Afternoon Tea Sandwiches

Afternoon tea is a Great British Institution.  It is a Posh Thing.  It is something 'the Set' might have done 'properly' in the 17 and 1800s.  Messing it up is not done.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to mess up afternoon tea.  There are only a few boxes to tick, and there are multiple acceptable ways to experiment with the content, theme and context of the event (cupcakes!  Steampunk! Picnics!  Booze!)  Here is what I reckon constitutes a 'proper' tea:

• Teas, plural, available - preferably some to be served with milk (e.g. Assam) and some without (Lady Grey).
• Scones, with real clotted cream, and at least two kinds of jam - a red/purple one and an orange one, minimum.
• Cake - either individual chunks, such as Lamingtons, brownies, or other traybakes; or a single large and creamy edifice.
• Finger Sandwiches.
• Sandwiches must be able to be eaten in two bites or less.
• They must have the crusts cut off, or it's not posh.
• The shape of the eventual sandwich (triangle or rectangle) is immaterial.
• Fillings may include spreads, but these must be savoury (not peanut butter).  
• Faffless but uber-kitzch adornments such as cress should be rampant.

Of all the boxes, it is the sandwiches which are most often overlooked.  They do not make as photogenic an arrangement on the three-tiered stand as the cakes; it is the scones which are seen to be the true essentials, and 'tea and sandwiches' doesn't have the same ring.  Nevertheless afternoon tea is a Meal, a small meal but a Meal all the same, and all posh meals have multiple courses.  

The Approved Sandwich-Making Method (appropriated from Douglas Adams)
The chief among knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife. It must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist onto the beautifuly proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder.  With just four more dexerous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would now be accomplished.

Suggested Flavours For Afternoon Tea Finger-Sandwiches

Meats
Roast beef / steak and mustard.
CurryNation Chicken: to make simple sauce, finely chop half an onion, fry in butter with 2tsp of cumin, coriander and a sprinkle of turmeric, and add coconut cream until spreadable.  Coat diced fried chicken in the mixture and assemble the sandwiches as above.
Fish
Smoked salmon, cream cheese and dill
Mackerel and horseradish
Veggie
Cucumber.  N.B. I could write a whole post on the Correct way to make cucumber sandwiches; the key thing is to peel the cucumber, slice thinly and drain the slices before assembly in a colander, scattered with salt.  This stops them going soggy.  Dress with salad dressing to increase flavour.
Cheese and chutney.

Moroccan Main Dishes

Here you can see the remains of the Easter Feast which i created on Saturday.  Although it felt like a long day of cooking had happened, none of these things actually take very much work - just monitoring.

Slow-Cooked Spicy Lamb Shanks

You Will Need: Oven tray, tinfoil, sharp knife and chopping board

1 lamb shank per person (or to share between 2 unhungry people)

jar of anchovies

clove of garlic per lamb shank

spice mix - to include coriander, cumin, salt, black pepper, chopped garlic

1) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.  Line the oven tray with tinfoil.

2) If you don't know the weight of your meat, weigh it.  Stab the lamb shanks in their juiciest bits.  Chop anchovies in half and garlic cloves into thin slices, and push an anchovy and sliver firmly into each stab with your fingers.

3) Arrange the shanks in the tin and sprinkle over the spice mix.  I used a bought tin of generic Moroccan goodness I had from years ago, but you could make your own.  Use enough to coat the shanks on both sides and rub well in.

4) Cover the shanks with another layer of tinfoil, and tuck in the edges.  Wham in the oven, then turn it down  to 150 degrees C.  Bake for about 40 minutes per pound and then some if you can manage it.

Lamb Kofta Kebabs

You Will Need: wooden skewers, oven tray, large bowl, fork, chopping board, knife, cheesegrater.

