Archive for April, 2010

Orange Sorbet Recipe

Summery sorbets, with fresh flavours and plenty of zing, make a great dessert. This orange sorbet goes fantastically with dark chocolate, so can be part of a sophisticated dinner with a sliver of chocolate tart, or can be served up for a family Sunday lunch with some chocolate mousse. It is equally good on its own with its burst of orange tang cleansing the palate beautifully.

The sorbet keeps well in the freezer, its flavour even intensifying over time, so make it in advance and have it on hand for an easy dessert option at any time.

Recipe for Orange Sorbet

Ingredients
10 oranges
juice of half a lemon
100ml water
icing sugar to sweeten if necessary

For the syrup
250g / 8oz sugar
150ml water
juice of half a lemon

Make the syrup first. Heat the ingredients together over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Bring it to the boil and allow to bubble for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and cool.
Grate the zest from 5 of the oranges and squeeze the juice from all of them.  You are aiming for about 3 cups / 750 ml of juice. Mix together the grated zest, lemon juice and water to the juice, then stir in the cooled syrup. Taste for sweetness. Add icing sugar if it is too sharp or more lemon juice if too sweet. Remember that frozen food needs slightly more sweetness than normal, to bring out the flavour.

Pour the mixture into a freezer container and chill for a few hours. Take it out again and break up the ice crystals by beating with a fork, then freeze again. For a special presentation you can freeze the ice in the scooped out orange skin halves as individual portions. If you are doing this make sure that al the flesh is cleaned from the skins, then scoop the beaten ice into them and freeze wrapped in clingfilm.

Rather join your friends in a fine restaurant than cook for a dinner party? Check out our list of fine dining restaurants in Leicestershire to choose from the best.

English Scone Recipe

Hot scones fresh from the oven, oozing with melting butter and luscious strawberry jam, or piled heart-stoppingly with clotted cream and topped with strawberries, are a real treat in summer or winter at tea-time. You don’t need to be in Devonshire or Cornwall for a traditional cream tea to enjoy them. They are so quick and easy to make at home that you can put together a batch on impulse on a weekend afternoon when friends drop round unexpectedly for tea.

Scones are best eaten on the day they’re made, better still when still warm from the oven, so make them in small batches unless you’re expecting a crowd. This recipe makes 12 medium sized scones and you can expect people to want seconds, so it does six people.

Recipe for Scones

220g / 8oz self raising flour ( or use plain flour with 2 teaspoons baking powder)
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
30g / 1oz butter
1 egg
185ml / ¾ cup milk

Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F.
Lightly grease a baking tray.
Sift together the flour, salt and sugar.
Rub the butter into the dry ingredients
Beat the egg with the milk and then stir into the flour mixture until it forms a light, sticky dough.
Flour a surface well and then roll out the dough to about 1.5 cm / ½ inch thick. The thickness isn’t crucial but if you make it too thin the scones will turn into biscuits!
Use a medium sized round or fluted pastry cutter to cut rounds of dough and transfer them carefully to the tray. Avoid twisting the cutter, as the scones will rise unevenly.
Collect together the scraps and roll out again until you have used all the dough.
Brush the tops of the scones with a little milk.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.
Cool on a rack for perhaps five minutes before serving, if you can wait that long.

Feel like going out for a tea-time treat instead of baking yourself? Visit Perkin’s restaurant in Nottingham with its fine array of tempting freshly baked goods.

Recipe for Vegetable Tempura

Light and crispy tempura is a real delicacy when cooked to perfection, the sort of thing you’d visit a Japanese restaurant for specially. There is a knack to good tempura, but you can cook it easily at home once you have mastered the basic batter. Then you can cook a whole range of fresh ingredients this way, from vegetables to prawns and seafood.

Tempura batter is the opposite of pancake batter. It should be made at the last minute, when you are ready to start frying, so it is not kept standing. It should be lumpy not smooth, barely folded together, to achieve that golden lacy effect when fried.

