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Go to the recipe for Bread and butter pudding
Our friend Anthony brought round one of those panettone things on Christmas Day. In the end not a lot of it got eaten – we had a decent spread lined up already, and the panettone was kind of a last-minute whim on Anthony’s part.
For those not familiar, panettone is a kind of domed bready cake, often containing dried fruit and other goodies. It’s usually risen with yeast as opposed to baking powder. Panettone is a centrepiece at Italian Christmas tables and seems to be becoming more popular in other countries.
So Christmas came and went, as did Boxing Day, New Year’s, and the thing was still sitting there in its box, with only a few slices taken off. Continue reading ‘Panettone pudding recipe – a twist on bread and butter pudding’
Published on
November 26, 2010 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, English traditional, Favourites, Indian, Pasta, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
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Go to the recipe for Pasta with white truffle
Go to the recipe for Eggs in cocotte with white truffle
On “schoolnights”, when everything happens at helter-skelter pace, it’s always a rush to get home from work, throw a meal together and do the day’s housekeeping before crashing into bed. If I’m lucky Waz has been on an early shift and we can share the evening duties.
So on the weekends we really like to give a lot more time and attention to creating lovely meals that we can enjoy eating at a slower pace.
I thoroughly respect the ideology of the Slow Food Movement – begun in 1986 to celebrate and enjoy local and regional cuisines. So when time permits I love to create meals that embody the Slow Food philosophy of creating the simplest of dishes, with the highest quality ingredients.
Chef Michelle and I recently treated ourselves with a whirlwind weekend trip to the centre of the white truffle universe – the Alba truffle festival in Piemonte near Turin, Italy. We ate a fantastic truffle meal at a Slow Food restaurant with some luscious local Barolo wine. We couldn’t believe our luck the following day when, while roaming the Alba hills, we ran into a local truffle hunter who sold us some white truffles that his little dog had just dug out of the ground. Continue reading ‘How to cook with truffles’
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Go to the recipe for Swiss roll, aka jelly roll
Swiss roll – or jelly roll to the Americans and Canadians – is what Lenny likes to call a store cupboard cake. Like my Mum’s teacake, this is baking at its easiest. You’ve probably got most of the ingredients already, and the results are sure to win you a disproportionate amount of praise from your guests. Continue reading ‘Let the jelly roll: Swiss roll recipe from Waz’s Nana’
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Go to the recipe for sausage rolls
This is my Uncle Kev’s sausage roll recipe, and it’s fantastic for parties. Or you can even make a double or triple batch before Christmas, Thanksgiving or local festive holiday and freeze them, then heat them up in the oven for a really quick finger-food for a big group of people. Continue reading ‘Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls’
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While it’s nice to experiment in the kitchen and try exciting and slightly scary things like soufflé and partridge, it’s equally nice to build up a stock of really easy, favourite recipes that you can cook any day of the week. You know, the kind of recipes you don’t even a shopping list for, because the list of ingredients is in your head.
This fish pie recipe is like that for me. It’s fairly quick, easy, tasty and you can substitute different kinds of seafood or vegetables, depending on what you’ve got in the fridge or what’s available at the fishmonger (or, let’s face it, the supermarket). Continue reading ‘No-fuss fish pie’
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Autumn is game season, and in years past I’ve indulged in wild meaty delights such as pheasant and woodcock (I think it was). I’ve fantasised about getting out in the woods with my wellies and peacoat, dogs yapping along the muddy tracks while I take a few shots at the woodland foul as the beaters scare them out of the brush. But I never really thought it would happen.
And it didn’t, exactly. But this did: our friend Richard was lucky enough to be taken on a game shoot recently and, lucky for us, his kitchen was being refurbished at the time, so we ended up with two lovely, bright-eyed fresh partridges trussed up in a plastic bag to do with what we would.
Continue reading ‘Partridges with bread sauce’
Published on
September 11, 2008 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
Tags: blackberry crumble, cooking, Cooking videos, crash test kitchen, kitchen, lenny, recipe, video blog, waz.
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Although we haven’t had a brilliant summer here in the UK, and it looks like what we did have is pretty much over for the year, we did manage to bid a sad farewell to the summer by taking a lovely walk in the Kent countryside.
I love the public footpaths here in the UK: there is a network crossing public and private property that anyone can walk along and enjoy what the countryside has to offer. We often take a day-trip down to Kent to wander across the rolling green dales, through the fields, woodlands and orchards, taking in the fresh air.
On this particular sunny Saturday our route took us through numerous apple orchards where crisp, pink apples shone on the trees and the hedges were thick with fat, juicy blackberries.
Continue reading ‘Blackberry crumble with short ramble’
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Preparing and gathering together the component parts of a trifle is only half the job – it is also necessary to give some thought to assembly.
