Nothing more homely than 'Corned Beef Pie'

I have a friend whose son lives in London and eats at expensive restaurants, but when he comes home to his Mum in Wales his food request is always corned beef pie. What is it about nursery food that brings out the soft side in grown men? Whatever it is, it is worth having a few nursery treats on hand to keep them satisfied. A bonus is that, uncooked, it freezes well.
So here is my recipe for the well loved pie.

The filling
1 tin of corned beef approx 350g
700g potatoes
1 onion
50g butter
salt and pepper

Chop the onion into small dice and fry in half the butter until golden.
Peel the potatoes and steam until soft. mash and put aside.
Cut the corned beef into  chunks and add to the warm potatoes along with the onion and the rest of the butter.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Allow the mixture to cool while you make the pastry. Do not be tempted to add hot mixture to the pastry as it will melt and be really difficult to work.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C

For the pastry:
300g plain flour, or you can use 100g wholemeal flour and 200g white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150g butter
water
Salt and pepper

Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add the salt and pepper to taste. Don't add too much as corned beef can be salty.
Add sufficient water to the mixture to bring it together in a ball of pastry. Do not overwork as it will make your mix tough.

Line a metal dish with two thirds of the pastry. Add the corned beef mix and smooth the top.
|Roll out the remaining pastry and cover the mixture.
Trim any excess pastry and crimp the edges to seal.

Cook in a preheated oven yntil golden brown. This can take between 30 - 45 mins. Make sure that the underside is cooked.

Enjoy.
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Strawberry Jam Making

At this time of year the strawberries are coming into their own, There are lots of luscious things to make with them, namely adding a small amount of sugar to them , allowing them to macerate for about 15 minutes and then eating with creme fraiche and meringue. What could be better. However, my brother gave me 2Kg of strawberries this week and as much as I love the above strawberry dessert, there were so many that I was moved to make jam!! The exclamation marks are there because I am no lover of strawberry jam. I have always found it too sweet for my taste. I prefer plum or sour cherry jams and when they are really good apricot jam, Oh and I forgot to mention blackberry. In the past I have tried to make strawberry jam myself and while I have not achieved jam I have made a very nice syrup. I think that you are beginning to understand my feelings about strawberry jam.

So, faced with these strawberries, I suddenly remembered the recent Raymond Bland television series, in which he met Christine Ferber, who is the acclaimed jam maker of France. I decided that if she couldn't give me a recipe for decent strawberry jam then no one could.

What I found was interesting, but her method of making jam over a couple of days is not a new one. I have seen it in old cookery books that I had on my shelves. Basically you take:

1Kg of hulled and quartered strawberries
1 kg of sugar ( I only used 650g)
1/2 a lemon

This is not a new recipe.

TAKE NOTE
I also uses a packet of powdered pectin. Don't use the liquid one as it is awful.
I don't like too much sugar in jam so I only used 650g. Far healthier and better.

Let’s  proceed. This is my adapted method and not the precise one given by Christine. 
Put the strawberries in a non reactive bowl ( plastic). Cover with 500g of sugar and the juice of half a lemon and stir. Place in the fridge overnight to let the juices run.
Next day, put the bowl in the microwave, plastic can be so handy, and bring up to boiling temperature. Switch off and allow to cool. You can do this in a sink filled with enough cold water to cover the base of the outside of the bowl. No water in the bowl. Return to the fridge. Leave overnight.
By the next day you will have a good amount of strawberry liquid and some, almost candied, strawberries floating about on the top. Strain the liquid into a medium saucepan and put the strawberries back into the plastic bowl.
Put the strawberries back into the microwave and heat up. This should take about 3 minutes. They need to be hot when they go back into the syrup as it speeds up the setting time.
Bring the strawberry liquid up to the  a rolling boil until it reaches 105 degrees C. Add the warm strawberries to the liquid and return to 105 degrees. Then add the rest of the sugar that you have mixed in with the powdered pectin. Mix well and boil rapidly until you reach 105 degrees. This should take about 4 minutes. Test for setness by doing a wrinkle test. See Delia for help on this.
Pour the jam into sterilised jars and put the tops on straight away. As the jars cool that should pop and this will tell you that an airtight seal has been created which will help your jam to stay fresh.
I found it helped to turn the jars upside down from time to time as this helps distribute the strawberry pieces.

Now for what I found.

I used my trusty thermometer that I bought from IKEA a couple of years ago. It is a probe so I think that it is much better than a sugar thermometer which is hard to read and a pain to clean.

