Lynn’s Cooking Blog

Due to a few problems with the area which I currently live in, we decided to move. So I’m in the middle of packing up my 3 bedroom flat with mold blooms in my sons bedroom and paint peeling in the corridors in an area awash with drunks, drugs and perverts, to go to a 3 bedroom bungalow with it’s own garden in a town outside Glasgow (but still near enough to see my Mum regularly) and a beachfront just 10 minutes walk from us.

I can’t do any ‘real’ cooking until I get my new kitchen sorted (smaller - alas, the only downside that I can see), so give me a week or two, and I’ll be back boring the pants off you.

If at first you don’t succeed, give up, there’s no use being a damn fool about it. No, no, don’t be silly, I’m joking. This is my second attempt at making a Pineapple Tart Tatin. I’m sure the Tatin Sisters didn’t have the troubles that I’ve had with this. I mean, what could be simpler? Err, Brain Surgery springs to mind

I did read recently on someone else’s blog (sorry, I can’t remember who) that people enjoy seeing the failures of our cooking, as well as the successes. In that case, you must be lovin’ this saga. Because it didn’t work out this time either.

Let’s start at the very beginning (apparently it’s a very good place to start).

This was roughly 100g of butter, along with 5 tablespoons of demerara sugar slowly melting in the pan. I left it until the sugar had melted completely.

While this was happening, I topped and tailed the pineapple and peeled the skin off.

Chop up the pineapple flesh and, when the syrup is ready, add the prepared pineapple to the pan and poach it for about 10 minutes.

The pastry is half a block of frozen shortcrust pastry. It doesn’t have to been neat, crimped, fluted or primped in any way, hence why I like this dish so much. It’s the lazy persons best friend.

In the oven for 20 minutes at 200C and then it’s time to turn it out - again. I let it cool. I used my very biggest serving plate. I didn’t leave it long enough.

It least it didn’t get dropped this time, but the syrup was very runny and, although it’s difficult to see in this photo, the serving plate has a layer of it.

Ah well, third time’s the charm

Sorry, I know it’s rude to talk with your mouth full.

One from the Delia Collection - Baking which, unfortunately, doesn’t have a link to a recipe on her site.

I’ve never made Brownies before, so Alexander kindly offered to give me a hand in the kitchen. No. he’s never made them either, but he’s got an awful lot of experience eating them, so that makes him more of an expert than I am.

Brownies are American in origin, and I get the feeling that some prairie housewife had an experience which I’m sure we’re all familiar with - her baking failed. But, instead of being dismayed at this turn of events, she used her ingenuity and slapped some icing on top and proudly presented them to her church social group with a triumphant flourish. Indeed, after tasting them, no-one would dare suggest that they were in any way subservient to a well risen cake.

They are easy enough to make by melting the butter and the chocolate together over a barely simmering pan of water.

Then you simply add the rest of the ingredients for the base and mix them thoroughly by hand - no processor required.

Ah yes, child labour at work. The Victorians had some fine ideas!!!!!!

The recipe calls for a 10″ x 6″ baking tin which is 1″ deep. I searched a long time to find one and finally got this from Matalan.

What? No Lakeland pan liners? I don’t think they do them in the size I needed so I did it the ‘old fashioned’ way.

It’s quite shallow, so you have to twist and turn the pan to make sure that it goes into all the corners.

Once it comes out of the oven, it should look like this.

The Fudge Icing

Ah, I had a bit of a problem with this. You boil evapourated milk and sugar together as a base before adding the chocolate and butter.

So far, so good.

But once the chocolate and butter were added, it ’seized up’ at bit. An oily residue seeped out and no amount of beating would reincorporate it.

I put it into the fridge and waited for it to become what Delia calls a ’spreadable consistancy’ And waited. And waited. It was solid. Finally, once it was cold, I had to reheat it over a pan of simmering water and melt it back and spread it while it was warm. It did work, although it was a worry. Once it had cooled down again it was cut into 15 pieces and tasted. Thankfully the messing about with the topping hadn’t done it any harm and it tasted fabulous.

Some pieces were given to the childrens friends and the consensus is that Alexander and Katy are lucky so and so’s!!!!!

Oh, all right…………just one more shot!!!!!!!

It was such a great idea - Pineapple Tart Tattin.