The other trick to good tempura is having the oil at a constant temperature (about 170C / 340F). Test it with a small piece of batter before you start. The batter should dip under the surface and then rise quickly to the top when the oil is the right temperature, but should not turn dark too quickly.

Recipe for Vegetable Tempura

Ingredients
For the batter
2 egg yolks
2 cups sifted flour
2 cups iced water

For the dipping sauce
1 cup dashi
1/3 cup mirin
1/3 cup light soy sauce

vegetables: sweet potatoes, shitake mushrooms, broccoli, onions, courgettes or whatever is fresh and in season.
Flour for dredging
Oil for deep-frying

Prepare all your vegetables first of all. Peel and cut into rounds or slices to make appealing bite-sized shapes. Dry off any moisture with kitchen towel.

Prepare the dipping sauce. Bring all the ingredients to the boil in a saucepan, then switch off the heat. Keep warm.

Put the oil for frying on to heat.
Make the batter in two batches. Use half the ingredients to make a first lot, as you are waiting for the oil to heat, and leave the rest until you’ve used up the first batch.
Beat the egg yolk lightly, add the iced water and mix a couple of times with a chopstick or fork.  Add the flour all in one go and fold gently just a few times until the ingredients are loosely mixed. There should still be lots of lumps of flour and a rim of unmixed flour round the edge of the bowl.
Assemble your work surface, with the tray of prepared vegetables, a bowl of flour for dredging the vegetables and the batter. Have a plate lined with kitchen paper ready to drain the cooked vegetables on.
Dip the vegetable pieces in the flour a few at a time, shake off excess flour, then dip into the batter. Slide into the hot oil and fry until golden (about 3 minutes). Allow excess oil to drip from it then put on the lined plate to drain. Tempura should be served still hot, so do an assortment of vegetables together and serve them in batches, with the dipping sauce, as they are ready.

Tempted by tempura but not ready to make it yourself? Head out to Nottingham’s finest Japanese restaurants and discover how delicious it is.

Strawberry Shortcake Recipe

Light, crisp and buttery, the American strawberry shortcake is a great family dessert recipe for summer. When strawberries are in season, all they need is a little sugar and cream to make a delicious end to any meal, but the addition of the shortcake mellows their acidity, bringing out their sweetness and turning them into a real feast.

Nothing like Scottish shortbread, American shortcake is more like a sweet, rich scone and is very quick and easy to make. It is best when made at the last minute, so that it has just cooled enough not to melt the cream, but is still fresh and gloriously soft on the inside and crisp on the outside.

Recipe for American Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients
500g / 18oz plain flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
5 teaspoons baking powder
300g / 10 oz butter
300ml whipping cream or half milk, half cream

Filling
500g-750g strawberries
sugar
500ml / 2 cups whipping cream

Preheat the oven to 220C / 425F.
Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl.
Rub in 200g / 7oz of the butter in the same way you do with pastry. When the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, mix the cream or milk in to make a soft dough.
Decide whether you want individual shortcakes or one big one to cut into slices.
Roll out the dough leaving it quite thick. It needs to be just big enough to fit twelve 7cm / 3 inch rounds or two large 23cm / 9 inch ones.
Grease a baking tray with butter. Cut the rounds and place half of them on the tray. Melt some of the remaining butter and brush it onto the rounds. Put another round on top of each of them.
Bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Check at 10 minutes to make sure they’re not going too dark.
If you are doing one large shortcake it will need 20-25 minutes.
Pull the cakes apart and allow to cool slightly before filling.

In the meantime prepare the fruit. Keep the best berries for decorating the top. Halve the rest and sprinkle them with sugar to taste. Whip the cream until it is softly peaked.

When the shortcakes have cooled, (they don’t have to be completely cold, in fact warm is good too, as long as you are serving them immediately) spread the insides with the rest of the butter, pile strawberries on top, lay another layer of shortcake on top and put the best strawberries on top of that. Serve with copious dollops of whipped cream.

