Pissaladiere

This is a French 'pizza' full of onions and herbs, topped with salty anchovies. Quite suited to the Indian palate is what I heard when my friends tasted it :). It is of course a Rachel Allen recipe. Here it is. It can be made with puff pastry as well, I made it with the shortcrust pastry.

Pork Ribs with Jack Daniel's Barbecue Sauce

This one's my own recipe with a little help from a close friend and Jack Daniel's sauce of course.

Ingredients
1 kilo pork ribs (uncut)
4-5 tablespoons Jack Daniel's Hot Chilli Barbecue Sauce (there is a recipe for this sauce on the internet)
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1/4 cup of orange juice
25ml whisky (I used single malt, but any whisky will do)
lug of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon mixed herbs (I used Knorr mixed herbs cubes, you can use a mix of dried parsley, thyme and oregano)
salt and pepper to season

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease a baking tray with a drizzle of olive oil. Rub salt and pepper over the pork ribs and let it sit for a while. In the meantime, mix the barbecue sauce, garlic, orange juice, whisky, olive oil and herbs in a bowl. Smear this sauce well over the pork ribs. Place the pork ribs in the baking tray and cover with foil and bake for approximately 3 hours. You will have to remove from the oven every 45 minutes or so, to turn the piece of meat over and drizzle the juices over as it cooks.

When the meat is cooked, remove and slice the ribs and pour over a little of the sauce that remains in the baking dish.Serve with mashed potatoes or wedges and salad with dressing.

Brownies- Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe, from his book Jamie's 30 Minute Meals. He uses some ingredients that I couldn't find at the supermarket, so I substituted clementines with orange zest, pecans and sour dried cherries with macadamia nuts.

Ingredients
2x100g bars of good quality dark chocolate
250g unsalted butter at room temperature
200g caster sugar
6 level tablespoons of cocoa powder
4 heaped tablespoons of self-raising flour
2 tablespoons of crystallized ginger
4 eggs
zest of 1 orange
handful of macadamia nuts

Method:
Smash the chocolate and chop the butter into rough chunks- you can put the chocolate and butter in a water bath to melt completely if you don't have a food processor. When they have both melted and soft, add 200g caster sugar, 6 level tablespoons of cocoa powder, 4 heaped tablespoons of self-raising flour, a pinch of salt and the crystallized ginger. Mix together with a hand held electric whisk. Crack in the eggs and whiz.
Grease a non-stick baking tray (approx. 32x26cm) and drizzle with some olive oil. Use a spatula to spoon and spread the brownie mixture evenly into the tray of about 2.5 cm thickness. Sprinkle over the macadamica nuts. Grate over the zest of the orange. Bake for about 30 mins at 180 deg C.

Upside-down cranberry and blueberry cake

Here is the recipe from Rachel Allen for the upside-down cranberry cake. This is a really simple recipe. Try it.

For the buttermilk, since it's difficult to get in the store- I used this recipe- takes just 5 mins to make.
Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar
Method:
Stir in the lemon juice or vinegar in the milk. Let it stand for 5 to 10mins, and its ready to use.

Note-For the cake I also added blueberries.

Tip- while melting the butter and sugar, it may take longer than 2 mins for the sugar to melt. Allow the sugar to melt on low hear for a soft texture.

Crab Thermidor

This is a simple recipe I found on the internet a while ago. Many recipes use imitation crab meat or some subsitute for crab meat, but I used crab meat here. It's time consuming to clean crab as you may imagine, but the taste is simply divine! I love seafood, so I was willing to spend the time and effort on this one. I managed to find some frozen crab meat at the store, so that's what I am going to use next time.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon paprika

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1-1/2 cups cream

50g processed cheese, cubed

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese

250g crabmeat (1kg crab fetches about 250g meat; boil crabs whole for 7 mins, cool and clean)

Method:

-In a large saucepan, melt butter. Stir in the flour, salt, paprika and nutmeg until smooth, keep on low heat. Gradually add cream. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Reduce heat; stir in process cheese and lemon juice until cheese is melted. Remove from heat; stir in parmesan cheese until melted. Stir in crab.
-Transfer to 3 greased ramekins. Sprinkle with additional paprika and parmesan if desired. Bake, uncovered, at 180° C for 20-25 minutes or until bubbly.

Christmas Cake

I baked this cake for Christmas using Rachel Allen recipe. It is a moist cake, and perfect for the season. I soaked the fruits in alcohol overnight (longer than the recipe indicates) and baked the cake 2 days before Christmas. It is time consuming, like any Christmas fruit cake I guess, involving lot of chopping of fruits and preparation. There is also an additional almond icing in Rachel's recipe that I skipped this time. Maybe I will plan better next time and complete with the almond icing.

And the pictures..

Dutch Apple Cake

Again, a Rachel Allen recipe. Dutch Apple Cake according to Rachel is a level 'easy' to make, however, I found it a little tricky the first time I made it. It was a bit too sweet, so I reduced the sugar from 175g to 125g the second time around, AND my apples didn't sink to the bottom! Rachel says that they do. I don't know if I didn't use the right variety, nonetheless this is a delicious cake and worth trying.

Here are some pictures..