Tag Archives: regional cookery

28/04/2024 · 7:19 pm

To Make Chelsea Buns

Well hello! Sorry for the long quiet spell, I have been hard at work writing not one, but two books. The manuscripts have been handed in and the usual service can resume. I did keep the podcast going though, so if you’ve not heard the new episodes, listen below:

The books are about baking and puddings, and I’ll tell you more about them later in the year. As I was researching and writing them, I realised that there are recipes I have been meaning to write for you, but, for one reason or another, I have never got around to. Well, I aim to rectify this over the next few months. Top of my pile is the very delicious Chelsea bun, my favourite of the sticky bun tribe.

I recently asked Twitter[1] which was better, cinnamon or Chelsea buns. In my hubris, I expected the Chelsea bun to win easily. It did not, and the main reason it wasn’t picked was that folk didn’t know what one was. Well, today I give you my recipe which I have been working on and I think perfected (I hope you agree).

For those not in the know, a Chelsea bun is a coil of enriched dough filled with butter, sugar and dried fruit. They are batch-cooked together so as they grow, they touch, filling the tin, producing buns that are soft on the sides, gooey at the bottom and brown on the top. They are finished with a sticky glaze and adorned with crunchy sugar. Decadent deliciousness. Jane Grigson wrote that they are ‘[t]he best of all the buns, on account of their buttery melting sweetness, and the fun of uncoiling them as you eat them.’[2]

They were first made at the Bun House in Chelsea at the start of the 18th century, the earliest mention of them cropping up in the 1710s.[3] The buns fell out of favour sometime in the early 20th century and are hard to track down, so if you want to try one, you’ll have to make it.[4]

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Recipe

The dough for these buns is sticky and difficult to knead, and I would advise using the dough hook attachment on a stand mixer. Hand-kneading is perfectly possible, it’s just a messy business.

Enriched doughs take longer to prove, so if there is somewhere warm to prove your dough, so much the better.

Makes 12 buns

For the bun dough:

500g strong white flour

5g/1tsp instant yeast

10g/2 level tsp salt

60g sugar (caster or brown)

90g softened butter

250ml warm milk, or half-milk-half-water

1 beaten egg

For the filling:

60g melted butter

90g sugar (caster or brown)

90g raisins and/or currants

40g candied peel

Egg wash

For the glaze:

50ml water

50g caster sugar

Crushed lump sugar (optional)

Make the dough using a stand mixer, if possible: first, mix all of the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Next, make a well in the centre and add the butter, liquid and egg. Mix to combine the ingredients and then knead with a dough hook on a slow-medium speed for around 10 minutes until smooth and the stickiness of the mixture has much reduced. Lightly oil another bowl (and your hands) and turn out the dough, tightening it up into a ball. Cover and prove until at least double in size. I proved mine at room temperature and it took 90 minutes.

As you wait, line a 24 x 34 cm deep-side tray with greaseproof paper, fixing it in place with dots of oil or butter.

Fix the side closest to you by pressing and spreading the doughy edge to the worktop.

When doubled in size, roll or press out the dough out on a lightly-floured surface – it’s still sticky so make sure you reapply flour to your worktop regularly – until you make a rectangle measuring approximately 40 x 60 cm, the dough with its long side facing you. Have patience and try to make the dough of even thickness.

Now apply the filling: lavishly brush the dough with the melted butter, go right up to the back edge, but leave a 1-cm gap on the side edges and 2-cm on the edge facing you.

Next, sprinkle the sugar evenly, then the dried fruit and candied peel.

Now the fun bit: fold the further edge over and start to roll up the dough by lifting and stretching gently before rolling, keeping the coil tight. It is easiest to do this in sections. Keep going until the dough is almost rolled up, then lightly brush the facing edge with a little water.

Using a sharp knife, cut off the two ends[5] – I like a serrated knife for this job – then cut the dough into 9 or 12 pieces. If the knife presses the edges a bit and flattens the coils, don’t worry, they can be easily reshaped by hand.

Arrange your buns in your prepared tin, leaving a good and even gap between them. Cover and allow to prove again: for me, this took 60 minutes.

When they are almost proved, preheat your oven to 200°C. When ready, brush each bun with beaten egg. Slide into the oven and bake for 25 to 3- minutes if baking 12 buns. It’s worth investigating them to check they have baked all the way through.

When they come out of the oven, sit them on a cooling rack in their tin.

Make the glaze by mixing the sugar and water in a pan over a medium heat. Stir to dissolve, increase the heat and bring to a boil, and let it bubble away for 30 seconds. Take off the heat and brush the buns: be lavish. It might take a couple of coats to use up all the glaze. If you like, sprinkle with crushed lump sugar.

[1] I refuse to call it X.

[2] Grigson, J. (1992) English Food. Third Edit. Penguin.

[3] David, E. (1977) English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Grub Street.

[4] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[5] Don’t throw these away: cook them separately and have with a cup of tea – baker’s perk!

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20/12/2023 · 6:57 am

Westmorland Sweet Lamb Pie

This post complements the 2023 Christmas special of The British Food History Podcast called ‘Mince Pies’:

I have written several times about mince pies and mincemeat over the years on the blog. There are my two go-to mincemeat recipes: Jane Grigson’s Orange mincemeat, and Mrs Beeton’s traditional mincemeat, along with instructions on how to make small, individual mince pies. This year, however, I wanted to make an old-fashioned sweet lamb pie, once eaten in  Westmorland in the Northwest of England, a defunct county now making up parts of Cumbria and North Yorkshire. It was one of the last areas of the country to carry on putting meat in its mincemeat mixtures.[1] Like all mince pies of the past, they were not eaten only at Christmas, but much of the year, though because of the dried fruit content, they were associated with wintertime.

