Recipe corner: Ecclefechan tart

I know I still need to put the recipe for Christmas pudding cheesecake up but that is at home and I am not. I am currently in Edinburgh, waiting for a train back to Leeds and so it seems fitting to be talking about Scottish food.  If you have never been to Scotland (or, weirdly, Waitrose which sometimes sells little ones at Christmas as some sort of mince pie alternative) then you will probably never have come across Ecclefechan tart and that is a shame because it is lovely. I think it is nicer than its more widely known distant cousin, the Yorkshire curd tart.

I made D go to Ecclefechan once. Reader, there did not appear to be anything there. We spent the evening playing cards in the hotel bar. But we did have Ecclefechan tart. And when I told the proprietor of the Ecclefechan House Hotel that I was basically there because I was a tart groupie, she was kind enough to let me copy the recipe which had been in her possession for donkey’s years.

So, some notes. The first: I have not provided a recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry here, feel free to use your own. Or, you know, Google it. The recipe does not call for blind baking so we did not and I have not mentioned it below. It was fine. But if you are a pastry purist and you want your bottom super crisp, then you might need to improvise a little here.

The second: I was slightly short on dried fruit so I made up the weight with some mincemeat that I had hanging around. Which isn’t quite in the spirit as it will have introduced a slight element of booze and spice which shouldn’t really be there. But it still tasted lovely so it’s worth considering if you have any leftover from Christmas that needs a good home.

The third: the vinegar will smell very pronounced when you first add it, but will cook out to a mellow, slightly sour back note in the finished dish, so do not be tempted to skip.

Ingredients

1 quantity of sweet shortcrust pastry, sufficient to line a standard tart tin (ours is 9 inch)

100g butter
2 eggs
150g soft brown sugar
1 tbsp vinegar
200g mixed dried fruit (sultanas, raisins, currants)
50g chopped walnuts

Cream, to serve

Serves 8 

Roll out your pastry, line your tart tin and place in the fridge to chill until required. Preheat oven to around 160 (fan).

Place the butter in a saucepan and melt over a gentle heat.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and then tip in the sugar and whisk again to combine.

When the butter is melted, remove the pan from the heat and set aside for a couple of minutes to allow it to cool very slightly.

Stir the melted butter, the fruit and the vinegar through the eggs and sugar mixture.

Pour the whole lot into the tart tin and transfer to the oven to bake for around 30 mins. I covered mine with foil halfway through to stop the top from catching (but our oven is a beast).

Allow the tart to cool slightly before serving - it is best warm, not hot. Lovely with a good splash of cream.

Edited - 25 January 2021

We have been marking Burn's Night with a feast of Scottish food and revisited this recipe - but with individual tarts rather than a large one. To make two individual sized (5" diameter) tarts I used the following amounts:

35g butter

35g beaten egg

50g soft brown sugar

1 tsp vinegar

65g mixed dried fruit

15g chopped walnuts

Also - this sweet pastry recipe worked a treat (and I'm very nervous about pastry handling). I halved the recipe and there was enough for two individual tarts plus offcuts for a few mini mince pies. A sterling success.

Notes from my Christmas kitchen (2019 edition)

I didn’t take a single photo of the food that we ate over Christmas - which, for those of you who know my (startling lack of) talent for food photography may come as a shock. The trouble is (and I’ve complained about this before) while you are trying to line up the perfect shot - or even just trying to line up something that you can make look half decent if you Instagram the bejesus out of it - the food is a) smelling yummy and b) getting cold.

I think, though, this was the year that we really nailed Christmas dinner - our version. We still serve confit duck legs - the method very closely based on Valentine Warner’s recipe detailed here. We have now introduced an additional meat element: the duck and black pudding bonbon. To make these, D roasted two duck legs until tender then removed the skin and shredded the meat into a bowl, alongside two thick slices of black pudding. The mixture is soft and pliable enough to easily fashion into balls before rolling in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and deep frying - all of which, with the exception of the frying, can be done well in advance.

There is mash, because there has to be a potato element. And there is braised red cabbage which has been a staple for many years being both a little bit sour, a little bit sweet and a little bit buttery all at once and providing some moisture to the plate in the absence of any gravy.

This year, as well, inspired by a Thomas Keller recipe, we softened an onion in a little butter and oil then added a pile of shredded sprouts with a couple of sprigs of thyme. Covered the whole in chicken stock and reduced right down before adding a splash of cream and a good spoon of Dijon mustard. The bitterness of the sprouts were tempered, but not entirely diminished, by the flavour of the rich sauce and it really worked well to pull everything together.

Usually, we end up eating pudding on Boxing Day because we’ve maxed out. But keeping things light on the snacks and starters type meant that this year, after a couple of hours digestion time, we just about made room for the individual Christmas pudding cheesecakes that D had carefully prepared earlier in the week. I love Christmas pudding and I love cheesecake so this was a match made in heaven! I’ll post the recipe here for future reference - it would be great if you were entertaining a lot of people since you could make a full sized one, get it done well in advance and then just slice and serve on the day.

Meal planning Monday: 20th January 2020

We continue to eat our way through the freezer which has kept food bills low this month and been proving extremely delicious. Well, I say food bills have been low - we did have a bit of a splurge in the Indian supermarket yesterday to restock the spice rack and get the wherewithal for a batch of D’s famous green stuff which, we have decreed, must be in the fridge at all times. Also, D keeps buying prawns because the cat has decided that they are her Favourite Thing and she has her father firmly under the paw.

