I should coco! - Coconut and Lemon Curd Madeleines

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I’ll be honest, I’ve been slapping coconut oil on my face for as long as I can remember, and it is indeed as good a moisturiser and restorative as my previous moisturiser, if not better, which, when I discovered this, was brilliant and disappointing rolled into one. It's brilliant when I think on one hand of the money I now save by buying coconut oil and putting that on my dressing table instead of the (expensive) moisturiser that I had been sucked into buying by promises of eternal youth. My savings now go towards my not insubstantial collection of Kurt Geiger shoes, which is very pleasing, but the cloud that goes with this particular silver lining is my thinking of the copious amounts of money I had spent in the years gone by on 'posh' moisturiser which in turn led me to lament the ‘Kurt Geigers’ that could have been mine if I had been a bit more savvy. Life can be cruel.

But my recent discovery of cooking with coconut oil has been a revelation. A bit of reading around led me to discover that coconut oil had been the ‘go to’ oil for cooking and baking, before we discovered the horrors of hydrogenated, manufactured fats and indeed like many other naturally derived oils, coconut oil had long been a beauty/health staple too by those in the know. Win. Win. So, for no real logical explanation, I decided to celebrate my much improved knowledge by making madeleines.

Regular readers to this blog will know that I am a Francophile, pure and simple. That being the case, it is surprising that my madeleine pan, bought at Super U in a pretty Dordogne town one balmy summer when I was young, beautiful and carefree, before such pans were ever readily available here, has had about three airings in all the time I have owned it. Despite my lack of effort, madeleines are a cinch to make, as long as you are vigilant because like most ‘biscuity’ types, blink and they are burned.

Newly inspired, I decided to make coconut and lemon curd madeleines, which are loosely based on the idea of placing a dollop of something in the middle of the raw madeleine mix. I’d seen it done with Nutella, but with my coconut vibe, I thought that the sharp lemon tang would be a great foil to the mellow, nutty coconut. So, I set off to work, replacing the requisite amount of butter for VitaCoco coconut oil and adding about 50g of desiccated coconut, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon orange flower water (I was thinking citrus…) to a well-established madeleine recipe that I had cut out of a French cookery magazine in the dim and distant past. The result was, even though I say so myself, pretty damn good. It was a good thing that madeleines don’t really keep very well and need to be eaten within a few hours of baking. Marcel Proust used to dip his stale madeleines in his tea; Lola, Finn and Phill snaffled these before I had managed to put the kettle on. There can be no better recommendation in my mind.

And if you don’t like lemon curd, what about lime curd for a totally tropical vibe? Or a dollop of raspberry jam? Now, Coconut and raspberry: Let me just think about that for a moment. Or you could visit www.swearbyit.com for some more great recipes!

This recipe is an entry into the #swearbyit challenge with Vita Coco. Find more great coconut oil recipes and tips on using coconut oil at www.swearbyit.com

Coconut and Lemon Curd Madeleines

Makes approximately 18

Ingredients:

3 large eggs

130g caster sugar

1 tbsp honey

1tsp orange flower water (optional)

100g Vita Coco Coconut Oil, softened,( but cooled if you have melted it) plus a little more for greasing the tin.

50g desiccated coconut

150g plain flour

6g (a generous teaspoon) of dried yeast

A pinch of salt

About a quarter  to half of a jar of good quality lemon curd

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200c

Place the eggs and the sugar in a mixing bowl and beat until light and airy.

Add the honey and the orange flower water if using and mix well.

Add the coconut oil. If it is quite solid, mix it vigorously into the egg mixture until it disperses evenly.

Add the flour, the coconut, a pinch of salt and the yeast and mix until combined. Don’t overbeat. Personally I taste the mixture at this stage to see if I can discern the flavours, in this case, coconut. If it tastes a bit bland, add a little more salt, but be careful.

Grease the madeleine pan very well with the coconut oil. This is imperative as you want your madeleines to come out easily.

Place a heaped teaspoon of the mixture into each madeleine mould. Tap the pan down on the working top to encourage the mixture to settle into the mould.

Place a scant teaspoon of lemon curd onto the madeleine mixture.

Top the lemon curd with another generous teaspoon of the madeleine mixture. You may have to use the spoon to disperse the mixture evenly and it may all become a bit messy, but it will be okay.

