Preparation time: 5 – 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Skill level: easy
Makes: 6 – 8

Ingredients

• plain flour – 100g
• baking powder – 1tsp
• caster sugar – 1tsp
• 2 free-range eggs – beaten
• milk – 75ml
• sweetcorn kernels (frozen/tinned or ideally fresh) – 350g
• ½ medium red onion – finely chopped
• 1 chilli – finely chopped
• fresh parsley – finely chopped – 2tbsp
• s & p
• a little olive oil for cooking

In a bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and sugar along with some salt and freshly ground black pepper.

In a jug mix together the milk and eggs.

Gradually stir the milk/eggs into the flour mixture to form a batter.

In another bowl mix together the sweetcorn, onion, parsley and chilli and season well.

Add this to the batter and stir everything together.

Heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan and drop in about 3/4 ladle of the mix. Flatten down a little with spatula and cook for a minute or two until nicely browned on the bottom.

Turn over and cook on the other side.

Flip out onto some kitchen paper and keep warm. Repeat until you have used up all the batter – we ended up with an uneven seven.

Serve with whatever takes your fancy.

Verdict: Sweet and succulent with a hint of chilli heat. Experiment with different flavourings and extras.

Drink: Peroni and some left over white.

Entertainment: We’re back on the streets with Homicide.

Snow comes to Yumblog Cottage

Our constructed Colcannon soup can be found here.

Preparation time: 5-10 minutes
Cooking time: about 30 minutes
Skill level: so easy you should NEVER buy commercially made soup*
Serves: 2

Ingredients

For the soup part

• potato – peeled and diced – 450g
• onion – finely chopped – 120g
• butter – 50g
• vegetable stock – 1 litre
• full fat milk – 100ml
• fresh parsley – finely chopped – 1-2tbsp
• s & p

For the cabbage part

• cabbage (white or savoy) – 450g
• butter – 40g
• s & p

To make the soup, melt the butter in a large heavy pan, then add the potato and onion. Stir to coat everything in butter and season with salt and pepper.

Cover and sweat over a low heat for 5 minutes.

Add the stock, turn up the heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the potato is soft.

Liquidise with a hand blender and return to the heat.

Add the parsley and milk and season to taste – be generous with the pepper.

Meanwhile shred the cabbage very thinly – removing outer leaves and stalk.

Pour 3 tbsp of water into a large saucepan and add half the butter (20g) and a pinch of salt.

Put on the heat and when the butter has melted add the cabbage and toss everything together.

Cover with a lid and cook for a few minutes until the cabbage has softened but still has a little bite.

Add the remaining butter and season with salt and pepper.

To serve, pile the cabbage in the centre of a soup bowl and pour the soup around.

Verdict: This deconstructed version ensures the cabbage still has a bit if bite. Warming, comforting and as Gregg Wallace might well say ‘Like a big buttery smack on the lips’.

Drink: A mug of no nonsense Yorkshire Gold. ‘Let’s have a proper brew’

Entertainment: The ever brilliant Radcliffe and Maconie.

*The exception being Heinz tomato soup when poorly or hungover.

Supermarket snobbery aside, I’ve never used fresh yeast before so I did an AW-T, slipped a packet up my chef whites and made a run for it.

Preparation time: 15 minutes plus at least an hour rising time
Cooking time: 30-35 minutes
Skill level: easy
Makes: 2 loaves (if you’re going to the effort of making your own bread, there’s little point in making just one loaf. Freeze the bonus loaf if need be)

Ingredients

• seed & grain white flour (Allinson’s) – 1kg
• fresh yeast – 42g
• sugar – 2tsp
• salt – 3tsp
• vegetable oil – 30ml
• warm water (1 part boiling to 2 parts cold) – 600ml

Fresh yeast is not as potent and dried yeast, so you’ll need three times the amount. Therefore if a recipe requires 2tsp of dried yeast (1tsp = 5g), you’ll be needing 30g of fresh yeast.

In a large bowl mix together the flour, salt and sugar.

Crumble the fresh yeast into the warm water and stir to dissolve.

Pour onto the flour and mix together to form a rough dough.

Add the oil and knead into the dough.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Divide into two and shape into round loaves and place on oiled baking sheets.