I was first introduced to this pie by Jane Grigson, and I made it many moons ago, for the Neil Cooks Grigson blog, I really liked it and have been meaning to revisit it.[2] These pies were not of the small individual type, but large plate pies, baked in a pie plate made of earthenware, tin or enamel.[3]

I’ve based the recipe on hers, but I did make some changes inspired by other recipes found on the Foods of England Project website.[4] The mincemeat isn’t cooked, but because of the booze and sugar content, it keeps very well. Don’t be put off by the meat content, it makes the filling succulent – and you can taste it, but this blurring of sweet and savoury is most delicious, something I have come to embrace after so many years of making historical British food.

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The filling:

This makes around 2 ¼ litres of well-packed filling, but I do intend to make two large pies at least and lots of smaller ones, so scale down if need be. It keeps for months if left somewhere dark, dry and cool; and remember mince pies are for life, not just for Christmas.

500 g lean lamb

200 g lamb or beef suet, membrane and sinew removed (packet stuff is acceptable if fresh is unavailable)

350 g apples, peeled and cored

120 g almonds

250 g each currants, raisins and sultanas

300 g soft, dark brown sugar

100 g chopped candied peel

Juice and zest of 2 oranges

120 ml dark rum

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp each ground mace and cinnamon

½ freshly grated nutmeg

To make a truly ‘minced’ meat, you need to chop the meat, suet, apples and almonds quite finely. (You can, of course, use minced lamb, slivered almonds and grated apple and suet).

My ‘minced’ lamb and suet

Mix everything together in a large bowl and pack tightly into sterilised jars.[5] Leave to mature for at least a week before using.

The pie:

These pies were made on pie plates, but you can make them in any flan or pie tin you like. For my 26 cm diameter pie plate I used the following amounts, though the pastry was quite thin, so you may want to proportion things up in line with perhaps 360 g flour. I will leave it to you to judge size and thinness. There are instructions on how to make small, individual mince pies here.

300 g plain flour

150 g butter, or 75 g each butter and lard

75 g caster or icing sugar

80-100 ml cold water

Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with ½ tsp salt

Dice the fat and rub into the flour until breadcrumbs are formed (or use the flat beater on a machine, set to slow), then add the sugar, mix, and add the water slowly mixing and stirring. Bring everything together to form a firm dough. You might not need all of the water. Knead briefly to smooth the dough, cover and then leave to rest in the fridge for around 30 minutes.

Roll out two-thirds of the dough into a round, lift and lay it over the plate neatly. Prick the base with a fork. Spoon the filling in. Again, go with your gut – do you want a thin amount or loads? I added enough to come up to the lip of my plate.

Roll the remaining third of the pastry out into a round. As it rests, wash the rim of the pie plate and place the lid on top, securing it with a crimping tool or fork prongs or with your thumb or forefinger. Cut a steam hole and brush with egg. You can sprinkle a little sugar over the top if you fancy.

Place in the fridge to firm up and preheat the oven to 200°C. When the oven has come up to heat, slide the pie onto the centre shelf and cook for around 35 minutes, or until a good golden-brown colour and you can see the filling bubble through the steam hole.

Best eaten warm with thick cream, or rum butter.

I ate my first piece so quickly, I forgot to photograph it. This is my seconds.

[1] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[2] Read the original post here: http://neilcooksgrigson.com/2014/01/02/388-sweet-lamb-pie-from-westmorland/

[3] Grigson, J. (1992) English Food. Third Edit. Penguin.

[4] Hughes, G., ‘North Country Sweet Pie’, The Foods of England Project. http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/northcountrysweetpie.htm

[5] To sterilise jars, heat them in the oven for 25 minutes at 120°C. Any rubber seals – or lids with rubber seals, can be sterilised in very hot water.

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26/05/2023 · 1:08 pm

Dock Pudding

The good thing about being a lover of British puddings is that there is an almost infinite number to cook and try. All of the pudding recipes I have posted on the blog thus far have all been of the sweet variety, and they have all been fairly well known, but this year I am going to try and write some posts and recipes for savoury or obscure ones. First up is dock pudding which happens to tick both of those boxes. This pudding is one I have been meaning to cook for years, but I’ve only gotten around to it until now.

Dock pudding used to be very popular in Yorkshire, especially in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. The dock in question isn’t the common dock (the one you rub on nettle stings) but a particular species that goes under several names including bistort, passion dock and sweet dock, its Latin name is Polygonum bistorta.[1] It can be distinguished from the common dock by its yellowish spear-shaped leaves. The leaves are collected when young, alongside tender nettle tops, there is a recipe for it in Alexis Soyer’s classic 19th century work A Shilling Cookery For the People, where it is made with a mix of two-thirds passion dock, and one-third nettles.[2] These were supplemented or replaced with whatever greens were around: sorrel, raspberry leaves, chives, spinach, etc, the choice changing with the season. These are washed, sliced and cooked with onion or leek and oatmeal to make a very dark green porridge, which is fried in dollops in bacon fat, lard or beef dripping.[3] It has been likened to Welsh laverbread in colour and flavour, in that you will either love it or hate it.[4] It sometimes goes by the name herb pudding, which makes sense seeing as docks are only eaten in the springtime when they are tender. It is mixed with more oatmeal and water, tied in a cloth and boiled, cooled and fried in slices.

