Winter warmers

Question of the week: as the weather's getting colder, do you have a favourite Winter-warmer type recipe you'd like to share?

"Baked apples are a classic pudding this time of year, and for good reason. You'll need one cooking apple per person, plus some dark brown sugar, sultanas or mixed dried fruit, a smidge of butter, a sprinkle of ground cinnamon, an oven proof dish, and an oven preheated to 180c

The only tricky bit to the whole thing is coring your apples - it's easiest with a dedicated tool - like a tiny cookie-cutter on a mini bayonet - but if you don't have one of those around, no problem. Work carefully with a sharp knife, blade longer than the apple is high, to make four vertical cuts, forming a square column around the core. Carefully! Then push the column out, and you're good to go.

Now you just need to score a line around the circumference of the apple, and put them in your dish. Fill the core with alternate layers of your dried fruit and your dark brown sugar, tamping them down as you go, and ending with a little bit of butter and a final dab of sugar - the butter will melt down and make the fruit filling moist, but can be skipped if you've not got any to hand. Pop the whole thing in the oven for about half an hour.

The apples should be bursting at the seams with fluffy, light flesh, with the stuffing adding a rich sweetness. Serve with a light dusting of cinnamon, and either ice-cream of Greek yoghurt.

(For a quick fix, you can put a basic version of this together with an eating apple, no sugar or butter, and cook it in the microwave in about five minutes.)

* Photo by anjuli_ayer, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Winter warmers

Question of the week: as the weather's getting colder, do you have a favourite Winter-warmer type recipe you'd like to share?

"Bonfire Night tonight, so really the menu ought to be baked potatoes and bangers-in-a-bun, but if you need something to warm you up after watching a fireworks display, soup is rarely a bad idea. Soup recipes are always a bit vague, but here's an experiment that turned out very tasty indeed.

Red Pepper Soup.

I was working with roughly two red [bell] peppers and half a large onion person - for five I had ten peppers and three really substantial onions. Chop the onion fine, and soften really slowly in an almost obscene amount of butter until they're glistening and transparent. Add in the finely chopped [and seeded] peppers, and more butter if things are looking dry. Keep stirring them over the low heat, until they too soften and cook down. At a rough eyeball they reduced in volume somewhere between a half and a third. Add enough vegetable stock [or I guess maybe chicken or turkey stock, if you're carnivorous and have it to hand] to make it soupy but not to drown it [I added probably just less than half a pint.] simmer gently for a while longer, season to taste, and enjoy. I ran 2/3 of it through the food processor to get that really thick smooth texture, but it's hardly compulsory."
- Miss Alice

* Photo by Alan Cleaver/, used under Creative Commons.

Winter warmers

Question of the week: as the weather's getting colder, do you have a favourite Winter-warmer type recipe you'd like to share?

"I often get the urge to bake when it's cold and grey outside. This apple, honey and oat tray-bake seems pretty appropriate to the season.

You'll need:

110g butter
180g runny honey
1 medium egg
90g wholemeal flour
3/4 tsp of baking powder
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
130g porridge oats
1 apple, cored but not pealed, and then either chopped finely or grated coarsely.

Preheat the oven to 190c, and grease your baking tray - a Swiss roll pan is ideal, but not essential. For added insurance, line with greaseproof paper. If you're using a non-stick tray that you care about, line with enough paper to form 'handles' on the short sides.

Either pop the butter in the heating over for a few minutes to mostly-melt it, or blast it in the microwave for 30 seconds or so.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, honey, egg and vanilla until smooth.

Add the wholemeal flour, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon and stir in.

Mix in the oats and the apple.

Drop into your baking tray, and press flat with the back of a spoon. If you don't have a baking tray with sides, leave a few cm clear at each edge and you'll probably be fine.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven. Leave to rest for about five minutes before slicing up your tray-bake, and then leave to cool in the pan.

If you're using a non-stick tray that you care about, and remembered to line it with enough paper to form 'handles' use them to lift the whole thing out while it's still warm so you can cut and cool it out of the tray. "
- Miss Alice

* Photo by The Marmot, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Winter warmers

Question of the week: as the weather's getting colder, do you have a favourite Winter-warmer type recipe you'd like to share?