If you like, you can layer whipped cream inside the shortcake on top of the strawberries for a really creamy confection, just whip up more cream than listed in the recipe.

Tempted by luscious summer desserts, but don’t have time to make them? Head out to Perkins restaurant in Nottingham and sample the wonderful concoctions on their dessert menu.

Potato Puri Recipe

These delicious deep-fried Indian breads are a real treat. Eaten as a snack with some relish or chutney, or as an accompaniment to a main meal, they are irresistible, with a gorgeous aroma of spice as they cook. In India they are often eaten for breakfast, so you can cook them at any time of day, whenever the longing for a comforting savory snack grabs you.

Pooris, or puris, are best eaten when they are freshly made, while they are still puffed up and aromatic, but you can keep them warm for up to half an hour if necessary, covered with a cloth.

Recipe for Potato Puris

Ingredients
1 medium potato
140g / 5ox plain flour
½ teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for frying

Boil the potato until tender and peel it while it is still hot. Mash it and leave to cool a little.
Sieve the flour with the salt and spices into a bowl. Rub the mashed potato into the flour, mixing it well in.
Add 4 teaspoons of the oil and mix in well. Start to bring the dough together, adding 1 tablespoon of water if needed. The dough should be quite firm so don’t add too much water.

Knead the dough for 10 minutes.

Brush the ball of dough with a little more oil and leave it to rest covered with cling film for 15 minutes.
Knead the dough briefly again, then divide into 8 small balls. Keep the dough covered when not working it.

Heat 6 cm oil in a wok over a medium heat. The oil should be hot but not smoking.

While the oil is heating, start to roll out the balls of dough on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle the dough with flour as you work so that it does not stick. Keep rolling until it is about 15 cm / 6 inches in diameter.

Test the oil temperature by putting a little piece of dough in. It should rise up to the surface quickly if the oil is hot enough, but the oil should not smoke.

Slide the rolled out puri carefully into the oil. Use a slotted spoon to keep pushing it lightly under the surface to help it puff up. Turn it over and fry the other side until golden. If it turns dark too quickly, reduce the heat.
Remove onto kitchen paper in a bowl to drain, cover and cook the next one. Eat as soon as possible.

It is important to handle the dough as little as possible when making the puris, just as when making pastry.
Sounds like too much effort to make your own puris? Why not visit one of Derby‘s finest Indian restaurants and enjoy sampling their delicious breads as part of a wonderful meal.

Patatas Bravas Recipe

A stalwart of Spanish tapas, these little fried potatoes with spicy salsa brava make a great snack on their own or as part of a tapas selection. Salsa brava is one of those best kept secrets. Every bar in Spain has its own closely guarded recipe. No two are exactly the same but this recipe gets pretty close to the authentic Spanish flavour

The sauce is best made in advance so the flavours have time to develop and keeps for several weeks, so you can use it with other tapas dishes such as fried chicken wings too. There is a long list of ingredients for the sauce, but all you have to do with them is process them together, so it is not in the least complicated to make.

Recipe for Patatas Bravas

Ingredients
4 large potatoes
olive oil for frying
salt

For the salsa brava
325g / 12oz piquillo peppers or pimentos
60ml / ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic crushed to a paste
2 tablespoons onion, grated
4 teaspoons Smoked Spanish paprika
½ teaspoon hot paprika
½ teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon dried thyme
4 teaspoons white wine vinegar
60 ml / ¼ cup dry white wine
salt and pepper to season

Make the sauce by processing all the ingredients to a smooth consistency. Taste for heat and add some Tabasco if you like it hotter.
Parboil the potatoes in their skins for 10-15 minutes. They should still be firm. Allow them to cool.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes about 3cm / 1 inch in size. Season them with salt
Heat the oil and fry the potatoes until golden brown.
Drain on kitchen paper and check the seasoning.
Drizzle the salsa brava over the potatoes only when ready to serve as the potatoes should retain their crispness to contrast with the smooth spicy sauce.

