Blue Cheese Brownies

Dear readers,

There have been some interesting developments in brownie recipes recently; the latest trend being the addition of marmite. I remembered one Chemistry lesson when I was in college and we watched a clip of Heston Blumenthal making a chocolate fondant with blue cheese. Until I made these brownies, I'd never tasted chocolate and blue cheese together before. I searched the internet and couldn't find any existing brownie recipes with blue cheese. I did, however, come across a blue cheese truffle recipe.

I am no expert on blue cheese but I chose to use gorgonzola because I love the pungency and tanginess of it. I also love the sound of the word gorgonzola! However, I am sure that this recipe would work well with any type of blue cheese. I used the same base recipe as I did for my Salted and Spiced Dulce de Leche Brownies.

Blue Cheese Brownies
200g good quality dark chocolate
200g butter
100g blue cheese
250g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
125g plain flour

Melt the chocolate, cheese and butter in a bowl over a pan of hot water and set aside to cool slightly.
Whisk the eggs with the sugar and mix with the cooled chocolate, cheese and butter. Sieve and stir in the cocoa and flour. Pour the mixture into a greased and lined baking tray. Bake for 25 minutes at 190°C. Slice once cooled.
Notes:
I cooked these brownies for 30 minutes and they turned out a little dry, so I have reduced the baking time to 25 minutes in this recipe.

I found these brownies truly fascinating! The gorgonzola flavour was very subtle but added a deep, tangy complexity of flavours which came through near the end of each bite. I was very impressed and surprised at how delicious they were; I was half expecting them to turn out to be inedible! This recipe seems to achieve the perfect balance - if there were any more cheese I think that they would taste unpleasant.

I took these brownies into work (I work with a number of Food Scientists) and, as an experiment, I asked my colleagues to sample the brownies to see if they could guess the secret ingredient. It was great fun! Some suggested marmite, a few suggested stock cubes and one colleague even suggested green tea! A few picked up on the cheesy notes, however, only one person guessed the secret ingredient correctly (after a struggle!). In fact, they were from the Sensory department and have been working in Food Sensory Science for over 15 years! So, perhaps their correct conclusion doesn't count, since they are trained for this exact type of research!

In conclusion, these brownies caused quite a stir (to say the least!) and I now have my colleagues asking me if I will be continuing this "Monday Taster Challenge". I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested to have a go at making them, even if it is just to see people strive to guess the secret ingredient! I wonder if these actually have been made before, I find it difficult to believe that they haven't. I also wonder if blue cheese brownies will be the next flavour trend after the 'Marmite Brownies'. We shall see...

Cucamelon Bloody Mary Salad

Dear readers,

There aren't many cucamelon recipes out there so I found it difficult to find inspiration. Many of my friends suggested that I make a cocktail with the cucamelons, perhaps something involving gin, since cucumber and gin make a good pairing. I thought to myself, why not make both a cocktail and a food recipe in one? I always love the addition of alcohol in food because it creates an extra dimension of flavour as well as excitement!

 Cucamelon Bloody Mary Salad
100g cucamelons
120g baby plum tomatoes
3 red chillis
100ml vodka
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1 handful celery leaves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper for seasoning

Slice the cucamelons, baby plum tomatoes and chillis and place in a bowl with the vodka. Allow to rest in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours, but preferably overnight (this depends on how strong you would like the alcohol; overnight soaking will provide quite a kick!). Drain the vodka-soaked vegetables, add the rest of the ingredients and mix gently.

This salad can be served as a side dish or, since the flavours (and alcohol) are quite strong, it can be served as a canapé or a palate cleanser at a dinner party served in spoons or shot glasses.

Notes:

This salad seems to go through a sequence of flavours as it is being eaten. It begins with fresh flavours and crunchy textures (especially from the cucuamelons), followed by the warmth of the alcohol which slowly develops into quite a kick at the end with the deeper, more 'Bloody-Mary-like' flavours of the celery seeds and leaves near the end. It is certainly different from most other salads and causes quite a stir!

I'm, actually, not a huge fan of vodka, but decided to stick with vodka in this recipe so that it wouldn't be too unusual. The vodka can easily be substituted for a different alcoholic spirit, such as tequila, and name the salad "Bloody Maria" instead of "Bloody Mary" (I regret not doing this in the first place now, since I much prefer tequila to vodka!).

Instead of cucamelons, chunks of cucumber could be substituted.

Cucamelons

Dear readers,

Back in May I bought myself a packet of cucamelon seeds from Suttons. Since we had a slow start with summer this year, the seeds took a little while to take off. However, we were very lucky with our summer when it did arrive and my cucamelons have bloomed!

Cucamelons, despite their name, do not taste of melon. They taste of cucumber with a sharp hint of citrus. The 'melon' part of the name comes from the fact that they look like baby watermelons. They are native to Mexico, where they are called "Sandíitas de raton" (baby mouse watermelons).

