Mulled chocolate and orange marshmallows

I like joining in on round-ups, it means I have to invent something new now and again. Especially for We Should Cocoa, the chocolate round-up because I don’t normally cook or make anything with chocolate. My interaction with chocolate is typically: (1) buy chocolate, (2) put it down somewhere visible and pass it several times to show willpower, (3) eat chocolate.

In honour of the miserable weather, the Christmas season, and the crappy cups of hot chocolate that we usually get when ordered at a cafe, I have created Mulled Chocolate. And in honour of the delicious homemade raspberry marshmallows our friend Vanessa gave us recently, I’ve added orange marshmallows to the chocolate.

Because this seemed lightweight for a recipe, I’ve also baked some chocolate and orange cookies, to be enjoyed with the hot chocolate or whenever. Merry Christmas!

Mulled chocolate (2 mugs)

2 mugs of milk
100g Montezuma’s drinking chocolate
½ cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods, cracked
2 star anise
1 piece ginger in syrup
1 tiny piece of nutmeg
1 dessert spoon rum

Put the milk in a pan, add all the spices and rum, then heat to a simmer before taking it off the heat and allowing everything to infuse for 10-15 minutes. Now strain out the whole spices, return to the heat, then add the chocolate. Bring it to a simmer again and whisk lightly for a few minutes until the chocolate is thoroughly melted in. The whisking is important: your chocolate will be glossier and more delicious.

Of course you don’t have to use Montezuma’s finest. It’s a 54% chocolate, so you can use a stronger dark chocolate if you want your drink really gnarly, or a milkier chocolate if you like it milky. And of course the rum is entirely optional; if you don’t want any booze in, it still tastes great. Alternatively if you want a really wicked treat then double the rum! Finally, we don’t like our chocolate milky and so I actually used 50/50 milk and water instead of the traditional all-milk drink.

Orange marshmallows (loads!)

To get an orange flavour, I took the peel of 2 oranges (make sure you don’t get any white pith) and added it to the juice of one of them. Then I simmered this down until I had about 50ml of juice after straining the peel out. I added a tablespoon of orange-flavoured spirit (Triple Sec or Grand Marnier). I then used this marshmallow recipe but when adding the bloomed gelatine sheets to the sugar I added this juice instead of the water the gelatine had soaked in. At the whisking-into-egg-whites stage I added a small teaspoon of orange blossom essence and a half-teaspoon of red and yellow food colouring, instead of vanilla essence.

Choc and orange cookies (12 or so)
So many recipes on the internet, I didn’t know where to start. But then I spotted this one, and the use of nutty brown butter seemed different and very promising. Thanks to Delicious Days for this recipe. I used only two-thirds of the amounts, because there’s only two of us after all, so I’ve laid out the recipe in full here:

100g butter
70g dark chocolate
30g candied orange peel
50g dark Muscovado sugar
50g soft brown sugar
30 g granulated sugar
1 large egg
150 g plain flour
½ tsp baking soda
Maldon sea salt
  1. Melt the butter in a small pan and cook it slowly over a medium heat. You want it to brown and give off a nutty smell, but be careful as it burns easily and will then be bitter and rubbish. Pour into a small bowl as soon as it’s right, so it doesn’t continue cooking in the pan.
  2. Leave the butter to cool for 30 minutes, meanwhile chop the chocolate and peel into little pieces
  3. Preheat the oven to 175C and line two baking sheets with baking paper.
  4. Beat the sugars and egg in a bowl for several minutes until creamy and most of the sugar has dissolved.
  5. Pour in the butter (leave any dark dregs in the bottom) and beat for a couple more minutes.
  6. Sift in the flour, baking soda and a pinch of salt, then mix into a dough. Add the chocolate and orange peel, mix to distribute them. Don’t over-mix here.
  7. Scoop dollops of dough onto the baking sheets, leaving space to spread between each. Sprinkle a few salt crystals over each one and stick them in the oven for 12-15 minutes. They will be very soft when you take them out, but become a little firmer once they cool. Should still be chewy in the middle though!

Enjoy!

Review: Galoupet, Knightsbridge

It was eye-bitingly cold up in town today, with fierce gusts hustling the shopping crowds along the streets. Something of a relief then to get out of the night air and into Galoupet. Not much of a relief, though, as the décor of this restaurant-cum-vintner is tastefully cold. The dining room is small, but rather than feeling intimate and special it just feels… small. I think if you were a svelte Knightsbridge shopaholic you might feel at home.

I can’t fault the service. The chaps were very suave in their businesslike suits and attended to us perfectly throughout. We were briefly baffled by the shortness of the wine list (this is a vintner, right?) then entertained by the opportunity to get up en masse and trot to the Enomatic machines by the front door where we could read a description of each wine and take our pick. Short though the list was, all those we tried were very good.

