Pistachio Mon Chéri Brownies

I have been on a mission to clean out the pantry, which might have resulted in some peculiar recipes here. :-))The "Mon Chéri",another chocolate product produced by Italian Ferrero, contains a "heart" of sweet cherry soaked in a liqueur and is encased in Ferrero's dark chocolate!

• 80 g All-purpose flour
  
  
• 1/2 tsp Salt
  
  
• 1/2 tsp Baking powder
  
  
• 250 g Mon Chéri liqueur chocolate©angiesrecipes
  
  
• 150 g Butter
  
  
• 200 g Sugar
  
  
• 3 Eggs
  
  
• 2 tsp Vanilla extract
  
  
• 70 g Pistachio, roughly chopped
  
  

1. Preheat the oven to 165C/330F. Grease a 20x25cm baking pan and line with foil. Brush the foil with vegetable oil.
   
   
2. In a bow, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder. Melt the chocolate, butter and sugar over a pot of simmering water. Add in the flour mixture. Whisk in eggs, one a time, until fully incorporated. Add in vanilla extract and chopped pistachio.
   
   
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the center of the hot oven for 30 minutes. Remove and cool completely on a rack. Cut into 12 squares.

Haddock chowder

I've said before how much I hate soup and how pointless I think it is.

But I don't think chowder counts as a soup. Nor is it especially anything else. It's... chowder.

Anyway, this is very nice and very easy. A great thing do to for a lot of people for lunch because it won't take up really any of your attention and you can plunk it down in the middle of the table and pretend you live on Nantucket or something.

It's also quite wholesome, which means that you've got good reason to make a giant comforting crumble or a lot of chocolate cake for afters, which I feel I can never quite justify, and people often can't quite manage, if I've dished up a humdinger of a roast.

Smoked haddock corn chowder, for 4 
(bastardised from Jamie Oliver's new book, 30 Minute Meals, or 30-Minute Meals to be more accurate)

300g smoked haddock (buy it skin off if you can because taking the skin off yourself is a real pain in the A)
4 rashers bacon
2 dried red chillies (if you want - I thought it was lovely a bit spicy, but don't if you're not keen)
4 spring onions
200g waxy potatoes, chopped into cubes about 2cm big
1 large can sweetcorn or 4 corn on the cob
3 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
1.5 pints chicken stock
150ml single cream (but I used double and it was nice)

1 Chop up the bacon, potatoes and spring onions and cook them in a large pan gently for 10 minutes with the dried chilli if you're using and not if not.

2 When the bacon is looking done, add the sweetcorn. If you're using fresh sweetcorn, you'll have to shave the corns off the cob in the best way you can see how. Tin users can just tip the little suckers straight in.

3 Give this all a stir. Add the haddock, (I cut mine up roughly into about 4 big bits before chucking in. Jamie puts it in whole), the bay leaves and the thyme and then cover with the stock.

4 Cook for 12 minutes over a medium flame. Then add the cream, stir in and cook gently for another 5-10 minutes. You can leave everything whole or you can bash it all up with a potato masher, or just bash up one side and mix it all together.

Eat with Matzoh crackers if you want, but it's pretty filling on its own.

Goulash

I realise now that you can't see the pork very well in this photo, but it was shredded and sticky and very nice


Apart from bacon and sausages, I don't cook pork that much. I've never eaten it in a form that wasn't quite tough and a bit tasting-of-nothing and I was traumatised at about 13 while reading Alive that when cooked, people taste like pork. It put me right off.

But this slow-cook goulash recipe that I found in Jamie at Home, surrenders a shoulder or leg of pork to something totally edible, that doesn't have the mouthfeel of a Uruguayan rugby player.

Goulash, if you've never had it, is usually made with beef, I think, and is a rich, smoky thing made with a lot of peppers and tomatoes. Very autumnal and, I believe the word I'd use if I was a proper cookery writer and not just a half-educated, semi-psychotic, spiritual alcoholic is "fragrant".

I missed out so many ingredients in this that it hardly counts as Jamie's recipe any more. Below is the ghoulash as I made it, which worked excellently well and I was really pleased with it - if you want to get hold of the original recipe, it is very conveniently located on Jamie Oliver's excellent website, or on p.257 of Jamie At Home.

This takes three hours to cook, but it works.

For 2 very hungry people, or for 4 less hungry, with rice.

650g pork shoulder or leg, skin off, fat left on
2 sweet peppers, sliced
2 chillies, chopped (you can probably leave the seeds of one in - or both if you like. The 3-hour cooking time seems to knock the shite out of the seeds' heat)
2 red onions, finely sliced
1 heaped tablespoon smoked paprika
1 can plum tomatoes
1/2 a jar of grilled peppers in oil
salt
pepper

for on top:
soured cream
chopped lemon zest
chopped flat parsley

1 Set the oven to 180C. Heat some oil in a deep casserole pan and score the fat on your pork in a criss-cross diamond shape. Season with salt and pepper. On a low-medium flame, cook the pork fat-side down for 15 minutes.