Once they got going, they became a little wild and greedy, stretching their curly arms all over the metal supports and neighbouring plants! The cucamelon fruits themselves, however, do tend to hide behind the big leaves and sometimes a low angle is required to spot them!

From the 10 seeds that I planted, only three germinated into seedlings, two of which grew into tall plants that provided fruits. I think that, including allowing for the odd person stealing a sample, they yielded 60 to 70 cucamelons in total. Not bad for my first attempt at homegrowing!

I showed the top photo in this post to a colleague of mine who is also interested in homegrowing. He gave me a wonderful (and rather unexpected) reaction; I quote "Ah bless, they look lovely! Perhaps you could call them cute-a-melons?". How sweet!

Now I need some help in creating some recipes in which I can let these little beauties shine, both visually and flavour-wise. Please feel free to share any ideas and I'll see what I can conjure up!

Blackberry and Sage Cheesecake Cupcakes

Dear readers,

Blackberries have been available all over the place and I thought it would be a shame not to include them in a recipe, especially since they are abundant and free! I wanted to make something which would encourage the gorgeous juices of the blackberries to run and show off their colour, so I decided on a cheesecake cupcake.

As always, I like to create recipes with unusual flavour combinations. I especially like adding herbs to sweet treats because they can create very intriguing flavour combinations even though they are more commonly used in savoury recipes. I wandered around the garden and came across sage. I have seen a couple of sage and blackberry recipes before, so decided to go for it. One could call these "foraged cupcakes" since both the blackberries and the sage have been foraged. But I'm sure that there are plenty of other "foraged cupcake" flavour combinations out there!

 

Blackberry and Sage Cheesecake Cupcakes

2 medium eggs

100g caster sugar

100g self raising flour

100g butter

8 sage leaves, finely chopped140g cream cheese

60g caster sugar

1 medium egg

75g blackberries

Cream together the sugar and butter, then add the flour and eggs and whisk. Mix in the finely chopped sage leaves and fill the cupcake cases up by two thirds.

 

Whisk together the cream cheese, sugar and egg then stir in the blackberries. Add a tablespoonful of the cheesecake mixture with the blackberries on top of the cupcake mix and bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown, depending on the size of the cupcakes.

 

Unfortunately, most of the cheesecake mixture migrated to the bottom and the sides of the cupcake which left the gorgeous purple colours to only be seen through the cases! I'm glad that I used white cases so that the colours of the blackberries were visible. However, once one opens the case, the gorgeous purples are unveiled to reveal their true colours!

 

These cupcakes had an interesting mix of reviews. Some found the sage flavour quite dominant, while others thought that it was very subtle. Personally, I think that they have just the right amount of sage, but the recipe can be adjusted according to one's taste!

A taste of the 193 course menu

Dear readers,

A couple of months ago, a friend sent me a link about an event taking place in London - a world record attempt on the longest tasting menu. The menu included 193 dishes from all over the world and was hosted by a food company called Unearthed. This sounded incredible and when I saw that they sold tickets for a 1 hour sitting of the event, I was determined to become a part of it!

 

                                     Table setting

The first set of tickets had sold out almost immediately. I was told that more would be released on a particular date. So I sat poised over the computer and fortunately managed to get 2 tickets!

 

The one hour sitting included 7 taster courses. Firstly we were given Kansiye - a traditional hearty beef stew with peanut butter from Guinea.

                            Kansiye from Guinea

The next stop was Thailand with the classic Pad Thai, served with a lemon wedge and some ground peanuts.

                         Pad Thai from Thailand
 

Two courses were served in the form of drinks; Rose Water Cordial from Turkmenistan and Otai - a watermelon, pineapple and coconut drink from Tonga. The Rose Water Cordial was aromatic and refreshing. The Otai really surprised us. We had never tried coconut and watermelon together before but the combination is delicious! This was a favourite of ours and we hope to recreate it sometime, with a drop of rum maybe...

 Rose Water Cordial from Turkmenistan

The next food course was Koshari from Egypt - an eccentric dish of macaroni pasta served with an exotic sauce of rice and lentils. To be honest, we thought that this one was pretty bland and didn't enjoy it so much.

                             Koshari from Egypt

The clock was ticking and we had 20 minutes left. We were given the last two dishes, both of which were desserts; Tama from Palau - a deep fried vanilla ball, and Frozen Durian from Malaysia. The vanilla ball seemed quite similar to a doughnut. Durian is known to be an acquired taste. To me, it tasted like slimy, garlic-spiked fruit. I don't think that I'll be in a hurry to eat durian again! But it was certainly an experience to try it!

                      Otai from Tonga

Our hour was then up and we had to leave for the next sitting of guests. During the meal, there were also some Uneartherd food products out for tasting including Bratwurst, Spanish omellete, chilli and lime prawn skewers, Proscuitto Crudo and Pear and Almond tart, to take us to a few more countries while we were in there!

