Devon Caviar with Wheat-Free Blini

Exmoor Caviar, delicious British sturgeon roe (Acipenser Baerii) produced in the clear waters of Devon and salted with Cornish Salt – a real West Country treat. I can’t recommend it enough, the Caviar has an excellent creamy flavour with just the right amount of saltiness. The best way to eat it – on its own, by the spoon! But if you want to spread it on something, put it on blini, the small yeasty pancakes from Russia, traditionally served with sour cream and caviar – recipe below.

Recipe

Gluten-Free flour Blini

Classic Russian blini are made with wheat or buckwheat flour. I thought I’d try gluten-free flour blini for a change. I added a bit of bran to the recipe as the flour is white and it really worked. They had a satisfying texture and the same slight yeasty, sour tone as the classic recipe.

165g Gluten Free Flour, sifted (Doves Farm) or buckwheat flour

2 tablespoons of bran (optional)

¼ teaspoon of salt

1 pack 7g easy blend dried yeast

150ml full fat Greek yoghurt

175ml whole milk

2 medium eggs separated

25 g of butter

Mix the gluten free flour, bran, dried yeast and salt bowl in a large bowl.

Place the Greek yoghurt and milk in a small saucepan and warm it gently – it must only be slightly warm, as too much heat will kill the yeast.

Now add the egg yolks to the milk, mix them in with a whisk and then pour the whole lot into the flour mixture. Whisk everything until you have a thick batter, then cover the bowl with a clean tea cloth and leave it in a warm place for about 1 hour.

It will now be bubbly and spongy.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them in. Cover with the cloth again and leave for another hour or so.

When you are ready heat a little of the butter in a heavy bottomed or iron frying pan. Let the butter sizzle and drop 1 teaspoon for small blini of about 3-4cm across (or 1 tablespoon for larger blini) into the pan.

Fry for about 40 seconds then flip and repeat on the other side. The pancake should look thick and fluffy with a few air bubbles and golden in colour.

Timings depend on your hob. Transfer it to a wire rack and repeat, brushing the pan with butter each time. This mixture should give you about 24 small blini or 16 bigger ones. Serve with sour cream and caviar.

 

 

 

 

FIG SUNDAY, an April Palm Sunday Tradition

Palm Sunday falls on April 14th, 2019.

This is hearty fare, be warned! You might need to go on a long country walk after eating this figgy delight.

TO MAKE FIG PUDDING

Ingredients

1/2 lb breadcrumbs made from stale crusty white bread

1/2 lb dried figs

1/2 lb of soft light brown sugar

6 oz suet

1/2 a nutmeg grated

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 eggs, well beaten

Lashings of cream

1. Mince the figs very small

2. Mince the suet likewise.

3. Mix the bread crumbs, figs, sugar, suet, vanilla and nutmeg very well together

4. Moisten with eggs

5. When well mixed place in a clean, floured muslin cloth and tie tightly.

6. Drop into a pan of boiling water and leave at a low simmer for 4 hours.

7. Remove from the pan and hang to drain and cool for 5 minute, unwrap the figgy cannon ball from the cloth and place on a plate.

Serve with cream, and a cold glass of white wine.

Oysters Hot or Cold?

Oysters Hot, Oysters Cold? I like ’em hot. A modern day version of this is to fy them and stuff them into a slim baguette, warmed and spread with garlic butter. Mmmm.

Christmas Pudding

The Christmas plum pudding we know today evolved from that old British food staple, ‘pottage’ – a soupy stew made from grain, vegetables and meat, thickened with breadcrumbs and flavoured with spices, and sometimes, fruit and wine. Plum pottage was a medieval Christmas dish and it was served as a first course, which would have been a hearty start to the meal, one wonders if you would have room for anything else.

Oddly, as with so many little kitchen utensils, the re-useable pudding cloth only became common at the beginning of the 17^th century, before that few thought to use fabric to cook a pud. The fashion of encasing the popular baked puddings and pottages in a cloth then took off (particularly as most poor households did not have an oven) and some, like plum pudding were also left to hang after boiling or steaming, to improve the flavour.

As the centuries wore on the meat in plum pottage was replaced by suet, the plums (dried prunes) replaced by a wider variety of dried fruits and nuts, and the alcohol content raised considerably. By the 1830’s the ‘cannonball’ crowned with holly we associate with Christmas had firmly taken hold in our culinary calendar

I include below a recipe for Christmas Pudding in Modern Cookery for Private Families by Eliza Acton (1868 ed) below, but it’s rather late in the day to make this for Christmas so if you wish to buy one, I recommend the superb puddings of Georgie Porgies Puddings https://www.georgieporgiespuddings.co.uk/ which can be bought online.