Feel like an evening of Spanish tapas? If you don’t feel like cooking all those little dishes yourself, then why not head out to one of Nottingham’s best Spanish restaurants and enjoy their delicious tapas selections.

Focaccia Recipe

Golden Italian focaccia, glistening with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt and rosemary, is irresistible just on its own, but also makes heavenly sandwiches, for a summer picnic with a difference.

This is a simple dough recipe, which will make a delicious olive oil flat bread, maybe not quite the same as the focaccia you remember fresh from the Italian bakeries of Tuscany, but definitely worth baking. The dough can be formed into two trays of focaccia to be cut into squares, or made into individual rounds, whichever you prefer.

Recipe for Italian Focaccia Bread

Ingredients
1kg / 2lb plain flour
2 teaspoons salt
700ml / 1 pint lukewarm water
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
20g / 2 tablespoons instant yeast

For the Topping
Extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
rosemary

Mix together the flour and the salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and sprinkle in the yeast. Add some water and start to mix. Keep adding water and the olive oil and mixing until it comes together in a soft dough. If it is too sticky add more flour.
Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is smooth and elastic, for about 5 minutes or so. Put in an oiled bowl covered with a damp cloth to rise until doubled in size. This should take about 1- 1 ½ hours in a warm environment, longer in a cold room.
Brush two baking trays with olive oil.
Knock down the dough and divide in half. Push it out with your hands to fit the baking trays. It is up to you whether you leave it in rough oval shapes or roll it out neatly to fit exactly.
Leave the dough to rise again for ¾ hour.
Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F.
Before baking, brush the tops liberally with olive oil, then sprinkle with sea salt and fresh rosemary leaves.

Alternative flavourings
Rosemary is a traditional flavouring for this bread, but you can also experiment with adding other ingredients to the dough: fresh sage, whole pitted olives, crumbled cooked sausage meat, even nuts. Add these when the dough is knocked down before shaping the dough, so that they are incorporated into the bread. Then continue as before just leaving out the rosemary from the topping.

In the mood for the flavours of Italy without all the hard work? Why not head out for a great wood-fired pizza  at Fire and Ice restaurant in West Bridgford, Nottingham.

Cherry Clafoutis Recipe

May is cherry picking season in the south of France and this easy dessert is a great way of using cherries to create a memorable end to a meal. All a clafoutis consists of is a rich batter poured over the fruit and baked to golden, delectable puffiness.

You can make clafoutis with all sorts of other fruit, cherries being the most traditional, but plums, apricots and peaches also working well. The cherries are usually left whole, which is a whole lot easier for the cook and is supposed to add to the flavour as it bakes. Remember to warn your guests to spit out the stones though!

Recipe for Cherry Clafoutis

Ingredients for six
4 eggs
50g / 2oz flour
50g / 2oz sugar
600ml milk or half cream, half milk
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
pinch salt
500g / 1.1lbs cherries
2-3 teaspoons brandy (optional)
icing sugar to serve

Preheat the oven to 190C / 375F
Butter a 20x30cm baking dish or a round one of about the equivalent capacity. Spread the clean cherries over the base of the dish.
Sift the flour, sugar and salt into a bowl.
Make a well in it and break in the eggs, whisking just until mixed.
Add the liquid a bit at a time in a steady stream, whisking continuously. Only whisk as much as necessary to mix the batter together. Over-mixing makes the finished dish tough rather than soft. If there are lumps of flour, it is better to pour the batter through a sieve to remove them rather than trying to beat them in.
Pour the batter over the cherries and leave to rest for 30 minutes or so.
Preheat the oven to 190C / 375F.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until puffed up and golden.
Leave to cool a little, then sprinkle the brandy over, if using, dust with icing sugar and serve, perhaps with a little cream or a blob of vanilla ice cream on the side.