My patch of Passion dock

Technically, then, I could have used any green leaves, but I really wanted to make it with Passion dock; so called because it is found growing during Passion Week, the last week of Lent.[5] It was an extremely important food, the first fresh green vegetable after a winter of eating only pickled vegetables and salted meats. Many people were showing signs of scurvy by early spring, so few fresh vegetables were eaten. Dock is also said to be an excellent blood cleanser and good for the skin too, being a preventative of spots and pimples.[6]

Dock pudding was especially popular in the Victorian era, but was considered a famine food in the 20th century.[7] Very few people eat it now, but there is an outlier because the West Yorkshire town of Mytholmroyd has held the World Dock Pudding Championships every May since 1971.[8] I’m going to try my best to go next year.

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I found a patch of Passion dock growing in the Cheshire town of Lymm last year, but they were far too old and tough to pick, but I remembered this year. Oddly, I couldn’t find any nettles, but I did spot some sorrel and some wild garlic. I was in a bit of a rush, and didn’t have enough to make the very green sort of pudding, but I didn’t want to boil one (to save on fuel), so tried a common trick of cooking it in a saucepan, pouring and setting it in a tub so I could slice and fry it. This method is sometimes used for other savoury puddings such as black pudding or mealy pudding.

Makes 8 to 10 slices of pudding:

100 g trimmed, young leaves of any amount of the following: passion dock, nettles, spinach, sorrel or any other edible greens you like

1 leek or onion, sliced thinly

80 g oatmeal (not rolled oats)

1 tsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

400 ml water

A smidge of flavourless oil such as sunflower or groundnut

8 rashers of streaky bacon

30 g lard or dripping, or 2 tbs of your favourite frying fat or oil

Your pudding needs to be cooked, cooled and set the day before you want to eat it (or several days before if you like). To do this, shred the leaves and add them to a pan with the leek or onion, oatmeal, salt, pepper and water. Bring to a simmer, stirring so that it doesn’t form lumps.

Cook for around 20 minutes and all of the vegetables are soft, then take off the heat. Now take a tub of around 1 litre capacity and brush with the oil. Pour the pudding into the tub, cover, cool and then refrigerate.

When you want to cook your pudding, first fry the bacon in your chosen frying fat or oil over a medium heat until very crisp. As they cook, prepare the pudding: turn out onto a board and cut even slices between 1 and 1.5 cm thick. It’s best to use a serrated knife for this task.

Remove the bacon rashers and keep warm as you fry the pudding slices: turn up the heat to medium-high and pop in the slices. It’s a bit like making bubble and squeak in that you need to wait and allow them to build up a good, crisp fried layer before you disturb them: a good 5 minutes. Turn over with a spatula and fry the other side for a further 4 or 5 minutes.

When ready, serve up with the bacon and whatever other breakfast things you like. I went with fried eggs.

Notes:

[1] Brears, P. (2014) Traditional Food in Yorkshire. Prospect Books.

[2] Soyer, A. A Shilling Cookery for the People: Embracing an Entirely New System of Plain Cookery and Domestic Economy. (Geo. Routledge & Co., 1855).

[3] Davidson, A. (1999) The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press.

[4] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[5] If you want to know more about the food of Passion Week, listen to this episode of the podcast:

[6] Davidson (1999); Brears (2014)

[7] Brears (2014)

[8] Davidson (1999)

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29/12/2022 · 11:10 am

Black bun (Scotch Bun) Part 2: Recipe

My traditional yeast-leavened black bun

As promised, and carrying on from my last post, here is my recipe for the traditional yeast leavened black bun (Scotch bun). I must say I was really surprised with how well it turned out: it was enriched with so much stuff and was so huge, I thought the poor little yeast cells wouldn’t be able to do their job. I was wrong, but it did take two days to do two provings required before baking.

The white dough is essentially a sweet brioche made without eggs. When it was time to knock it back after its first rising, I was encouraged by the network of small yeasty bubbles that had formed inside the dough.

The tiny bubbles in my enriched basic dough

The bun was huge and made quite the centrepiece (though if you wanted to reduce the quantities and make a smaller one, go ahead). The cake inside was deliciously moist, and the brioche dough wonderfully buttery and thin and in such contrast with the treacle-black centre.

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It may have been big, but it kept well and was perfectly delicious well over a week after baking.

For the basic dough:

450 g plain white flour

450 g strong white bread flour

160 g caster sugar

10 g dried fast-action yeast

20 g salt

160 g softened butter

400 ml hand-hot full-fat milk

A smidge of flavourless oil

For the centre:

750 g basic dough

100 ml black treacle

400 g currants

400 g raisins

100 g candied peel

100 g slivered almonds

1 tsp mixed spice

½ tsp each ground cinnamon and allspice

2 eggs, plus 1 more for glazing

Butter for greasing

Granulated sugar

Two days before you want to bake your black bun, in the evening, make the basic dough. This is best done with an electric mixer, however don’t let me stop you attempting this by hand. Mix the dry ingredients – flours, yeast, sugar and salt – in your mixing bowl, make a well and add the butter and milk. Mix slowly with a dough hook until everything is mixed together, then turn the speed up a little and knead until smooth. Because it’s a low-gluten mixture and there’s all of that butter and sugar, it won’t be very elastic, but when it’s really smooth, you are done. It should take 8 to 10 minutes.

Paint the inside of a bowl with oil, then bundle up the sticky dough as best you can and cover with cling film. Leave to prove until around double in size. This took 18 hours: I use a low amount of yeast on purpose that the yeast ferments slowly. It may take less time for you if you used more yeast, and if your home is warmer than mine.

Knock back the dough and place 750 g of the dough in your food mixer, then add the treacle, dried fruits, candied peel, almonds, spices and eggs. Mix with a flat beater for a couple of minutes until everything looks smooth and like a Christmas cake batter. Set aside.

