Lockdown Edition Week 15: Baked Custard with Macerated Fruit

Thursday and still no Random Kitchen post? Well, therein lies a tale.

I'd written the text as usual and was just adding some photos, I hit ctrl-Z to undo a photo I'd put in the wrong place, for some reason that deleted the entire blog text too... and then Blogger decided to choose precisely that moment to execute a non-recoverable autosave.

Which is not just a source of deep frustration, but a pity too.

If Blogger hadn't decided to delete my post, I'd have told you all about the recipe for "Baked Custard with Macerated Blackcurrants" from the Riverford Farm Cook Book, which you can also read online. I'd have detailed my suspicions about the term "baked custard" (much like "grilled cheese", it feels like it's missing something) - and, of course, the word "macerated", which just sounds a bit grim.

You'd have heard about my inability to locate blackcurrants in the Lewisham/Deptford area and my decision to go with a vaguely cobbled-together alternative that would probably work okay despite not really being the same thing at all:

I mean, purple fruit is purple fruit, right?

I'd have told you about the other compromises I made along the way, including substituting the required "crème de cassis or brandy" for some fairly potent Alcohol Of Some Description that a friend brought back from Kosovo...

Ainsley pictured for scale

...and, erm, accidentally using granulated sugar instead of caster sugar. Not so much a compromise as a cock-up, that one.

Managed to fish out about 40% of the granulated and replace it with caster though, so, you know. Could be worse.

I'd have told you how pleased I was to realise I owned a roasting tin big enough to serve as a bain marie for a "23cm gratin dish":

And I'd have shown you the epic old-school ruler I used to make sure the water in my mahoosive bain marie was deep enough.

Eddie, this one's for you

I'd definitely have shared the pleasant sight of curds being strained out of the custard.

(Also those bubbles can't be ideal)

You'd have enjoyed my growing scepticism about the 50-minute oven time prescribed by the recipe; then again, it specifically says the custard should be cooked "until just set", with nothing about it being brown on top or anything else, so I can only assume that this:

...and this:

...are how it was supposed to be, as unappealing as it looked.

Then I'd have talked about the berries and how I macerated them two ways (one with Kosovo grog, one without):

And we'd have ended up with some badly-presented slop in a bowl, because that never ever happens in the Random Kitchen.

You might have been puzzled to learn that Riverford's visitors "often tell us this the best thing they have ever eaten", given that it's just some overly creamy, barely set custard with some slightly soggy fruit on top. I certainly was. It tasted nice, of course, but it was hardly luxurious.

So much so, in fact, that the next day I popped the leftovers into the oven for an extra half an hour at a higher heat.

That's a bit more like it

As well as looking more attractive, the baked custard, now being actually baked to some extent, also held its shape when being served up this time. Speaking of serving, I just used unmacerated fruit second time round - we didn't feel like the alcohol added anything much to proceedings (though that might be because I was using the wrong berries and some freaking weird alcohol).

And as if that wasn't enough, I could have told you all about the third attempt I made. (There were ingredients left over and I don't have much use for double cream, despite Novelli's best efforts.)

This time I decided to use individual ramekins (well, Gü dessert jars) in the hope this might lead to a more set dessert. They still required the full 50 minutes to look vaguely done, and even then, my oven conspired to cook them unequally - thinking about it, this may go some way to explaining some of my less successful baking efforts...

As for the congratulations and macerations, to quote the recipe, "It also works with ... raspberries as well." That's fortunate, because I was all out of purple berries by this stage. Instead, I warmed some raspberries with some sugar and let them get squishy as per the recipe, and they did indeed work rather well on top as a tangy counterpoint to the rich custard.

(Looks a bit like I've just poured a tin of chopped tomatoes over the whole thing, but what can you do?)

The flavour was still a bit meh, to be honest - I think I'm learning that I just prefer sugar to cream, perhaps because I'm northern and cheap - but this was definitely the most successful execution of the three and made for a perfectly satisfactory dessert.

And so it would have been nice to tell you all about it.

But I can't, because Blogger swallowed my post whole.

Three-word verdict: Screw you, Blogger.

Lockdown Edition Week 14: Pancakes

The book: How To Boil An Egg (Jan Arkless)

The recipe: p183, "Pancakes"

Yes, just "Pancakes".

Here's the thing about randomness. It doesn't care whether you're in the mood for something exciting, something exotic, something Italian involving seafood that's still alive at the point of purchase. If the wheel of fortune wants to land on How To Boil An Egg, and if, within that, it chooses to avoid the old-fashioned but more involved propositions on the surrounding pages (case in point: the "Crunchy Cream Pie" involving Angel Delight and crushed digestive biscuits) in favour of "Pancakes"... well, then all I can do is endeavour to turn it into bloggable content. Somehow.

