Gooseberry ice cream

There's no food colouring in here, this ice cream was made with red gooseberries and all natural ingredients:

• 500g gooseberries, topped, tailed, and halved
• 150g sugar
• 30g water
• 250g double cream

Put the Gooseberries, water and sugar in a pan. Heat gently, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has melted, then increase the heat and simmer for 4-5 minutes. Whizz up in a liquidizer and pass through a sieve while still hot. Allow to cool completely, then refrigerate for a couple of hours before whisking into the cream - just until combined. Churn in an ice cream machine for 10-15 minutes, then transfer to a freezer and freeze for at least one  hour before serving. Recipe from Ices: The Definitive Guide.

Pea and mint arancini

I hadn't gotten round to downloading the photos from my camera when I made the last blog post. Here are the pea and mint arancini I mentioned:

and here's what they looked like inside:

These are quite easy to make. If you leave leftover risotto in the fridge overnight, it will congeal and look quite unappetising, but this makes it very easy to handle. Take a small handful of the rice and form into a ball around a nugget of mozzarella, then roll gently between your hands to shape. Toss in flour, then beaten egg, finally breadcrumbs. Once you've assembled your arancini, deep-fry in batches in a neutral oil: 6-7 minutes at 180℃ will do nicely.

Small arancini make a great appetizer, but there's something especially satisfying about deep-fried food that makes it almost worthwhile making too much risotto with an eye on tomorrow's snacks.

What's cooking...

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd give a quick round-up of what's been cooking over the past week. Drop me a line if something takes your fancy and you'd like a more detailed recipe.

Sous vide hand of pork
Riverford sell hand of pork (the lower part of the shoulder) with a fennel, garlic and chilli rub as a porchetta roast. They suggest roasting for 8 hours at 95℃, so I thought I'd try it sous vide and gave it 12 hours at 80℃. The meat was very tender, but a bit dry for my taste. Next time I'll try vacuum packing it with some lard, and maybe reduce the cooking time.

Gooseberry ice cream
A delightful, refreshing ice cream from Ices: The Definitive Guide. A really simple recipe, lightly cooked gooseberries, puréed and sieved, then whisked into some cream when cool and churned in the ice cream machine.

Gooseberry fool
I tried a custard-based fool for a change. It was disappointing, I'll keep it simple and use just cream next time.

Swiss chard lasagne
I thought it was spinach in the veg box until I looked more closely. Still, the chard worked very well in a lasagne, and this is something I'll definitely be making again.

Cannelleni beans, char-grilled courgettes and tomatoes
The beans cook in just 20 minutes in the pressure cooker. Drain, and toss together with char-grilled courgettes, tomatoes, and a dressing of your choice (olive oil and lemon would work well). To cook the courgettes, slice thinly along their length, salt for 30 minutes, rinse, brush with olive oil, and cook on a ridged griddle pan until just tender.

Confit chicken legs, sous vide
I didn't have any goose fat to hand, so used lard, with some garlic and lemon thyme for flavour. I chilled these down and put them in the fridge, so I'm not sure how they've come out.

Macaroni cheese with carrots, courgettes and French beans
Using up the ends of the veg box and the excess cheese sauce left over from the lasagne.

Chocolate beetroot brownies
I had some cooked beetroot in the fridge - it was intended for a risotto, but my guest turned up their nose at the idea, so it found its way into this recipe from Riverford instead. They were good, but not as nice as the chocolate beetroot cake I made earlier in the year.

Pea and mint risotto
Fresh peas from Riverford, mint from the herb garden (aka pots by the back door).

Arancini
Balls of risotto wrapped around a nugget of mozzarella, coated in bread crumbs, and deep-fried. Is there a more delicious way to use up leftover risotto?

Cranks banana and apple bread
A yeasted banana bread. This contains no eggs or butter and, being the Cranks, is made with 100% wholemeal flour. Great with a cup of tea. Recipe from The Cranks Recipe Book.

