Background: Both my parents are exceptional cooks and my mother is the ultimate domestic goddess. She's not just a spectacular cook but a total inspiration for life long glamour. I'm not... i'm trying but i'm erratic, unpredictable, forgetful and disaster prone, but thankfully the end result is tasty because I care. The journey no matter how chaotic is the exciting part.
So where do I start... well. I just think food should be delicious and cooking as easy, complicated and adaptable as necessary. Since my 2012 cooking New Years resolution, i've realised how frustrating it can be not having the right ingredients.
This brings me to the plan of action. I hope to point you towards the options, I want to discuss alternatives not just list them... ie replacing creme fraiche for cream in a toffee sauce, works just fine but it'll have that ever so slight kick rather than the smoothness of cream. But this is exciting right? Why can't we make a Thai green curry without coconut milk? Well there's no reason. I'm going to have a host of disasters. No doubt about that. And quite a few mediocre dishes, but that's better than spending lots of money on a whole host of expensive ingredients that I use once then hide away in the cuboard.
I hope to discuss what we can do with these random items, like white wine vinegar. I bought this for some stupid red velvet cupcakes that went horribly wrong. I hate them. They upset me because I went to every bloody supermarket nearby and none of them had white wine vinegar in stock. Then eventually i found one last bottle, a giant bottle of white wine vinegar. All i needed was one tsp for this recipe. Eugh. nightmare. I'm sure for an experienced cook, there's lots of stuff you can do with white wine vinegar... but for me... it's not so clear.
I'm not embarrassed to admit my ignorance, i'd like to know more, i'd like to be more experienced but hey, i'm learning now and it's exciting. I hate the weird arrogance involved with food and cooking, where people make you feel guilty. I had a full blown debate about the pointlessness of making homemade gravy with someone at work, because quite frankly, who actually gives a crap if you mixed some flour and stock together? if you end up having to add browning to give it colour anyway? For gods sake just use the meats juices and some bisto. Obviously i'd be secretly impressed if someone did make their gravy, but the sheer pompousness of the way this colleague insisted that everyone should make gravy from scratch made me quite furious! This is based on experience by the way, this Xmas I made my own gravy and it was just a nightmare and the least appreciated thing on the plate. It was a nightmare because i was cooking quite a few different things at the same time and i'd managed to have my head in the oven so long that my face of makeup had actually melted all over my face, like something from a horror film.
Ok so this is a little intro to explain my motives. I end up using about 3 different recipes for one dish because I hate their measurements or I don't understand what they are telling me to do or they are using tropical ingredients I can't simply get from my Turkish supermarket next door. I love the supermarket they must think i'm a complete fruit loop with the amount of times I visit looking for last minute ingredients.
I really hope I stick with this, because i'd love to start a little club for people like myself who love food but are totally intimidated by all the recipe books out there. I made risotto for the first time and I had no idea what Jamie Oliver was on about in his 30minute meals, i genuinely had no clue and I bought a giant encyclopedia of cooking and that didn't help much so I called my flatmate. It really shouldn't be that confusing, but if you are a complete amateur then it is. The obvious isn't obvious yet, and we shouldn't be afraid to ask, to learn. So let's get cracking!
My first recipe is the most recent...
Sticky toffee pudding.
This is an absolute favourite dessert of mine and i'd love to perfect it. I made it last night for the first time and I was really surprised that it was quite tasty because I disobeyed a lot of the instructions... on the websites.
Ok so the first disobedience was the cooking aparatus. I was told to use pudding dishes, didn't have one so just used a cake tin. If I had a loaf tin, that would have been better.
Lined the cake tin with greaseproof paper. I'm not sure the size of the cake, medium sized with a spring bottom thing so you can pop it out.
Pudding
190g plain flour
2tsp tsp of baking powder
170g demerara sugar
50g unsalted butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
2 eggs
(2 tbsp black treacle -reduce golden syrup if you have this - i didn't)
200g pitted dates chopped
250g boiling water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tea bag
Pudding
- 200g creme fraich
- 125g unsalted butter
- 175g soft brown sugar (ideally muscovado sugar - i don't know why, but i didn't have this)
- 1 tbsp golden syrup
- vanilla ice cream, to serve
1) Preheat the oven to 200c/ gas 6?put the dates in a saucepan with the boiling water and tea bag. After one minute remove the tea bag. Add 1/2 tsp baking soda. Keep stirring the dates until they soften and bring to the boil. Once softened set aside.
2) mix the butter, sugar and one egg. Then add the other egg. Then add the flour and vanilla essence. Mix well making sure no lumps. Then once it's a smooth consistency add the dates mixture. Once mixed well, pour into the tin.
Keep an eye on this, I think mine was in the oven for 35-40mins because it took a while to set. I turned the heat down to 180c as it was starting to go a little too brown but not setting. It needs to feel springy but firm. Do the toothpick test, it can have a little mixture stuck to it but only a very tiny bit.
3) for the toffee sauce mix the sugar, creme fraiche, treacle and butter together until it's all melted and smooth then bring to the boil.
Leave the cake to cool slightly, pour the hot toffee sauce and some vanilla icecream on the side. I reheated the cake and sauce in the microwave for 5-10secs and it was fine.
*I used a combination of BBC food James' sticky toffee pudding, allrecipes.co.uk Sticky toffee without dates and, BBC good foods Apple steamed pudding with toffee sauce.
I used a combination because I didn't have self raising flour - so needed plain flour alternative. I didn't have black treacle, but turns out the turkish shop has some in stock. I also didn't have cream so I used creme fraiche.
All in all, I'm happy with it!
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