If you’d like to try some other French desserts, why not visit one of Nottingham’s French restaurants and discover some classic French cuisine.

Baklava Recipe

Sweet and spicy nut filling in crispy flaky filo pastry, this quintessential Greek and Middle Eastern dessert can very easily be made at home, with the help of ready made filo pastry. Sticky and deliciously sweet, a small piece goes a long way, so it is perfect for rounding off a meal with coffee, or for snacking on at tea-time.

You can use any nuts except peanuts, though pistachios, walnuts and pecans are the most usual. Spices used also vary and can include cinnamon, cardamon and cloves, so choose whichever of these you prefer or combine them.

Recipe for Baklava

Ingredients
500g filo pastry
300g chopped pistachios, walnuts or pecans or a mixture
½ cup sugar
250g melted butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves or cardamom

For the syrup
4 cups sugar
2 cups water
juice of half an orange

Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F.
Mix the chopped nuts with the spices and sugar.
Butter your baking tin (which should be the same size or slightly smaller than the sheets of pastry).
Layer 5 sheets of filo pastry, brushing each one with melted butter before putting in the next.
Keep the unused pastry covered with a damp cloth to prevent it drying out.
Spread half of the chopped nut mixture over the pastry.
Layer another three sheets of pastry, again buttering each one, then the remaining half of nut mixture. Add another 5 sheets of pastry on top, buttering as you go.
You can add more than 5 layers, up to a maximum of 10 top and bottom, depending on how much pastry there is and how thick you like it.
When the final layer is on, trim the edges of excess pastry with a sharp knife if necessary. Cut the baklava into individual serving sizes, either triangles or diamonds. Butter the top, then bake for about 1 hour.
While it is baking prepare the syrup. Put the sugar water and juice in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer stirring for about 10 minutes. Allow to cool.
When the baklava is golden brown, remove from the oven and pour the syrup over it. Leave for at least 20 minutes before serving, longer if you can bear it.

Never use a fan oven for baklava, as it will burn the pastry edges.

Feel like tasting baklava made by the professionals? Why not visit one of Nottingham’s Greek restaurants and sample their desserts.

Tapenade Recipe

Dark, piquant and delicious, tapenade is wonderfully easy to make at home. The salty, fruity taste of olives is given extra zest with the addition of capers and new depth with an anchovy or two. Spread on crusty bread for lunch or as an appetizer, or used in puff pastry tarts for savoury interest, tapenade is an addictive snack that has all the health benefits of olives to recommend it, as well as its taste.

While the name tapenade is essentially French, black olive pastes have been developed wherever olives are grown around the Mediterranean. This recipe has a French slant with its capers and anchovies.

There are so many versions of tapenade available to buy ready-made, that making it at home is really not essential, but it can be fun to develop your own perfectly balanced black olive paste, experimenting with different olive varieties, varying the amounts of capers, trying it with and without the anchovies, and it really takes very little time and effort.

Recipe for Home-made Tapenade

Ingredients
250g / 9oz black olives without their stones
2 tablespoons capers
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 anchovies
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
black pepper to season

Put the pitted olives, capers, garlic and anchovies into the processor and blitz to a paste.
You decide how chunky or smooth you like it. Don’t overdo it, as you want some texture to it.
Add the olive oil and lemon juice and mix together, then season to taste with black pepper.
The tapenade should keep for at least two weeks in the fridge. You can seal it with a thin layer of olive oil to keep for longer.

Experiment with different olive varieties, from different countries. Greece, Spain, Italy and France all produce olives with substantially different flavours so it can be fun to see the difference they make to your tapenade.

Feel like enjoying the tastes of the Mediterranean without any effort. Why not visit or Madeira Vista in Leicester for a selection of wonderful Mediterranean dishes and a great atmosphere.