Take the remaining dough, form into a ball, place on a floured work surface and roll out into a large circle 32-35 cm in diameter. Make sure your pin is floured too; this will prevent sticking. With slightly wet hands, scoop the dark sticky dough and pop it in the centre of your circle. Now gather the dough so that the centre is completely covered – rather like a giant Eccles cake.

Cut away bits of the dough that have bunched up too much and glue any edges with a thin coat of beaten egg. Don’t worry if it looks a bit messy. Turn the bun over and flatten it with your hands, smoothing away any bulging bits to make a nice round shape.

Now liberally grease a 25 cm flan ring with butter and place on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and then dusted with flour, and place the bun in the centre. Press the bun or lightly roll it with your rolling pin so that is just a centimetre off from touching the edge. Paint the top with egg and scatter over a little granulated sugar, then stab holes in the top with a thin, pointed knife right down to its base – this keeps it flat as it rises. Cover with a large plastic bag[1] and allow to prove until it has grown large enough to fill the ring. For me, this took 12 hours.

Preheat your oven to 175°C and place a heatproof tin on the bottom of the oven. When it’s time to bake the bun boil the kettle, then open the oven and slide your bun onto the middle shelf, gingerly slide the tin out enough so that you can pour in the hot water, slide it back in and close the door.

Bake at this temperature for an hour, then turn the heat down to 140°C and bake for a further 2½ hours. If the top is getting too brown, cover it with some kitchen foil.

Remove from the oven, and slide onto a cooling rack. Remove the ring when the bun is just warm.

The black bun will keep for weeks in an airtight box or tub. It is delicious eaten with sharp cheese.

Notes:

[1] I find a supermarket ‘bag for life’ is best for this task. I have one that I use only for proving things like this. Turn it over and turn up the edges, as you would your trousers to make it a sturdy shape and hey presto!

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27/12/2022 · 6:16 pm

Black Bun (Scotch Bun) Part 1: History

Before we begin: a big thank you to Scots chef and food writer Sue Lawrence for helping me out with the research for this post.

It has become a Christmas tradition of mine to ask my Twitter followers to select by Christmas post for me by way of a poll. I like to include both obvious and obscure options and was very pleased this year to see roast turkey receive no votes all (though I suppose I’ll have to write about it at some point!), and the most obscure on the list – the black bun – win out with 46% of the votes.[1]

The black bun – sometimes called a Scotch bun – is a Scottish speciality that has changed in shape and constitution through the years, but is today a type of fruit cake baked in a loaf tin lined with shortcrust pastry. It is then covered with more pastry, egg washed and baked. The cake was often made black with the addition of black treacle; Sue Lawrence says of these very rich black buns, ‘the malevolent appearance of the black inner of its shiny golden pastry case might be off-putting to some black bun virgins.’ It might come as no surprise that the bun ‘is almost invariably served with a dram of whiskey.’[2]

Black buns today are fruit cakes wrapped in pastry (pic: BBC)

It is traditional to eat black buns at Hogmanay, the Scots new year festival. Food writer and chef and Sue Lawrence writes evocatively of childhood experiences of the Hogmanay celebration:

‘As I grew up, Hogmanay…was always a time for friends and fun. Friends and neighbours would get together to have a drink and the traditional shortbread (often eaten with cheese), sultana cake, black bun and such delights as ginger and blackcurrant cordial.’[3]

For many Scots Hogmanay, was – and is – more important than Christmas Day is the Christmastide calendar. The black bun is actually the Scots’ Twelfth Cake, but the food and the party was, according to F. Marion McNeill, ‘transferred to Hogmanay after the banning of Christmas and its subsidiary festival, Uphaelieday or Twelfth Night, by the Reformers.’ Christmas Day saw a similar treatment, hence the importance of Hogmanay over other days.[4]

It’s worth mentioning that the black bun wasn’t eaten throughout Scotland: in the Highlands and islands the clootie dumpling was eaten instead.[5] I talk about the clootie dumpling and other Hogmanay foods and traditions with Ulster-Scots chef Paula McIntyre in a new episode of The British Food History Podcast published on 28 December 2022:

You may be wondering why it is called a bun. Well. If you look at older recipes, you’ll see that it was using an enriched white bread dough, a proportion of which is mixed with all of those ingredients one  might expect in a Twelfth/Christmas cake: currants, raisins (sultanas are avoided because of their paler colour), candied peel, etc. The mixture was then wrapped in the remaining dough, proved and baked. They were huge and ‘graced many a festive table in the big houses of Scotland over the centuries’, one recipe, provided by Sue Lawrence, used 15 pounds (6.8 kilos) of flour!

I first heard of the black bun, not in a Scottish cookery book as one might expect but in Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery.[6] She described it as ‘a remarkable confection’, and it is one of the few British, but not English, recipes included in the volume. Indeed, as I found out whilst researching this post, black buns were sold by Edinburgh bakers and sent as gifts all across the British Isles; so it was, at a time, well-known outside of Scotland. Because her book is on yeast cookery, Elizabeth only includes older recipes that use yeast as a leavening agent. She provides several recipes from several sources, and it is interesting to see how the bun became richer and fruitier as time went on. Black buns grew to be so enriched that it became almost impossible to leaven them using yeast, luckily this happened around the same time chemical raising agents were commercially available. At first the chemically-leavened buns were made with bicarbonate of soda and buttermilk – just like a soda bread – but over time, it became more like a regular fruit cake.[7] The pastry initially used was a huff paste – a pastry somewhere between a hot water pastry and a shortcrust. At first it wasn’t eaten, the paste simply protecting the interior, however as time went on, the pastry was swapped for a richer, more buttery shortcrust.[8]

The black bun also gets a special mention in another classic book of English food, Dorothy Hartley’s Food in England,[9] where it is described as a pastry-lined cake. Interestingly, in this book, there is a rare illustration showing the variety of shapes in which the black buns were made:

There are many fantastic recipes for the cake/pastry sort of black bun; Sue Lawrence has one in her forthcoming Scottish Baking Book, and there is one is F. Marion McNeill’s wonderful The Scot’s Kitchen[10] too, so I thought I’d give the yeast-leavened one a go.