In defence of Ms. Arkless, I'm pretty sure I've referred to exactly this page when making pancakes in the past. Her book remains a useful starting point for the absolute kitchen novice, as it did when I first wrote about it, and it's hardly her fault if page 183 is lacking on the excitement front.

Besides, it could have been worse.

(Perhaps I was too quick to defend Ms. Arkless after all.)

Anyway, the pancake "recipe" mentions the obligatory lemon and sugar topping, but it also points us in the direction of the "Omelette and Pancake Fillings" section on pages 30-31.

This seems like a good opportunity to spice things up a little (not literally, of course; spices would be far too exotic for Jan) and select one savoury filling and one sweet filling at random.

Even here, the finger of fate lets us down: we could be enjoying asparagus, cheese, honey and walnut, bramble jelly (or, erm, "herbs" - thrilling), but instead we end up with "Tomato" from the left-hand page and "Fruit" from the right-hand page. Cheers, random.org.

Fine. Let's just get on with it, shall we?

The prep: Jan says we can use fresh fruit, but for that full 1986 effect, I'm using a tin of peaches that's been sat in the cupboard since the last no-deal Brexit supermarket stockpile (which reminds me, must get in the queue for a November delivery slot).

Eggs are in plentiful supply because I've been on a bit of a Swedish baking kick lately, while the tomatoes come from this week's veg box and are probably too good for this purpose - but hey, a bit of luxury never hurt anyone. (Gout sufferers may disagree.)

The making: Are you expecting me to actually tell you how to make pancake batter? It's flour, milk and an egg, you whisk it, it remains lump-free (ideally). Jan even spares us the pinch of salt you find in many other pancake recipes. Why go crazy?

Preparing the fillings at least requires a little more effort, but only a little. The tomatoes and peaches are sliced...

...and then I follow Jan's detailed instructions by frying the tomatoes "in a little oil or fat" and keeping them hot until required.

This being done, it's time to make some pancakes! Jan wants me to grease the pan with "oil or lard - not butter". You won't be surprised to learn that I go for the first option. (I did consider buying some lard for sheer old-school authenticity, but I would have had absolutely no use for it beyond this recipe and that seems a bit wasteful, so there we go. Isn't it a pleasing word to say out loud though? Lard. Larrrrrrrrrd.)

The frying and tossing process is complicated by an ancient IKEA fish slice losing its remaining structural integrity partway through...

...but we get there eventually, and Miniature Ainsley is delighted.

Fillings are added in turn and... nope, I just can't conjure up any more words to describe making pancakes and rolling them up with stuff inside them. Sorry.

The eating: This is what it comes down to, right? We all know how to make pancakes and slice up a few basic ingredients, but how do the minimalist (to the point of frugal) fillings suggested by How To Boil An Egg stack up in terms of actual enjoyment?

The fried tomato variant, while simple, is OK. It'd benefit from some cheese, of course (as most things would), but at no point does Jan suggest actually combining her suggested fillings, so plain tomato it is. And yeah. It's fine. Sam even goes so far as to venture that most glowing of praise, "it doesn't not work...?".

Miniature Ainsley can scarcely conceal his excitement

The tinned peach variant, however, is a big ol' lumpy pile of "meh". In hindsight, following the tomato approach and heating the peach slices first to activate the sugars a bit might have been an idea (albeit an idea Jan failed to mention) - at room temperature inside a warm pancake, it's just a bit underwhelming and tasteless.

Which was to be expected, I suppose: there's no ambition here beyond "equip your home-leaver with the skills to make basic food without burning down the kitchen in their student halls", and in that respect at least, it's a case of "job done". From looking at Amazon, it seems like the updated edition of How To Be An Egg does aim a little higher in places - witness the mentions of such concepts as "hoisin" and "tabbouleh"! - but a search within the pages shows that the "Tomato" and "Fruit" fillings still use exactly the same wording as they did in 1986. I suppose it's reassuring that some things never change.

There's enough batter for two more pancakes. We do them with ham and cheese. They're much better.

Two-word verdict: Brutally rudimentary.

Lockdown Edition Week 13: Ginger Chicken with Coconut Rice

The book: Ainsley Harriott's Meals In Minutes

The recipe: p114, "Ginger Chicken with Coconut Rice"

While The Random Kitchen is ultimately a self-indulgent little project, I'm grateful to have acquired a modestly sized but surprisingly fervent base of readers who have consistently engaged with my ups and downs, made the right "eww" noises at my terrible photographs, peer-pressured me into making meringue swans, and occasionally even donated me their ridiculous cookbooks. I've come to expect and greatly appreciate the entertaining and funny comments I get every time I share one of these blogs on my socials.