Bruschetta

Traditionally, bruschetta is just char-grilled stale bread rubbed with tomato and garlic and drizzled with olive oil. This is a jazzed-up version: we have the char-grilled stale bread, but it's topped with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, dressed with olive oil and a pinch of finely chopped garlic. There are two stars of the show here. The first is the olive oil, Merula, from Spain (perhaps I should be using Italian olive oil, but I'm not claiming this is an authentic bruschetta). This is a light and fruity olive oil, slightly peppery but not at all bitter. It's good enough to drink straight from the can. And you'll find it in Waitrose. The second star is the mozzarella, a buffalo mozzarella from Laverstoke Park Farm. Wow! This is smooth and rich, slightly salty, and so soft. It's a new discovery for me, appearing only recently on the Riverford extras list. Madalene over at The British Larder posted recently about the same thing, only she goes on to tell you how to make fresh buffalo curd - something for another day.

Gooseberry Pound Cake

Gooseberries are one of the first fruits of the year, usually coming into season before the strawberries. This year, they both appeared at about the same time. I used to buy gooseberries from the farmers' market in Oxford, but out here in the middle of nowhere it's more convenient to have them delivered by Riverford. They appear on the extras list throughout July and - you know me - I couldn't resist ordering some as soon as they showed up on the web site. 

I was going to make a gooseberry pie, but the 300g punnet wasn't enough to fill my pie dish (three punnets would about do it, I think). Instead I made the moist, rich, pound cake pictured above. This needed only 100g of fruit, leaving me enough to put aside for a fool. The pound cake was inspired by Monsieur Audot's Gooseberrry Cake, the recipe for which appears in Jane Grigson's Fruit Book. If the cake is to be eaten cold, Grigson recommends following a pound cake recipe instead. I took her advice, adding M. Audot's flavourings for good measure.

Pound cake takes its name from the quantity of the ingredients: 1lb each of flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Hannah Glasse, writing in 1747, gives the following recipe (excerpt courtesy of Google Books):

 

As you can see, it's quite a labour intensive task. Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking, quotes a Miss Leslie who in 1857 described a technique for beating eggs "for an hour without fatigue"; he notes that she goes on to say "But to stir in butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making. Have this done by a manservant."

Coincidentally, Ruth asked me last week if I had any references on the science of baking, in particular the importance of mixing ingredients in the right order when making a sponge cake with the creaming method. Ruth's manservant was convinced you could add the ingredients in any order, and he succeeded only in making a treat for the birds (which reminds me of an advert for Bero flour involving sinking ducks, but let's not get distracted).

As usual, McGee tells us what we need to know: "In cake making, the mixing step doesn't just combine the ingredients into a homogeneous batter: it has the critical purpose of incorporating air bubbles into the batter, and thereby strongly influencing the final texture of the cake. [...] The fine solid particles carry tiny air pockets on their surfaces, and the particles and beating utensils carry those pockets into the fat or liquid. Flour is often added only after the foam is formed, and then by gently folding it in, not beating, to avoid popping a large fraction of the bubbles, and to avoid developing gluten."

McGee also explains how modern hydrogenated fats and chlorinated flours can help make sweet, tender, moist, light cakes, but he notes that the flavour they impart is not to everyone's taste.

For a pound cake these days, we usually reduce the ingredients to 4oz each (making 1lb in total) and can cheat by using artificial leavening (self-raising flour and/or baking powder), and a machine to do the mixing. Grigson (this time writing in English Food)  says "Thanks to self-raising flour and baking powder, the ingredients can be flung together in no particular order, producing a dough that will rise as it should, in seconds if you use an electric beater, or in three minutes if you have to make do with your hands or a wooden spoon." (Ruth, is your husband reading this?)

The recipe that follows is a simple pound cake recipe, with ground almonds added on Grigson's advice ("to improve the texture") and orange flower water and nutmeg added at M. Audot's behest.

Gooseberry Pound Cake Recipe

• 125g butter, softened
• 125g vanilla sugar
• 125g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 large eggs
• 20g ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tsp orange flower water
• 1/3 nutmeg, grated
• pinch salt
• 100g gooseberries, topped and tailed

Pre-heat the oven to 180℃. Grease and line a 1lb loaf tin. Place all the ingredients   except the gooseberries in the bowl of a Kenwood chef, and give them 3-4 minutes on medium speed with the K-beater. Gently fold in the gooseberries, then spoon the mixture into the prepared tin. Bake for about an hour (test with a skewer). Allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

The verdict

The texture is good, and the sharpness of the gooseberries adds a nice balance to the rich, sweet sponge. Definitely one to make again. The throw-it-all-together method worked fine, but it would be interesting to try this recipe without the baking powder, using the traditional creaming method instead.