I read through a few recipes and based mine on a recipe by Florence Jack, provided by Ms. David in her book. What I liked about it was that it seemed very black: loads of currants and raisins as well as added treacle. I did tone some of the ingredients down because it seemed to me that it enriched it simply wouldn’t rise.

I’ll let you know how I got on in the next post….

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Notes:

[1] The other two options were Brussels sprouts and buche de Noel which attained 21% and 33% of the votes respectively.

[2] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[3] Lawrence, S. (2003) Sue Lawrence’s Scottish Kitchen. Headline.

[4] McNeill, F. M. (1968) The Scots Kitchen: Its Lore & Recipes. 2nd edn. Blackie & Son Limited.

[5] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999)

[6] David, E. (1977) English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Grub Street.

[7] Hartley, D. (1954) Food in England. Little, Brown & Company.

[8] McNeill, F. M. (1968)

[9] Hartley, D. (1954)

[10] McNeill, F. M. (1968)

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18/10/2022 · 1:27 pm

My Best Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

Carrying on from my conversation about Yorkshire pudding with Elaine Lemm on the podcast recently, I thought I should toss my hat into the ring with my own recipe.

This post complements the episode ‘Yorkshire Pudding with Elaine Lemm’ on The British Food History Podcast:

This is a simple affair, and after some rigorous recipe testing, using fewer eggs or different mixtures of milk and water, as well as different receptacles in which to cook the batter, I think it is both excellent and fool proof. It goes by the tried-and-tested equal ratio method: i.e. equal volumes of plain flour, milk and eggs, plus a good pinch of salt, and animal fat (in my case, lard).

The pudding takes around 40 minutes to cook, the perfect amount of time to rest your roast meat before carving and serving.

In the podcast episode Elaine and I came to the conclusion that anything made in a muffin tin, isn’t really a proper Yorkshire pudding. Indeed, the consensus on my Special Postbag Edition of the podcast, cooking the batter in a tray achieves the best proportion of crispy, crunchy bits on the fringes and nice puddingy softness in the base. Listen to that episode here:

Have something to add to the debate? Please get in contact or leave a comment at the end of this post, I’m sure I shall be revisiting the subject in future postbag episodes.

A large pudding has both softness and crunch

Cooking in a dish that is good and thick is important for a good rise: you need something that will heat up in the oven, but also retain it when the cool batter is poured in. Don’t go for anything flimsy here: a really thick metal tin, or even better, an earthenware dish: it’s thickness and its property of retaining heat creates a pud with a fantastic rise: I got such a good one it almost hit the grill elements in my oven when put on the middle shelf! I give the dimensions of my dish in the recipe, but don’t worry if yours is slightly different; puddings like this are very forgiving with respect to dish size.

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Make the batter a few hours (minimum one) before you want to cook it.

Serves 6 to 8 if eaten with a roast dinner:

¾ cup (180 ml) plain flour

A good three-finger pinch of sea salt

¾ cup (180 ml) eggs

¾ cup (180 ml) milk, full fat, if possible

30 g lard, dripping or goose or duck fat

Put the flour and salt in a bowl, make a well in the centre and pour your eggs inside the well. Use a whisk to combine the eggs and flour, starting in the well, gradually mixing the flour into the eggs. This prevents lumps forming.

Once the flour and eggs are mixed, add the milk, whisking slowly at first, until it is fully mixed in, then give it a good thrashing for 30 seconds or so. Leave, covered, at room temperature until you want to cook it. If you like, pour the whole lot into a jug, for easier handling later.

When you are ready to cook your pudding, preheat the oven to 200°C.

Place the fat in your tin or dish – I used an earthenware dish of dimension 20 x 28 cm, with steeply sloping sides – and place on the centre shelf of your oven. Give the dish and fat plenty of time to get fully hot: I leave it in there for a good 25 minutes.

Now give the batter a final good whisking, quickly (but carefully) open the oven door, pull the shelf of the oven out slightly so that you can pour in the batter. The batter should sizzle and frill up in the fat.

Quickly push the shelf back into place and close the door. Do not open the door until 25 minutes have elapsed.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, depending upon how dark you like your risen crispy edges.

Remove and slice into squares, serving it up with your roast dinner.

A pudding of high proportions

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09/03/2022 · 4:29 pm

Cheese and Leek (or Onion) Pie

Hello! I’m back after two-month hiatus. Did you miss me?

It’s British Pie Week this week so I thought I’d post a recipe for a favourite of mine. The trouble is, I have many favourites, so I came up with a list of four and let Twitter decide. I was very glad to see my favourite won.

Later, I saw the cheese and leek/onion pie was tenth in the top ten favourite UK pies, receiving just 1% of the vote!* Shocking. I think there may be a north-south divide effect at work there; back in the days of my market stall and restaurant, cheese and leek pie was by far the favourite.

The cheese and onion pie or pasty used to be a very important food for the working classes of Northern England, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire: it’s easy to make and the ingredients are cheap compared to meaty fillings. It’s the pie equivalent of the Welsh Rabbit/Rarebit.

The simplest of fillings were made of cooked onion, thinly-sliced raw potato, or cold mashed potato, and grated cheese. On the fancier side, a thick white sauce is used instead of mash. For my recipe I am going somewhere in between to hopefully enjoy the best of both worlds. I use onion and leek interchangeably because either (or both) can be used: I make leek pies as I’m intolerant to onion.

