A cooking show by real people
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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 Christmas duck
Let’s talk turkey. Actually let’s talk about something else this Christmas. Let’s talk turkey alternatives.
This is a first for Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve never done a Christmas episode before. So we thought we’d focus on two of the basic elements you want on your table: crispy roast potatoes and a lovely bird.
But instead of turkey, we’ve chosen duck. Continue reading ‘Duck in for Christmas’
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Go to the recipe for hot and fast roast chicken
People do fuss over a roast chicken, don’t they? Doing all sorts of things like draping bacon over the fleshiest bits to keep them moist, mucking around poking seasonings under the skin, stuffing all sorts of things inside them to add flavour, even insisting that you have to roast a chicken breast-down in the pan and then flip it over part way through cooking.
In our opinion, if you keep the cooking simple, getting a good result can be reduced to one decision: buying a decent chicken in the first place. There’s been a lot of publicity about chicken welfare lately, with the focus being on battery laying hens and intensively reared, fast-growing meat birds that can hardly stand up by themselves.
In our house we haven’t gone down the full free-range route, but have settled on buying slow-growing birds that are fed better food in more spacious barns endorsed by animal welfare authorities. In the UK the scheme is called RSPCA Freedom Foods and no doubt there are equivalents elsewhere in the world. Continue reading ‘Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast’
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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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Spaghetti bolognese - it’s an old standby, and as such has become one of the most used and abused recipes under creation. Outside of its hometown of Bologna in Italy, bolognese has become a catch-all name for any meat-and-tomato sauce quickly slapped together and served over pasta, which is almost invariably spaghetti.
But start investigating bolognese and you’ll find out some interesting things. In traditional Bolognese cooking, ragu alla bolognese is rarely served with spaghetti (usually it goes with tagliatelle); it contains very little tomato (eschewing the pound can or two of tommies that many people dump into the saucepan); there are no herbs in it (so rack off home with your shaker of dried oregano); and one of the key ingredients is time (not the herb - the stuff in your wristwatch).
Most surprisingly of all - to me, at least - the key to a lovely rich bolognese is a goodly portion of milk.
Continue reading ‘Classic bolognese’
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I’m not much of a sweet tooth, and unlike Waz I’m not much of a coffee drinker. But when I do indulge in a proper espresso it’s always lovely to complement it with a sweet little morsel. Just like nata - or proper Portuguese custard tarts. These delicacies are made with a puff pastry base and a vanilla egg custard filling with a hint of orange zest.
They are by no means the only custard tart around. Waz and I are also huge fans of Chinese dan ta - those lovely little glossy-topped, flaky-based tarts you get when you have good yum cha (also known as dim sum). Continue reading ‘Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata)’
There’s an old Buddhist saying that goes something like: “When two paths open up before you, make soufflé.”
There are two main paths to soufflé, and in accordance with the true version of that Buddhist proverb, we chose the difficult one. Continue reading ‘About the soufflé’
What a month it’s been. Moving to a new address on the other side of London, getting to grips with a new kitchen (while mourning the loss of the behemoth stove at our previous address), and on top of that, work work work!
THEN, just as we got this episode - where we make Hainanese chicken rice - shot and edited, Apple decided to bring out their new set-top box, Apple TV. It lets you watch podcasts like ours on your telly. Cool gadget, but it posed some issues, because to make the most of it we’ve had to step up the resolution of our videos.
But more on that later. We decided on something simple for the first show at our new place - Hainan chicken, or as some call it, Hainanese chicken rice. Like many Asian recipes it’s big on fresh ingredients prepared in a straightforward manner. Continue reading ‘One chicken, three ways’
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We’ve set out to make authentic French onion soup, complete with crusty toasted bread and gruyere on top. And when you embark on such a mission, you simply must make the soup base - beef stock - from scratch.
This is one of those really rewarding kitchen marathons. The stock may take hours and hours to make, but most of that is simply the simmering process that seethes out the delicious juices from the beef bones and vegetables.
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And the preparation is enjoyably crude: vegetables roughly chopped, roasted with the bones, then tossed into a pot with water and a few simple spices. Continue reading ‘Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch’
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I couldn’t help it. Lenny left those blocks of delicious dark chocolate sitting there in the cupboard for weeks and weeks. Late one night I just had to have a nibble.
In the end, having not quite enough 70% cocoa dark chocolate to make these molten-centred puddings wasn’t such a big problem. Hidden away in another corner of the cupboard was some plain old Cadbury’s glass-and-a-half, and it probably took the edge off the cheek-puckering bitterness of the hardcore Green & Black’s Organic.
Go to the recipe for heart-melting chocolate pudding
Lenny had been dying to cook this devilish delight after we had one at the rather posh St John restaurant in Clerkenwell, London. Continue reading ‘Heart-melting chocolate pudding’
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 ‘Cracking creme brulee’
One of my pet hates is a cappuccino without good froth, especially one for which I’ve forked out my hard-earned readies.
After I dropped many a hint, Lenny gave me an espresso machine for Christmas. Determined not to replicate the work of dud baristas who have been fleecing me for donkeys’ years, I went to work quickly to perfect my frothing technique. Now Crash Test Kitchen is ready to go public with the cappuccino tips you’ll find in this episode.
Too many of the coffee chains get away with selling fraudulently priced beverages with coarsely bubbled, over-aerated scum on top that has absolutely no body to it. Carry a coffee like this across the room, or up the street to your job, and you’ll find the foam has burst its bubbles and collapsed into plain old milk again. Really, really bad foam will discombobulate under the weight of the mandatory chocolate powder or flakes alone. Continue reading ‘Froth my milk up’
I have never found 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’
Go to the recipe for chicken soup
When Lenny’s feeling a little bit under the weather she gets a craving for soup. Actually, pretty much ANY excuse to make this simple, hearty chicken soup will do. You just start with a whole chicken, remove the skin and simmer it with tasty vegetables until the flesh is tender and comes away easily from the bone (Lenny calls this the “fall-apartability” test.
Removing the skin as Lenny does in this video might a familiar process to people who’ve basted a “chook” by getting their hands under the skin to rub a mixture of butter, garlic, herbs and what-not on the flesh. Continue reading ‘Chicken soup from scratch’
Duck in for Christmas
Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast
No-fuss fish pie
Classic bolognese
Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata)
About the soufflé
One chicken, three ways
Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch
Heart-melting chocolate pudding
Cracking creme brulee
Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls
A chicken crashes and burns
We Did It All For The Gnocchi - Again
Tajine or not tajine?
Rhubarb’s your uncle