This week is an unusual one because we are both away with work for one night. While D is living it up in Nottingham I will probably be eating a ready meal. While I travel to Edinburgh, he will be having steak. We have very different standards when it comes to solo dining! Elsewhere:

Monday: green chilli chicken soup

Tuesday: gnocchi (from the freezer) probably with tomato sauce, pesto and mozzarella

Thursday: D’s homecoming meal - creamy salmon pasta

Friday: we have some bags of Christmas nibbles left in the freezer because we always, always buy far too many. So nibbles. And maybe some homemade bread if I get round to making it.

Saturday: Burns Night, and my Dad’s birthday. We are going to make Balmoral chicken, from this month’s Good Food magazine. Chicken, haggis, neeps and tatties- I’m already excited!

Happy cooking les touts!

Recipe corner: coconut and ginger mussels

We got five new recipe books for Christmas which added to an already huge collection. All too often, much wanted books come into the house, get read, drooled over, maybe even tagged and then they get consigned to the shelf. And, come meal planning, it’s the internet that is called upon as the main resource. It’s ridiculous.

So, despite our plan to spend most of January eating down the freezer, we decided to make an exception for the new books. Last night, we pulled out “Made in India” by Meera Sodha. This was a gift from my Mum who has been raving about it for years. On the basis of this dish, I see her point. It wasn’t complicated food but it was utterly delicious and one we hope to revisit soon.

I love mussels in any shape or form and they are so cheap! D picked up a bag in the market for just over £3 which served two of us very generously and felt like a luxury. We just had some well buttered baguette on the side - Sodha suggested paratha which would have been lovely but was an effort too far after a long week at work. Next time!

Ingredients

1kg mussels, in the shell, debearded and cleaned

Tbsp vegetable oil
2 small onions, finely chopped
Small handful dried curry leaves
4 fat garlic cloves, crushed
Chunk (4-5cm) root ginger, grated
Red chilli, deseeded and chopped

Hefty tbsp tomato purée
1/4 tsp chilli powder
200ml coconut milk
Handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Serves 2

In a large pan (with a lid) gently heat the oil then tip in the onions and the curry leaves with a decent pinch of salt. Turn the heat down to low, cover, and cook for 8 mins until the onions are very soft and beginning to turn golden.

Now in goes the garlic, ginger (be generous with the ginger!) and chilli and cook off for another minute until the garlic has lost its raw smell. Stir through the tomato purée and chilli powder, again cook for a minute to get rid of any raw spice, and then pour in the coconut milk, up the heat and bring to a gentle bubble.

Time to tip in the mussels. Swirl the pan gently then put on the lid. Cook for 6-8 mins - it will be dependent on the size of your mussels, but you want all the shells to be wide open and the meat glistening and tender.

Use a slotted spoon to dish the mussels then stir the coriander through the sauce and check the seasoning before pouring over and serving with some sort of bread for dunking.

Meal Planning Monday: 6th January 2020

The first meal plan of the new year, nay, the decade! How exciting. 

The month of January has two themes. The first is: our chest freezer is full. How is it even possible to fill a chest freezer? We’re broke after Christmas, let’s spend the next few weeks eating it down. The second is: oooh! New cookery books! 

Monday: tuna pasta bake. Using some remaining Christmas cheese. This is obscenely cheesy which is just what’s needed after the first day back at work.

Tuesday: gnocchi with Parmesan butter, sage and walnuts. Hmm, apparently the third theme is cheesy stodgy. But - gnocchi from the freezer, leftover walnuts and the Parmesan butter comes from the Marcella Hazan book D got for Christmas.

Wednesday: I’m travelling with work. So, whatever I can get that’s close to the hotel and under the expenses limit.

Thursday: I don’t get home till nearly nine, so likely a sandwich on the train.

Friday: fish pie, using various odds and sods of fish from the freezer.

Saturday: burgers (from the, yawn, freezer)

Sunday: a Rachel Khoo recipe from “My Little Swedish Kitchen”. Slow roasted salmon fillets which I’ll serve with pink pickled onions and lemon and dill scented rice.

Happy cooking!

Into the twenties

Towards the end of last year I was pondering the future of this blog.

When I first started, I had a vague USP - or at least an SP, as it was hardly U. I was someone who enjoyed good food who was following the Weight Watchers diet. It was supposed to be a record of losing weight while cooking nice meals. It was also a nice way of interacting with other people in the diet blog community.

Well, times have changed. I may still be Weeble shaped but I no longer follow Weight Watchers and have come to believe that, for me at least, anything which involves endless counting and measuring of food is not really a good idea. And many of the blogs I followed back then have disappeared, their authors with them.

I still wanted somewhere, though, to act as a virtual recipe repository and a record of special meals. So I toyed with the idea of a new blog and even went so far as to investigate domain names. But, nah.  There might be stuff on here that makes me squirm a little bit (encouraging the use of half fat butter and cheese to make macaroni cheese springs to mind) and I wish that it didn’t have WW in the title (would anyone believe me if I pretended that it stood for something else? World Wide? Whimsical, Wobbly?) But it’s mine, dammit. And I am very fond of it, crappy food photography and all.

So, this year, as challenged by D, I am going to blog more regularly and make sure all our favourite recipes and meals are recorded. I might even go back and revise some of those earlier abominations dishes.

Happy New Year to all, may your 2020 be a good one (and may your shadows never grow less).