As for the cheese, use a mature kind that melts easily: Cheddar, Lancashire, Double Gloucester etc. The pastry should be a simple shortcrust made with half butter, half lard, but all butter is good too.

Serve the pie with mashed potatoes or chips, with peas and gravy as is traditional, but this pie eats very well just warm with a dressed green salad and some good old salad cream.

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Makes one large pie to serve 6 people (or 4 greedy ones who always have seconds)

For the filling:

50 g butter

1 leek, trimmed and sliced, but with the green left on; or 2 medium onions, peeled and sliced

350 g (approx.) potatoes, peeled and diced (about 2 medium-sized ones)

Salt and pepper

1 tbs plain flour

1 tsp English mustard powder

275 ml hot milk

150 g grated cheese

Pinch Cayenne pepper (optional)

2 tbs double cream

For the pastry:

400 g plain flour

200g salted butter, or 100 g each butter and lard (or shortening)

120 ml water or milk

Egg wash

Start with the filling. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the leek or onion and potatoes, season with half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Cook over a medium heat until the leek or onion melts right down. Do this slowly, turning down the heat if necessary – you don’t want to fry them, though a pale golden brown colour is fine.

Stir in the flour and mustard and cook for a minute before mixing half of the milk. When the milk combines with the flour to make a smooth sauce, add the remainder of the milk and combine again.

Simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then remove from the heat and stir in the cheese. Mix in the Cayenne pepper. Check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper. It’s a good idea to slightly over season the filling to make up for the comparatively bland shortcrust pastry. Finally stir in the cream and allow to cool completely. I usually make my cooked fillings a day or two ahead of time.

Now make the pastry. Rub the fat(s) into the flour. If you are using unsalted butter, add half a teaspoon of salt. If you are making pastry by hand, unless you have forearms like Popeye, use fats that are at room temperature. If using a mixer, use the flat beater and use cold fats straight from the fridge. Either way, once it resembles breadcrumbs add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time until you have a soft but not sticky dough. Knead very briefly, wrap in cling film and leave it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

After resting, take around a third of the dough and roll out on a lightly floured worktop. I used an 18 cm cake tin because I like deep-filled pies, but a shallow pie dish or flan ring of around 25 cm would work too. Roll out a third of the pastry into a circle. Leave the pastry to rest again for a minute or so before laying it in the tin. Be careful to press the pastry into the corners without stretching it: lift it in carefully. If using a deep dish as I have it’s helpful to fold the pastry into quarters, placing it in the dish or tin and then unfolding it.

Roll out the remainder of the pastry to make a lid. Cut a steam hole in the centre and set aside.

Spoon in the pie filling, but don’t fill it too much – it does expand as it cooks. Now brush the edges with egg wash (I use an egg, or egg yolk, beaten with half a teaspoon of salt). Glue the lid in place, pressing the lid down well.

Trim the excess pastry with a sharp knife and then crimp the edges or use a fork to seal the lid. Paint with more egg wash, and if you like add a bit more black pepper. Place in the fridge to set the pastry.

Preheat your oven to 220°C and pop a baking tray on the centre shelf.

(If you have any left-over pastry and filling, make a pasty with it (see here for my Cornish pasty recipe) and bake it with the pie, or freeze it. Both pastry and filling freeze well separately.)

Take the pie out of the fridge and place in the oven on the hot baking tray (this prevents a soggy bottom from developing) and bake for 45 minutes, turning down the heat to 180°C when the pastry is a nice golden brown.

*The poll appeared in the Metro back in 2017: https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/09/the-most-loved-pies-around-the-uk-may-divide-the-nation-6498584/

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07/09/2021 · 7:50 am

Cobnuts, Filberts & Hazelnuts (& Cobnut Cake)

One of my favourite seasonal foods are fresh Kentish cobnuts, and they are in season right now, so I thought I’d write a little post about them in case you see them at your local greengrocer’s shop. In the north of England they are difficult to get hold of, and when you do see them they cost a small fortune, but luckily for me, I was in London last weekend and spotted a fruit seller outside Borough Market selling big punnets at just £3.50 a pop. Up North, I’d have had to remortgage.

Cobnut season runs from late August to October in the UK, and they can – or, at least, their wild cousins can – be found growing on wild hazel trees all around the country – in fact they grow in abundance near me in Manchester. Unfortunately, the squirrels beat me to them every year. Nutting season traditionally started on 20 August on St Philibert’s Day.1

Wild, unripe Mancunian hazel/cobnuts

There’s a little confusion regarding nomenclature here, as is so often the case, some call these nuts cobnuts, others filberts, and some call them simply hazelnuts. Are there any real differences between the three or are they just regional names for the same thing? Well that all depends upon whom you ask, and when in time you ask.

Let’s start with the wild tree, the hazel, or to give its Latin name Corylus arellana. These nuts are hazels, or hazelnuts, they are elongate and flatter that the supermarket variety, but they still have the same smooth shells. This is what many people today would call a cobnut. This common tree produces nuts that was an important foodstuff for Neolithic humans, and they have been cultivated since Roman times.2,3 These cultivated trees were bred for greater yields and larger nuts changing making them more spherical in shape. These round nuts were called cobs, or cobnuts, and they are what we would call hazelnuts today. They grow so well in Kent that at one point 7000 acres of land was put aside for their cultivation, plenty to export a significant number to the United States.3

Okay, let’s, for the sake of argument, say that hazels are the wild nuts and cobnuts are their cultivated cousins, where do filberts fit in? Well, these are a larger cultivated nut from a completely different species of hazel (C. americanus).4 They were regarded as a rather upmarket orchard fruit, whilst cobnuts were considered more suitable for the hedgerow (or did they mean hazels!?).3

Today, cobnuts appear to be a catch-all term for any of the elongate forms of hazelnuts. The great thing about getting them fresh is that they have a lovely crisp, refreshing flavour, rather like water chestnut but with a mild hazelnut flavour. They are still covered in their green protective coats (shucks) and sometimes even the shell is still green. They store well and can be dried and eaten months later. An alternative to drying is to shell the fresh kernels and store them in honey. I expect the fresh kernels would make very successful pine nut replacement in pesto.

