© City Life Live. All rights reserved
Granny Sue, I should explain, is not my granny.
She's the granny of a friend, and creator of the world's greatest cheese biscuit recipe. Last time we visited, her grandson's lovely wife produced a dish of Granny Sue's most excellent biscuits, and kicked half the batch she made up a notch with a sprinkle of cumin seeds.
I waited until they were both rendered soft and giving with drink, and demanded the recipe: here it is, unaltered by me aside from the addition of some more whole spices.
She's the granny of a friend, and creator of the world's greatest cheese biscuit recipe. Last time we visited, her grandson's lovely wife produced a dish of Granny Sue's most excellent biscuits, and kicked half the batch she made up a notch with a sprinkle of cumin seeds.
I waited until they were both rendered soft and giving with drink, and demanded the recipe: here it is, unaltered by me aside from the addition of some more whole spices.
Granny Sue's Seeded Cheese Nibbles - by Liz Upton
The unholy amount of butter and cheese in these makes for an intensely crisp, rich finish - I defy you not to scoff the lot in about five minutes flat.
To make about 25 toothsome little biscuits, you'll need:
60g plain flour
60g sharp Cheddar cheese
60g salted butter
1 egg yolk
1 heaped tablespoon whole-grain mustard
Water
20g Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon each fennel seeds, cumin seeds and coriander seeds
On baking sheets, form teaspoons of the mixture with your fingers into little rounds or lozenges about half a centimetre thick - it's fussy but rather nice to create a different shape for each of the three different spices you'll be using. Sprinkle a pinch of grated Parmesan on each one, then a pinch of one of the spices. I made a third of my batch of biscuits with cumin, a third with coriander and a third with fennel. Press the top of each biscuit gently with your finger to make sure the whole spices are firmly engaged with the cheese. Bake for 12 minutes until the biscuits are sizzling and golden. Cool on the baking sheets for ten minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve with drinks before dinner.
To read more from Liz Upton go to http://www.gastronomydomine.com/
To make about 25 toothsome little biscuits, you'll need:
60g plain flour
60g sharp Cheddar cheese
60g salted butter
1 egg yolk
1 heaped tablespoon whole-grain mustard
Water
20g Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon each fennel seeds, cumin seeds and coriander seeds
On baking sheets, form teaspoons of the mixture with your fingers into little rounds or lozenges about half a centimetre thick - it's fussy but rather nice to create a different shape for each of the three different spices you'll be using. Sprinkle a pinch of grated Parmesan on each one, then a pinch of one of the spices. I made a third of my batch of biscuits with cumin, a third with coriander and a third with fennel. Press the top of each biscuit gently with your finger to make sure the whole spices are firmly engaged with the cheese. Bake for 12 minutes until the biscuits are sizzling and golden. Cool on the baking sheets for ten minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve with drinks before dinner.
To read more from Liz Upton go to http://www.gastronomydomine.com/
Put the butter in the freezer for 20 minutes, while the oven heats to 200°C (400°F). Sieve the flour from a height, making sure you get plenty of air into it, into a large mixing bowl, and grate the Cheddar cheese into it. Grate the frozen butter into the bowl, and use a knife to mix the butter, cheese and flour together well.
Add the egg yolk and the mustard to the bowl with a little water (the amount of water you'll need to make a soft dough will vary according to the conditions on the day you make the biscuits) and mix with the knife until you have a dough which comes together nicely without sticking.
Add the egg yolk and the mustard to the bowl with a little water (the amount of water you'll need to make a soft dough will vary according to the conditions on the day you make the biscuits) and mix with the knife until you have a dough which comes together nicely without sticking.
Gooseberry fool - by Liz Upton
We English diners aren't blessed with much, but we're pretty blessed when it comes to summer fruits. We've been through rhubarb, strawberries, cherries and greengages already this summer: now it's the turn of the gooseberry.
There are several different varieties of this lovely, fragrant berry, some very sharp and best used for cooking (they're very good simmered down and served with rich meats like duck and goose), and some so sweet they can be eaten raw. Its flavour character and the texture it cooks down to means that it fits well into the sort of recipes you might cook with rhubarb - and if you don't have any gooseberries, you can make this fool with rhubarb and emerge happy. I very much like the texture of the soft seeds and flesh of the fruit in the mouth, and don't sieve the gooseberry puree in this recipe to remove them. Try it both ways, and see which you prefer.
We English diners aren't blessed with much, but we're pretty blessed when it comes to summer fruits. We've been through rhubarb, strawberries, cherries and greengages already this summer: now it's the turn of the gooseberry.
There are several different varieties of this lovely, fragrant berry, some very sharp and best used for cooking (they're very good simmered down and served with rich meats like duck and goose), and some so sweet they can be eaten raw. Its flavour character and the texture it cooks down to means that it fits well into the sort of recipes you might cook with rhubarb - and if you don't have any gooseberries, you can make this fool with rhubarb and emerge happy. I very much like the texture of the soft seeds and flesh of the fruit in the mouth, and don't sieve the gooseberry puree in this recipe to remove them. Try it both ways, and see which you prefer.