Because even though trifle is ostensibly a slapdash co-mingling of separate (and according to Waz, perfectly edible separately) bits and bobs of sweetness, sharpness and creaminess, the presentation is all-important.
In fact, the appearance of trifle is probably the only thing I have liked about this traditional English pud in the past. Continue reading ‘Tickety-Boo Tipsy Trifle (part 2)’
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Remember Sponge Blob Square Pan? The absolute debacle where we tried to cook a sponge cake?
It was back in the very early days of Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve learnt a few things since then, but the idea of cooking a simple sponge still gives us the collywobbles.
But then Lenny went and decided she wanted to make a classic English trifle – and of course that involves a sponge cake sliced into fingers. This time we armed ourselves with Allegra McEvedy’s “Never Fail Victoria Sponge” recipe, as handed down by her mum and published at the Word of Mouth food blog of the Observer Food Monthly, where we do some cameo appearances. Continue reading ‘Trifle Part 1: The Spongeblob Redemption’
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You’ve had eggs benedict – but what about eggs benedict on a fresh, home-made muffin with handcrafted hollandaise sauce? And what if your hollandaise “splits” in the middle of the cooking process? Can it be retrieved, or should you bin it and start again?
These and other questions answered in this marathon episode.
Strictly speaking, eggs benny is made with ham, but in our experience smoked salmon has become synonymous with the dish. Continue reading ‘Project Benedict’
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Wow! I was interviewed as an authority on food podcasting for the Guardian Unlimited newsdesk podcast this morning and can’t believe how nervous I was. I hope they managed to edit together something sensible from all my babble. You can find the interview about 16 min 40 sec into the bulletin.
Loads of stuff I forgot to mention – like how we’ve been in Time magazine, and how we’re cited in Stephanie Bryant’s new book Videoblogging for Dummies.
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Anyway. It’s been a while since we posted an episode – listen to the GU podcast and you’ll learn that it’s partly because our cooker/stove/oven was broken, and getting it replaced was a bit of a nightmare. Also we’ve been travelling again, and work life has been keeping us busy. But we’ve kicked back into gear and, to coincide with the Guardian interview, here’s an episode in which we make a simple teacake.
This video was previously posted incomplete, but it’s now the full episode, so if you saw “Part 1″ please watch again.
Now, about teacake. As the name suggests it’s the perfect accompaniment to a cup of your favourite leaf tea, and is as much a part of the Anglo-Australian baking repertoire as scones and sponge cake. Continue reading ‘Cinnamon teacake’
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“Welsh rarebit” or “Welsh rabbit” was one of those dishes I’d always wondered about, along with “toad in the hole”, before moving to the UK.
Apparently its name is originally a bit of a slight on the Welsh – who were (many years ago, I’m sure) considered so inept they couldn’t catch a rabbit for dinner, so they had to settle for cheese on toast. In an early example of political correctness the name was adjusted to “rarebit”, supposedly taking a bit of the sting out of the insult.
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There’s more to good rarebit than just slices of cheddar plopped on bread and stuck under the grill (broiler, if you prefer). The recipes vary, but common elements seem to be a good cheddar, some Worcestershire sauce and either beer or milk. Continue reading ‘Pulling a rarebit out of the hat’
If you’ve watched the last episode (this one includes a quick recap) you’ll know that we made banoffee (banoffi) pie after much pleading from our gastro-pal Chef Michelle and her hubby Phil.
Most of the work was done at our place, then we transported the components , including the fragile shortcrust base, across London to Michelle and Phil’s for completion and gustation.
Go to the recipe for banoffee pie
The crust made it intact and the results were pretty good all round, making allowances for a little over-zealous whipping of the cream by Lenny. Continue reading ‘Banoffi or Banoffee? Vol. 2′
Banoffi 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.
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′
My 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.
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 pineapple confusion’
Don’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.
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, Disaster of the Dish: Braised lamb shoulder recipe’
Published on
March 8, 2006 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Favourites, French traditional, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
We all want one of those chef’s blowtorches, don’t we? You know, the ones that you can use to blacken a capsicum (sorry, a pepper), blister a tomato … or make creme brulee!
I’ve had a serious addiction to this oh-so-unhealthy French dessert for years now – probably since I saw the movie Amelie, with that pixie-faced leading lady who rates “cracking creme brulee with a spoon” as one of life’s greatest pleasures.
Most restaurants have it on the menu, and I’ve eaten all sorts of variations – fruit flavoured and the like – in different parts of the world. Continue reading ‘How to make cracking creme brulee’
I have never found a chocolate cake as good as my mum’s. Actually it’s my grandmother’s recipe, and a great one at that.