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Kentish Cobnut Cake

The best known traditional food made with cobnuts is Kentish cobnut cake. A dense cake flavoured with ginger and sweetened with some kind of unrefined sugar or honey. Some are made like a sponge cake by creaming butter and sugar, others are made by melting butter and syrup/sugar together. I go for the latter method. I found a few recipes that include a good dollop of double cream in the mix, so I’ve added it my recipe. This produces a dense cake, which I prefer, but if you want to make a lighter one, mix a teaspoon of baking powder into the flour and swap the cream for around half its volume of milk (i.e. 80 ml). Being a syrupy cake, it benefits from a couple of days’ maturing time in an air-tight box. You can use any syrup you like, or indeed any unrefined sugar. Honey works very well, especially if you have stored within it some cobnut kernels. As far as the nuts go: hazels, cobnuts or filberts all work equally well.

Makes one 8 inch/23 cm cake.

180 g butter

120 g golden syrup or honey

80 g Demerara, or any brown sugar

150 ml double cream (or 80 ml milk, if going for the lighter option)

3 knobs preserved ginger, chopped

2 eggs, beaten

240 g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder (optional; use if going for the lighter option)

1 ½ tbs ground ginger

100-150 g whole cobnuts, shelled weight

Preheat oven to 160°C and line a 20 cm round cake tin.

Melt the butter, syrup or honey and sugar in a saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Take off the heat and mix in the cream (or milk), chopped preserved ginger and then the eggs.

Mix the baking powder, if using, into the flour, then mix in the ground ginger and cobnuts. Make a well in the centre and pour in the butter-sugar mixture, stirring slowly with a whisk until the batter is smooth.

Pour into the lined cake tin and bake for anywhere between 1 and 1 ¼ hours. Test it is ready using a skewer. Cool in the tin.

References

1.           Wright, J. River Cottage Handbook No.7: Hedgerow. (Bloomsbury, 2010).

2.           Vaughan, J. G. & Geissler, C. A. The New Oxford Book of Food Plants. (Oxford University Press, 2009).

3.           Mason, L. & Brown, C. The Taste of Britain. (Harper Press, 1999).

4.           Johnson, O. & More, D. Collin’s Tree Guide. (Collins, 2004).

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05/04/2021 · 4:45 pm

Glamorgan Sausages (Selsig Sir Forgannwg)

The breakfast was delicious, consisting of excellent tea, buttered toast and Glamorgan sausages, which I really think are not a whit inferior to those of Epping.  

George Barrow, Wild Wales, 1862*

I don’t know about you, but I’m a beggar for freezing all sorts of bits and bobs left over from kitchen tasks or clearing out the fridge – carcasses, egg whites, vegetable trimmings – all in the name of frugality, and then promptly forgetting about them entirely. Because of this bad habit my freezer is full to bursting, and desperately needs emptying. The worst offender is fresh breadcrumbs: two bags full of them, in fact. As soon as I saw them, three foods flashed up in my mind: a nice stuffing for poultry, Queen of Puddings or the Welsh classic, Glamorgan sausages. Unsure which to make, I turned to Twitter, and Twitter resolutely told me it should be Glamorgan sausages. I was sure Queen of Puddings would win, but I’m always terrible at guessing the outcomes of these things.

A Glamorgan sausage is “a kind of savoury rissole made of cheese, leek or onion, eggs and breadcrumbs.”1 and they hail from the Vale of Glamorgan, south-east Wales. The Vale has been excellent spot for dairy farming for millennia, says Jane Grigson: “the Iron and Roman Age Welsh were largely a pastoral people moving about and dependent upon flocks and herds.”2 The work was – and is – hard, and communities were often cut off from other for whole seasons at a time; it seems that it was worth it though because the cows were very productive, and there was often a surplus of milk and cheese. This cheese was mixed with leftover bread and flavoured with leek, spring onions and parsley. This mixture was formed into sausage shapes and fried in lard or beef dripping.

A 1627 map of Wales, the Vale of Glamorgan is circled in black

There is a myth that the Glamorgan sausage is actually a twentieth century invention, created by the Ministry of Food during the Second World War to push meat-free cooking during rationing. As the quote at the top of this post tells us, they have been around a lot longer than the 1940s.

Traditionally Glamorgan sausages were made using Glamorgan cheese from the milk of the old Glamorgan and Gwent breeds3,4 which declined to almost extinction in the twentieth century, and so a replacement cheese is used today, the best known Welsh cheese, Caerphilly. It is described by the Welsh Cheese Company thus: “Caerphilly has a lactic, fresh lemony flavour and a slightly crumbly texture.”5 They also complain – as do I – of the wan, tasteless Caerphilly cheese we find in our supermarkets today.

If you cannot find a good Caerphilly from a good cheesemonger, I would advise going for a different cheese altogether, the best substitute being Lancashire. You can, of course, use Cheddar, indeed I have used it several times in past, so I will not judge.

Glamorgan sausages ready for frying

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If you’ve never made them before, have a go because they are easy to make and delicious, and, in my mind, a much superior vegetarian sausage to any masquerading as ‘meaty’ in supermarkets’ freezer cabinets. They can also be made and kept in the fridge for up to three days until you want to fry them. They also freeze well uncooked.

