sits on the hob) to make it but you have to soak the pot all day to ensure it doesn’t dry out and crack and as it hadn’t been planned there was no time.  Instead we made it in the rice cooker.  Total time (cooking and prep) is about 30 minutes.

• Crack the rice by cooking the it in a frying pan with some garlic, some sesame oil and a small amount of chicken stock
• Pour contents of frying pan into rice cooker.  Add water to rice cooker (I usually work on the index finger measure, i.e. put your finger vertically on top of the rice and fill water until it reaches the first joint ’bout an inch).  Switch on rice cooker
• Add light soy, a bit of oyster sauce and white pepper to rice cooker.  Stir it all in.
• Cut up a chicken breast (I usually cut it into really fine little matchstick shapes) also slice some chinese sausage if you have some
• Cut up the vegetables (thin discs/ovals of carrot, baby corn, mange tout, chinese mushroom)
• By this time the rice cooker has come to the boil.  Layer the chicken and chinese sausage on top of the rice (don’t worry if it sinks a bit).  Then add some ginger (ground or fresh) on top of that.
• Layer the vegetables on top of that.  Put lid back on rice cooker and wait till it’s done.
• When the cooker has finished dig down a little and test a bit of rice, it should be nice and fluffed, if not then add a bit more water (not too much say a couple of inches from a cup) and switch cooker on again
• Serve and sprinkle a little dark sauce (sparingly) over the rice
• Enjoy!

You can practically add whatever you feel like into it.  I’ve tried it with bulgur wheat or quinoa instead of rice too and that works. 

Summary of the day: Went to work, Had long morning meeting, Had 10 min lunch before touching base with supervisor, Yet another student meeting, Wrote some pleading emails, Cooked crock pot rice, Watched CSI, Sympathised with husband (he has to write school reports tonight - there are only so many adjectives you can use to describe the same thing!)

Browsing through the pantry wondering what to cook for dinner.  I love cooking and experimenting with what my friends have now termed “leftover surprise”!!  Today I decided, as it was a little chilly, to cook a stew of some sort.  Turned out to be quite good so for posterity here’s my random recipe involving anything I could find (Sat is food shop day so the cupboard was looking a little bare):

- Fry 1 red onion and a rasher of bacon till brown
- Chop up and add a sandwich steak (about 2 palm sized pieces found in freezer)
- Add some worcestershire sauce and a spoonful of wholegrain mustard
- Throw in 2 chopped up spring onions
- Slosh in some red wine
- Throw in a tin of cream of mushroom soup (contents of, not the whole tin duh)
- Add a handful of pearl barley
- Add a handful of shitake mushrooms (I found some frozen ones at bottom of freezer)
- Chop 3/4 of a carrot (I grated the other 1/4 into the salad I had for lunch) into disc shapes and add
- Add some chopped up potatoes (we only had 2 slighty squishy potatoes left)
- Add some frozen mixed veg (in this case sweetcorn and brocolli)
- Turn heat right down and leave for 2 hrs

Definitely time to go to the market again tomorrow - we have a total void of vegetables (except a packet of mange tout, believe me I would have added that to the stew but they’d just have boiled into sludge)

Summary of the day:  Had absolutely no meetings at work, Managed to actually get the process models done, Did three days worth of Times 2 puzzles, Made a stew, Watched lots of Channel 4 (25th anniversary today)