skip to main |
skip to sidebar
While not possessing the most appealing of names, clotted cream is an important and revered delicacy, as quintessentially English as Irish stew and Welsh rarebit. Used as an accompaniment for puddings and pies, it is most widely known as being the key component in a traditional cream tea: scones, jam, clotted cream and a pot of tea.
But what actually is it? Made traditionally in the south west of Britain (think Devon and Cornwall), it is a thick, rich yellow-coloured cream, made by subjecting unpasteurised cows milk to heat until the cream rises to the surface, forming a slight golden crust. Once cooled, the clots of cream are then skimmed from the top. Its importance to the UK is such that it enjoys EU-sanctioned protected status, similar to France and its rights to the name of Champagne. Did you know it was one of the last meals served to passengers on Concord's final flight around the world? True...
I'm quite partial to tea, scones and jam, and I've never come across it here in NZ so it was logical to pursue clotted cream as an experiment. There are a wealth of recipes available to try, but this one was the most straight forward (from an old Aunt Daisy cookbook). Off to the Kai lab!
You will need two parts milk to one part cream; here, I used one litre of full cream milk (whole milk) and a 500ml bottle of cream.
Pour the milk and cream into a bowl or pot and leave overnight in the fridge to allow the cream to rise to the top. The creamy layer that forms will be quite substantial.
Remove the bowl of cream from the fridge and place over a pot of boiling water. Reduce to a simmer.
Over the course of an hour you'll see the surface of the cream start to form a yellow skin; it will also start to form sporadic bubbles (that's bubble, not boil - if it boils, you've got it far too hot).
After an hour, which according to my recipe should be sufficient cooking time, it should look like the photo below - quite a substantial frothy yellow crust. Take it off the pot and place it in the fridge to cool.
Once cool, carefully skim the clotted cream off the surface.
And there you go! Isn't it lovely, all yellow and rich! It tastes as you'd expect cream to taste, with the added sensation of more substance and body, compared to say, whipped cream. Consequently, it's a little richer too...
...and the perfect compliment to scones and jam. Don't use butter - my god, it's rich enough as it is - if you do, the little man who calculates your health insurance premiums will hear your arteries change down a gear to accomodate the load, mark my words. Apparently, I've served this backwards - it's meant to be cream first, then jam - regional bias apparently, although if your scones are still warm from the oven, cream first would result in it dripping all over the place. Until I get to the UK and spend a warm spring afternoon with a proper cream tea at an English tea room, this will have to do. Time for more tea - pip pip!
Oh, by the way - the leftover milk? Use it to make rice pudding. I won't give you a recipe because you must have one somewhere surely. Failing that, just ask the internet. Bye bye.
Interesting links:
Simple DIY clotted cream (made with mascarpone) clickety
Wikipedia clickety
Background on Devonshire cream teas clickety
Click on the photo that opens this post - it really does look quite grand!
Guess what? A cheque turned up in my mailbox from local book publisher Hachette New Zealand! A while ago, they asked to use one of my photos in a book called "Afghans, Barbecues and Chocolate Fish - The ABC of Kiwi Food". It was one of the shots from the rewena bread series of posts. They were having trouble finding suitable photos for use in the book, found mine quite by chance and asked for copies to peruse and consider. I hadn't heard anything back in several months when, voila! A copy of the book and the accompanying cheque popped up in my mailbox. It's a great read full of information and stories about kiwi food, recipes and cooking personalities. Take a peek - it's available in most book stores. Look at my cheque!
Lovely loot!
By the way, last year, the same photo was used by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN agency, for its International Year of the Potato website. You'll find it on this page (scroll down) which forms part of the collection of recipes from around the world which use the humble spud. Pretty neat, huh?
Ladies and gentleman, I give you: a fish hot smoker made from an old, unloved oven! It may not look like much, but read on...
While resembling a decommissioned prop off the set of Doctor Who, it is surprisingly effective in what it does. Kerry wanted a hot smoker that could accommodate a large catch. To achieve this, and to render it safe, all wiring and circuitry were removed, along with its housing; the resulting cavities were sealed with riveted metal sheets. The elements too were taken off, along with its casing.
The warmer drawer serves as the smoking chamber, with the smoke making its way into the body of the oven through a series of holes drilled through its floor.
Being a standard sized oven, it has four shelves and when full, there is plenty of room for the smoke to circulate and work its magic on the fish. The door seal is in surprisingly good condition given the oven's age, and no smoke escaped during operation.
And there you go! A dirt cheap fish smoker, made from something which would probably have ended up as landfill; backyard tech at its simplest. Go make one!
All this and smokey trouty goodness too - huzzah! A big thank you to Kerry for his time and all round cleverness.