The dining concept at Galoupet is to treat the dishes on the menu as sharing plates, akin to tapas. Choose perhaps three dishes each, our waiter recommended, and they will come for you to share. So that’s what we did, adding one or two sides until it was suggested that we had plenty.

And so we received a progression of dishes ranging from delicious to slightly disappointing. I like smoked eel, and I like Jerusalem artichoke, but I expected something more than a few bits of each tossed together with startlingly bitter leaves and a mustard dressing.

There was a paradox of cephalopods. On the one hand we had octopus cooked to soft perfection, with just a little bite, accompanied by a stimulating purée of fennel and kohlrabi salad. On the other hand we had squid in rubbery chunks, served with slippery black pasta in an underwhelming coconut broth. With some green veg added as an apparent afterthought, since it was wholly unrelated in texture or taste to the rest of the dish. Why would you cook tricky octopus so well and then flounder on the squid?

White crab came served on hollowed chunks of cucumber. Very dinner party. I’m surprised to find myself saying this, but the flavour of cucumber totally overwhelmed the crab. There was definitely plenty in this meal to keep us talking, and lest I’m sounding too critical there was a lovely piece of stone bass served on a beetroot risotto shot through with orange. Also beautiful chunks of slow-roast pork belly, although the tamarind and sesame sauce was disappointingly un-punchy. There was a splendid bit of onglet with crispy polenta, venison set on a gorgeously deep beetroot purée, and decidedly Persian lamb scoring high for the strong tang of cardamom but points deducted for unwanted grisly bits.

In general we found most dishes to be light on seasoning and strong in greenery. At this heavy and indulgent time of year, not at all a bad thing. I think Galoupet is probably cooking for the fashion-conscious habitués of Knightsbridge, who need to fit neatly into their size 0 dresses. Keeping it a bit healthy is fine. My real frustration is with the “sharing plates” thing.

I don’t think the concept works here, nor is it necessary. These creations are too involved, with too many elements, to be successful sharing plates. They are losing their potential by being dumped in a bowl and plonked in the middle of the table to share a spoonful each. Perhaps our problem was in being a table of four? We ordered three dishes each, and they brought them out in order – lighter dishes first, then fish, then meat. So we could have had the makings of a perfectly good three course meal. So… why not?

For this location, for this level of quality, Galoupet is pretty good value. Three dishes and a dessert comes to around £35. But while some things were hits, others were misses, and it’s probably not a place I’ll be popping back to soon.

The Chilli Pickle at Christmas

Photos from The Chilli Pickle in Brighton, because there weren’t enough good ones to go with my review of the place.

The goose momos were absolute perfection, packed with seasonally spiced goose and served with a stunning redcurrant sauce. Truly ‘Indian Christmas’.


The curried venison was also superb, but what really sent this dish into orbit was that innocuous little naan down there. It was stuffed with an incredibly thin but tangy layer of dates.

This is something I’ve never come across. Hidden under that colourful sauce is a ring doughnut, of all things! It’s called a vada, and the sauce was tangy and uplifting as well as bright.

Nothing better at the end of an Indian meal than a proper cup of chai. Hugged in the hands, in the approved method for bearing hot drinks to the lips during winter. ; )

Rabbit ragù

My cooking comes from all sorts of places. In descending order of pleased-with-myself: (1) very occasionally I just invent something new, from nothing; (2) sometimes I eat something good at a restaurant, and then try to make something like it at home; (3) quite often I decide what I want to make, look up a bunch of recipes on the internet, and pick out what seem like the best bits from a few of them and combine; (4) I will also just use a recipe verbatim from one of the four or five cookbooks that are my bibles; (5) now and again I get inspired by some cheerfully gushy celeb chef on the telly and make one of theirs.

This rabbit thing is sort-of one of those. Jammy Oliver was cheekily and cheerfully cooking up a 12-hour rabbit ragù in an old tin can on a campfire in a wet field in rural Wales. Don’t ask me why. But the

butchers in Ludlow are awash with cheap (and already skinned + jointed!) rabbits right now, so I thought “yes, we’ll have some of that.”

I looked up the recipe on-line and hit a minor snag, in that a couple of the commenters on his site were reporting that their results were a bit sloppy and flavourless. My first thought was: wow, this only aired two days ago, did they rush straight out after the programme in the hopes of running over a rabbit in order to be the first to try Jammy’s latest recipe? My second thought was: maybe there are recipes out there for a rabbit ragù that don’t include the gimmick of cooking the whole thing for 12 hours in one big pot, whole unpeeled onions and all? I found a Huge Fearnley-Whittingstall and just set about tweaking it.

Which brings me to this, a rabbit ragù that had a jolly rich and flavoursome taste, a nice oily feel in the mouth and would probably be about right for six portions. Pukka. Nice one. Indeed, luvvly.