Mint to the left already looking limp

500g lamb mince
half a red onion
6 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
large bunch of fresh mint
1 egg

1) Soak the wooden skewers in water to stop them from catching fire under the grill.
2) Preheat the grill.
3) Grate as much as possible of the onion on the larger holes of the cheesegrater; chop the garlic and mint finely.  Add to the mince in the large bowl.  Break in the egg to one side and beat with the fork.  Now use the fork to mush it all together until smooth.
4) Get your hands in and make comfortably sized phallic lumps of meat; slide a wet skewer into each one.  Place on the oven tray as you go.  If you have any left over, make the meat into patties to fry like burgers - they won't need any extra fat.
5) Grill until well browned, turning once during cooking to get both sides.  These heat up well in the oven or back under the grill later if you should need to grill a big tray of something else:

Stuffed Peppers
You Will Need: Oven tray, chopping board, knife, small bowl, kettle

Large bell peppers, half per person or two for a veggie main
olive oil
couscous
sultanas or chopped apricots
flaked almonds or pistachios
cumin
salt
greek cheese e.g. feta

1) Preheat the grill.
2) Cut the peppers lengthwise, removing any seeds but keeping the stems on for decoration.  Pour a little oil into each one, roll it around the inside to coat and rub on the outside as well.  Grill on the oven tray until blackening, then turn over to do the other side.
3) Meanwhile, make your couscous as per packet instructions - about 2 dessertspoonfuls per pepper or less.  Add a handful of fruit and nuts and a pinch of salt and cumin to make things interesting.  Chop the cheese into small pieces.
4) Take the grilly peppers out, fill with couscous and top with cheese.  Put back under the grill until the cheese is browning and squidgy.

Horseradish

It takes some amount of work to turn these:

into this:

but somehow, over the New Year bank holiday, my man managed it.  Just occasionally he becomes obsessed with an idea, a Make or Do, in the same way that I will - and is determined to Make or Do it.  Advice will be sought from the internet, his mother, brother, and indeed all and sundry who wander into his line of sight, and he will panic about doing things 'properly'.  This is a man who will look up the 'correct' salad dressing for cucumber sandwiches.  The vagueness of advice available about dealing with horseradish did not perturb him for long, however.  Having once grasped the idea, and then the root, from his father's garden, and got said roots home, nothing would do but that homemade horseradish sauce was made. 

You will need a food processor of some sort.  Obviously in the old days this stuff had to be hand-grated, but even using the supergraters mentioned in my Orange Cake post this would take forever and be dangerously eye-watering.  He used his mother's Magimix to pulverise roughly chopped pieces of peeled root.

Having crumbed up your roots, you will need a saucepan and some creme fraiche.  At this point any mixture of the two will be either too mild or mouth-scrapingly hot; the best way we think to get the flavour correct is to very gently cook the mixture, taste-testing as you go.  Adding vinegar, a small amount of icing sugar and/or flour is also an option, although not one which I saw the application of in detail.  The key thing is correct flavour balanced with correct texture.

Once done the sauce will keep in the fridge for a few weeks, slowly getting milder and milder.  We've been eating it with cold cuts and smoked mackerel on toast.  Dyed green it's also a cheap substitute for wasabi.  Added to mustard it forms Tewksbury mustard.

Real horseradish is apparently very easy to grow in Britain; the leaves are also edible, although they have the typical popularity of tuber-top greens at the moment.  The boy's second rapidly-grasped idea was to grow our own, although he would have to indulge in some guerilla colonisation of his mother's garden to make this happen.  Maybe one day ... but for now, another seasonal jarred thing to Make and Do has been created which I'm sure will become a traditional part of our culinary year.

Dopiaza Tart

This succulent, sweet tart uses onion pastry and brown sugar.  It could be a pudding, if you put some creme fraiche on it and were very blase about whether puddings are actually sugary.  It's a little too savoury for that purpose for my liking, but certainly tasty!

Dopiaza Tart
You Will Need: Sharp knife and cutting board, frying pan, 12ins tart dish, fork, teaspoon, rolling pin, baking tray

Flour for dusting
10 oz flour-worth onion pastry (see previous post)
Large lump of butter
12 oz peeled onions
4 eggs
6 oz cherry tomatoes
6 oz brown sugar
1 heaped tsp turmeric
1 heaped tsp ground ginger
1 heaped tsp coriander
1 heaped tsp cumin
1/2/ tsp garam masala

1.  Preheat oven , with baking tray inside, to 180 deg. C.
2.  Roll out onion pastry to line the tart tin, prick the bottom with a fork and pre-bake 10 mins. in the oven, putting the dish on the baking tray to distribute the heat to the base.
3. Finely chop the onions into half-moon slices, including any chunks left over from making the pastry.  Fry them gently in the butter until softening, and browned on one side.
4.  Stir the spices into the onions, fry 2 minutes and add the tomatoes, sliced into quarters.
5.  Beat the eggs, and gradually incorporate the sugar.
6.  Take the case out of the oven.  Fill the pastry with the onion and tomato mixture when it is very soft, then pour on the sugary egg.
7.  Bake the whole tart for approximately 25 minutes.  Serve warm.