Gooseberries have a fantastic affinity with elderflower. It's just one of those happy coincidences, like strawberries and black pepper (try it some time). If you made the elderflower cordial I encourage you to make it every June (or if you have some from the supermarket in the cupboard), use two tablespoons of it in place of the sugar in this recipe. To serve two, you'll need:
450g dessert gooseberries
2 tablespoons sugar OR elderflower cordial
400ml whipping cream
400ml custard - make the custard using this recipe or buy some from the supermarket chiller cabinet
Top and tail the gooseberries with a sharp knife, and put them in a small saucepan. Add the sugar or elderflower cordial to them and put over a low heat. As they simmer, the berries will collapse into a thick sauce. Remove from the heat, taste for sweetness, adding a little more sugar or cordial if necessary, transfer to a bowl and put the gooseberries into the fridge to chill for a couple of hours. Make up the custard and put it in the fridge to chill with the berries.
When the gooseberries and custard are nice and cold, whip the cream into soft peaks. In glasses, layer the custard, gooseberries and cream to serve. Some like to swirl them in the glass, but I think this is far prettier served in distinct layers.
To read more from Liz Upton go to http://www.gastronomydomine.com/
The UK's online city guide
..........................................
Select a city
Refried Beans with Salsa and Chorizo - by Liz Upton
This is my slightly European-ised (and it's no worse for that) take on Mexican refried beans. You can serve yours in chi-chi little towers like this if you're feeling all...retentive, or you can just dollop piles of beans, salsa and avocado/crème fraîche on the plate however you fancy. I have a sense that life is probably too short for chi-chi little towers.
This recipe makes more in the way of beans than you'll eat at one sitting; you'll probably get two or three meals for four out of the amounts below. (The salsa amounts below are for one meal.) This is because the long simmering of the beans and the making of the sauce that flavours them is quite time-consuming, so it's worth making plenty and freezing the remainder before you mash them to cook quickly at a later date if you want to save yourself some work. To keep the chorizo crisp, you'll need to fry some up each time you make this (although you can, of course, leave it out, especially if you have a vegetarian to feed); chopping and frying the sausage is not so much of a hardship, though, given how good it tastes.
Refritos, despite the title of this post, doesn't actually mean 'refried', but 'well-fried'. These are really worth the effort; they're silky-smooth in the mouth, and intensely savoury: a billion times better than anything you might have had out of a can. Amazingly, they also do not make you fart. To make a large panful of beans for three meals and enough salsa for one meal, you'll need:
Beans
500g pinto beans
3 bay leaves
5 cloves
2 dried chillies
1 large onion
1.5l water
1 can tomatoes
4 banana shallots
6 anchovies (yes, even for anchovy-haters - see below)
1½ tablespoons smoked Spanish paprika
2 tablespoons chipotle chillies in adobo
Bacon fat or chorizo fat to fry
1 dried chorizo
Salsa
Six medium tomatoes (vine-ripened is your best bet at this time of year)
½ banana shallot
1 small handful (about 15g) coriander
A squeeze of lime juice
1 avocado
crème fraîche
Chop the onion into rough dice and put it in a large saucepan with the rinsed beans, bay leaves, cloves and water. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on and simmer for 2½ hours, until the beans are soft. Check during cooking to make sure there is plenty of water for the beans to swim around in, adding a little more if you think they need it.
When the 2½ hours is up, halve the shallots and cut them into half-moons. In a large frying pan, saute them in two tablespoons of bacon fat or chorizo fat (using these fats does simply astonishing things to the flavour of this dish, but you can use olive oil if they make you nervous or if you are not the sort of person who keeps jars of such artery-clogging things in the fridge) with the anchovies. The anchovies will melt and break down. They will not make the dish taste at all fishy - they just add an unidentifiable and delicious richness and depth to its structure. Keep sauteeing, stirring every now and then, until the shallots are golden. Add the tin of tomatoes to the pan with the chipotles in adobo and Spanish paprika, and simmer until thickened. Using two different kinds of smoked chillies may look like overkill, but they both have very different characters, the chipotles dark and chocolatey in their heat, and the paprika much brighter. Together they're fantastic here.
Add the thickened mixture to the beans pan with a tablespoon of salt (smoked Maldon salt is good, but isn't totally necessary) and return it to the heat, this time uncovered. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid in the pan takes on a texture like the sauce in a can of baked beans. You'll be able to tell when it's ready; it can take anything from 45 minutes to a couple of hours.
You can serve the beans now as a kind of baked bean. This is also the point at which you should stop to reserve two thirds of the beans for cooking later on. Set the third you are using for refried beans aside until you are nearly ready to eat.
For the salsa, just peel and seed the tomatoes, dice and mix with the diced shallot and chopped coriander, and squeeze over lime juice to taste. Chop a chorizo into coins, quarter each of these coins and dry-fry them until they are crisp and rustling in the pan. Set aside in a small bowl, reserving the fat for another go at the beans.