It is really difficult to get the syrup to reach 105 degrees. I put it on the highest heat that I had and it insisted in boiling away like mad but never getting higher than 99. I now believe that this is the reason that my jam has never set before. I have never actually reached the setting temperature. You can boil for ages and make a disgusting jam without reaching a setting point.

This is why I cheated and added powdered pectin that I bought in France. Makes life so much easier and gives you a jam that sets without boiling the flavour out of it and helps to enhance the taste. Do not bother with liquid pectin as in my opinion it has a distinct flavour that will spoil the jam.

Crostata di Prugne Secche

Prunes are delicious. I know that in the UK they make people think of school dinners but a decent Agen prune cannot be beaten for flavour so when I was deciding on what to cook as a cake today I went for a prune filling for my pasta frolla. I did put a twist on it though so you will be delighted that it is not neat prunes, which it could well have been,

I started with the pasta frolla.  The recipe is so easy it is just the rolling out that you need to be careful with. It is a soft pastry that tends to break so I usually use cling film and roll it out on that. It is then easy to pick up and drapes over that cake tin.

Ingredients

150g butter

250 flour

grated rind of 1 lemon

Half a pack of lievito or two teaspoons of baking powder

2 egg yolks

150 sugar

Beat the sugar and butter together until creamy.

Beat in the egg and then fold in the flour and the baking powder until you have a soft dough. You can put it to rest in the fridge for about half an hour if you have the time.

Put a piece of cling film on the work surface and roll about two thirds of the pastry out on that. Make sure that it will cover the bottom and sides of the tin that you will be using.

For the prune filling

300g pitted prunes

100ml whipping cream

Brandy Use as much as you need to make a spreadable paste. I used about 100ml.

50g sugar

Put the prunes, brandy and sugar in the food processor and pulse until you have a thickish paste. It should still have bits in it . Too fine will be like baby food.

Turn it into a bowl and beat in the cream until you have a spreadable paste.

Spread over the pastry base and then roll out the remaining pastry and cover the filling. Trim and neaten the edges of the pastry.

Cook in a fairly hot oven for about 30 - 40 minutes until golden brown. Leave to cool and dust the top with icing sugar.

This cake is quite rich so small pieces are perfect.

Saucy monkey Pudding

How many of you have over ripe bananas going to waste in your fruit bowl? You know as well as I do that there is only so much banana bread that you can make. So you'll be delighted with this pudding from Short and Sweet. This time it's for hot, buttered nutty bananas with a banana chocolate sponge. Serves four. As an aside, and an important one at that, I couldn't resist making a pudding with this name.

As this super scrumptious recipe has been published in the Guardian, you will have to go there for the details, but please leave a comment here.

Published in The Guardian.

Miraculously, I didn't change a thing!

I've been asked to direct you to the Guardian page for the recipe.

Dan Lepard's Rum Cake

Although this recipe was published in 'The Guardian', those of you who have seen the previous post will know that I have the wonderful book from Dan Lepard so I actually used that one. I also cooked it in a round thin in the shape of an 'O' as Dan suggested. I think that this helped as the cake cooked more quickly than if it was a traditional round cake. The moisture in the cake might have made it sink.


Please don't expect this to be a pretty cake but, what it lacks in looks it makes up for in taste. I think that you will see that the cake is very moist. It could be the pineapple that is cooked in the mixture or the copious amounts of rum that were included in the ingredients and poured over it after cooking. Who cares really as the result was mouthwatering.

I did have to make some changes, not because I thought that the recipe needed it, but because I was missing a few ingredients and so I substituted, almonds for brazil nuts, raisins for dates and mixed spice for the spices. otherwise it was exactly as published and I must say, delicious. You will not regret making this cake. Your only regret will be in eating the last slice.

Recipe can be found here at the Guardian

Short and Sweet

I think that I've just bought the best cookery book ever and that it a statement that I don't bandy around without thought.

I bought this book despite the lack of pictures as the recipes and writing are so tempting that I couldn't resist.

I've already made a few things so as soon as the pictures are available --- problems with computers ---  don't ask, I will get them out to you.

Let me see

It occurred to me today that, if the statistics for this blog are correct, a lot of people look at this blog.  A few leave comments, but no one has told me about what they have cooked and whether they liked it if they did so.

So I am throwing out the challenge.

Tell me what you have made from the recipes on this blog.

Did you like what you made?

I'm waiting.