2 Remove from the pan and add the onions, chilli, paprika, a good pinch of salt and pepper. Turn the heat right down and cook for ten minutes until the onions are soft.  Add the sliced peppers, grilled peppers and tomatoes. Put the pork back into the pot - sort of wriggle it down in between the peppers and tomatoes - and pour in enough water to just cover the meat.

3 At this point I was going to add a tablespoon of cider vinegar but clean forgot. I wish I had, so you  might if you do this. Bring to the boil on the hob and then put in the oven for 3 hours with a lid on.

4 Wander off and do something else. Then come back about half an hour before it's ready and cook some rice, open a pot of soured cream and chop up some parsley and lemon zest.

5 When the pot comes out of the oven, attack the pork in the pot with two forks to shred the meat before serving.

Like all stews, this re-heats and freezes very well.

Eat and try not to think about planes crashing.

Cranberry Cornflake Cookies

These cornflake cookies are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Just delicious! Serve them for tea or as an energy boost with a glass of milk for your kids after a long day of school.

• 120 g Butter, diced, at room temperature
  
  
• 100 g Brown sugar
  
  
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  
  
• 130 g Pastry flour, sifted
  
  
• 1 tsp Baking powder
  
  
• Pinch of salt
  
  
• 2 tbsp Milk
  
  
• 45 g Dried cranberries
  
  
• 80 g Kellogg's Cornflakes

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Line two baking trays with paper. Wish together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
   
   
2. Cream the butter, brown sugar and vanilla essence in a mixing bowl until creamy. Add in the flour mixture, and mix on low speed until just combined. Add in milk and mix until dough comes together. Using a wooden spoon, stir in cornflakes and dried cranberries, and mix until well combined.
   
   
3. Form the mixture into 24 balls and place them 1-inch apart onto the prepared trays. Flatten slightly with the back of a spoon. Bake for 14 minutes until light golden. Cool for 5 minutes on tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Carrot cake with orange and mascarpone frosting

One of the more unwelcome realisations in my life was that finding the right man and getting married doesn't solve your problems.

It solves some of your problems - i.e. the problems that go "Am I going to end up with someone I hate?/My family hates? Will I die alone never having known domestic bliss?" But it turns out that when you lift that particular weighty rock from your life, a thousand other shitty things scurry out.

It's like when you find out you're not HIV positive. My friend Julia was sympathising with me the other day about my genuine fear that I was HIV positive. I was convinced I had this, or Hepatitis C, because I've had two tattoos. And they were not performed in clean places. They were down backstreets, one in Guatemala (I think... or was it Mexico...) and the other one in Australia. The guy in Australia, I remember, had kind of a runny nose. Anyway, so about six months later I became convinced that I was going to die. And that was 11 years ago. A long time to worry that you're going to die without doing anything about it.

"Just Get. A. Test" said Julia. "You haven't got it. Although, I used to worry about being HIV positive, so badly that it would keep me awake at night, and then I got a test and it was negative and on my way home from the test I was suddenly gripped with panic about my dissertation, like so badly I couldn't breathe. So, you know, watch out - you may replace one fear for another."

Well, then I got pregnant and I had to have a blood test, there was no escaping it. They took pints out of me without even saying please; they measured it and weighed it and dipped things in it and I got sent in the post a list of all the diseases that I don't have. Negative for everything. I've even got negative blood - B Negative - which is one of those rare ones they're always advertising for on the radio. (Which I think means that if I get hit by a car and I need a massive blood transfusion I'm toast.)

Anyway, finding out that I'm not HIV positive and I don't have Hepatitis C was like getting married. It solved one problem, but released others that have been suppressed.

Although anxiety and depression is, I find, all relative. It's not as bad right now as when I came back from a bad final year at university and promptly went insane. For about three months, every time I was about to cross the road, I would see, out of the corner of my eye, a car accelerating fast towards me, like it was going to hit me. And I'd turn my head and stagger back from the corner and clutch myself - but there'd be nothing there.

When Natasha Kaplinsky started talking to me out of my TV, that was when I went to the doctor. It was back when she was doing breakfast telly and I was getting ready to go somewhere, or just staring out of the window, and I distinctly heard her say: "Esssstheerrrrrrr!" And I spun round, heart pounding, to find her chatting amiably about alopecia. Then it happened again, the next day, just the same.

Well, I'm no idiot. I was clearly mad.