I bought the pineapple. I chopped up the pineapple. I melted butter and demarara sugar in a large pan. I added the pineapple and poached it for about 10 minutes. I rolled out the shortcrust pastry and carefully laid it on top of the pineapple. I put it into the oven to cook. I cleared up and got a large serving plate out of the cupboard. I got the tart out of the oven and let it cool for a while. I put the plate on top of the pan. I held it tight and inverted the whole lot.

I picked up the pastry and the pineapple up from where the plate had slipped and splattered the tart all over the work surface.

We ate it anyway and made a note to use a bigger plate and HOLD ON TIGHTER FROM NOW ON!!!!!!!!!!

Although they seem to think her name was ‘Christine’ (I have posted a comment on their site to tell them, so it might be the right name by now) here she is proudly holding her prize of a US Navy Gato Submarine She was chuffed to bits.

Many thanks to the Glasgow South Ship Modeller’s Society for this marvelous prize.

…..Joe Di Maggio, a nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you……..

Which is a dreadful way to start a review of Di Maggio’s , a restaurant chain in Glasgow, but I’m afraid that it’s the best that I could come up with.

The chain of 7 restaurants has had a terrible time recently, and I won’t dwell on what happened here, but concentrate on the visit that we made today to one of the chain. We were in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park for the annual Southside Festival and when it came time for lunch, we were spoiled for choice. Shawlands is a popular shopping area with a varied selection of eateries, ranging from Fish & Chip shops, Indian and Chinese restaurants, to Italian pizzeria and American Ice Cream parlors. I guess that we were just unfortunate that we chose Di Maggio’s.

We were seated quickly, after the waiter had ascertained that we hadn’t booked. I really don’t know why he asked - the room was pretty empty and, as we were seated near the door, we didn’t hear him ask anyone else. It’s got a good menu, and (what I took to be a hopeful sign) vegetarian options are highlighted with a ‘V’. Why they did this, I’ll never know, as ‘Prawn and Melon’ on the menu has one. Perhaps it’s a misprint, as it’s sandwiched between ‘Garlic Mushroom’ and ‘Warm Goats Cheese’ on the menu. Perhaps the printer was having a bad day and couldn’t find his glasses.

Okay, lets think……what did we have? I ordered Deep Fried Mozzarella Cubes, Andy had a Focaccia Peppericino. The kids split an order of Garlic Bread and Alexander had a Half Corn on the Cob. The deep fried Mozzarella Cubes were good, and came with a terrific tomato sauce for dipping. I’m afraid that I lost most of that to Katy, who nabbed it for dipping her garlic bread in. Andy’s Focicca was, I think, the highlight. Fresh, crispy bread, with fresh tomatoes, red onions and chili in a balsamic and basil vinaigrette. He let me have a little bit (damn him for keeping most of it to himself) and it was terrific. The garlic bread was, well, you really can’t go wrong with garlic bread. It would be a rare restaurant indeed who could balls that up. Alexander’s comment on the Corn on the Cob was that it was ‘okay’.

Main courses were as follows: both children had ‘Champion Cheesy Pasta’ and portions of chips for theirs, and Andy and I went for Pizza, he for the Funghi, and I for the Mediterranean. The children tell me that the Cheesy Pasta was fine, but Katy had to remind them that we were still waiting for her chips. They were the nicest McCains chips I think I’ve ever seen. Definitely not made ‘on site’. Andy’s Funghi, which was, according to the menu ‘Mozzarella, tomato and a carpaccio of wild fresh baked mushrooms’ was disappointing. We could only see normal closed cap mushrooms. My Mediterranean, was ‘mixed roast red and green peppers, chargrilled aubergine and courgettes, marinaded in virgin olive oil flavoured with balsamic vinegar’ And when it finally did come, that’s exactly what it was - but not until I’d sent back the Margherita that they first brought me.

No toilet roll in the ladies rest room.

They have apparently won the ‘Best Family Restaurant’ in the recent Scottish Restaurant Awards 2008, and the children did enjoy the ‘Kids Corner’ sheets given to them when we were seated. As well as some games on it, it’s also got the childrens menu printed there.

Total cost for lunch for the four of us - £40 exactly.

Verdict? Patchy food; service was rather slow, considering how quiet it was; okay for what it was, but nothing to write home about.

They may be able to proudly boast the they’ve been ’serving Glasgow since 1983′ but from what I experienced today, I doubt that I’ll be one of the Glaswegians that they’ll be serving it to again.

(oh, and the lyrics come from Simon and Garfunkels ‘Mrs Robinson’ As if you didn’t know).

