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igenlodeI made a Nettle Porridge from an old handwritten recipe that I don't think my mother ever actually used; it's a page of different ways of taking revenge upon the nettles in your garden, starting with Creamed Nettles and ending with the slowest and most complicated of all, Nettle Porridge! This is actually a steamed barley-and-nettle-pudding with a lot of other foraged leaves in the ingredients; I managed to locate the requisite handful of young dandelion leaves, although the only place I could find them was in the local dog-walkers' spot -- I did try to avoid the bases of trees! -- and got a few of the first blackcurrant leaves, but there were so few of those that I harvested a good handful of hawthorn shoots as a substitute. Thyme and mint are beginning to shoot in my own pots, so I was able to use those. I couldn't find any sorrel and don't know of any growing wild locally (perhaps I should try to sow some, as I do like the flavour; I think it really grows too big, though, and wouldn't like my hot dry balcony), so I substituted some anachronistic chopped lemon rind.
Having pre-cooked the barley you then wilt in all the leaves, season, and mix it with a beaten egg before packing into a pudding-basin and steaming for a further hour and a half. Mine actually got steamed for rather longer than that because I was trying to cook a chocolate beetroot cake (successfully moist, but it *does* discernably taste of beetroot, which the recipe promised it wouldn't!) at the same time and didn't start frying the sausage with which I meant to accompany the nettles until later. And of course sausages always take forever to cook...
The steamed nettle/dandelion pudding was actually very tasty, as flavoured barley puddings go, although I think the recipe was right to describe it as an 'accompaniment' to cooked meats; however I went back and had a second helping even though I had finished the sausage, and it was still very more-ish.
I also made an unexpectedly successful kulebyaka using a very improvised recipe based on an American adaptation of the Russian version. I cooked up an unholy mixture of ancient buckwheat and leftover semolina from the ends of two packets to serve as the grain layer, hard-boiled and sliced a single egg in lieu of the six or so in the recipe, which was really not enough (but I had already used a whole egg in the yeast dough, which was the one area not economised on), used parsley and dried tarragon instead of dill, braised some tough green leeks in the oil from a small tin of anchovies, and bought a single fillet of cheap coley from the supermarket in lieu of the river fish of the Russian version or the Alaskan salmon of the US recipe, skinned it reasonably adequately with a sharp steak knife and then boiled up the skin in the leek pan to create fish stock to eat with the pie. I rolled out the dough too thin and it ripped while I was trying to close the edges of the pie, but I got it sort of flopped over seam-side-downwards and baked it in a hot oven.
It was delicious (and so far as I could remember from earlier attempts, tasted pretty authentic despite the ingredients!) I honestly think that it was probably the unorthodox inclusion of tinned anchovies that really made the dish, because even that tiny quantity made the flavour intensely rich and savoury, while the home-made stock was very good. It was certainly a good way of making a single fillet of fish, intended to serve one person, provide four or five servings -- pastry strikes again :-)
(It actually looks pretty much like my attempt at kurnik -- one Russian pie is much the same shape as another!
The chocolate beetroot cake was originally an Abel & Cole recipe from our veg box days (and the days when the boxes still came with recipe sheets in them, instead of everything being online-only!). The recipe tells you to pre-boil the beetroot, which takes forever, and I would be strongly tempted just to grate it in coarsely as I do for carrot cake; however in the quest for a really moist chocolate cake I dutifully boiled it just in case this might make a difference. I didn't have enough cocoa powder left so grated some bitter dark chocolate to make up the weight, which might have made the cake even richer.
My copy of the recipe has handwritten amendments saying that you should use a large cake tin (well over the suggested 20cm) and cook for 80 minutes instead of the suggested 50 minutes, and both these suggestions definitely appeared to be necessary; it was still very moist after the extra half-hour! (I wonder if modern eggs are too large -- but the recipe does say that you will need to 'pour' the mixture into the tin, so it may be intended to be that runny.)
I didn't make the cream cheese icing, both for reasons of economy and to make the cake easier to store. The sourness might have been a pleasant contrast, but it certainly isn't essential. (I note that the online recipe page has a comment saying that the cake ceases to taste of beetroot after the first day...currently mine certainly does taste of it!)
Having pre-cooked the barley you then wilt in all the leaves, season, and mix it with a beaten egg before packing into a pudding-basin and steaming for a further hour and a half. Mine actually got steamed for rather longer than that because I was trying to cook a chocolate beetroot cake (successfully moist, but it *does* discernably taste of beetroot, which the recipe promised it wouldn't!) at the same time and didn't start frying the sausage with which I meant to accompany the nettles until later. And of course sausages always take forever to cook...
The steamed nettle/dandelion pudding was actually very tasty, as flavoured barley puddings go, although I think the recipe was right to describe it as an 'accompaniment' to cooked meats; however I went back and had a second helping even though I had finished the sausage, and it was still very more-ish.
I also made an unexpectedly successful kulebyaka using a very improvised recipe based on an American adaptation of the Russian version. I cooked up an unholy mixture of ancient buckwheat and leftover semolina from the ends of two packets to serve as the grain layer, hard-boiled and sliced a single egg in lieu of the six or so in the recipe, which was really not enough (but I had already used a whole egg in the yeast dough, which was the one area not economised on), used parsley and dried tarragon instead of dill, braised some tough green leeks in the oil from a small tin of anchovies, and bought a single fillet of cheap coley from the supermarket in lieu of the river fish of the Russian version or the Alaskan salmon of the US recipe, skinned it reasonably adequately with a sharp steak knife and then boiled up the skin in the leek pan to create fish stock to eat with the pie. I rolled out the dough too thin and it ripped while I was trying to close the edges of the pie, but I got it sort of flopped over seam-side-downwards and baked it in a hot oven.
It was delicious (and so far as I could remember from earlier attempts, tasted pretty authentic despite the ingredients!) I honestly think that it was probably the unorthodox inclusion of tinned anchovies that really made the dish, because even that tiny quantity made the flavour intensely rich and savoury, while the home-made stock was very good. It was certainly a good way of making a single fillet of fish, intended to serve one person, provide four or five servings -- pastry strikes again :-)
(It actually looks pretty much like my attempt at kurnik -- one Russian pie is much the same shape as another!
The chocolate beetroot cake was originally an Abel & Cole recipe from our veg box days (and the days when the boxes still came with recipe sheets in them, instead of everything being online-only!). The recipe tells you to pre-boil the beetroot, which takes forever, and I would be strongly tempted just to grate it in coarsely as I do for carrot cake; however in the quest for a really moist chocolate cake I dutifully boiled it just in case this might make a difference. I didn't have enough cocoa powder left so grated some bitter dark chocolate to make up the weight, which might have made the cake even richer.
My copy of the recipe has handwritten amendments saying that you should use a large cake tin (well over the suggested 20cm) and cook for 80 minutes instead of the suggested 50 minutes, and both these suggestions definitely appeared to be necessary; it was still very moist after the extra half-hour! (I wonder if modern eggs are too large -- but the recipe does say that you will need to 'pour' the mixture into the tin, so it may be intended to be that runny.)
I didn't make the cream cheese icing, both for reasons of economy and to make the cake easier to store. The sourness might have been a pleasant contrast, but it certainly isn't essential. (I note that the online recipe page has a comment saying that the cake ceases to taste of beetroot after the first day...currently mine certainly does taste of it!)