What I never expected was for an anonymous reader to send me a life-size cardboard cut-out of Ainsley Harriott.

Well, I say anonymous. The targeted misspelling of my name on the delivery label, plus the fact that a 40th birthday party I attended in the not too distant past involved Sir Cliff Richard in cardboard cut-out form, meant I had a strong suspicion.

A WhatsApp exchange followed:

(If you heard that reply in this voice, you're not the only one.)

What can I say? Apparently this household is now home to a cardboard Ainsley, the man whose every contents page launches a thousand bad quips.

I wouldn't mind, but there's even a mini-Ainsley to sit on the kitchen worktop and observe my every move.

I reiterate what I said on WhatsApp: for fuck's sake.

Anyway. For all it arrived a few weeks ago, I think it's only right that I waited until the next encounter with Meals In Minutes before unleashing the full Ainsley on this blog. Even if this recipe isn't really the "full" Ainsley - it has a sensible name, for a start. But honestly, in a week when I have to try and explain the presence of a giant fucking Ainsley Harriott in my house, I'm glad to have a fairly straightforward recipe to blog about...

The prep: I had a sense of déjà vu when reading the recipe for "Ginger Chicken and Coconut Rice" (seriously? not even "Nutty Chick 'n' Ginger"?), until a spot of targeted searching made me realise I was thinking of the Sichuan Orange Beef recipe from the original Random Kitchen, which also involved mushrooms, oranges, spring onions and some unnecessary garnishes. (Spoiler alert.)

Technically I'm allowed to veto anything that's too similar - no point in blogging the same stuff twice - but the fact that this is a chicken dish already satisfies the "different enough" criterion, so on we go.

The main compromise I'm going to have to make here is that the recipe calls for skin-on chicken breasts, and getting hold of them at Lewisham Asda proves surprisingly difficult, by which I mean impossible. I feel like the skin would up the "authentically oriental" score of this dish - not that it's claiming to be authentic, but the ingredients at least suggest we're looking in that general direction - so it's a shame, but skinless will have to do. Healthier, at least, innit?

Other than that, most of what I need is already in the house. The recipe calls for two bunches of salad onions (honestly, is there a more useless measure than the "bunch"?), but I think the colourful single bunch that was in the veg box this week should be substantial enough:

Lewisham Asda does at least provide me with a block of creamed coconut from its mighty "Jamaican/Indian/Polish/preserved lemons" aisle of randomness. Meanwhile, I'm usually lazy when it comes to ginger (the stuff from a jar is fine for most purposes), but since it's actually in the title here, I figure I should buy fresh. Even if my bits of ginger root do look unnervingly like potatoes.

The making: You're going to enjoy the first instruction here. Are you ready? Here we go: "Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the chicken, skin-side down, for 2-3 minutes on each side until golden brown."

Cook the chicken skin-side down. On each side. Good good.

Anyway, my breasts are skinless so it's a moot point. Having browned my breasts, they go into an ovenproof dish and I mix together the marinade-slash-sauce, which involves honey, soy sauce, crushed garlic, grated ginger, and the grated rind and juice of an orange. For a while, this doesn't look like it's going to turn out terribly well...

...but we get there in the end, more or less.

This is then poured over the chicken, and into the oven it goes. There is "basting" involved later in the process, which is a bit surprising considering how little liquid there appears to be here:

...but there we go. After ten minutes in the oven, I remove the dish and add some halved button mushrooms and the salad onions, "trimmed and halved". Hard to say what exactly is meant by "halved" here - lengthways, I guess? The photo accompanying the recipe suggests that we might actually be talking crossways, but that seems a bit excessive given my onions are quite substantial, so I compromise on this:

Seems all right. There's not really enough room in the dish for me to successfully baste the chicken, onions and 225g of mushrooms with what is a minimal amount of liquid anyway, but I do my best and back into the oven it goes.

In the meantime, I make the coconut rice. Like so often recently, this involves a rice-to-water ratio that I'm not entirely happy with - just 400ml of water for 200g of long-grain rice - and when a good amount of that water boils off in the time it takes for the creamed coconut to dissolve, I'm forced to improvise a little. The end result (with just "12-15 minutes" as the required cooking time) manages to be simultaneously sticky/squishy and a little al dente, which is an impressive and not altogether pleasant combination.