 Tama from Palau and Frozen Durian from Malaysia

Overall, it was a very interesting evening, having sampled a variety of dishes from around the world. Some were more unusual than others. It would have been a dream to be part of the production of such an exciting event, and, of course, I would have loved to have tasted all of the 193 dishes.

 

Fried Chive Flowers

Dear readers,

Please allow me to apologise again for my absence from this website! Life has been really busy (as always) and I am just about to go on holiday.

One Saturday morning as I sipped my cup of coffee in the garden, I noticed that all of the chive flowers had blossomed. They looked so pretty that I decided to take a few snaps.

I then remembered reading Shu Han's post last summer on Chive Flower Tempura. This is a beautiful recipe that's, fortunately, quite simple too. It was a few weeks later that I finally got around to making the tempura - I was lucky that there were still some chive flowers left!



Fried Chive Flowers
A handful of chive flowers
½ cup plain flour
½ cup beer
A pinch of salt
Frying oil/fat (quantity depends on what application is used for the frying)

Wash and dry the chive flowers. Heat the oil to 190°C. When the oil is to temperature, add the beer to the flour and mix. Dip the chive flowers into the batter and fry for about 20 seconds or until they are golden brown. Place onto a plate with some kitchen towel to soak up the excess oil. Lightly sprinkle with salt before serving with any sauce that one desires!

Notes:

Shu Han recommends using a solid fat such as lard or coconut or palm oil, but I had none of these at hand so I just settled for plain sunflower oil.

Frying these in a deep fat fryer would be the safest way since the temperature can be controlled. I fried these using hot oil in a pan and the temperature was very difficult to control. I would recommend heating the oil to 190°C, then turning the heat off and removing the pan from the heat once you begin to fry, to prevent the temperature from soaring.

I was actually in such a rush to photograph these before I had to head out that I only tried one before I left. I ended up baking the rest of them for a few minutes once I got home and they were great!

Thanks for the recipe Shu Han!

Mad Hatter's Afternoon Tea - Sanderson Hotel, London

Dear readers,

As one may have noticed, I am a great fan of Afternoon Tea! I love having a selection of different treats, which I can nibble in whichever order I please. However, many Afternoon Tea menus are similar, so, whenever I come across a different menu, I have to try it!

Firstly, we were given a selection of interesting teas which we were allowed to smell to make a choice on our selected brew. These included Mint Choc Chip, Apple Pie, Rhubarb and Custard and Strawberries and Cream. I chose a Strawberries and Cream tea, which had a pleasant subtle sweetness.

The quirky crockery perfectly matched the innovative and unusual menu - mine had a zebra on a circus pedestal!

The top tier of the platter held a small carrot meringue on a bed of pea shoots and 'strawberries and cream' marshmallows mushrooms. The carrot meringues were a great idea, but they didn't taste of much. The marshmallow mushrooms were also a great idea but were a little too sweet to eat them all. As I've mentioned previously, I think that marshmallows require a little tartness as their high sugar levels can make them too sickly-sweet to eat!

The second tier consisted of a 'Tick Tock' traditional Victoria sponge cake, a melting mango cheesecake and a matcha green tea and white chocolate mousse served in a dark chocolate teacup. The Victoria sponge was light, creamy and delicious. The melting mango cheesecake was a little disappointing; it had a runny mango centre (like an egg yolk) which was held by an almost-crunchy gel coating. The mango sauce was not tart enough to sit well with the white chocolate flavoured cheesecake. It was too sweet and it had no crunchy base for contrast, either!

The matcha teacup was a quite a treat. The mousse was light and fluffy with a little tickle from the popping candy on top! The last sweet included the famous "drink me" potion. This consisted of 3 layers including a passion fruit jelly, coconut panna cotta and an exotic fruit foam. This was a fine fusion of tropical flavours which was far too small a portion!

The savoury treats included four sandwiches, a savoury olive scone (there was also a sweet fruity scone) and two mini quiches. The olive scone went fabulously with the herb and garlic butter on the side! I used two sides of jam and cream on the fruity scone. The sandwiches, each made with different types of bread, were quite impressive. They were rolled up to look even prettier (see photo below). The sandwiches included smoked Cumbrian ham with wholegrain mustard on sun-dried tomato bread, cucumber and chive cream cheese on spinach bread, smoked salmon and lemon butter on rye bread and egg mayonnaise with watercress on lemon bread. Each sandwich was packed with flavour. I would have definitely ordered more if I had had room!

We'd almost forgotten about the Jelly Wonderland course by the time we had finished everything else. We were very full by this point but we just about found room to try all of the jellies. There were raspberry, pear, green apple and mango and chilli jellies. We tried them all but we only really liked the green apple jelly. The others had very weak flavours and all of them had an unpleasant grainy texture.

Overall, it was a great escape down the rabbit hole with some fun and interesting treats. I would definitely recommend it!