The great food historian Theodora Fitzgibbon suggests eating them “hot with fried puréed potatoes [or] for breakfast with bacon.”4 I heartily agree.

Makes 8 sausages

180-200 g Caerphilly cheese (or Lancashire or Cheddar)

120 g fresh breadcrumbs

3-4 cm section of leek, finely chopped

2 tbs chopped parsley

4 sage leaves, chopped

Leaves from 2 sprigs of thyme

2 tsp English mustard (or up to 3 if using a mature Cheddar)

2 eggs

Salt and pepper

2 tsp water

2 tbs seasoned flour

Extra breadcrumbs (fresh or dry) for coating

Sunflower oil, beef dripping or lard for frying

Grate the cheese and place in a food processor with the breadcrumbs, leek, herbs, mustard and one of the eggs and some salt and pepper. Pulse to a sticky rubble – the mixture should easy come together, if all seems a little dry, add the water and pulse again. This can all be done by hand, of course, if you prefer.

Bring the mixture together with your hands to form a nice yellow-green dough and divide into eight equal pieces. Wet your hands and roll the pieces into little sausages, around 1 ½ cm thick.

Now find three saucers, sprinkle the seasoned flour on one, beat the egg and pour that on another, then scatter your extra breadcrumbs on the third.

Now roll a sausage in the flour, tapping away excess, then the egg and then the breadcrumbs. Repeat for the remaining sausages.

Heat a deep frying pan over a medium-high heat with the oil or lard; you need enough for a half-centimetre depth. When hot fry the sausages for around 3 minutes, then turn them all a quarter turn – use two forks for this – cook another 3 minutes, etc until they are golden brown all over.

Remove and drain on kitchen paper and serve immediately.

*This quote is taken from, A Taste of Wales by Theordora FitzGibbon. The Epping sausages referred to in the quote are a skinless type made from pork and sometimes breadcrumbed or floured before frying, hence the comparison.

References

1.         Mason, L. & Brown, C. The Taste of Britain. (Harper Press, 1999).

2.         Grigson, J. English Food. (Penguin, 1992).

3.         Glamorgan. The Cheese Wiki https://cheese.fandom.com/wiki/Glamorgan.

4.         FitzGibbon, T. A Taste of Wales. (J M Dent & Sons Ltd, 1971).

5.         A brief history of Caerphilly cheese. The Welsh Cheese Company https://www.welshcheesecompany.co.uk/blog/brief-history-caerphilly-cheese/ (2020).

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24/12/2020 · 2:13 pm

Scáiltín (hot Irish milk punch)

Merry Christmas readers! It’s time for my annual Yuletide boozy drink recipe.

This year Christmas is a very different one, of course, scaled back so much many of us are spending it on our own of the first time, and there’s no chance of getting to a pub any time soon. But we’re a resolute lot, and I am sure we all plan to make the best of it.

If you need a bit of extra comfort this year (and I suspect you do), you could do a lot worse than making scáiltín, a delicious Irish milk punch. It’s very simple to make and you probably already have the ingredients at home.

I came across this delightful drink a few years ago inside The Complete Irish Pub Cookbook and served it up at my little restaurant in the wintertime where it was very popular. Scáiltín is a hot punch made with milk and Irish whiskey; we can agree on this. However, the flavourings vary quite a lot. I’ve scoured my books and the internet and, as so often is the case, found that there is a lot of disagreement. Some insist it should be sweetened with honey, others brown sugar; some say it’s not scáiltín unless it is flavoured with caraway, yet many claim that ginger and cinnamon must be used. Butter is added to enrich it, but only sometimes.

Of course, all of these variations are correct: by nature, regional foods vary within and between towns, and many of the differences probably came down to class. Spices were costly, so many had to miss them out altogether; though some of middling wealth would have reached for the caraway because it was one of the few spices that could be grown in Europe and was relatively cheap.

It seems to be a very old drink, probably mediaeval. However, there is very little information about this delicious drink out there, so if you know anything about this drink’s pedigree or have a recipe for it of your own, please leave a comment.

I have settled on the recipe below, essentially cherry-picking my favourite ingredients, but feel free to change them. I do insist you add the small knob of butter though. I think it makes all the difference. If you are not a fan of whiskey, you can substitute dark rum, but I must urge you to try it with the whiskey; I hate the bloody stuff usually, but somehow, combined with the ingredients below it is perfect. How many of us have received a bottle of it as a gift in the past only for it to collect dust on a shelf? Put it to good use, I say.

I hope you have a great Christmas despite everything that is going on, and if you are feeling a little too much like Scrooge this year, knock back a couple of these, I guarantee they will warm your cockles, and get you in the Christmas spirit.

See you on the other side! Neil xxx

Per person:

240 ml full-fat milk

1 to 2 shots (25 to 50 ml) Irish whiskey, dark rum or (heaven forbid!) Scotch whisky

1 tbs honey

Good pinch of mixed spice

1 tsp salted butter

A few rasps of freshly ground nutmeg

Place everything in a small saucepan except the nutmeg and heat gently whisking with a small whisk to get a good froth. Even better, if you have a proper coffee machine, heat it with the milk froth attachment for an extra silky scáiltín.

Pour the scáiltín into cups or mugs spooning the froth on top and quickly grate a little nutmeg over the top. Serve immediately.

Excellent with mince pies.

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References

The Complete Irish Pub Cookbook (2012) by Christine McFadden

Éigse: a journal of Irish studies; 1948, Volume 5

The Milk Punch Episode (2018) by Eric Kozlik, Modern Bar Cart https://www.modernbarcart.com/podcast/episode-076-the-milk-punch-episode

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