Onion Pastry

The following recipe is intended to be used in a Dopiaza Tart, but could be adapted to any savoury pie or quiche recipe you care for.  Unlike proper shortcrust, you probably won't need to add any extra liquid to this mixture to make it come together.

A helpful hint I found on the interwebs is that 2ins less than the size of your tin is the number of ozs of flour you will need to make the right amount of pastry.  I shall be testing this theory whilst making the tart later.

Onion Pastry

You Will Need: Grater, sieve, large bowl, sharp knife, dinner knife, tissues :'( chopping board, clingfilm

10 oz strong white bread or plain flour

5 oz unsalted butter

pinch of salt

8 oz peeled onions, to get 6 oz grated onions.

1.  Peel and grate the onions on the larger holes (as for cheddar or carrot) over the chopping board, until you can't successfully hold them anymore, or you get 6 oz, whichever is sooner.  Put the gratings into a sieve and press out as much liquid as you can into the sink with your knuckles.  This is a weepy job, so have the tissues handy!

2.  Leaving the onions to drain, finely cube the butter straight out of the fridge.  Rub it together with the flour and salt in a large bowl, until the mixture resembles evenly-textured peroxide-coloured breadcrumbs.

3.  With the dinner knife, scrape the drained onions into the crumbs and mix.  Then get your hands dirty and knead it all together into a ball.  If you need to, add some water for stickiness, but you shouldn't need to.

4.  Wrap the pastry ball in clingfilm and chill in the fridge until you need it, for at least half an hour.

You could use red or white onions for this, but I recommend red as they have a sweeter taste.  Whatever you do, don't try buying what I always think of as 'student onions,' the small ones that come in packets of 20 - you will waste years of your life and much fingernail peeling them.

Biriyani Cheesecake

YES.  The day has come to continue our Quest!  The next step in my diabolical plan to create a spicy-hot cake, this cheesecake comes with an inner layer of aromatic basmati rice pudding.  Inspired both by the Indian dish and by the Malaysian pudding knows as 'glutinous rice' which comes in many strange colours, I've added dairy produce to my list of magical ingredients which seem so wrong but taste so right.

To be honest this didn't turn out like your traditional cheesecake; I believe the top is a little more browned than I would like (so would recommend watching carefully and a tinfoil hat) and the base more of an upside-down crumble topping, but it's all delicious so I'm posting it anyway.  Experimentation and improvement can wait until later.

Biriyani Cheesecake

You Will Need: Small saucepan, wooden spoon, Springform cake tin 20cm across, tinfoil, large deep baking tray, greaseproof paper, sharp knife and chopping board OR food processor, teaspoon, large bowl, measuring jug.

150g bread(crumbs)

50-70g blanched hazelnuts

100g butter

__________

150g caster sugar

75ml milk (not too skimmed)

150g cooked basmati rice

4 dried bayleaves

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

about 10 cardamom pods, opened and seeds ground

(pinch of saffron if you feel like affording it)

___________

400g cream cheese

2 eggs

2 egg yolks (so you need 4 eggs but save the whites of the last 2 to make meringues.)

1.  Line the Springform tin with greaseproof paper and grease it with butter.

2.  Acquire your breadcrumbs and toast them, either by making 150g of toast and processing or chopping it, or buying ready-made breadcrumbs in a box and very carefully grilling them on a baking tray lined with baking paper until crispy.  Watch out if doing this!

3.  Chop the hazelnuts very finely, and melt the butter in the small pan on a low heat.  Stir the crumbs and nuts into the butter, then tip into the bottom of the tin and press down gently with the back of a spoon.  Chill in the fridge while you make the next stages.

4.  Make sure you have cooked your rice well and that it comes to 150g only when cooked, not dry - otherwise you'll have too much.  

5.  Rinse the small pan.  Add the spices and bay leaves to the milk, with 50g of sugar, in the small pan. Bring to a simmer, then remove, wash and reserve the bay leaves.  Add the rice.  Simmer and reduce until sticky mess!  Leave to cool off the heat.

