Cookies and Chutney.

It's been a while since I last wrote on here, and i'm starting to get a little bit fidgety and generally just being a bit of a grumpus. I would say that me writing is not a choice, but a deep seated need to project my inner creative out like a pretentious tit but my body does seem to be proving my theory right. I give to you this example; I've been tired all evening, I get into bed, say hello to Jupiter up to the South-East of my sky and decide to write myself a reminder sentence, something I often do, and here I am, two hours later, bolt awake and writing tirelessly. I've not written anything properly for the past few weeks, and I feel like my brain cells are slowly dying, a reaction I, coincidently, also develop when i've not read (...about cooking) for a while. But back onto the post, this is more of an update to all of my happenings during my absence rather then a history-based post, so i'm sorry if you're disappointed, but there will be a rewarding recipe by the end I promise.

I've just started a new job and i'm balancing as many hours as I can and putting off all my other things, like having a social life and cooking properly. Oh the shame! I say that, i've still cooked a fair amount, for example, a fortnight ago I made a huge batch of cookies (see rudimentary figure below!)

I was quite chuffed with them, me and my sister crowded round the oven 'ee'-ing at the cookies to not spread any further and squeaking at random intervals when we spotted a rogue chocolate chip melting into the dough. They were yum, so to reward your patience, I give to you a pretty damn sexy cookie recipe. Make them right and they are lovely, chewy and soft, love it!

Chocolate Chip Cookies
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
170g unsalted butter
200g dark brown soft sugar
100g caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
300g chocolate chips

- Set your oven to 170C or Gas Mark 3 to start with, and cover your baking sheet with greaseproof paper/baking parchment.
- Melt the butter and leave to cool a little, whilst you're waiting sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a separate bowl and set aside. Once cooled a little, cream together the butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until really well mixed. Add the vanilla, egg and egg yolk and whisk as hard as you can until light and creamy.
- Add in the sifted ingredients until just mixed and then add in your chocolate chips (I used a mix of dark and milk because I couldn't decide on the one I wanted!).
- Spoon your mixture out onto a tray, leaving about 3 inches in between each cookies, you should fit maybe 9 cookies on a good sized tray. If you want to as well, instead of laying out your cookies relatively flat, try to pile them high and thin, that way when they melt they'll stay a decent thickness and will be even more awesome!
- Bake for around 15minutes, but keep a very close eye on, to keep them chewy they're almost a little underdone. It's difficult to tell if they're golden brown because the dough is already that colour, and once you notice they're getting darker it's already too late, so you have to do it by touch. If you open the oven after 12 minutes, touch the top of a cookie with your finger and it feels completely liquid underneath, they're too raw, but they shouldn't be solid. They should spring back ever so slightly but not feel like you're poking an egg with no shell...or a fake boob.
- Leave them to cool for 2 or 3 minutes on the tray, then lift them off onto a cooling rack to cool properly.

What they look like once finished! (Stolen from Allrecipes where this recipe is from!)

This recipe is pretty perfect, I remember many, many years ago when I was still an angst-ey goth and I made a set of cookies that were absolutely amazing. I literally searched for 5 years to try and find it and I just sort of gave up that it was a one off and it wasn't to happen again. Turns out it was this recipe, to cut a long story short, and they're still as lovely as I remembered, sweet and satisfying with milk, as any good cookie should be I suppose!

I've not just stuck with cookies either, I also decided it would be a brilliant idea to make a plum and apple chutney with the huge bowl of yellow plums my grandad bought up from his allotment. My dad loves cheese and by the time Christmas comes around it'd be perfectly matured. It was a good idea, in theory, until I realised my biggest pot was not big enough to fit the monster haul...after i'd put in all the ingredients. After much chutney was slopped about and transferred to my slow cooker, I left it to bubble down into a sticky, lovely mess and pour into jars. And voila, the finished product!

