Looking for an excuse to use Brandy butter?

You should be.

Christmas is the season for Mince Pies. And, if you know me, you know that "pie" is most typically followed by "a la mode." In fact, I see pie as more of a topping for ice cream than the other way around.

So I made the offhand comment one day that mince pies would be pretty good if they were served warm with ice cream, and it was one of those moments where everyone suddenly realizes you're a leper and takes a couple of nervous steps backward. I think one person said, "Gross," which was generous. I was assured that the main thing my mince pie experiences were missing was Brandy butter. What is Brandy butter? I was happy to buy some and find out.

My local store-brand Brandy butter consists of about 47% butter, 47% powdered sugar, and 6% forms of brandy (including cognac). Who feels festive now?

Saltmarsh Lamb and Mint Crisps: Pro or Con?

We were discussing British Cuisine the other day at work, and I made some comment to the effect that since moving to this side of the pond, I am in cheddar heaven. Maybe this is what life is like in Wisconsin but, for someone who feels like all good American cheddar originates in Grafton, Vermont, UK Cheddar is the epitome of everything I had ever hoped for in a cheese. I prefer extra-strong cheddar, known locally as level 6.

All of which to say, my colleagues asked me to share the complimentary words. "Please let your fellow Americans know that our food isn't terrible!!" was the rallying cry. And so, out of deference to my British colleagues, I offer you this humble list pro and con list of British food from my current vantage point, two months in.

Jen's Pros

• Cheddar (see above)
• Mustard. Mustard here is really very good. It's strong, approaching high-quality German mustard even in it's most mundane forms. Even the store brand mustard is really good. And Colman's Mustard is basically wasabi.

Needless to say, Dave really, really likes Colman's. Then I found this vintage Colman's ad, which is just uncanny.

Uncanny, assuming that the idea of Dave playing cricket makes sense to you.

• Biscuits. I've never been shy about my love of cookies, but they take it to a whole new level with one kind of biscuit in particular: The dark chocolate covered shortbreads, with the milk chocolate covered ones in a close second. In a different league altogether (because they're Belgian) are the Jules DeStrooper Stroop Waffle. Note, these have a thin layer of caramel in the middle. Sheer joy!!!

• Meat pie. I never thought I'd come around on this one, but it's really good. Maybe it's the shortbread crust and the quantity of gravy involved, but man is meat pie good. In all its forms, including Cornish Pasty. Meat pie. Mmmmmm.
• Whiskey. I've really come around to the peaty thing. I also think it helps that pretty much all of the labels feel like they were designed by Thomas Jefferson in the Monticello library. (They don't look like they were designed by him, mind you, but maybe like they wish they were.)

Jen's Cons

• No tofu. I have to go to the specialty Asian grocery store to get tofu. They don't have it at the grocery stores here (that I've seen), which I attribute to the crazy quantities of meat everywhere--especially sausage.
• No decent coffee. Whole-bean coffee is particularly tricky at the grocery store, where there isn't too much selection in this regard. I think coffee is a delicacy here. Read that sentence again. The mind boggles.
• Mediocre beer. This isn't just about the cask ale thing, as I actually have come to really like cask ale in this cold weather. It's about the mouthfeel, which is often a bit watery compared to some of the American microbrews by which I have been spoiled. It turns out American beer is just much stronger than British beer. No wonder Guinness is the best-known beer outside the country, as it's one of the tastiest ones within it.

Dave's Pros
I'm not foolish enough to weigh in on everything Dave loves here, but there are a couple of items worth noting.

• Wine Gums. They're just gummies, like gummie bears or Swedish fish, but called wine gums. They are shaped like names of wine (e.g., Bordeaux, port) but are not flavored like wine. They're just plain gummies. He thinks they are amazing. I cannot make heads or tails of this.
• Meat-flavored crisps. Tonight's flavor was Saltmarsh Lamb and Mint. He loved them. "Wonky" seems more apt to me.

Making Gin

So, I had this idea after we saw the Sipsmiths' tasting table at the store. Sipsmiths is a micro-distillery in London - apparently the first copper-pot distillery to open in 200 years. The gin was nice, too, and not too badly priced.

I thought I would look into what, exactly, gin is. Whisky or whiskey is grain-based: corn, barley, rye, etc. bourbon is made from corn. I bet you can guess what rye whiskey is made from. Brandy or grappa is distilled wine. I knew gin had juniper berries in it, but how is it made? Ferment the berries? To the internets!

Turns out it's neutral spirits (grain-based, again) with botanicals added. I guess every distillery has their own version, so here's what I tried:


take a liter bottle of vodka - i used smirnoff red, as it was on sale at the store -

add 2 Tablespoons juniper berries. Let soak overnight.

