Sticky Toffee Pudding to die for ...

Why did I call this post "Sticky Toffee Pudding to die for"? Because this is not a health food recipe. Eat too much of this and you will die young but with a huge smug grin on your face.

The pudding is what might be referred to in the UK as "stotty" pudding (i.e. heavy and filling) and the sweet, sticky sauce is so good that neighborhood kids will throw grappling hooks onto your roof and climb into your kitchen with big dessert spoons between their teeth to get at it.

Sticky Toffee Pudding is a traditional British dessert and there are many ways to make it. If you Google "sticky toffee pudding" you will find lots of repetitions of the same basic recipe that originated with Jamie Oliver. All of them feature pitted dates in the recipe.

I have the greatest respect for Jamie Oliver which is why I chose to make my pudding different. Here is how I made it.

Ingredients

• 2 large apples
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• Vanilla Essence
• 2 eggs

Preparation
The Pudding:

• Peel and dice the apples then cook them in a pan with half the sugar until mushy
• Stir in the flour and baking powder then break the eggs into the mixture
• Add a splash of vanilla essence and the cinnamon
• Mix thoroughly until the batter is thick and smooth then transfer it to a greased baking dish
• Bake for 45 minutes at 400F

The Sauce!

• Gently melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan
• Stir in the remainder of the brown sugar, a splash of vanilla essence and bring to the boil
• Stir continuously - no really, I mean it - and let the mixture boil for a couple of minutes
• When the sugar/butter mixture has turned to a thick, sticky toffee, stir in some cream (50/50 coffee cream is ideal)

John's Notes
Okay, let's be honest. The pudding is only there to give us an excuse to eat the sauce, so go ahead just make the sauce and pour it over ice cream, sponge cake or whatever takes your fancy. Have fun, the sauce takes only 5 minutes to make, 5 hours to digest and 5 days to recover from the guilt!

15 minute Soup From Scratch for a Dollar

"I remember during the war" my old grandfather used to say; "we had to make do with whatever we could grow in our own garden". He was right, of course, during the days of food rationing, people grew whatever they could in their own backyards or on their "allotments".

They grew mainly vegetables for their own consumption. Home-grown veggies were cheap, nutritious and helped fill dinner plates when other food sources were scarce. I came across one wartime recipe for carrot soup that I tried just because it sounded intriguing.

A good soup is prepared from a quality stock, seasoning and a main flavour ingredient (in this case, carrots). Stock is a liquid prepared by boiling meat bones or vegetables. But what if you don't have any stock and you want to make soup in a hurry - for example; in just fifteen minutes?

This recipe is the solution. Grab four large carrots from your garden (okay, maybe from the supermarket produce section). You now have all the ingredients you need; in fifteen minutes you will have soup.

Ingredients

• 4 large carrots
• 4 cups water
• Seasoning

Preparation

• Peel and dice the carrots and boil, or preferably, steam until tender; do not discard the water!
• Pour the cooked carrots and a little of the water used in cooking into a blender and blend until smooth
• Return the carrots to a saucepan, add water and bring to a simmer
• Stir in salt, pepper and a little ginger
• Remove from the heat and stir in a little milk

John's Notes
Jamie Oliver might shake his head in disbelief and Gordon Ramsay would curse me out of his kitchen. But, damn it, this was a very fine and tasty soup. The recipe calls for the water in which the carrots were cooked to be used as a rudimentary stock ... and it works!

10 Minute Chicken Liver Pate

This week's recipe is very easy to make indeed. The total preparation time is only about ten minutes. Chicken liver pate may not be the healthiest food you can eat as it is high in fat, but if eaten in small quantities it makes an excellent starter dish or light snack.