I didn’t know until I asked mum for the recipe that it’s a “boiled” cake. You don’t actually boil it to cook it – but you simmer some of the ingredients before making the final mix. Continue reading ‘Chocolate cake like mum makes’
Rhubarb. To me it’s always been more a synonym for nonsense or babble, or a gap-filling nothing vegetable in the garden, than the deliciously tart and easily prepared treat it turns out to be.
We went to the Borough Markets with a chef friend on Saturday and no doubt the rhubarb we bought is a super-organic non-GM wind-powered dolphin-friendly variety.
You can spend hours at the Borough and we really should get some footage down there for a future episode. I’m sure I can overcome my fear of being clocked by a falling 25kg wheel of gourmet cheese. Continue reading ‘Rhubarb’s your uncle’
Ah, London and its familiar smells. That tantalising, fatty waft of fish and chips. That grey electric dust that gets up your nose in the Tube.
But what we love best about London is the food culture. Fresh ingredients are plentiful in the fruit and veg stalls on the street, the multicultural stores, the market districts, and the new “gastro pub” movement is adding another dimension to the culinary scene.
After our transatlantic flight from Toronto we “dossed” with Lenny’s brother Cam for a few days while we found somewhere to live. We did our research and ended up moving into the first place we saw.
The good news is our new kitchen is EXCELLENT! Good lighting, plenty of bench space and, best of all, a gas stove. Continue reading ‘Here’s steak in your ale pie’
Mmm, lamb. We can’t get enough of it … after all, we come from the country that was built on the sheep’s back. No, we don’t mean the Shaky Isles (New Zealand), we mean the Wide Brown Land (Australia)!
After gobbling down some excellent lamb at Les Freres de la Cote restaurant in Quebec City, we couldn’t wait to do a “Canadian Safari” episode featuring this meat. But Canucks by and large don’t seem to “get” lamb, and there’s very little produced locally. So we resorted to some Kiwi lamb racks sourced at a supermarket on Prince Edward Island. Continue reading ‘Lamb rack with balsamic mint sauce – recipe’
I was doing some web research after our sausage excursion to Calgary and was disturbed at the extent to which the corporate sausage machine has been keeping an eye on our snag tastes.
I’ll elaborate, but first a little on this episode of CTK. We prepare a simple dish that for want of a better name I call “sausagey pasta”. We hadn’t cooked it for a while, so our memories were a little fuzzy on the exact list of ingredients. A bit of Googling and some head-scratching, though, and we came up with a recipe.
Click here to VIEW THE VIDEO
But back to the sausage evil empire. This company called Devro has broken our habits down to pie charts and line graphs. Apparently 31% of us want our sausages straight, but 66% don’t care whether they’re straight or curved. Of more concern, 55% don’t know what’s on the outside of a sausage – natural casing made of gut, or that synthetic stuff we mentioned in the last post. Continue reading ‘Your sausage habits exposed’
So what do you want in a sausage? Are you content with a cellulose or collagen tube filled with anonymous, homogenous mystery-meat paste containing who knows what?
If you’re like us, you demand sausages filled with real ingredients that you can see, taste, feel and smell. Not to mention the texture — and when you bite through that natural sausage casing, a really good “snag” should hit you with a burst of flavour and aroma.
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For a long time, our sausage benchmark was set by Tony’s Super Meats in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. I remember Tony entered the annual Sausage King contest for the first time a few years back and blitzed the competition with his continental creations. Continue reading ‘Blessed are the sausage makers’
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We started out with the best intentions: whip up a layered sponge cake to celebrate our friend Paul’s 30th birthday.
He’s back in Australia, we’re here in Canada, but we’d just eat it on his behalf we reckoned.
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Well, that was the plan. You see, it seems there must be a secret to making sponge cake – and we’re not in on it. Continue reading ‘Sponge blob square pan’
Published on
April 18, 2005 in
Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes.
Our guest for this instalment of Crash Test Kitchen is our old mate Dave.
Now Dave is a bit of a dark horse, it seems, when it comes to matters of the kitchen. Just recently, after all our years of knowing the lad, he declared that he knew how to make a cheesecake.
And not just your fridge-set cheesecake, mind you – the full-blown baked variety. So Lenny and I found this recipe on the internet, supplied the ingredients and set Dave to work. Continue reading ‘Dave makes a cheesecake’
How to make Kung Pao Chicken
How to cook with truffles
Let the jelly roll: Swiss roll recipe from Waz’s Nana
How to roast a duck, the slow and tender way
Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast
No-fuss fish pie
Classic bolognese
Portuguese custard tarts recipe (pasteis de nata)
About the soufflé
One chicken, three ways
Rhubarb’s your uncle
Soy for the “sake” of it
Braised pork belly like Mao used to make
Lamb rack with balsamic mint sauce – recipe
A crow-eater gives us curry