To fry the beans, eat 2 tablespoons of bacon or chorizo fat in a large saucepan until very hot. Mash the beans in their sauce with a potato masher. They shouldn't be completely smooth, but work at it until most of the beans are reduced to a paste. Dollop the paste into the hot fat. It will hiss and spit. Use a wooden spoon to stir the beans around in the frying pan, and keep stirring every couple of minutes until all the fat is absorbed and the liquid from the beans has evaporated to leave them thick and dense.
Stir the crispy chorizo into the beans and serve with a hearty spoonful of the salsa, some sliced avocado and a good dollop of crème fraîche. This makes a great meal on its own. If you're feeling greedy, it's also a brilliant accompaniment for a steak.
To read more from Liz Upton go to http://www.gastronomydomine.com/
This is my slightly European-ised (and it's no worse for that) take on Mexican refried beans. You can serve yours in chi-chi little towers like this if you're feeling all...retentive, or you can just dollop piles of beans, salsa and avocado/crème fraîche on the plate however you fancy. I have a sense that life is probably too short for chi-chi little towers.
This recipe makes more in the way of beans than you'll eat at one sitting; you'll probably get two or three meals for four out of the amounts below. (The salsa amounts below are for one meal.) This is because the long simmering of the beans and the making of the sauce that flavours them is quite time-consuming, so it's worth making plenty and freezing the remainder before you mash them to cook quickly at a later date if you want to save yourself some work. To keep the chorizo crisp, you'll need to fry some up each time you make this (although you can, of course, leave it out, especially if you have a vegetarian to feed); chopping and frying the sausage is not so much of a hardship, though, given how good it tastes.
Refritos, despite the title of this post, doesn't actually mean 'refried', but 'well-fried'. These are really worth the effort; they're silky-smooth in the mouth, and intensely savoury: a billion times better than anything you might have had out of a can. Amazingly, they also do not make you fart. To make a large panful of beans for three meals and enough salsa for one meal, you'll need:
Beans
500g pinto beans
3 bay leaves
5 cloves
2 dried chillies
1 large onion
1.5l water
1 can tomatoes
4 banana shallots
6 anchovies (yes, even for anchovy-haters - see below)
1½ tablespoons smoked Spanish paprika
2 tablespoons chipotle chillies in adobo
Bacon fat or chorizo fat to fry
1 dried chorizo
Salsa
Six medium tomatoes (vine-ripened is your best bet at this time of year)
½ banana shallot
1 small handful (about 15g) coriander
A squeeze of lime juice
1 avocado
crème fraîche
Chop the onion into rough dice and put it in a large saucepan with the rinsed beans, bay leaves, cloves and water. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on and simmer for 2½ hours, until the beans are soft. Check during cooking to make sure there is plenty of water for the beans to swim around in, adding a little more if you think they need it.
When the 2½ hours is up, halve the shallots and cut them into half-moons. In a large frying pan, saute them in two tablespoons of bacon fat or chorizo fat (using these fats does simply astonishing things to the flavour of this dish, but you can use olive oil if they make you nervous or if you are not the sort of person who keeps jars of such artery-clogging things in the fridge) with the anchovies. The anchovies will melt and break down. They will not make the dish taste at all fishy - they just add an unidentifiable and delicious richness and depth to its structure. Keep sauteeing, stirring every now and then, until the shallots are golden. Add the tin of tomatoes to the pan with the chipotles in adobo and Spanish paprika, and simmer until thickened. Using two different kinds of smoked chillies may look like overkill, but they both have very different characters, the chipotles dark and chocolatey in their heat, and the paprika much brighter. Together they're fantastic here.
Add the thickened mixture to the beans pan with a tablespoon of salt (smoked Maldon salt is good, but isn't totally necessary) and return it to the heat, this time uncovered. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid in the pan takes on a texture like the sauce in a can of baked beans. You'll be able to tell when it's ready; it can take anything from 45 minutes to a couple of hours.
You can serve the beans now as a kind of baked bean. This is also the point at which you should stop to reserve two thirds of the beans for cooking later on. Set the third you are using for refried beans aside until you are nearly ready to eat.
For the salsa, just peel and seed the tomatoes, dice and mix with the diced shallot and chopped coriander, and squeeze over lime juice to taste. Chop a chorizo into coins, quarter each of these coins and dry-fry them until they are crisp and rustling in the pan. Set aside in a small bowl, reserving the fat for another go at the beans.
To fry the beans, eat 2 tablespoons of bacon or chorizo fat in a large saucepan until very hot. Mash the beans in their sauce with a potato masher. They shouldn't be completely smooth, but work at it until most of the beans are reduced to a paste. Dollop the paste into the hot fat. It will hiss and spit. Use a wooden spoon to stir the beans around in the frying pan, and keep stirring every couple of minutes until all the fat is absorbed and the liquid from the beans has evaporated to leave them thick and dense.
Stir the crispy chorizo into the beans and serve with a hearty spoonful of the salsa, some sliced avocado and a good dollop of crème fraîche. This makes a great meal on its own. If you're feeling greedy, it's also a brilliant accompaniment for a steak.
To read more from Liz Upton go to http://www.gastronomydomine.com/