6.  In the large bowl, beat the remaining 100g of sugar and the cheese until smooth.  Add the eggs and yolks and beat again until incorporated fully.

7.  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Bring the tin from the fridge and spoon the rice pudding over the base, leaving about 2cm gap between the rice and the sides of the tin.  Smooth down with the back of the spoon.  Pour over the cheese mixture evenly.

8.  Triple-wrap the bottom and sides of the tin in tinfoil to prevent any water from getting into the cake.  Water you say?  It will make sense soon!  Put the tin on a sheet of foil and crunch it around the sides, rotate, repeat.

9.  Place the tin in the deep baking tray and pour water carefully into the tray so that it comes about 2cm up the sides of the tin.  This is called a Bain Marie and it allows the cheesy mix to cook gently and evenly on all sides.

10.  Bake for about 50 minutes, turning and covering with a foil hat if it looks to be going brown.  When the time is up, take the tin out of the bath and foil and leave to cool for at least 1 1/2 hours before unspringing.  Garnish with the reserved bay leaves.

Korma cake, Korma 'Shortbread'

For this curry, I tried two different approaches to the problem.  The cake which I made was popular with some, but others complained that it was a little too dry and crumbly for their taste - so I made a 'shortbread' biscuit as well to take advantage of this property.  Here are both recipes, presented for your benefit - I hope you enjoy both of them.

Korma Coconut Cake with Turmeric Yoghurt Topping

200g ground almonds

100g dessicated coconut

100g butter

150g caster sugar

3-4 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp chilli powder

2-3 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp garam masala

250ml pack of creamed coconut, drained

2 eggs

150g self-raising flour

_____________________

100g yoghurt

4 tablespoonfuls icing sugar

1tsp turmeric

Line a loaf tin with a strip of greaseproof paper.  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  'Breadcrumb' the first four ingredients by rubbing the lumps of butter between your fingers until you have an even crumbly mix.  Mix in the spices.  Drain the packet of creamed coconut (available in Sainsbury's, or 'all good supermarkets' in the 'foreign food' section) by cutting off a corner and pouring the watery substance down the sink.  Squeeze out all the creamy toothpastey coconut goodness into the mixture.  Mix; add the eggs, and the flour a little at a time.  Bake for approx.  one hour; check every 15 mins. and if need be put a tinfoil 'hat' over the tin if the top looks like burning.  Make up the icing and 'ice' the cake dribble-fashion when cool.

Korma 'Shortbread'

This recipe is based on the BBC Food recipe for generic shortbread, with key korma ingredients added, so some of the credit must go to Auntie...apologies for the Imperial measures for those metric fans among you, it won't happen again!  It does make doubling quantities easier though should the recipe prove especially popular ;)

1 ounce ground almonds

1 ounce dessicated coconut

4 ounces butter

2 ounces caster sugar

4 ounces plain flour

1/4 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp coriander

1/4 tsp garam marsala

1/4 tsp turmeric

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.  Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and lay out a cooling rack.  Beat the butter and sugar til creamy.  Stir in the dry ingredients and spices.  Mould together into a dough; wrap in clingfilm and chill for 15 minutes in the fridge.  Take it out of the fridge, shape into approx. 8 big fat fingers with your hands and prick each one with a fork 3 times (you know, the way it looks in the shops with holes in.) Bake for about 15 mins til golden brown and cool them on the rack.  Careful, they're crumbly!

Next Week: Biriyani...

The Quest for Curry Cake Continues

Well, as the Kashmiri Carrot Cake went down so well with all who sampled it this weekend, I am determined to continue my suspiciously sober quest for an actually curry-hot-tasting cake.  Today I have been exploring the Interwebs for a definitive list of possible curries to emulate, and have come up with the following Plan of Action, moving from mild to spicy up to a terrifying End Boss:

• Korma Cake.  Based on a coconut sponge recipe, this cake should be relatively easy to make work, incorporating creamed coconut, ground almonds, ginger, chilli, garam masala, black pepper and turmeric with a sweet yoghurt icing.

• Biriyani Cake.  This is a rice dish used as a side, so this cake will have to incorporate boiled rice, as well as almonds, sultanas, cinnamon, cardamom and a bay leaf.  Technically it's probably less hot than the previous two but the rice makes it adventurous.

