Macaroni Cheese, traditional Irish recipe.

An excellent simple standby dish, always popular.
You can knock this up quickly from store-cupboard ingredients, so quantities are necessarily variable - if you only have 2 tomatoes and 2 rashers, that's what you use.
You also need a little butter and flour and some milk to make the sauce; and cheese to grate into it.
And macaroni, of course!

Let us suppose you are cooking for three: use about half lb of macaroni. Bring a large pan of water to the boil and cook the macaroni until just slightly underdone; there's a reason for this!

While it cooks, cut up your tomatoes into smallish bits, say hazelnut size. Fry the rashers and chop with scissors into six or eight pieces. Make the cheese sauce, as follows:

Melt a dessertspoon of butter or margarine over a medium heat. Stir in a dessertspoon of flour and cook together for a few minutes. Gradually stir in about a half-pint of milk and heat together, stirring or whisking until they form a smooth creamy sauce. Cook slowly for five minutes. This should be quite a thinnish sauce.

Season the sauce and stir in as much grated cheese as you want, (or have): aim for a savoury taste.
Returning to the recipe:
When the macaroni is barely done drain it, put in a casserole dish, and stir in the chopped tomatoes, chopped bacon and cheese sauce. Stir together.
Sprinkle grated cheese on top and bake in a 350F oven until the topping is melted and the flavours have had time to blend. Say, 12 minutes.

During this time, the slightly thin sauce with be absorbed by the slightly underdone pasta: so that both aquire the right consistency.
If you had thick sauce over soft pasta, it turns into a pasty stodge.


Notes: for 1/2 lb pasta, about 2 or 3 fresh tomatoes (tastier the better)
3 or 4 bacon rashers
Cheese; sharp cheddar is best.
sauce: season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, mustard, Parmesan (any that appeal to you)

Variations: not many really improve it. Finely-chopped onion in the cheese sauce is popular with some. For vegetarians, you can substitute the rashers with sliced mushrooms.

Fruit Salad with Syrup

Let us suppose that you are preparing fruit salad for three people. Use about four pieces of fruit, all different, and with due regard to their quality, and the variety of colour and contrast of flavour etc. An apple, an orange, a banana and a plum and/or pear, will give good results. Also consider kiwis, strawberries, peaches, grapes and melon balls.

Start ahead of time so that the fruit salad will be well chilled, which makes an appreciable difference.
Start by making the syrup; Take a common teacup or similar vessel and fill one third full with ordinary table sugar. Add a third of a cup of water. Place in microwave and heat together until the sugar melts, maybe half a minute or so. Remove and stir well. Squeeze into the cup the juice of half a lemon. Pour this sharp, sweet syrup into the fruit salad bowl (you may let it cool if you wish) and commence to cut up your fruit. Place the apple and banana pieces into the syrup as soon as they are cut, this stops them going brown. I don't peel apples and pears but most fruits are peeled. Cut into spoon-size pieces. When all are in, stir well to coat fruit and chill in fridge. Taste the syrup to be sure it is sweet and lemony-sharp.
Pour off surplus syrup before serving: each person should have plenty of syrup but it should not be a splashy experience: fruit salad swimming/floating in liquid is not the best kind.

Other notes. This doesn't need much accessorising: you can pour a little cream, unwhipped, into each serving for a smoother finish. You can try flavouring the syrup with, for example, spices, or gin, but I'm not sure it's an improvement. A bland lemon gives a bland result - try to use a fragrant lemon, or half a lime (which are very acid so go cautiously)

This is one of the earliest recipes for a beginner cook: even a very small child can hold a banana with one hand on a board while cutting it into slices with a blunt plastic knife - good training. (Forks come later). The syrup is a simple matter too, if supervised so that the hot liquid doesn't spill. And it's nice to eat, of course, and healthy too!

Cockeyed Cake

Set oven to 350 deg F. Shelf across the centre.
Get a baking tin that is about 9 ins square, and about 2 deep, or similar: a chicken-size roasting tin works well: line it with non-stick baking parchment.