The following morning, add

3/4 tsp coriander seed
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp fennel seed
3 green cardamom pods
2 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf, torn into pieces
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp lavender
1 piece of lemon peel, roughly a 2 inch square.

Let this soak all day. strain out the bits that night and enjoy.


if I was doing it again i would definitely use a mason jar or something and make up a little packet with the spices, fold up a coffee filter into a little teabag and staple it shut.

filtering all the stuff out was a big pain because i didn't have a strainer or anything, ended up pouring into another bottle through a fork, then pouring back through the fork into the first bottle, then dumping the rest into a mixing bowl and then pouring THAT through the french press screen into a wineglass, then into the bottle.

Only spilled about an ounce that way, but still, unnecessary if you go with the packet method.

Two loaves of bread, made for Thanksgiving dinner. 

Left: salami-cheddar bread

Right: Spotted Dick, aka raisin bread

Somehow no other Thanksgiving photos survived. My excuse is going to be that I was busy in the kitchen all afternoon and evening. Little tip for those of you out at home - if your cranberry stuffing has too many cranberries, the chicken will look like it's not cooked for a long time. a looooooong looooooooooooong time. I kept waiting for the juices to run clear; finally we cut up the bird to cook bits individually in a skillet, and figured out what was really going on. The whole cavity was pink from cranberries. Oh well. Eating an hour later than planned was not the end of the world.

The week after, I decided to try my hand at a traditional meat pie. It's cold, so I like having kitchen projects that involve a lot of cooking. First off I started a pot of vegetable stock - step one was caramelizing onions in the cast-iron casserole, then adding carrot, parsnip and onion peels, the ends of some celery, and a bit of garlic. After the vegetables were in, I filled the casserole 2/3rds full of water, covered it, and put it in the oven at 110 C for 4 hours.

While that was cooking, i prepared the other ingredients.

yep, lard.

I dredged the chunks of pork in flour, with a pinch of salt and black pepper, then fried them in a cast iron skillet with a teaspoon of oil per batch. I tried butter, lard, vegetable and olive oil. The butter produced the best looking results. I only did about 5 or 6 chunks at a time, to prevent overcrowding and steaming the meat. Too much moisture makes grey meat, rather than the nice crispy brown stuff.

Meat transferred to a metal bowl

When the vegetable stock was done, I took it out of the oven, poured the contents through a strainer, threw out the veggies and poured the stock back into the casserole. At that point I added oregano, sage, a dash of fennel, cumin, a pinch of chilis and black pepper.

Here we have the homemade vegetable stock, plus spices

While the meat was browning, I sliced up some chestnut mushrooms.  When the meat was done, I transferred it to the bowl, turned the heat down, and added the mushrooms. I let the mushrooms brown a bit, then added them to the stock.

Like so.

Then I added a parsnip, three carrots, two and a half stalks of celery, and one leek to the stock, added the meat chunks, and turned the burner up to high. While that cooked for about 10 minutes, I buttered and floured a pie dish, and lined it with puff pastry.

Then the stock+veggies+meat were added to the pie. 

And then I cut strips of dough from the leftovers and made a crosshatch pattern on top, popped it in the oven for 20 minutes...

 

and there you go.



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In his amazing cookbook Mouth Wide Open, John Thorne has a recipe for "pasta in a bag"; basically the point is that by cooking the pasta in sauce, in a paper bag, you trap the moisture and keep a thick sauce that infuses flavor into the noodles. So I tried something similar, only with this little star pasta and in a casserole dish, not a paper bag.

First off. chop some onions finely, brown them in butter, and add the leftovers from a carton of tomato juice that seemed like a good idea when you were getting a cold and wanted vitamins, but then you ended up just eating ramen with an egg in it instead. Since this particular tomato juice was really thick, thin the juice with water until it's about the consistency of fresh squeezed OJ. Add pepper and the stellette. I put in some oregano (good idea) and fennel (not so good. Do not do this with fennel unless you're adding sausage.)

I covered the pot with a lid and let it boil for about 5 minutes, then took off the lid and started stirring. I wanted to get almost a risotto-like texture, where the pasta releases starch out into the sauce.

 

 

It worked pretty well - if I'd made this without the fennel I would have been ecstatic. With the fennel, it was okay but not phenomenal. I thought the fennel was kind of distracting, actually.

Whatever, Jed was really into it, so I'll count that as a partial success. 

"Stellette"

Fun fact: you can make bacon sausage. All you need is a meat grinder, a kilo of bacon collar joint., and some elbow grease. And probably a crash cart, nurse, and blood thinners if you heat more than three. I could feel my heart slowing down as I ate these.