Hiphopsideproject

A few years ago Adam and I travelled the length and breadth of the USA on a set of amtrak trains and greyhound buses, one of our favourite stops was New Orleans. It was a couple of years after Katrina, but the devastation was still oh-so-very apparent. We stayed in a little hostel that was the only occupied residence on the street, and was home to a hurricane survivor kitty. One of the things we loved about New Orleans (alongside the music) was the cuisine, from oyster po’ boys to gumbo, we sampled a super tonne of it. So here’s another recipe from that huge cook-off we had at my house a few months ago, beignets!

What’s a beignet? Well, there’s this little café (read, supremely busy bustling canteen style café) in New Orleans called Café Du Monde who supply tourist folks with hot chicory flavoured coffee and delightful french square shaped doughnuts covered with a HEAP of confectioners sugar (for British folk, icing sugar). Read more about the on beignets wikipedia page.

Ingredients
1 egg
3.5g Dry yeast (half a sachet usually)
200ml lukewarm water
60g caster sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
125ml evaporated milk
525g strong white bread flour
30g butter/trex/stork… any kind of cooking fat really
Oil for deep frying, or borrow a fryer
1 packet icing/confectioners sugar

Method

Nice and easy, but kinda sticky!

1. Combine the water, sugar and yeast in a big mixing bowl and wait for 10 minutes. If you’re using easy bake yeast, you can skip the ‘wait for 10 minutes’.
2. In another bowl beat together the egg, evaporated milk & salt. Add this to the yeast mixture.
3. Add half the flour to the mixture in the large bowl, and mix together.
4. Add the fat and stir fully, then keep stirring while you add the remaining flour.
5. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a floured surface, knead (if it’s not too sticky) until smooth. If you have a super sticky dough, just knead as best you can and add a little extra flour. It’s ok, everything’ll come up Milhouse in the end.
6. Clean out your bowl and oil slightly, return the dough to the bowl and cover with cling film. Place in a warm place to rise for a few hours (ours turned into a gigantic beignet dough monster, amazing).
7. Preheat you deep fat fryer or oil pan to 180ºc, put your icing sugar in a plastic food bag (you know, like a freezer bag) ready for beignet coating.
8. Roll the dough if you can to about 1cm thick and cut into 5-7cm square pieces. If you can’t roll due to stickiness (we had this problem) then just tear off lumps and flatten/pull them into shape. Deep fry these until they’re golden brown, turning them over constantly for an even cooking.
9. Remove from the oil and place on paper towels to drain away the excess oil. Place them in the bag of icing sugar and, keeping a firm grip on the opening!, shake to coat them fully.
10. Serve them with a giant pile of icing sugar on top… and with coffee, of course!

Not a great photo because of low light and beer, but man, these were gooood.

Last weekend was our Cajun/Creole/Deep-South cook-off. We were in the kitchen from 9am until 5pm when our family arrived to consume our creations. The menu ran like this:

• Popcorn Shrimp
• Crab Bisque served with baking powder biscuits
• Cornbread
• Jambalaya (shrimp)
• Gumbo (chicken and sausage)
• Macaroni Cheese
• Red Velvet cake
• Beignets

So while I work through the glut of photos I took during the day I thought I ‘d write up one of the easier recipes, the baking powder biscuits!

If you clicked on the link in the list above and read the wiki article you’ll see that they’re very similar to the English savoury scone (I pronounce it sk-own, by the way!). The main difference that I can see is that instead of using self raising flour as in the scone you use all-purpose (plain) flour and baking powder instead. This isn’t really a big difference, and I guess they’d work well using self raising too. The recipe is simple, and quite relaxing to make. Infact, I was just trying to get the recipe right and I wasn’t entirely happy with the one I made last week, so I whipped some more up just to get the quantities better. These turned out perfect :)

You’ll need:
300g plain flour
3tsp baking powder
60g butter/lard (go for the butter if it grosses you out! but lard is also an option, I used a mix of both because I ran out of butter and had some lard in the fridge from seasoning our new wok)
Pinch of salt
190ml milk

Preheat the oven to 200ºC
The method is SIMPLE, super super simple. Put all your dry ingredients into a bowl (don’t even bother sifting, it’s not worth the effort), mix them through. Add the butter/lard to the mix in small chunks, get your hands in there and rub the butter into the dry ingredients (you know, like you would if you’re making a crumble). Now, you don’t want it to be the consistency of a crumble, not super fine bread crumbs or whatever, but you want to get the bigger bits of butter worked in good. Then simply add your milk, little at a time, mixing as you go until you have a soft dough ball. Don’t worry if you’ve not used all your milk, or even if you think you need a little more, it’s all good.

Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and roll it to about 1.5-2cm thick. Cut out circles using a cutter, I used the ones with the fancy edges, the generic scone-cutting-devices. If you haven’t got them, get some, they’re cheap in any supermarket’s cookware section. Size doesn’t really matter with this (that’s what she said… HOHO!), go for whatever you think best… these rise upwards, not outwards, too (that’s wh.. no, not twice in the same sentence.. sorry).

Place them on an ungreased baking sheet, or if you have a none stick baking liner thing use that, those are amazing. Put them in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown, you may need to check the centres just to make sure they’re cooked through, if they’re not just turn off the oven and leave them to cook through with the residual heat. This usually stops them burning on top.