Now mix up as follows;-

Sift together into a large bowl,
1 and 1/2 cups plain flour (5 - 6 oz)
3 tablespoons cocoa powder (scant oz)
1 teasp bread soda (bicarbonate of soda)
half teasp salt
1 cup caster sugar (6 oz)

Stir them together and then make 3 holes in the surface; a small, a medium and a large.

Into the holes, pour, respectively, 1 teasp vanilla essence; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 5 tablespoons of cooking oil.

Over the top of everything pour 1 cup of cold water (8 fl oz).

Stir everything briskly together with wooden spoon until no flour is visible but don't prolong the mixing.

Pour into prepared tin, bake in prepared oven for half an hour, then check.

Let cool in tin, it is fragile.
When cold, sift a little icing sugar over to decorate (confectioner's sugar, I think)

Needs no garnish.
Raspberries are good with it though, for a dessert.

Unbaked chocolate cookies.

This is a famous American recipe, I believe; I first tasted it in the home of a hospitable friend, years ago. I thought the biscuits delicious and she generously shared the recipe, straight away.
Since then my friend has passed away and now walks other skies in freedom. She was a lovely person and I remember her whenever I make these cookies. A good memorial.

Unbaked chocolate cookies.

I was given the ingredients in American measurements; You can use a measuring jug that has fluid oz on it and allow 8 floz per cup.

In a mixing bowl, mix together:
3 cups of porridge oats,
4 tablesp cocoa powder,
pinch of salt and a
dash of vanilla essence. Stir together.

In a large, heavy saucepan, melt together:
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 stick butter (4 oz, 112 grams)

Bring this mixture up to a full rolling boil and boil for two minutes by the clock.
Cool for a brief minute, pour over the dry mixture and stir together.

[Optional; you may add at this stage, a quarter-cup of peanut butter.]

Drop by teaspoonfuls on to greaseproof paper, leave to cool.

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Notes: this can be knocked up very quickly from store-cupboard ingredients so it's a handy recipe for school treats or unexpected guests. Its pretty sweet as given, I often reduce the sugar a bit. I never use the peanut butter so can't report.

My friend told me that the texture - whether chewy or brittle - is governed by the length of boiling so an experienced hand can "tune" it to taste by boiling longer or shorter...I can't manage this. If they come out right they should cling together and be manageable; you might have to flatten them a bit with a fork.

Delicious and popular and even a way to sneak some whole cereal into the diet!

Thank you, Linda.

Passion Cake

Passion cake

A traditional sweet cake that is easy to mix, delicious and very healthy!

Ingredients:

10 oz plain flour

1 teasp bread soda

2 teasp baking powder

1 teasp salt

6 oz soft light brown sugar

2 oz chopped walnuts

3 eggs

2 ripe bananas

6 oz finely grated carrot

6 floz cooking oil.

Set oven to 350 degs F. Grease and line with paper a 9 in round tin, (or you can use a square one.)

Sift 1^st 4 ingredients oogether. (the dry ones) Mix in sugar and walnuts. Make a well in it then pour in the beaten eggs and the mashed bananas. Mix all together with a wooden spoon. Add the carrots and oil and beat well with wooden spoon to a soft cake batter. Bake for about an hour or until springy and firm to touch. Let cool in tin for 10 mins, then carefully turn out and finish cooling on rack: handle with care, it is crumbly and fragile.

When cold ice with orange icing:

Icing sugar, sifted: moisten with orange juice, and fine orange rind. Decorate with walnuts.

The tastiest coffee

What do you think? What is the very tastiest, home-made coffee?
Should it be ground fine, or coarse, or in-between: brewed long or short - that is to say, coffee grounds in contact with almost-boiling water for long or short time? Steeped in it or passed through? Filtered via paper, metal, simple strainer or not at all? Dampened first by steam, water, or dry?

Many and many are the coffee blogs; passionate indeed are the coffee devotees who write them.