Give the madeleines a final tap in the pan and then place them in the middle of the preheated oven. They might spread frighteningly and will look pretty awful initially but all will be fine. They should take about 8 – 10 minutes to bake and they should be a light golden brown with perhaps slightly browner ‘shell’ edges. Remove from the oven and when you can do so. If you have greased the pan well, the madeleines should come away from the moulds easily.

Trim the madeleines to their characteristic shell shape. It is likely that some of the mixture will have spread from the mould and therefore some trimming will be needed to neaten the madeleines up. I just think of all those sweet crispy bits and it pleases me enormously.

Eat warm, or whilst they are not quite cold. They will begin to become a little less light once they have been cold for a while, in which case, do what Proust did: make a pot of tea.

Merveilleux dans toutes les langues - poivre de poulet au citron #babel14

Je l'ai vraiment regardé avant de blogging pour # babel14, ou DMB14, 'Day of Multilingual Blogging'. L'année dernière, je blogué en anglais et en français à propos de Banana Cake, et cette année, je décide de cuisiner quelque chose de plus savoureux. J'ai regardé Tom Kerridge sur la BBC television, ici, au Royaume-Uni et je veux donc faire cuire tout ce qu'il a fait sur l'emission. Je essayé son plat pour citron poulet au poivre et  c'est goûté absolument incroyable. Il était également très facile à faire.

Il y a une version anglaise de cette recette. Vous pouvez le trouver ici.

Je me suis adapté la recette originale en remplaçant le thym pour romarin. Je suis aussi un peu inquiet que mes pommes de terre ne cuisiner, à faire en sorte que je coupe quelques-uns des plus grands de moitié.

Je servi ce chou et le poireau haché, que je sautés dans un peu de beurre avec l'assaisonnement. Certainement luxuriante!





Lush poulet de poivre au citron, adapté de 'Best Ever Dishes' par Tom Kerridge

Ingrédients

 

Pour la marinade

4 cuillères à soupe de miel liquide

2 cuillères à soupe de moutarde de Dijon

3 gousses d'ail, pelées, râpées

3-4 c de poivre noir concassé, au goût

2 citrons, le zeste et le jus


Pour le poulet de poivre au citron

4 os poitrines de poulet sans peau, chaque sein a marqué trois ou quatre fois l'aide d'un couteau bien aiguisé 4-5 brins de thym frais

1 citron, tranché finement

700g / 1½lb bébé pommes de terre nouvelles

sel et poivre noir fraîchement moulu

poignée de feuilles fraîches hachées flatleaf de persil, à server




Méthode:



Pour la marinade, mélanger tous les ingrédients de la marinade dans un bol et bien mélanger.

 

 

Pour le poulet de poivre au citron, frotter un peu de la marinade dans le poulet marqué, puis placer les poitrines de poulet dans un bol et verser sur le reste de la marinade. Couvrir le bol avec une pellicule de plastique et réfrigérer au réfrigérateur pendant au moins 10 minutes et jusqu'à deux heures.



Quand le poulet mariné a, préchauffer le four à 200C / 400F / Gas 6.

 

 

Disposer les brins de thym et de tranches de citron dans le fond d'un plat à rôtir. Versez les pommes de terre dans le plat à rôtir, puis placer les poitrines de poulet marinées sur le dessus des pommes de terre. Donnez le poulet un revêtement final de la marinade et assaisonner au goût avec le sel et le poivre noir fraîchement moulu.



Rôti pendant 30-35 minutes, ou jusqu'à ce que les pommes de terre et le poulet sont cuits (le poulet soit bien cuit lorsque le jus soit clair quand il est percé dans la partie la plus épaisse avec une brochette).




Couvrir le plat à rôtir avec du papier d'aluminium et mettre le poulet de côté pour se reposer pendant 10-15 minutes. Juste avant de servir, répartissez dessus le persil.

Quicky Quicky Chicky Chicken Tagine

 

 

I bought a tagine once. It was half price and to be honest it isn't very Moroccan looking; maybe I will buy one of those exotic looking glazed lapis blue affairs sometime but at the moment mine is just cream coloured and sits on the top of my cookbook shelf - it's a kind of  homage to the real thing, but not the real thing; not quite.

And it is a bit like that with this recipe. It isn't your full on, heady with spice tagine which tantalises the senses, but it kind of does the job when you haven't got the time to devote to the slow steady cooking that a real tagine might require (I realise that once all the ingredients are in, the magic takes place whilst I am away doing something else; my presence isn't necessarily required, of course, but when I fall in the house at 5pm or whatever, I need to have a meal that is going to be served before 8pm, or else the biscuit tin gets it...) so this is a good enough homage to Morocco whilst you are in your kitchen in the UK, dealing with kids and homework and the washing and....(insert other menial and but sadly necessary tasks here).