Rabbit ragù

1 rabbit, jointed
4 rashers smoked streaky, diced
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 turnip, roughly chopped
1 stick celery, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp peppercorns
3 star anise
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 tsp dried thyme
1 glass dry vermouth (or white wine)
olive oil
  1. Put some oil in a big saucepan and brown the rabbit pieces
  2. Now saute the bacon, onion, celery, turnip and carrot in the same pan
  3. Pop the rabbit back in, add the bay leaves, peppercorns and star anise, cover with just enough water and then put the lid on and simmer for as long as possible – 4 hours is good, 2 hours okay
  4. Get some olive oil in another pan, stick in the garlic for a few seconds and then the tomatoes and thyme. Leave this to simmer uncovered on a very low heat for 30-40 minutes
  5. Back to the rabbit! Strain the stock, chucking out the veg (actually I put the turnip in with the tomatoes) but keeping the rabbit and bacon
  6. Put the stock back on the heat, add the vermouth, and leave this to reduce down to somewhere below half a pint
  7. Pick the rabbit off the bones, shredding it as you do so. Dump the shredded rabbit and bacon into the tomato sauce, pour in the reduced stock, and season to taste
  8. Start the pasta now, and leave the ragù simmering and combining flavours for the time it takes to cook the pasta. Job done!

For those of a nervous disposition, no bunnies were harmed in the making of… ah, who am I kidding. Anyone who is squeamish about eating rabbit but who will eat fluffy, gamboling baa-lambs is frankly bonkers.

Review: 24 St George’s, Brighton

I managed to live in the south-east of England for many years before discovering that Brighton pays host to the second largest arts festival in the UK, after Edinburgh. It rumbles on for about three weeks in June with music, dance, theatre, comedy, book talks, galleries, outside performance and all manner of other chicanery. There’s probably less emphasis on comedy than Edinburgh, but that’s likely because Brighton hosts the UK’s largest comedy festival for two weeks in October!

Anyway, one very important part of our annual pilgrimage to the Brighton Festival for me are the Artist’s Open Houses. These are showcases for all manner of contemporary arts and crafts that pop up all over the city in front rooms, kitchens, gardens and sometimes the whole house. Jewellery, paintings, photography, clothing, homewares, pottery, and just about anything else you might want to buy for yourself or as gifts. Grab a booklet from the first one you visit and you can plot your campaign of exploration around the Victorian terraces of Brighton & Hove’s edgy

suburbia. I don’t think there’s another city in Britain where this could happen; the critical mass of “creative types” just doesn’t exist.

Where is this ramble going? Well, the Open Houses return for a couple of weekends in December every year to cash in on the need for interesting Christmas presents, so that’s where we were last Saturday. Lunch break at The Chilli Pickle was of course necessary and delicious. Goose momos with redcurrant relish! And at the end of the day we found our way to 24 St Georges, a new-for-2011 restaurant in Kemp Town.

The décor is dark and best described as reasonably-priced elegance. But certainly comfortable, I was very happy unwinding there after a long day. The staff were friendly and helpful, and carefully resisted hovering despite us being the only diners for almost an hour (we took an early table, it certainly filled later).

My starter was pigeon; described as terrine and smoked breast with mulled pears and J-choke puree. The fag packet-sized slab of terrine laughably dwarfed the three pea-sized blobs of puree, three tiny slivers of breast and ickle cubes of pear. Which is a shame, as every single element was delicious and nicely complementary. Maureen won the starter round with moreish quail scotch egg, made with a mushroom duxelles in place of mince. The porcini and salsify accompaniment was grilled properly, though the salsify was oddly devoid of flavour.

Maureen chose the skate wing to follow, and I personally have never seen it cooked and served rolled before. It looked like a fat and impressive white sausage. The flavour was great, though the inside was still startlingly pink and it’s a good thing we like our raw fish and were willing to trust that “local skate wing” really did mean it was jolly fresh. My main of beef medallions on braised ox tail was cooked spot-on; medium-rare beef, glistening and unctuous shreds of ox tail and a good mash.

For pudding, I had an Earl Grey rice pudding with walnut ice cream and rhubarb. The ice cream had a decided walnut flavour but was terribly powdery, the rice pudding had a good texture but no discernible bergamot, and the rhubarb additions were well-made but had no apparent connection to the other elements. Bit of a muddle. Maureen was on safer ground with a slab of chocolate sprinkled with sea salt, and some pistachio ice cream. Nothing to mark down there, if you like your chocolate.

I’d say that 24 St Georges is very fair value, at around £28 per person for three courses without drinks. There was a bit of a feeling of hit-and-miss about the dishes, but this might polish out with time. If you’re in Brighton and in need of a good evening meal in comfortable yet smart surroundings, I’d recommend it.