But when push comes to shove, if you make your own coffee at home, you will have to choose a method that suits you and, above all, produces a delicious cup that is a pleasure to drink!

I am frustrated by the sites that start from the assumption that you must buy an elaborate piece of named equipment; will it be Gaggia? an Espresso machine? A Dr Strangelove device called a vacuum, or a suction or some such contraption?
Coffee existed for centuries before these devices were invented, and in fact, in its spiritual home, the Arab world, coffee is regularly made by boiling very fine grounds with water, and serving the resulting strong thick sludge in tiny cups.
So don't be swayed by advertising or snobbery, but by the trusty Tastebud Test!

Make it, drink it, do you like it? Try a different way, do you like that? Stronger, weaker, finer, smoother, sharper, sweeter?



Ideal Coffee proportions:

Water: use either 5 fl oz, or a quarter of a pint, or 150 ml, or 5/8 of an American measuring cup.

Grounds: use either 20 ml, or 1 and a half tablespoons( standard measuring spoon type) or 2 rounded dessertspoons, or one standard coffee scoop, (some brands...)


Now, believe it or not, choose any measure of coffee grounds from the list above, and any measure of liquid from the list ditto, and mix the latter, just off the boil, with the former.
(All the coffee quantities are the same. All the water measures are the same - get out your measuring jugs, and check!)
No matter what gadget you choose to brew it in, this is the mixture that you will eventually drink: Stir them together, wait three minutes, strain through a tea-strainer, or a paper filter in a cone, or invest in an automated kettle-cum-jug-cum-filtercone etc that will do the same untouched by hand. Or mix in a cafetiere when you will just push the grounds to the bottom with a wire filter. Or boil up in a percolator when the boiling water will be dripped over the grounds and circulated up a sort of central chimney.
Or instal the grounds in one section and place the water in another, depending on the gadget: usually, steam will pass through the grounds , moistening and warming them; this is supposed to bring out the flavour (and yes, it does) and the hot water or steam is then pushed through and extracts the best of the flavour. That describes espresso and the classic simple Italian upstairs-downstairs coffee pot.

Grinding: different methods require different grinding fine-ness, in theory antway. Mind you I have made excelent coffee with all sorts of variations ; no need to be TOO picky about this!
Beans: grinding your own makes a huge difference, I am bound to say. But so does the type of bean. Choose your favourite.

And so on...I welcome contributions!

More biscuits...shortbread.

The best, and worst, of home-made biscuits, and an excellent one for the beginner to train on.

The word "short" refers to the fat content, (high)

First find your recipe: and I can tell you right now that most of the common shortbread recipes are much the same; they usually recommend a 3, 2, 1 ratio of flour, butter, sugar, in that order. Typically, let's say, 9 oz of flour, 6 of butter and 3 of sugar.
The butter is rubbed into the flour with your hands until amalgamated into a rich sandy mixure: the sugar is added, and the whole mass squeezed together until it forms a dough.
You may find this process frustratingly dry but DO NOT ADD LIQUID! Keep kneading, and your warm hands will bring it together into a smooth ball of dough eventually.
(If your dough has got too sticky/greasy in the kneading, you can lay it aside, or chill it, for a while, and the dough will firm up.

Usually this will be pressed out into a tin, or rolled and cut. Don't make it too thin or it will burn. And don't make it too thick or it will be dreary chewing. (Not thinner than a 2 euro coin, probably not thicker than about 7 mm, is the best I can suggest.)

Check the temperature of the oven: most recipes say something like "a moderate oven, about 350 F or 180C"- this is too high!

Bake slowly at about 325F or 160C and start checking at 9 minutes, then 11 minutes, then 13 etc.
Don't let them brown, a light suntan towards the edges is enough.
How much heat could it take to cook a bit of flour that thin? how long for a pancake on a pan, by way of comparison?
The sugar and butter are edible raw anyway, you're only cooking the flour - don't overdo it!

Remove and cool promptly - sprinkle with caster sugar. Done!
Very, very plain biscuits - there are many improvements possible, you bet. But more of that anon.