"You suffer from depression and anxiety," said my GP, Chris, looking bored. "You can either have cognitive behavioural therapy, or I can give you Prozac, or you can do nothing. But," he continued, "if Natasha starts asking you to do things, you must ring me immediately."

I made a "duuhrr" face at him. "I have seen Joan of Arc, you know," I said, as nastily as I could, and left. But it's okay, Chris has known me for a really long time and didn't take it personally. I didn't go on the pills, although I'm one of those people who believes that Prozac saves lives. Instead, I chose to get a book on CBT out of the library, read it cover to cover and Natasha never spoke to me again.

If only I'd discovered cooking back then. Although I dislike the bleat that cooking is "therapy", (no, lying on a sofa talking to a trained professional for an hour, four times a week, for three years, is therapy), mindless activity, routine and small accomplishments are the best friend of the depressive.

I happened the other day on a recipe for carrot cake with a orange frosting in Nigel Slater's Tender I. I've never made a carrot cake although I absolutely love it, because there's a slight issue with the fact that there isn't really a neccessity in my house for cake. My mother begged me long ago to stop bringing sweet things round to hers because she thinks my father is going to get diabetes and my husband doesn't like desserts or puddings of any description. And, I have always thought to myself "I want to make a carrot cake but I can't because I'll eat it all and get fat." But now I'm pregnant and depressed for no reason so I don't give a shit.



This cake is truly wonderful. But it is also complicated, so I'd advise you do a thing that I never do, but did today, which is get everything out of the cupboard and measure it all first before you start putting it together. Also read through the recipe all the way first so that the egg whites thing half-way through doesn't come out of nowhere and scare the pants off you.

A carrot cake with a frosting of mascarpone and orange by Nigel Slater

For the cake

3 eggs
250g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch salt
200 ml sunflower oil
25og light muscovado sugar
150g carrots
juice of half a lemon
150g walnuts, roughly chopped

For the frosting

250g mascarpone cheese
200g Philadelphia
150g icing sugar
grated zest of half an orange
some whole walnut halves

1 Set the oven to 180C. Butter 2 x 22cm cake tins and line each bottom with a disc of baking parchment

2 Separate the eggs. Sift together the flour, bicarb of soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

3 Beat the oil and sugar in a food mixer until well-creamed then introduce the egg yolks one by one. Grate the carrots into the mixture, add the lemon juice and walnuts and stir. At this point, the sunflower oil will float to the top of the mixture and look gross. Don't worry, this is normal.

4 Fold the flour into this mixture. I did this by hand, but Nige says do it in the mixer.

5 Beat the egg whites!!!! I didn't see that one coming... until stiff and then fold into the mixture with a metal spoon.

6 Divide the mixture between your tins and bake for 45 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean-ish ... because this is supposed to be quite a sticky cake.

7 To make the frosting, beat the mascarpone, Philly and icing sugar together in a mixer until smooth and creamy. You stand a better chance of this happening if the cheeses are at room temperature when you start. Stir in the orange zest. Splash some in between your cakes to sandwich together and the rest on the top and on the sides. Decorate with walnut halves.

Eat while reading Sylvia Plath.

Nigella's chicken

A question people ask me about being pregnant that I don't like is "Are you happy?" or "Are you excited?"

I know I'm wrong to dislike this question, but I do anyway, in the same way that I am completely wrong to be so irritated by people on the tube who tell me that my bag is open. They're only being helpful: I am in the wrong, they are in the right to point out that my bright purple wallet is up for grabs. So why do I feel such a powerful urge to tell them to fuck off?

Anyway, I suppose the are-you-happy question gives me the creeps because the truth is that no, I'm not happy and no, I'm not excited. That is, I'm not any more happy or more excited than I usually am, just generally, in life, just because I'm going to have a baby. If, on February 6th I was going to be given a new car, or a kitten - yeah that would be exciting.

But a baby? 

No. I feel the same way about the baby as I do about my A Levels, in that I am completely and massively unneccessarily over-prepared and the positive feeling I am feeling, is the feeling of looking forward to the challenge of putting my book-learning to good use.

There is nothing, literally nothing, I don't know about babies. And I know quite a lot about toddlers, too. I can look at a quiet and slightly grey 3 year-old and say "She's going to puke" - and she does. I can hear a baby screaming and say, accurately: "wind".

I have read everything - everything - obsessively about the subject, watched programmes, videos, talked to people endlessly. And please don't give me any of that nothing-prepares-you-for-an-actual-baby CRAP because I have also spent days and days and days looking after my sisters' issue, mopping up sick and keeping them awake until naptime, pushing them on swings, dressing and undressing, playing peek-a-boo and getting them to eat all of their pureed stuff and then eating all their Petit Filous.