• Dopiaza Tart.  Literally 'onions twice,' dopiaza uses onions as its basis in large and small pieces.  I plan to flavour a pastry with one 'set' of onions, and make a sweet caramelized onion filling for a spicy tart.

• Dhansak Cake.  The first recipe to use a significant amount of chilli powder, this might be a tricky one - but I am determined to try.  The significant ingredients are lentils (which have no taste and will add texture,) chilli powder, sugar and lemon juice - and as the Taste Triangle theory reminds us, both sugar and lemon juice go with 'cake' - so why not the remaining player?  We shall see...

• Madras Tart.  I resort to tarts here because I already own a recipe for an Italian tomato tart, which is admittedly a savoury dish but proves that tomatoes and pastry are a good combo for texture and taste. This should be a really quite hot pudding but I hope that the natural sugars of the tomatoes and anything else I add will bring out the chilli's real flavour, not just the tongue-scorching element.  

• Vindaloo Cake.  I ran into trouble with my research here - a traditional Goan vindaloo apparently contains wine or wine vinegar, and garlic, neither of which fit into any taste triangle with cake which I can think of - yet.  Helpfully there exists the British Indian Restaurant version which usually uses chilli, potato, lemon and black pepper.  The potato can be missed out as it is a misinterpretation of the word 'aloo' as Indian for the Portuguese 'garlic.'  Lemon+cake = yum, chilli+cake = ? black pepper+cake = ?  Truly this will be a fitting End Boss for my Quest.  Perhaps I shall have to use chocolate as my Ingredient of +4 Yumminess!

Curry and Beer makes for a very interesting Carrot Cake

A general rule of cooking is:  When drunk, many things seem like a good idea which will later prove to taste like unto that which usually goes down a toilet - which is where the ill-fated dish ends up.  Recently a trip to the local Curry House prompted a conversation which went something like this:

• If only pubs had curry on tap, to go with your beer.
• If only that curry was Mr. Whippy style.
• Hey, you could serve it in cones made of naan bread or very thick poppadoms.
• With a chilli chocolate flake!
• Hang on... what about curry IN CAKE FORM... everyone loves curry, everyone loves cake, right??

For once this drunken curry-based line of reasoning didn't sound so bad when sober, mostly because of a little thing someone (also in a pub) called the Taste Triangle: a theory that if A goes with B, and B goes with C, that A and C may well go together as well - chilli and chocolate, chilli and tomatoes, chocolate and tomatoes?  It's Heston Blumenthal territory to most of us, but in this case I didn't see why garam masala, or another 'sweet' spice such as cardamom or caraway, shouldn't be added to a carrot cake.

Kashmiri Carrot Cake

N.B.: The following recipe yielded a rather stodgesome loaf most suitable to eat with a cup of tea in hand, or perhaps some coconut icecream.  For a lighter version perhaps more self-raising, more rigorous beating and less mixture-per-tin might yield a less dense experience, but it will be up to you to experiment.

approx. 350g carrot, grated

half a small red onion, finely chopped

100g apricots, shredded

100g raisins

50g dessicated coconut

3-4 cm fresh ginger, finely chopped

3 fresh eggs

4-5 tablespoonfuls of olive oil

200g dark brown soft sugar

approx. 250g self-raising flour (you may want more than this.)

2 1/2 teaspoonfuls of garam masala

pinch salt

------------------------------------

pack cream cheese

2 tablespoonfuls icing sugar

coriander leaves, finely chopped

Preheat the oven to 180deg. C and line a loaf tin with a strip of greaseproof paper so that little 'handles' poke out of each end.  Mix together all the fruit, veg and spice in a large bowl; add the eggs and oil and stir to incorporate.  Mix in the sugar.  Add the flour about 50g at a time, until you've reached a thick gloopy consistency; get it in the tin and bake for about 1hr20mins, or until a skewer through the very middle comes clean.  You may find yours needs less than this as my oven is quite unbalanced, baking the back more than the front.

Beat the cheese, coriander and icing sugar together in a bowl until smooth and chill in the fridge until you need to ice the cake.

As a side note, this really rather deliciously unusual confection was made using a Global kitchen knife, which is what your teaspoons imagine the face of God looks like.  When I say 'shredded' apricots, I mean you will not believe how wonderfully sharp and easy to use these things are.  Get one.