"Autumn may mean cobblers and pie to you, but to me it means crumbles - apple crumble, rhubarb crumble, blackberry crumble - it's all good.

Pre-heat your over to 180c, and plan for a very light main course!

The topping is very simple

Take 200g plain flour and 100g porridge oats (or 300g plain flour, if you don't have oats to hand), add to a bowl with 175g brown sugar, and mix.

Cut 200g butter into rough cubes, and give them a super-quick blast in the microwave to soften, but not melt them - maybe 10, 20 seconds?

Add to the flour, oat and sugar mixture, and rub in - pinch the mixture between your finger tips, rubbing your fingers together to mix the butter into the dry ingredients. When main you're done, your mixture will look like breadcrumbs.

For the filling, you want some kind of fruit - roughly 500g of it, that you peel, core, chop, or - if you're using berries - just pour straight into an oven-proof bowl. You want the end result to cook down some, so eating apples and pears work better than cooking pears. Mix in any spices that sound good to you, and maybe a little sugar if you think it'll be too tart without.

It's a little late in the year for rhubarb, unless you buy it tinned, but rhubarb is good with ginger, as are pears. Apples and cinnamon are natural partners, as are apples and blackberry, or apple and blueberry. Plums are great with a couple of cloves and a splash of port or red wine.

So, you now have a bowl of breadcrumb-like topping, and an oven proof dish filled about half way up with fruit. Just shake your topping over the fruit, using the back of a spoon to spread it around more or less evenly, and press it down gently.

Pop in the oven for 40 - 50 minutes, until the top is starting to brown, and the fruit is bubbling up around the edges.

Traditionally, crumble is served with custard, but it's also good plain, with ice cream, or with a scoop of Greek yoghurt."
- Miss Alice

* Photo by Amanda Rudkin, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.

Winter warmers - Miss Alice

Question of the week: as the weather's getting colder, do you have a favourite Winter-warmer type recipe you'd like to share?

"There's just something about stew that suits this time of year, although as with so many traditional-type foods, it's less a recipe than a rough guide. The photo I'm using here comes from a set uploaded by PodChef, author of the Gastrocast Blog, which takes you step-by-step through a delicious looking Scottish beef stew with potato cakes.

Being vegetarian, I use quorn chunks in pace of the meat, and more often than not go for a chicken-esque stew, with herby dumplings, which follows a basically similar process:

Take a couple of onions, chop, and put them to soften in a little oil.

Roughly chop a leek or two, and stick that in, along with a bag of quorn pieces, and a shake of either dried lentils or rolled oats (the lentils will add a little protein, but either does the job of helping thicken the stew.)

Stir in a good shake of dried herbs to your tastes - thyme and rosemary is a classic combo.

While they're slowly colouring up, prep and chop an assortment of root veg - potatoes, carrots, swede, turnips - whatever you fancy. If you're using chicken, you'll want to make sure the meat is properly cooked at this stage, but with quorn, it'll be done in the time it takes to prep the veg.

Pop the chopped root veg into the pot, and give them a quick stir about. Then pour over stock (stock cubes are fine, with or without a teaspoon of Marmite) and, if you fancy it, some beer, wine, or cider, to fill the pan up to about three quarters.

Bring to a slow boil while you make your dumplings: mix together 50g of self-raising flour, 25g of veggie suet, herbs to match whatever you used earlier, and just enough liquid to turn into a dough. (Particularly delicious with fresh chopped rosemary and cider as the liquid) If you're making a big pot of stew, scale the mix up accordingly - just keep that 2:1 ratio.

Roll the dough into dumplings, remembering that they will rise, so the uncooked one should fit easily into the palm of your hand. Drop into the stew, cover, and simmer for about half an hour.

If you wish, come back at about the 20 minute mark to add frozen peas and/or sweetcorn, and then again at the 30 minute mark to round up a sacrificial dumpling to cut up to check that they've cooked through.

Tuck in, and enjoy.

Any left overs will re-heat in the microwave, and probably taste even better than the fresh version. If you're re-heating on the hob, you might need to add a little more water or stock, and make sure everything's properly heated through. "- Miss Alice

* Photo by PodChef, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.