Enjoy! they’re tastey with cheese, jam, honey, or just on their own.

If you’re reading this via an RSS reader visit the site for the printable recipe.

Nights are drawing in, it’s time to start preserving! Yep, we’re making loads of homemade presents again this year and started a week or so ago with the chutneys. This is a recipe we’ve not tried before, and was basically made out of necessity to use up a buttload of green tomatoes that weren’t ever gunna ripen. I think this recipe is super super simple, a great start into chutneys.

You will need

• Plenty of jars - we ended up using about 12 180ml jars and a couple of random large ones we had hanging around, too. You’ll need to sterilise these before you put the chutney in (generally, a dishwasher will suffice.. you can also heat them in the oven… google it).
• 2-3 dried chillis. I’d say add these to taste. Chop them up finely! If you’d prefer it none spicey, just don’t add them.
• 1 litre malt vinegar
• 1.5-2kg green tomatoes, chopped up.
• 250g of raisins
• 10-15g of fresh ginger, grated.
• 400-500g of chopped, peeled and cored apple
• 1 large onion, chopped finely
• 450g of shallots chopped finely
• 500g brown sugar (I used a really sticky brown muscovado for this, I just think it adds extra flavour and colour).
• 2tsp salt

You’ll find the most taxing part of this recipe is cooking everything. It’s a ball-ache, for sure, but it really is the hardest part. Right, now you have all your ingredients prepared, bung them all in a huge preserving pan (ie. the biggest, heaviest bottomed pan you have.. we have an epic pan that we use for soup, home brews and preserving. It’s amazing). Turn up the heat and simmer until it’s reached the consistency you like, ours took little over 1 hour, but so long as it looks like a chutney and everything is softened then it’ll be great. Let it cool for a little while, half an hour or so, and then fill all the jars! Put the lids on and store them in a cool dark cupboard. This chutney is best eaten a month after it’s creation, at the earliest, and like all other chutney’s the shelf life should be anything from 6 months to a year.

EAT IT WITH CHEESE!

So, you picked up the nachos, got the chili cooking and even boiled up some rice… but oh no! You forgot to pick up a jar of salsa! What to do! Well, I’m sure you have these simple store cupboard and weekly shop items to make a tasty 5 minute salsa fresca!

What you’ll need (to serve 3 people):

2 Ripe medium sized tomatoes
3 Spring onions (or more/less to taste)
A tablespoon of chopped jalapeno peppers (the pickled kind)
A handful of coriander
A splash of lime juice (fresh is best)
Chopped/minced garlic (to taste)
Your favourite tomato based hot sauce
Salt & Pepper

It’s super easy to make, too. Chop up the tomatoes, spring onions and coriander, combine them in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and voila! a tasty salsa fresca for all!

Alongside this you might want to serve a deliciously easy guacamole. Here’s what you’ll need:

1/2 ripe Avocados (like, squidgy!)
3 spring onions
Chopped jalepenos (it’s always best to use regular unpickled chillis, but they’re not always to hand so these will do!)
Chopped/minced garlic (to taste)
handful of corriander
splash of lime juice
and if you want, although not entirely neccessary, you can throw in 1 chopped up fresh tomato. Also for a smoother texture you can add a couple of spoon fulls of sour cream.
Salt & pepper to taste

Mash up the avocado coarsley, add the chopped up spring onions. Combine with all the other ingredients, and that’s it. Enjoy!

Woah guys we just made this monster of a batch of Cinder Toffee, it’s really something you should try. And super easy to boot! Following a recipe by the Goddess herself, Nigella Lawson, this recipe is so super fun to make. I’d even say it would be great to do with kids… if it didn’t involve magma hot liquid sugar…

For a batch the size that we made, which by weight is probably very little, but by volume would fill a large 1kg quality street/celebrations/rose’s tin (you know, the kind you get around this time of year!), you will need…

400g of Caster sugar
8 Table spoons (or 1/2 cup, 125ml) of Golden syrup
2 Table spoons of Bicarbonate of Soda

The process is extreeeeeemely simple. Start off by putting your sugar and syrup in a heavy based saucepan (make sure you use an oversized one!), mix these together as best you can (it doesn’t really work when it’s cold, so it’s best to keep mixing throughout the simmering). Place over a lowish heat, everything will melt into a lava type substance that bubbles and boils… don’t freakin’ touch this. Ok, so when it’s all lovely and golden (think… autumn) turn off the heat. Put the bicarb in and whisk it. Ready? READY? It turns into a fucking sugar monster, swear down. Yeh, see now why I told you to use a huge pan? We kinda didn’t. Que me running around the kitchen screaming ‘OMG Adam it’s still growing’… funtimes. Righto, now you should pour this into either a greased up tin (again, you may need a big big sized one, or two.. just have a couple ready incase) or some greased up greasproof paper that you’ve shoved into a dish of some kind (please grease this, else the paper sticks, and it takes you ages to peel that bastard off). Ah! Now leave it 1ish hours or until it’s gone cold and hard. Take it out and bash it up a bit, making super sticky hands but gorgeous lumps of cindery goodness. Voila!

Cinder toffee block snapped in half, how cool does this look?