To steam a pudding, you place it in a cloth in a bowl submerged in simmering water-https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/…/how-steam-pudding

To boil a ball pudding – the pud must be wrapped in calico or very thick muslin (scalded with hot kettle water to remove any chemicals) and submerged in simmering water. The scalded cloth should be floured, then the mixture placed in the middle and the corners of the cloth brought together above it, form the ball and tie it. Boil the pudding according to weight usually about 4 -5 hours but 3 1/2 in the recipe below.  Remove it with tongs and allow to hang in a cool place, over a bowl for two days or until the cloth is dry. I like to re-tie it new dry calico to avoid risk of mould and then hang for a month. Re-boil on Christmas day for 1-2 hours.

Eliza Acton – Modern Cookery 1868

Bramble Shrub

Artichokes with Anne Boleyn

Chanterelles! Mushroom Magic

Gooseberry Fool with Foxy

Devon Crab

Devon Brown Crab (Cancer Pagurus) is stupendously good and arguably the best in the world!  The people of Salcombe in South Devon celebrate this fact each year in May at the Salcombe Crab Festival and it’s all in aid of charity. This year it’s on the Sunday the 6th and we’re going so I’ll update this blog on Sunday and give you a taste. Can’t wait!

There’s nothing more enjoyable than sitting by the Devon coast leisurely eating a whole Devon crab with a glass of crisp white wine and all the time in the world – it’s the essence of slow food. These days, the crab sandwich has become hugely popular but I favour the crab savoury. Savouries were little treats served as a final course at dinner to ‘cleanse the palate’ before the bottle of port and the sojourn to the card tables, so popular in the 19th century. I like to surprise my family with savouries before dinner and they go mad for them. Crab toasts are one of the best – a simple dish but a perfect one that allows the crab to shine.

Crab Savouries

Take some good white bread, sliced very thin. Cut off the crusts and cut each slice diagonally to create triangles. Toast until golden brown and crisp  (the best way to do this evenly is on a grill tray in the oven). Butter generously while hot so the butter soaks into the toasted bread. Spread thinly with brown crab meat, then pile generously with white crab meat. Season with salt, pepper and a grate of fresh nutmeg. Serve immediately while the toast is still warm.

Crab fishing has always been a specialty of Devon. In the past families would make their own ‘inkwell’ pots in the winter from willow grown locally along the coast. The pots were baited with fresh fish secured with a wooden skewer and lasted about a year. The men would go out to sea and the women would help sell the catch. The pots are no longer hand-made from willow but the industry is still run by small family businesses who fish sustainably, so go get some crab!

Crab Linguine – add a few fennel seeds and chilli for a bit of kick.

Kitchenalia Cartoons can also be seen in Devon Life Magazine –  the Devon county magazine (UK) offering hundreds of pages of articles and superb photography every month.

 

Spring Watercress

So Lady Fanny Truncheon was correct, it has been proved that watercress can actually improve the skin, diminish spots and freckles and even reduce your wrinkles. But you have to eat 80g of raw watercress a day, which might become quite a challenge even if you love it as much as I do.

My favourite way to eat watercress is in Lao Salad, you can retrieve the recipe from my other blog ‘Ant Egg Soup’ – Lao recipe meanderings”, here using this link – Luang Prabang Watercress Salad.   

We tried it as a face pack and since it has more vitamin C than oranges, more iron than spinach, more B vitamins than blackcurrants and more calcium than milk, it can do no harm.  My daughter and I made up an ‘eighteenth century face pack’ made from chopped watercress mixed with two egg whites, a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of corn flour to thicken it up. It was slightly tricky to apply (don’t wear white!) but our skin felt silky and plumped up afterwards.

Watercress also makes delicious soup and in order to get the best out of this nutritious plant, chop the watercress and add it at the last moment when the soup has cooled a little.

Watercress Soup  – serves 4

Fresh watercress	120g
butter	55g
the white parts of 2 leeks chopped	200g
4 potatoes, peeled and chopped	350g
Marigold bouillon veg stock	1000ml
4 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche	4
salt and freshly milled black pepper

 

Begin by melting the butter in a large thick-based saucepan, then add the prepared leeks, and potato and stir them until they’re coated with the melted butter.

Next sprinkle in some salt then cover with a lid and let the vegetables sweat over a very gentle heat for about 20 minutes, giving the mixture a good stir about halfway through.

Now add the stock, bring everything up to a simmer, cover, and cook on a low heat for about 10-15 minutes or until the vegetables are quite tender.

Meanwhile chop up the watercress.

When ready, remove the pan from the heat and when it’s cooled a little liquidise the soup.

Return the soup to the saucepan, swirl in three tablespoons of crème fraîche, add the chopped watercress and season to taste with salt and black pepper

Serve in soup bowls and garnish each one with a little extra crème fraîche and some watercress leaves.

Alternatively, garnish with horseradish and crispy chopped bacon.

 

Kitchenalia Cartoons can also be seen in Devon Life Magazine –  the Devon county magazine (UK) offering hundreds of pages of articles and superb photography every month.