Hooray for cute chutney jars (thanks Dad for indefinitely lending them to me!)

Something you thankfully see just off screen is not only the horrific state of the caked on chutney on my slow cooker, but also the fact that i'd taken merely 3 ladles of chutney out of the beast, leaving me with a three-quarter full pot of chutney, and no jars to store them in! Oopsie.

Also, as well as starting a new job, I also turned 21. Hooray, I can finally drink in the US and Canada, not that it's that big of a deal, i've been able to have a cider or eight in the UK for three years, but it's encouraging that I can now go to North America and drink to my heart's content. But anyway, I had a little get together to celebrate my coming of age, with lots of yum food and good company!

From right to left (clockwise); in the slow cooker on the right, a slow cooked Greek shoulder of lamb with orzo stew, Sailor Jerry's Tiramisu (with a nifty little link to my recipe and everything), cherry tomato and parmesan omelette, tortilla chips and Tzatziki dip, pesto pasta with chorizo and roasted peppers, brownies and bread. It looks a little bit sad when I see it laid out, you wouldn't think this took me almost an entire day to prepare.

I would go on a little more about my exploits but it's coming up to 2am UK time and I'm going to go and work three very long days at the Jersey Music Festival. So I better go get my beauty sleep on so I can be up bright and early for 6am.
So for now, tara. I shall not leave it as long as I last did until my next post, I will doubtlessly be full of excited Jersey energy and bring back some wonderous tales of French-English food from out Channel Island cousins.

Peace
JR

Getting Messy with Tiramisu.

Well, as promised I come bearing gifts and snippets of food-related experience!

So this weekend was dedicated to having a bit of much needed R n R, and I reference, in a cheesy fashion, Rock and Roll. Blah blah blah a very fun and messy cocktail party ensued, with lots of yummy concoctions and home made treats. 

I was in two minds as to what I should make for said party, a cake would have been too small, and I thought it a little too cliche and unsophisticated to make brownies for a house-party. So I went with the next natural choice, Tiramisu! I say natural choice, the thing I was craving most. What can I say, i'm selfishly indulgent! I don't really feel you can truly understand a dish until you know at least the basics of where it came from, much like you can't make a modern twist unless you understand the original recipe. So in a bid to understand the ancestry of the humble Tiramisu, I was expecting to go back hundreds of years. Not quite what I found, but interesting nonetheless. 

First of all, being entirely word of mouth you can't trust sources, because people are selfish, and will take credit for things that doesn't belong to them, case and point, Alexander Graham Bell. But according to most of the rumours and whispers amongst the food community, this dessert was formed in the 70's or 80's by a tiny bakery called Le Beccherie. Now, it seems logical, the next step. The region in which it was invented, and I say invented with all meanings of the word, because this is definitely not a classical Italian recipe, was in Treviso, just outside of Venice, where all of the ingredients found in Tiramisu (Or Tiramesu in Venetian dialect) are very prominent in that region alone, marscapone, strong coffee, marsala wine (!), savoiardi biscuits. The reason I use an exclamation after the marsala is that, being literally a "pick me up" dessert, it was often given to the elderly and sick children, to give them energy with the sugar and coffee, and strength with the egg yolks. Also, it is often interchanged between other sweet dessert wines like muscat wine or sometimes dark rum or a moccachino-esque mixture. I hate to say it, but this is not a sophisticated dessert and it's not one of the more amazing Italian classics.

Now, i'm not going to go too much into the different recipes because I honestly would be here for hours, and it'd be incredibly boring to read. But everything can be interchanged, it seems. 

Does it need to contain savoiardi bicuits? 

Does it need to contain coffee? 

Does it need to contain whipped cream? 

Does it need to contain raw egg whites? 

Does it need to be dusted with cocao? 