I also forced my husband, who hates builders and all building work, to finance the building of a new floor on the top of our house because none of the other rooms would do as a nursery. I've made a will, appointed legal guardians should both my husband and I drop dead after the little sucker is born. It's got its own bank account. I've got a night nanny. I'm interviewing day nannies. I am going on an infant First Aid course because I know a baby that stopped breathing at 2 months in the middle of the night and the night nurse saved its life. (But what if it does it during the day when the night nurse has gone?)

Prepared? Yes. Like I'm about to invade Russia. Happy? Excited? No. But I refuse to believe that that's a bad thing.

Nigella's Kitchen started the other night and I enjoyed it very much. Her mother's "Praised" Chicken caught my eye because it's just the kind of thing I'm crazy about - whole vegetables, meat, broth and rice - quite plain but wholesome and delicious.

And this works - YAY! - because sometimes, let's face it, Nigella's stuff doesn't. My friend, who would want to remain nameless, is traumatised by Nigella's Grasshopper Pie (ingredients: creme de menthe, green food colouring etc) and she hasn't even made it yet.

Anyway, here we go. This is not Nigella's exact recipe because I disagreed with a couple of things, but if you want to seek it out, just Google it.

Nigella's chicken

1 chicken
1 medium carrot per person
1 celery stick per person - plus some leaves if your celery comes with leaves on
1 large bunch flat parsley
2 bay leaves
sprig thyme - this is optional
4 cloves garlic
salt
pepper
water
vegetable oil

1 Brown the chicken whole in a large casserole dish in a good slug of vegetable oil for about 3-4 minutes each side. I think you all get the drift by now that I don't think you should use olive oil for this kind of activity. Nigella says to crack the breastbone of the chicken to flatten it but I'm sorry, I just can't. Neither would I be able to kill a lobster by doing that thing with a knife in the back of its head.

2 Turn it breast-side up and then pour in a large glassful of white wine or vermouth. Let it sizzle down for a bit, about 2-3 mins and throw in your whole, peeled, garlic cloves

3 Add the carrots and celery, cut roughly into halves or thirds but no smaller

4 Chop the stalks off the bottom of your bunch of parsley, tie with string and add to the pot. Same with some celery leaves, if you're using these. Throw in the bay and the thyme, but it's no big deal if you don't have either of these. I daresay a small quartered mild onion might work well, too.

5 Scrunch over a good 10 twists of pepper and two or three pinches of salt. Then add water, just from the tap, until it comes up to about mid-thigh on the chicken. If you want a lot of broth, add more but don't cover the chicken.

6 Put in a 180C oven for 1 hour with the lid on and then 30 mins with the lid off to brown the top. Serve with red carmargue rice, yum yum, which takes 30 minutes to cook properly, so stick it on when the lid comes off. Scatter with chopped flat parsley.

My husband really liked this, even though he's not that crazy about plain food. So there you go.

Celery Pesto Rocket and Tomato Pizza

Top the homemade pizza crust with celery pesto, some of your favourite veggies, bacon, and cheese/es, and you have got a satisfying and totally delicious meal. Bon appetite!!!

Celery Pesto	Dough	Topping
50 g Almond slices 3-4 cup Celery leaves 50 g Parmesan cheese, grated 3/4 tsp Salt 90 ml Walnut oil 90 ml Extra-virgin olive oil	350 g Bread flour 1 tsp Garlic salt 7 g Instant dried yeast 240 ml Lukewarm water 2 tbsp Olive oil	4 tbsp Celery almond pesto 180 g Buffalo mozzarela, sliced 3 tbsp Parmesan, grated 4 slice Rindless bacon, torn 2 Tomatoes, sliced Some baby rocket

1. To make the pesto, place almond slices, celery leaves, Parmesan and salt in a food processor, then whiz to a paste. With the motor running, slowly add the oil until combined. Cover and set aside.
   
   
2. Combine the flour, garlic salt and instant dried yeast in a mixing bowl. Add in the warm water and olive oil. Stir at slow speed until all the ingredients combined. Increase the speed to the medium, and knead until the dough is smooth. Remove and shape the dough into a ball.
3. Grease the mixing bowl with a little olive oil. Return the dough to the bowl, cover with a plastic wrap and allow it to rest for an hour until it doubles in size. Preheat the oven to 220C/440F. When the dough is double its original size, punch it down to release the air bubbles. On a lightly floured work surface, cut the dough into two equal pieces. Shape each into a thin round layer, about 12 inches in diameter.
   
   
4. Spread two tablespoons of the celery pesto on each dough, then arrange mozzarella, Parmesan on top followed by torn bacon and sliced tomatoes. Bake the pizza in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes until the crust is light brown.