Still, it's good enough, and that means it's time to assemble the finished dish. Which I think I've done:

...until I remember the "garnish": orange wedges and bay leaves.

Well, okay. I find garnish to be a fairly useless concept anyway - you'll have noticed over the years that food presentation isn't exactly my strong point - but sprinkling on something actively inedible like bay leaves seems especially superfluous. Still, rules are rules, so on they go and it's time for us to wolf down this meal in minutes, in minutes.

The eating: It's not particularly coherent, which is to be expected given it's just some chicken, mushrooms and spring onions bound together with a tiny bit of sauce and a lot of hope. But the combination of sweet and savoury flavours - coconut and orange on the one hand, garlic and soy on the other - is nice enough.

And it looks quite pretty in a jumbled kind of way (though my colourful onions help a lot there).

I'm expecting a lot more of a ginger kick, given it's actually named in the title and Ainsley's blurb promises that "the delicious smells coming from the oven once this is on the go will drive your family's tastebud wild". There's nothing especially wildness-inducing here - it's a well-balanced flavour, but that's all. I suspect a 2020 cookbook would be a lot braver on the flavour front than this 1998 tome - we're probably bit more used to punchy flavours being front and centre nowadays, and that's a problem I keep encountering in this blog generally, and where 90s Ainsley is concerned specifically.

And, yes, the orange wedges and bay leaves serve no discernible purpose.

Still, not a bad effort. My miniature worktop Ainsley gets a little pat on the head for this one, but it's not quite nice enough for me to show his big brother any love. I'm still too busy working out what the hell I'm going to do with him...

Three-word verdict: Tastier than cardboard.

Lockdown Edition Week 12: Tomato & Okra Curry and Rice Pilaf with Almonds & Sultanas

The books: My red recipe folder; Curry Easy (Madhur Jaffrey)

The recipes: no. 12, "Tomato & Okra Curry"; p203, "Rice Pilaf with Almonds & Sultanas"

Typing the words "Lockdown Edition" for the twelfth time got me to thinking. A friend recently said he felt lockdown was essentially over now that he'd booked a hair appointment for a few weeks' time. And I totally get that sentiment. With the beaches overcrowded and people being encouraged to visit everywhere from the pub to Primark, it's hard to act like we're in full-on crisis mode even as the virus persists. But for me, as long as there's still no parkrun, no organised running generally, no theatre, no concerts, no stress-free foreign travel - all the things that make life more than just a slog in service of capitalism, in other words - as long as that's the case, "lockdown" as I choose to define it continues, and so does this silly little blog.

And it continues with a double feature, no less. Because the random wheel of fortune landed on a curry recipe from one of the folders of "stuff I've downloaded from the internet/been recommended by friends", I spontaneously decided to also randomise the side dish by picking a page from within the "Rice & Other Grains" section of Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy. That could have seen me making my own chapatis or parathas from scratch - fun! - but instead it's a fairly straightforward rice side to accompany a tomato and okra curry that was originally sent my way by a friend from a football forum, of all things.

What this means is Week 12 is not just vegetarian-friendly but, if you remove the little bit of butter the recipe calls for (and I tend to prefer to do that anyway), vegan-friendly too. Makes a nice change after all that duck, chicken and fish. And while the rice recipe remains under Madhur-shaped copyright, the curry comes from off of the internet so you can even read along at home if you want to - though I did have to use archive.org to retrieve the original page. It was actually quite nice to read it again after so long, since I only printed out the recipe part at the time, and not the accompanying blog post (so much for blogger solidarity). Although I note the latter section does contain the line "I think rice tends to make vegetable curries boring". Oh. Well, moving on...

The prep: The recipe calls for six tomatoes, and this week's Riverford veg box has kindly given me exactly that to work with.

The almonds and sultanas I need for Madhur's rice pilaf are still in plentiful supply following my adventures in aubergine a few weeks ago, and while the okra for the curry does require a trip to one of the Sri Lankan shops on Loampit Hill whose two-metre distancing policy is basically the owner shouting at you if you come in when you shouldn't, that's a good excuse to stock up on gloriously unhealthy snacks while I'm there.

With most of the other ingredients being store cupboard staples for any curry-friendly household, all that remains is for me to judge exactly what constitutes a "good handful" of coriander. People have different-sized hands, after all.

Ah sod it, let's just use it all

The making: Being from a blog rather than a recipe book, the somewhat casual nature of the ingredients list for the curry is also reflected in the method. It's almost like having to recreate a dish based on a Random Kitchen post. Which could be a blog in itself, if anyone else is bored on lockdown...

