Turkey Piquant

This is yet another long-standing entry from my well-thumbed recipe book.  I know it's been around a while as said recipe book was started to give me self catering ideas when I went to University many, many moons ago!

In my student days, it was a cheap meal to make and lasted me the best part of a week.  It requires basic ingredients and is good with either a jacket potato or rice as accompaniment.  I remember I used to add frozen peas to the rice mix when at Uni in a nod towards increasing my vitamin intake.

To make a panful, serving 3 with healthy appetites, we used

450g turkey breast, diced into even sized pieces
one bunch salad onions, washed and sliced
25g butter
2 Tbsp cornflour, seasoned
2 Tbsp redcurrant jelly
1" piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely diced (or 1 heaped tsp ground ginger)
One orange, juiced.

First of all, we added the cornflour to a bowl and seasoned generously with black pepper and a sprinkle of salt. We then coated the turkey pieces in the seasoned cornflour.  Whilst this was being done, we melted the butter over a low heat in a large saucepan and lightly cooked the sliced onions and ginger.

Next, the turkey was added to the pan and slowly browned over a medium heat.  Once it was browned, the redcurrant jelly was added, stirred through and gently allowed to melt.  Finally, the orange juice was poured into the pan.  The contents were mixed well, the pan was covered and left to simmer on  a low heat for 20-25 minutes.  (At this point you could transfer to a slow cooker to cook through and be ready later in the day)

Once the turkey was cooked through and the sauce had thickened it was served with a jacket potato.

It can also be served with wholegrain rice and peas.  This will make the amount serve 3/4 comfortably.

This keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days (ensure you reheat it thoroughly) or can be frozen (again defrost slowly and ensure it's heated through properly before serving.)

Chocolate Yule Log

This is our favourite baking activity of the year. When we went onto a Gluten Free regime, we wondered what the "special" cake we'd have at Christmas... luckily a recipe found in a magazine years ago led to the idea of what we would use as the basis.  Thus, we have adapted a chocolate roulade recipe, which is naturally gluten free, into one for a Yule Log.  This is how we make it.

The ingredients used for the roulade are:-

175g plain chocolate

6 large eggs, separated

175g caster sugar

For the filling we use:-

50g plain chocolate

half a 435g can of chestnut puree

100g golden caster sugar

2 Tablespoons Brandy  (optional)

150ml homemade creme fraiche (or use whipped cream)

To decorate, we make an old family recipe for Chocolate Fudge Icing:-

40g soft margarine (we use pure dairy free spread)

3 Tablespoons milk (we use rice or nut milk)

200g icing sugar

25g cocoa powder

We gather and measure out all the ingredients, the fan oven is set to 160ºC, and we line a  swiss roll tin with greaseproof paper ready to take the roulade mix.  First of all, the chocolate is melted (in a glass bowl over some warm water).  Whilst this happens, we whisk the egg yolks with 175g caster sugar until it is pale and creamy.  Then the melted chocolate gets mixed in.

In a large, clean bowl the egg whites are whisked until they form stiff peaks.  A tablespoon of this is then added to the chocolate mix to loosen it a little.  Then the remainder of the egg whites are carefully folded into the chocolate mix.

The mix is poured into the lined swiss roll tin and gently levelled.  It is then baked in the oven for about 20 minutes until spongy to the touch.

When it comes out of the oven, it looks like this. It is cooled in the tin for about 5 minutes during which time, a piece of baking paper is put on the work surface and sprinkled with some sugar.  The roulade is then turned out of the tin onto the baking paper.  The baking paper used in the tin is then carefully peeled from the roulade before covering with another sheet of baking paper which is then covered with a damp tea towel.  It is then left to cool for an hour.

Leaving the roulade to cool, we move onto making the filling.  For this, we melt the chocolate over a pan of boiling water.  Half a can of chestnut puree, sugar and brandy are mixed together and the melted chocolate is added and stirred in.  This is then spread over the roulade.  Next a layer of creme fraiche is spread over.

Then it is time to roll the whole lot.  We roll the long side and use the baking paper to help the process. *

Finally, the chocolate fudge icing is made by melting the margarine and milk in a pan which was allowed to cool slightly.  The milk/margarine is then added to the sifted icing sugar and cocoa powder and mixed well.  Then, the roulade is covered in the icing.  Using a fork, the icing is decorated to resemble the texture of the bark, sprinkled with sifted icing sugar and chilled.

The roulade freezes well iced or un-iced.  We cut ours one third/two thirds and freeze a third when it's made at Christmas for having over New Year.

It is delicious and never lasts long... it's supposed to serve 10 but that depends on how thick the slices are.

* The roulade can be frozen at this stage.  Defrost thoroughly and ice before serving.

Tweet Pie Choc Chunk Cookies

Those of you that follow us on twitter will be aware that Sous Chef J and I were at the BBC Good Food Show at the NEC last Friday. Whilst there we were able to watch chef Brian Turner demonstrate a couple of recipes on the Belling stand. He used an innovative, twitter crowdsourced, recipe book called Tweet Pie. It contains more than 200 'twecipes’ via Twitter from members of the public - 50 have been published in the book with all proceeds donated to the food charity FoodCycle. It can be bought on eBay for £4.99 using this link .

We chose to recreate the recipe tweeted by @ebmulcahy. Although it’s the one we saw being cooked, Brian made a few tweaks, and we also had to amend the recipe incorporate our gluten free requirements. Plus, we 'sort of' halved the amounts stated in the tweeted recipe in case the switch to gluten free didn't go to plan.

The ingredients we used were:-

125g caster sugar
125g butter (softened)
1 egg yolk
175g Dove's Farm self raising flour (for those not following a gluten free diet, just use SR Flour!)
Chocolate - white and dark, roughly chopped

The sugar and butter were creamed together. Then the egg yolk was added and combined well. Finally the flour was added and the mixture was brought together. This was all done by hand (just like we'd seen in the demo.) The mix was then wrapped in greaseproof paper and chilled (we left ours overnight.)

When it was time to bake the cookies, we removed the dough from the fridge for about half an hour then divided it into three parts.  Sous Chef J had (finally) decided that they would become chocolate chunk cookies - some were to be white chocolate, another lot would be dark chocolate and the third batch a mix of the two chocolates.

Once the dough was kneaded and had the chocolate of choice incorporated, they were roughly rolled into balls, placed on a non-stick baking tray and flattened slightly.  They were then placed in a pre-heated fan oven at 180ºC.  Having taken note of Chef Turner checking the oven after a few minutes, Sous Chef J ensured we did the same and set the timer for 6 minutes... whereupon it was decided another 4 minutes were needed to ensure cooked cookies.

Having been cooked "to perfection" the cookies were left to cool on their baking trays for 5 minutes before being transferred to a cooling rack. Then we 'tested' one of the white choc chunk cookies... although there was competition to get to the cookie first!

It was lovely to meet Jo (@jos_kitchen) and Louise (@comidayvida), both Midlands Food Bloggers, on the Belling stand.