Steamed Syrup Sponge Pudding

Steamed Syrup Sponge Pudding

Just the thing for a cold day!

Sometimes all you want is comfort food.

Ingredients

1tbsp Bread crumbs

3tbsp Golden Syrup

110g (4oz) Butter (you can use margarine)

110g (4oz) Caster Sugar

170g (6oz) Self Raising Flour

2 Large Eggs 

A little milk if necessary

Method

First prepare your bowl by buttering it well. Have enough baking parchment to cover the bowl twice ready along with some foil and some string. Put a big pan of water on to boil with a trivet in it or a steamer on it. The water shouldn't be able to touch the bowl.

Mix the breadcrumbs and the syrup and put in the base of the bowl.

Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric whisk until it is light and fluffy and a very pale colour. Add the eggs, one at a time, with a little of the flour to prevent the mixture splitting. Fold in the remaining flour and add enough milk to give the mixture a soft dropping consistency. Place mixture in bowl.

Fold the parchment in two then form a pleat in the middle; the pleat will allow for expansion of the pudding when cooked. Cover the bowl with the parchment and tie it in place with the string. take some foil and fold it into a strip about 3-4cm (1 1/2 in) wide. Place the foil strip under the bowl so that the ends of the strip are higher than the rim of the bowl Place on trivet or in steamer and cover with a lid. Turn down the heat on the pan to a steady simmer.

Leave to cook for at least an hour, topping up the water with boiling water if it looks like the pan will boil

When cooked remove from steamer/pan using the foil as a handle. Invert on a warm plate and remove bowl. Serve with home made custard.

Chicken Salad

CHICKEN SALAD

Sounds simple doesn't it

Trying to make a salad that is a little bit different,doesn't need lots of exotic ingredients and appeals to a pre-teen shouldn't be too difficult - should it? Well this one worked for me.

Ingredients

Cooked chicken breasts

Cos lettuce (Romaine would work just as well)

A small onion 

A few baby plum tomatoes

A couple of rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Home-made mayonnaise

Two thick slices of wholemeal bread from a small loaf

Olive oil

A little garlic purée

Pimenton (smoked paprika)

Cumin powder

Coriander leaf 

Free range eggs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Cut the cooked chicken breasts into thick slices. Take off the outer leaves of the lettuce then cut into inch wide slices. Finely chop half the onion - or use 3 or 4 spring onions sliced. Cut the baby plum tomatoes in quarters length-ways. Remove the pith and seed then slice again length-ways into three or four slivers per quarter. Slice the bacon into thin slivers and fry in a little, very hot, oil till crisp. Place chicken, lettuce, onion, tomato and bacon in a bowl. Season with salt and lots of ground pepper and mix together.

Remove the crusts from the bread and cut into chunky cubes/cuboids. Pour around 100ml of olive oil in a bowl and add half a clove's worth of garlic purée, half a teaspoon of pimenton, the same amount of ground cumin and a teaspoon of coriander leaf and mix together.  Soak the bread in the spiced oil. Heat the oven to 200°C. Place the soaked bread cubes on a baking tray. Cook for 5 - 10 minutes. The croutons should be crisp but not not burnt.

Put a pan of water on to boil. Add one egg per person to the boiling water bring back to the boil and boil for one minute. Remove from the heat and leave to stand for 6 minutes.

Coat the salad lightly in the mayonnaise and place on plates. Place croutons on the salad. Peel the eggs, which should be soft and runny in the middle, and halve, placing the boiled egg on top of the salad.

Serve with home made spicy oven chips.

Stovies

Stovies

A traditional Scottish recipe

Last night we had a nice bit of Roast Lamb so today I need to use up the little bit of meat that we didn't use yesterday. There's not a lot of it but that's okay for what I have in mind which is Stovies, also known as Stoved Potatoes.

Originally this was a way of using up Sunday dinner left-overs in Scotland. It uses the ends of the roast joint, surplus potatoes and other veg and gravy along with cheap ingredients to extend a small piece of meat. During the Second  World War the Ministry of Food promoted this recipe as a way of using corn beef and it is also made, in some places, with sausage.

Ingredients

Left over roast beef or lamb
Potatoes ( a good helping per person - this is the main ingredient)
Onions (two large ones or equivalent if feeding 3 or 4)
Dripping 
Left over gravy, left over veg  (not essential to the recipe)

Method
Put a heavy bottomed pan on a low heat and add 1-2 tablespoons of dripping (you can use lard or vegetable oil but dripping is best). Halve and slice the onions and put them on to sweat down. Peel or wash and then chop your potatoes into 1 inch cubes or thereabouts and put them in a pan of salted water and bring to the boil.
When the onions have softened and coloured add your meat, cut into small pieces, to the pan and stir. Take the potatoes off the heat when they have boiled for 5-10 minutes and still have a bit of bite to them (they shouldn't be cooked all the way through yet), drain and add them to the onions and meat. Add the gravy and any veg if you have them. if you haven't any gravy add a little stock. Cover and leave on a low heat, checking periodically that the stovies don't go dry. The potatoes should break up a bit and turn mushy at the edges while still leaving good sized solid chunks.

 

Season with a salt and a lot of pepper. I like to add a dash of Worcester sauce too. Serve.