This recipe is loosely based on the one I found on a loose page of a leaflet that came with a food magazine. It looks as though it might have been 'Good Food' magazine, but other than that, I know little. My alterations are that I doubled the onion content, put in some ras el hanout spice seasoning in to the sautéing onions and used chicken stock instead of water. With some couscous this was really, really rather nice...

 

Quick Chicken Tagine

 

Ingredients:

 

2 tbsp olive oil

8 skinless boneless chicken thighs, halved if large

2 onions, chopped

2 tsp grated fresh root ginger

2 tsp ras el hanout

150ml chicken stock

pinch saffron or turmeric (I used saffron)

1 tbsp honey

400g carrots, cut into sticks (which I would have used but I didn't have any!!)

small bunch parsley, roughly chopped

lemon wedges, to serve

 

Method:

 

 

Heat the oil in a large, wide pan with a lid, add the chicken, then fry quickly until lightly coloured. Add the onion and ginger, then fry for a further 2 mins. Add the ras el hanout and cook out until it becomes fragrant.

 

 

 

Add the chicken stock, the saffron, honey and carrots, if you have any that is, season, then stir well. Bring to the boil, cover tightly, then simmer for 30 mins until the chicken is tender. Uncover and increase the heat for about 5 to 10 mins to reduce the sauce to the consistency you require. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with lemon wedges for squeezing over.

 

 

 

I served this with (forgive me!!) ready made couscous salad which you just zap in the microwave. And it's as good as anything I could make from the packet. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it.

Cooking Like a Star, Delia Stylee - Orange and Greek Honey Syrup Cake

 

 

I think it is safe to say that you know where you are with Delia. There is some unwritten gastronomic rule somewhere that says that every Delia recipe will deliver. Your dinner party will be amazing. Everyone will swoon over your pudding. Your bolied egg will be perfect, for Delia showed you how to boil that egg. And whilst a lot of what I have just written is just a little tongue in cheek, it’s very rare a Delia recipe fails you. It’s food that makes you happy.

And that brings me rather neatly to cake, and I will speak for the group here; cake makes you happy. In that way they’re a bit like flowers, or balloons. They make you smile, and even if you decline a slice, (What is wrong with you?) they’re nice to look at. Pretty little things.

 

 

So, when I realised that March is the not only the month of white rabbits, but the month of Delia Smith on ‘Cook like a star’ hosted by Zoe at Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo at Eat your Heart Out and Mich at Piece of Cake I had to start with cake and as it’s a month nearer to what should be the start of some warmer weather (one of these years, I will be right…) I chose something Greek, and who knows, if I wish really hard and my punt on the Euromillions this evening comes off, then tomorrow I might be eating something similar sat outside some taverna somewhere *crosses fingers*.

Cakes with a soaking syrup usually don’t dry out so you can choose to eat this over a few days if you like. It’s a very moreish, tasty, zingy cake though quite crumbly despite the syrup soaking. Probably the semolina/cornmeal content. It does need the yoghurt topping because of this in my opinion. If I made this again, I would go for something richer like ever so slightly sweetened mascarpone spread over the top. That would be tremendous!

Greek Orange and Honey Syrup Cake, adapted from Delia Smith’s ‘How to Cook, Book Three’.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

2 small oranges (weighing about 9 oz/250 g)

4½ oz (125 g) ground almonds

6 oz (175 g) well-softened butter, plus a little extra for greasing

6 oz (175 g) golden caster sugar

3 large eggs, beaten

9 oz (250 g) semolina (I used fine cornmeal)

4½ level teaspoons baking powder

For the syrup:

8 fl oz (225 ml) Greek mountain honey

5 tablespoons orange juice

1½ tablespoons lemon juice

1½ inch (4 cm) cinnamon stick (I used a tsp of ground cinnamon)

For the topping:

7 oz (200 g) Greek yoghurt

1½ oz (40 g) unsalted, shelled pistachio nuts

2 tablespoons Greek mountain honey

 

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 6, 400°F (200°C)

 

 

First, cut the oranges into chunks, removing the pips. Then tip the whole lot – flesh, pith and zest – into a food processor and whiz it to a thick purée.