….but at least we can still pretend while we’re indoors.

Midsummer has now come and gone and, I fear, the majority of us are still waiting to ditch the thermals and turn off the central heating. I was planning to go the the Glasgow Mela yesterday, but the thunder, lightening and torrential rain put me off. And to tease me, every so often, we’d get 10 minutes of glorious sunshine. S’not fair. So, on an attempt to bring a little sunshine into the weekend, I made Socca from a Ross Burden recipe, and a crunchy feta salad from the Good Food magazine from July 2006.

Socca is a French dish, made from chickpeas, and is generally considered to be peasant food. Feta salad is Greek, with the addition of the toasted bread to mop up juices so I suppose, although they both come from different countries cuisines, they’re both Mediterranean in origin. It’s bright, sunny colours make you feel that, even if it’s cold, damp and gloomy outside, there’s always the possibility of warm, balmy days to come. We can but hope.

I’ve made this combination before and they really do go well together.

I know that I’m a bit premature, but my Mum is going to be 80 next year. We’re already thinking about a party, buffet etc. but what I want help with is designs for a totally spectacular 80th birthday cake. I want to make it myself and pour as much love and care into it that I can. If you come across a wonderful cake while looking at other blogs, could you please send me a link to it?  I will be eternally grateful.

“I understand the big food companies are developing a tearless onion. I think they can do it — after all, they’ve already given us tasteless bread.”
Robert Orben

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Making your own bread is one of the most deeply satisfying things that we, as cooks, can make. There are so many different types, and with varying degrees of complexity, for the virgin breadmaker to contemplate. So therefore, I would like to state that the possession of a good, basic bread recipe that can be adapted, is one of the treasures that we should seek out. Or, you can just go look up Delia’s Plain and Simple White Bread and use that instead. As I do.

Since the demise of my lovely breadmaker (Actually, I don’t think I told you the saga. It happened when I was on holiday with the kids on Arran last year. I got a text from Andy, asking me how the breadmaker worked. I told him to leave it alone. He didn’t, and I came back to find it in pieces) I’ve been making it by hand. Okay, technically, the Kenwood does the mixing, but I take it out and knead it, cover it with cling film, bash it down, shape it and let it rise again (proving the yeast still works and that I haven’t managed to kill it off), so that counts, doesn’t it?

Adding the water to the dry ingredients.

Once you’ve kneaded the bread, put it into a bowl, cover with cling film, and leave it in a warm place to rise.

I said ‘let it rise’ not turn it into Mount Kilimanjaro!!!!!!

When you pull the dough, you’ll see the ’strings’.

You can then either bash the dough down back to it’s original size, shape it and leave it to rise again, or………….cut the dough in half and add extra ingredients. I’ve added……….

…….sundried tomatoes to one half, and……….

…….fried onions to the other half.

Sprinkle the flavourings on while you’re doing the second knead and then leave till the dough has risen before putting them into the oven.

They’ll bake in the same time as a normal loaf, and look (and taste) fantastic.

Interior of the sundried tomato bread.

And the interior of the onion bread.

You can also vary the flour by taking out 200g of the strong white flour and replacing it with an equal amount of wholemeal/rye or whatever takes your fancy.

Hmm, rereading the original Delia recipe has made me notice a few things that I’ve changed about the recipe. Firstly, I don’t use butter, but olive oil (I rarely have ‘real’ butter in the house, but I’ve always got olive oil) and secondly that I use a bit more yeast than she does (2 x 7g packs of Hovis Fast Acting Yeast ). I think that this shows what an adaptable recipe it is, so any changes that you want to make will be just as easily incorporated into it.

And I’ve just noticed that this is my 100th post. Yaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s a Bank Holiday today, so therefore it must be raining, right?

Bollocks.

Wanna see where we went today? Helensburgh is a small town on the north coast of the Clyde Estuary. I’m sure that it’d be nothing but a sleepy wee town, except for the positioning of the Faslane Navel Base a few miles along the coast. This ensures a steady stream of Navy personnel and Trident protesters. No sign of either today though.

The church in the main square.

This is my lovely husband and daughter walking along the front, with Rhu Marina in the background.

Just in case you ever wondered what I look like.

We don’t know who the late Peggy Norval was, but……

……….her favourite view was magnificent.

A view of the town taken from the pier.

And, as you can see, not a cloud in the sky to mar the day. Hope your day off was as nice.