I start by halving a large onion and chopping one half into crescents and the other into "rough chunks".

The crescents of onion go into a big saucepan and are softened in a little oil. While that happens, it's time to make a curry paste (of sorts). This I do by putting the chunks of onion in a blender along with some garlic, bird's eye chillies, ginger, and the stalks from my "handful" of coriander. This all gets whizzed up before a glug of olive oil is added along with some ground coriander, cumin and turmeric. While it's hardly a classy method, it can't be faulted for speed and very soon I have a paste of sorts, albeit one that is looking rather coriander-heavy.

It's not easy being green

Maybe my hands are on the big side, I don't know. Anyway, coriander is awesome, so I see no real issue here.

This paste is added to the softened onions, as are some cardamom pods, and the spices are "cooked out". I sort of know what that means without actually knowing. Basically I'm looking for them to release their fragrance. Which they duly do over the next five minutes or so - though (as the recipe suggests) I add some extra oil, as otherwise the fragrance would be less "aromatic spice paste" and more "burnt stuff".

At this point, I add a tin of tomatoes - the recipe just says "plum tomatoes", but context suggests to me that they should be chopped - plus 400ml of water. This is brought to the boil, sea salt is added, then it's time for me to carefully add the fresh tomatoes. These go in whole, and that's how they'll stay. I find this a really interesting idea, even if it does look a bit... odd.

While that simmers away, I prepare the rice. This is beautifully straightforward. Having soaked some brown basmati rice, I briefly fry (in turn) a small cinnamon stick, some half-rings of onion, some finely sliced almonds and some sultanas. The drained rice is then added and stirred through, along with some water and ('twas ever thus) considerably less salt than Madhur wants me to use.

Once this mixture is brought to the boil, it's left to cook on a super low heat with the lid on - no need for crumpled greaseproof paper here, Novelli - and that is literally it. The water (and, subsequently, steam) does the rest, with the occasional stir just to make sure that nothing's sticking, and the result is some lovely plump grains of rice. Well, plump by basmati standards, anyway.

Back to the curry, then. With 20 minutes to go, it's time to add the okra, which I've chopped into inch-long pieces (or thereabouts). At this point, the recipe says: "Remove the lid if the sauce needs to thicken a little / add a touch more water if necessary."

Mm, incoherent floaty stuff

You can probably guess which of these instructions I follow; the lid duly comes off for the entire last 20 minutes. Even then, it still looks a bit liquid-heavy - it smells great, though, so if nothing else we're talking liquid with tons of flavour.

The final step improves matters, fortunately: a teaspoon of garam masala is stirred through, as are the coriander leaves whose stalks I used in the curry paste earlier. This has the effect of thickening and fleshing out the curry right at the very last minute - although I'm still glad to have made plenty of rice to mop it all up with.

Serving suggestion: Pair with some underwhelming supermarket "Indian" "starters" you found at the back of the freezer earlier today.

The eating: My main thought while making the curry was "crikey, that's a lot of coriander". The sheer herb overload of the paste, the big handful of leaves that got stirred through at the end - I thought it might end up overpowering the dish. Instead, the coriander and the spice combination works really well against the sharpness of the tomatoes, and the end result is a veggie curry with a really deep and punchy flavour. Although that punchiness could also be due to the bird's eye chillies. This is definitely a dish with a kick to it, albeit one that's controlled enough to be absorbed by the rice.

Speaking of which, the pilaf turns out to be a good addition, with the almond and sultana sweetness doing some useful work against the heat and tang of the curry.

And what of the whole tomatoes? They're supposed to be "softish, but still hold their shape". I wouldn't quite go that far - even with a careful stir, adding the coriander has also caused the tomatoes to start disintegrating a little - but there's still plenty of intact tomato flesh in there. I'd go so far as to say it gives the curry a certain "meatiness" that can be lacking in vegetable curries (ha ha, yes, I know - I mean texturally!). And I suppose that'd be even more the case if I'd gone with unchopped plum tomatoes too.

It's a curry, it was never going to look elegant

There's a little dissent within the household for once - Sam thinks this is a nice enough meal but not something he'd go out of his way to order in a restaurant, say, whereas I'd be quite happy if you served this up to me and charged decent money for it. Making it all the more satisfying that (being meat-free) this is a super cheap eat. A little oil aside, it's also reasonably healthy. Well, depending on what you serve it with, obviously.

All in all, then, it's a good week for my recipe folders and even reliable old Madhur. I'm getting better at not messing up rice, and the humble tomato gets to enjoy its moment in the limelight. Solid work, everybody.

Two-word verdict: Deceptively decent.