Ingredients

• 300-400g chicken liver
• 200g butter
• Dried mint leaves
• Black pepper, salt, garlic
• Scotch whisky

Preparation

• Dice and lightly fry the chicken livers in half the butter
• Place in a food processor or blender with the remainder of the butter and blend until a smooth paste
• Add a generous amount of ground black pepper, some salt, garlic, the dried mint and a shot of Scotch
• Stir well, transfer to a glass or porcelain dish and refrigerate until firmly set

John's Notes
The wonderful thing about pate is that you can make an endless variety of different flavours. I flavoured mine with mint because it is one of my favourite herbs; you could use your own favourite herbs or spices. The Scotch whisky is optional but it serves two purposes. First, it richens the flavour and second, it acts as a mild preservative. This recipe makes rather a lot of pate so unless you are making it for a party you might end up with it in your fridge for several days.

You can serve pate on lightly toasted soldiers (narrow strips of sliced bread) or with your favourite crackers. I served mine on McVities Butter Puffs. To make a party platter, finely dice some red and green bell peppers, celery, English cucumber and cherry tomatoes, then place a teaspoonful of veggie mixture on top of the pate on crackers. Line the platter with large lettuce leaves for a nice presentation.

How to Make Mouth-Watering Lamb Hotpot

This dish is often referred to as Lancashire Hotpot. Indeed its most famous example is "Betty's Hotpot" from the Rovers Return pub on the TV show Coronation Street which is set in the Lancashire area. If anybody knows whether "Betty's Hotpot" is real or just a fictional dish from the TV show please let me know through the "comments" area at the bottom of this post.

The secret recipe for Betty's Hotpot was published on this blog about a year ago. Now in the grip of what has (so far) been a mild winter in southern Ontario I decided to revisit the recipe and make the best tasting hotpot that I could, with no expense spared. Actually it cost me about $20 to make a delicious and filling meal for four. I decided not to follow Betty's recipe exactly but I still cooked an exceptionally good hotpot. Here is how I made it:

Ingredients

• 1 medium leg of lamb
• 3 large potatoes
• 2 large onions
• 2 large carrots
• Seasoning (Daddies Sauce, garlic, salt, pepper, Sarson's malt vinegar, bay leaves, basil, Worcestershire Sauce, soy sauce)

Preparation

• Remove the meat from the bone, trim off the fat. Dice the meat into small cubes. Chop the bone into pieces about a couple of inches long using a meat cleaver
• Boil the bone vigourously in 2 litres of water for at least an hour, preferably longer, to make lamb stock.
• Toss the chopped lamb meat in a little oil and then again in flour, then brown the meat in hot oil
• Slice the potatoes fairly thinly and parboil (i.e. cook lightly until not quite soft - I used a microwave to do this)
• Slice the carrots thinly and parboil or steam until not quite soft
• Dice the onions and fry in hot oil until soft but not browned
• In a large ovenproof dish, layer the ingredients starting with meat at the bottom and ending with a layer of potato on top
• As the stock nears the end of its boil make the volume back up to 2 litres by adding boiling water, reduce the heat to a simmer add seasoning and continue to simmer for a while. Taste the stock. When it tastes really good it is ready
• Pour in the stock until it just covers the top layer of potato. Make enough stock so that you have some left over to top up the dish later
• Cover the dish with a lid and place in an oven at 350F and cook for at least 2 hours. Top up the stock as necessary during cooking. Half an hour before cooking is complete, remove the lid to allow the top layer of potatoes to brown.

John's Notes
Traditionally, neck of lamb is used, but this cut is not available in supermarkets in my area. I used leg of lamb instead because I needed the bone to make the lamb stock. Nota bene - as the Romans said to Queen Boadicea - the secret to a really good hotpot is in the stock. That is why I recommend tasting the stock before adding it to the dish. If the stock doesn't set your tastebuds alight the finished hotpot won't either.

The end result in my kitchen was a very, very tasty dinner. The meat was soft, tender and full of flavour. The vegetables were similarly well-cooked and full of flavour. It is important to parboil the potatoes and carrots before adding them to the dish to ensure that they cook fully and to make sure they keep their flavour.

This is one of the best; I'll be making it over and over again in my kitchen.