Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Coffee, Toffee, Banoffee Pie - Vol. 1

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by
Waz
on April 24, 2006
in Cakes, breads and baking, Christmas recipes, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional and Video recipes
. 12 Comments

Click here to view the videoBanoffi or banoffee? The debate rages, and the inventors of this world-famous dessert, the Hungry Monk Cafe, arguably should get the last word - even though they would appear to be in the wrong, since the name stands for “banana and toffee/coffee”. Maybe the “i” is there to make it sound Italian.

Go to the recipe for banoffee pie

Our friend Chef Michelle and her man Phil had suggested we crash test this one at our house, under her supervision. But plans change, and we had to switch the dinner venue to their place at very short notice. That meant whipping up the base and filling at ours, then transporting the components across London and finishing the job at theirs.

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO, or GET CRASH TEST KITCHEN IN iTUNES.

The easiest and perhaps most dangerous way to make the basic caramel filling needed for this dessert is to submerge a can or two of condensed milk in a pot of water and boil for hours and hours. There’s always the risk of the cans exploding if you let the water level drop. Continue reading ‘Coffee, Toffee, Banoffee Pie - Vol. 1′

Rice pudding with confusion of pineapple

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by
Waz
on April 15, 2006
in Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Failures and redemptions, Quick and easy, Vegetarian and Video recipes
. 10 Comments

Click here to view the videoMy mum would often make rice pudding when I was a kid. Though I loved the pudding, I would scrape off the skin with my spoon and plop it on mum’s plate, who made an ostentatious show of eating it while I curled up my nose in distaste.

Lenny was making risotto a while back and couldn’t find arborio rice, so bought some “Italian pudding rice” instead at a corner store. I insisted, though, that it wouldn’t work, and went out an ultimately successful mission to find the right kind for risotto. That left us with this packet of pudding rice, which Lenny has finally put to use.

Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO, or GET THE VIDEO IN iTUNES.

In our modest cookery library she found a recipe for “nursery rice pudding” and went to work, also grilling some pineapple for a topping. Continue reading ‘Rice pudding with confusion of pineapple’

Triumph of the Lamb (and Disaster of the Dish)

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by
Waz
on April 6, 2006
in Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, English traditional, Lamb and Video recipes
. 12 Comments

Click here to view the videoDon’t roast it – braise it! That’s Lenny’s new mantra after discovering the pleasurable results of cooking less-than-choice cuts very slowly in a tasty stock or sauce.

It’s not really stewing - you carve the cooked joint or piece of meat as you would a roast, rather than chopping it up beforehand.

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This episode is also a lesson in the hidden perils of pyrex-style cookware. Well, if we’d just googled it beforehand, we would have known the risks of exposing it to a naked flame.

Lamb is available fairly cheaply where we live, so Lenny went on the hunt for value and got a boned-out shoulder for about six quid. She sent me hunting for “kitchen string” so she could roll it up, and I managed to scrounge a couple of metres from a butcher. I must say, she does a fine job of binding a very ordinary looking piece of meat into something that looks like “a bought one”. Continue reading ‘Triumph of the Lamb (and Disaster of the Dish)’