It seems that the only thing that's so concrete about this dessert is that it has marscapone and egg yolks, and some people don't even put those in! It can get silly but as I said, it's very useful to know the original recipe. So that's what I did, I went on a hunt and I found the original recipe. How cool! Well, I can't say original recipe ever, but it's the first recipe to ever be published in "Vin Veneto" in 1981 when they traced the dessert to Le Beccherie. Hooray! It shall be included a little further down!

A little more on it though, not to sound patronising, but just so we're all at the same point. If you've never had Tiramisu before, it's alternating layers of coffee and alcohol soaked savoiardi biscuits and zabaglione cream, sometimes being topped with whipped cream dusted with cocao powder. And it is creamy and very yummy and actually one of my favourite desserts. Alas, onwards!

The First Published Recipe for Tiramisu

As Credited to Vin Veneto Magazine and Le Beccherie!

Makes enough for about 20 servings!

350ml espresso coffee

2 teaspoons sugar

4 egg yolks

100gr sugar

450gr marscapone cheese

30 savoiardi biscuits

2 tbsp cocao powder

- Brew your coffee strong! Dissolve 2 teaspoons of sugar while it's still warm and leave to cool a bit.

- Beat the egg yolks until light and fluffy and add the sugar and beat again.

- Combine the marscapone cheese to the mixture.

- Dip half the lady fingerss in the coffee and place in a pan in a single layer

- Spread half the marscapone mixture over the biscuits and repeat.

- Leave to chill for 3-4 hours and dust with cocao powder

Done! Simple as, it seems basic enough huh? I do worry about getting food poisoning and though i'm sure it's perfectly safe, eating raw egg makes me nervous. So I do mine a little differently. If i'm honest, this recipe was completely made up when I was in the process of making it, and I used what I had to hand, living in a small town, marsala wine is not exactly in abundance, it took me long enough to find marscapone! So i've had to sub in some bits and bobs along the way, and i've altered slightly the recipe. But it's not just me, thousands of people are as paranoid as I am! So here goes.

Jess' Sailor Jerry's Tiramisu.

Serves 20 big portions, or 30-40 small portions. This is a beast of a Tiramisu!

500gr Marscapone cheese (room temp)

4 egg yolks

8 tbsp caster sugar

2 packets of savoiarde biscuits (about 50 biscuits)

250ml double cream

4 shots of Sailor Jerry's spiced rum

6 tsp strong coffee diluted in a fair amount of hot water

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cocao powder for dusting

- Beat the eggs until they get fluffy and lovely and light, then add the sugar and beat some more. Add 2 shots of the coffee mixture, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and the last 2 shots of Sailor Jerry's.

- Prepare a double boiler and put the egg mixture dish over it and beat thoroughly until it becomes a warm custard. Keep it moving and stir thoroughly! Now's the time to take it off the hob, it doesn't need anymore heat.

- Get all of your marscapone cheese and mash it so it's soft and pliable, then pour your egg mixture into it. This is your zabaglione custard/cream!

- Brew your coffee and add 2 shots of Sailor Jerry's and 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and dip your savoiarde biscuits in and layer them across the bottom of your dish (about 8inch x 12inch x 3inch dish).

- Whip half of the double cream to stiff peaks and mix into the zabaglione. Mix well and try get all the lumps out.

- Pour some of your zabaglione-whipped cream mixture and spread across the biscuits.

- Soak and place another layer of savoiarde biscuits, and pour another layer of zabaglione custard and spread!

- If you have enough room soak and prepare another layer of biscuits and pour the last bit of your zabaglione.

- Whip the last half of the double cream to soft peaks and spread on top!

- Chill in the fridge for 5+ hours or overnight.

- Just before you serve, dust a thin layer of cocao powder on top, don't dust it too soon because it'll go soggy on top!

Sorry this one's a bit blurry!

And there you go! I gave you a double helping of Tiramisu-ey goodness, with photographic steps. Aren't I just a dedicated little blogger.

So after all that creamy, sexy goodness, I bid you farewell!

Peace

JR