Next, put all the other cake ingredients into a large bowl and, provided the butter is really soft, just go in with an electric hand whisk and whisk everything together until you have a smooth, well-combined mixture.

When combined, fold in the orange purée, spoon the mixture into a prepared 10 inch springform tin and smooth the top with the back of the spoon.

Now place the cake on the centre shelf of the oven and bake it for an initial 10 minutes. Then lower the temperature to gas mark 4, 350°F (180°C) and bake for a further 40-45 minutes, or until it is golden brown, springy in the centre and has shrunk slightly from the sides of the tin.

Meanwhile, make the syrup. To do this, simply combine the honey and 5 tablespoons water with the cinnamon stick in a small saucepan, place it over a gentle heat, bring it up to simmering point and let it simmer gently for about 5 minutes. After that, take the pan off the heat, remove the cinnamon stick and stir in the orange and lemon juices. (I just threw it all in together and heated the mixture!!)

 

Leave the cake aside to cool for 5 minutes, then remove it from the tin to a wire rack to cool, with a large plate underneath. Make a few holes all over it with a skewer before pouring the syrup over it. (It will look like there is far too much, but don’t worry, the cake will absorb more than you think, and any that is not absorbed can be poured from the plate back over the cake.) Then, when the cake is absolutely cold, place it on a serving plate, cover it and leave it in a cool place overnight, though I served it a few hours later.

 

 

Just before serving, spread the top of the cake with the Greek yoghurt, sprinkle over the pistachios, drizzle with the honey and serve cut into chunky slices.

This is a big cake. Serves 8 – 10 comfortably.

 

I am submitting this recipe to March 2013's 'Cook Like A Star' blog hop hosted by Zoe at Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo at Eat your Heart Out and Mich at Piece of Cake. See other amazing Delia recipes below!

A speedy roast! Martha Stewart's Pork Tenderloin with Honeyed Butter

 

 

I am writing this at the time of year where you might be sick of eating meat; Christmas can turn into a bit of a meat marathon with all those roast dinners and the general prolonged faffing about that goes along with them, and if you are anything like me then there comes a time somewhere around 27th December where you are crying out for a cheeseboard, but before you banish any more meat out of your mind, here is an unfaffy, speedily quick way of rustling up a pretty gorgeous meal courtesy of Martha Stewart who is the subject of this month's Cook Like A Star  bloghop.

 

The bloghop is hosted by Zoe at Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Riceball from Riceball Eats. If you have the time, visit there for many more Martha Stewart treats!

 

It has been the case for a long time that pork in this country at least can be quite dry and flavourless, due to this country's obsession with intensive farming methods. This meat lends itself to be being basted and roasted in this way and the quick cooking process leaves the meat caramelised and flavourful on the outside, and moist on the inside. I must say however that the seven minutes cooking time in the oven was a little too short when I cooked this - it ended up being more like 15. I can only think that either I have an inefficient oven or else Martha Stewart's pig of choice is rather small. Anyway, it's worth mentioning. I pierced the loin with a knife part way through to check the juices and it needed a little more and whilst I know you can serve pork a little pink, I do think a good vet would have got this little piggy back to market. So, it got double the time and in my mind didn't suffer for it because it had been well seared in the pan on top of the hob beforehand, so it was still moist and juicy in the middle.

 

I served this with fondant potatoes and petit pois. And it was good. Very good!

 

Pork Tenderloin with Honeyed Butter, adapted from the Martha Stewart website

 

Ingredients:

 

4 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons honey

1 1/2 pounds pork tenderloin, trimmed of silver skin ( ...mine was a more like a lb of pork, about 600g)

Coarse salt and ground pepper

1/4 cup water

 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

 

 

 

In a Dutch oven or ovenproof skillet, heat butter and honey over medium heat, stirring to melt butter.

 

 

 

Season pork with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and place in pan.

 

 

 

Cook until underside is lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Turn pork, and cook until other side is browned, about 5 minutes more. Lower the heat if the honey begins to burn.

 

Put pan in the oven, and roast until pork is just cooked through, 7 to 10 minutes. (Though it may take longer; see preamble!) Transfer pork to a plate.

 

Add water to the pan, and stir over medium heat to scrape up all the browned bits. Add any accumulated pork juices from the plate, and simmer until sauce is reduced to about 1/2 cup.

 

 

 

Slice pork on the diagonal, and serve drizzled with sauce.

 

I am submitting this as part of the 'Cook Like A Star' bloghop. Visit some of the other wonderful Martha Stewart dishes below!