Hello! What are you contemplating having for morning tea today? You could trot off to your local bakery and settle for a piece of cake or slice, made, like pretty much everything else gazing at you from inside the cabinet, from premix. Or you could whip up your own slice of gooey, chocolatey, arterial-clogging goodness! Put your health insurance policy to one side (or use it to make one of these), and start gathering the following:
For the base, you'll need -
Half a cup of brown sugar
Two thirds of a cup of dessicated coconut
Two thirds of a cup of self-raising flour
85g butter, melted
Three quarters of a king-sized bar of caramello chocolate*
*People of Aotearoa! If you're using Cadburys, try and track down the bars you see being sold through schools and kindys - those are still made here in NZ using their old recipe and consequently taste a lot better than the Australian mix presently occupying space on our supermarket shelves (yes, I know they've reverted back to the old recipe, but the supermarkets are still trying to get rid of that stock). Alternately, you could just use Whittakers or another brand.
Caramel Filling -
60g butter
4 tablespoons golden syrup
2 cans of sweetened condensed milk
Topping -
King-sized bar of milk chocolate
Chocolate shavings
Gold leaf, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, etc
Right - off to battle... Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius. Dig out a 20cm square cake pan and line it with baking paper. Grab your caramello and chop into rough chunks. Combine the brown sugar, coconut, and flour in a large bowl and whisk like the devil. Hurl in the cut-up chocolate. Add the melted butter and mix with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Firmly press the mixture into the pan using the back of a spoon.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned.
Set base aside to cool and start making your caramel. Keep the oven on!
When I first made this, there didn't seem to be enough caramel so I've doubled the amount; you could halve it, but it won't look anywhere near as impressive. Place butter and golden syrup in a pot over medium heat, stirring to melt and combine. Once done, add your condensed milk. Stir constantly over medium heat for about 9-12 minutes, until caramel thickens - don't stop stirring! If you do, it will catch and you'll end up with caramelised flecks. It's not the end of the world if it happens; just take it off the heat & pass it through a sieve to remove them. Pop back into a clean pot and carry on, stirring constantly (listen to me! tsk...)
Spread caramel over the base using a spatula. Pop back into the oven for a further 10 or so minutes, just until the edges of the caramel colour to a pale brown. Remove and let it cool.
Melt the milk chocolate in a small pot over very low heat, stirring frequently. Alternatively, melt the chocolate in the cool little double boiler you found in a second hand store in Greytown (yay me!). Spread melted chocolate over caramel. If you have spare chocolate like I did, cut it up into rough chunks and scatter over the slice. And to seal the deal, sprinkle with chocolate shavings or flake. Then buy some running shoes, fatty.
Pop your slice into the fridge for about 15 minutes. Remove, take out of pan and cut into pieces. If you leave it any longer in the fridge, the chocolate could set quite hard, making it diabolically awkward to cut. Oh, and to make cutting easier, pop the kettle on and warm the blade in the boiling water - way easier.
And there you go! Morning tea? Sorted! Serve with lashings of tea and cupcakes to someone beautiful...
Hello :-)
It's good to see you (well, all two of you, according to Statcounter...)
Right, where to start? I haven't posted in nearly nine months. It's been so long, I'm actually having trouble remembering how blogger works :-) I had a brief wander around the scene; lots of new food sites & bloggers, with a ton of enthusiasm and vigour on show. Where have I been? I'll fill you in over the next few weeks, but mostly I've just been busy with work, and therein lies the problem. In the process of working so hard and for so long, I've forgotten to actually live a little. Recently, someone very dear to me has gently reminded me of the simple delight to be had in stopping every once in a while to catch your breath. She's also served as inspiration in resurrecting Kai. It's something I thoroughly enjoyed working on, so why let it languish? Thank you, honey...
So, I'm dusting it off and giving it a once over. I'll have to check and update the links here, and maybe give the blog a facelift, but it's going to be a bit of a work in progress, so no dramatic, overnight changes. Just a little nip and a bit of a tuck here and there.
So with that in mind, I'm going to slowly ease myself back into posting by starting off with some linky goodness. Give me a few days and I'll have something more substantial lined up; stuff involving jam, hunting for old kitchen equipment with maybe a gem iron or two...
Thanks for stopping by :-)
- How to open a bottle of champagne with a sabre! Clickety
- Retro food recipes (principally British) Clickety
- Want the best flavoured cookies? Vaccum-sealed cookie dough Clickety
- How to make a one pot indoor herb garden Clickety
- How to write (from Vonnegut, no less!) Clickety
- Country Life - a great show on Radio NZ National featuring stories from the rural sector. A good source of information & entertainment about NZ food in all its forms Clickety Podcast link here
What a tumultuous year... I quit my job at the orchard & enrolled to train as a chef; I've been working in a local restaurant honing my craft, not to mention just starting a stint as a breakfast chef. I've lost weight, sleep and doubtlessly some hair, and picked up a keener appreciation of food, not to mention some horrible eating habits. I swear you'll get details on my life but not till I get some time to myself, which will probably be early next year - I plan on relaunching the blog so pleeeeeeease persevere. A big thanks to those of you who have emailed asking what's been happening and apologies to those of you I've inadvertently forgotten - your interest is keenly appreciated; I just simply haven't had the time to keep up with the blog. When I'm not working, I've been studying and when not doing either of those things, I can be found doing laundry (damnable chef's whites!).
So again, stay tuned - I'll do my best to throw stuff up but the really cool things will happen next year. Bye for now...