Cover with oiled clingfilm, and set aside until it has doubled in size. (This should take about an hour, although if your house is as cold as Yumblog Cottage it could take considerably longer. We often leave ours overnight.)

Preheat your oven to 230°C/Gas Mark 8

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200°C/Gas Mark 6 and bake for a further 15-20 minutes until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped on the bottom.

Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Verdict: A good all rounder which is great either each end of a sandwich or toasted and heavily buttered. The was no noticeable difference between this loaf and one made with dried yeast … it did seem to rise a little faster though.

Drink: T or K4e

Entertainment: Watching with equal parts alarm and ammusement as Yumblog Junior gets ever more independent and bossy.

Incidentally welcome to 2012 – the year which in the future we will look back on as marking the beginning of the end. Quietus anyone?

Preparation time: 5 – 10 minutes
Cooking time: about an hour
Skill level: easy
Serves: 4 – 6

Ingredients

• waxy potatoes – thinly sliced – 1kg
• 1 large onion – thinly sliced
• 1 clove of garlic – crushed
• fresh thyme – 10g
• double cream – 250ml
• semi-skimmed milk – 320ml
• mature Brie – 250g
• olive oil
• s & p

*OK so this uses the wrong cheese and doesn’t contain any lardons so purists and pedants will probably insist this is not a true tartiflette.

Preheat your oven to 180c/gas mark 4.

Gently fry the onion in some olive until soft and beginning to colour. Set aside.

Strip the leaves from the thyme sprigs and finely chop.

Put the cream, milk, garlic and thyme in a large saucepan and bring to a simmer.

Add the sliced potato, cover with a lid and cook for 5 minutes.

Stir in the cooked onions and season with salt and black pepper.

Butter a suitably sized ovenproof dish.

Chop the Brie into slices.

Place half the potato mixture into the prepared dish and sprinkle over half the cheese.

Repeat, finishing with a layer of cheese.

(At this stage the dish can be set aside and cooked at a later time.)

Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until bubbling with a golden crusty top and tender when stabbed with a knife.

Serve as a side or main with a healthy salad.

Verdict: Potato and melted cheese works, this is a fact and this is another excellent example of the genre. Creamy smooth rich filling comfort food.

Drink: Red – we are still bravely drinking our way through our substantial Christmas stash of booze.

Entertainment: The third and final episode of ‘Black Mirror’ followed by Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Happy New Year – You decide when.

Preparation time: 1 minute
Cooking time: 3 minutes
Skill level: easier than making a cup of tea.

Ingredients

• Kirsch – 100ml
• juice of 2 lemons
• finest Yorkshire tap water – 500ml
• honey – 2 tsp

Put water, lemon juice and honey in a saucepan and bring to the boil.

Add the Kirsch and keep on a low heat until ready to serve.

Serve.

Verdict: Boozy Lemsip.

Food: Accompanied by baked polenta and roasted vegetables.

Entertainment:‘MasterChef – The Pros’. The final. Congratulations to Ash.

Preparation time: 1 minute
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Skill level: slightly more skill required than for making Glogg, because you have to peel a satsuma.

Ingredients

• Pimms – 250ml
• Brandy – 100ml
• apple juice – 500ml
• ground ginger – 2 tsp
• 1 satsuma – segmented
• dried apple slices – handful

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Pour.

Drink.

Verdict: A nice boozy gingery warming drink. Like a hug in a mug. But not like cup-a-soup.

Food: Accompanied a very tasty gravalax…recipe to follow.

Entertainment: The penultimate episode of ‘MasterChef – The Pros’. Ash is the obvious winner.

Preparation time: 1 minute
Cooking time: 5 minutes plus 15 minutes infusion time
Skill level: If you can manage to open a bottle of wine, you can make glogg

Ingredients

• 1 bottle of sub £5.00 red plonk – 750ml
• 6 cloves
• fresh ginger – sliced – 70g
• 10 cardamon pods – halved
• caster sugar – 85g
• dried apple slices* – handful
• 2 cinnamon sticks (very much optional at Yumblog Cottage)
• brandy – 40ml
• plus some flaked almonds and raisins to serve

Pour the wine into a saucepan and add all the other ingredients (apart from the brandy).

Heat and simmer gently for 5 minutes.

Turn off the heat, cover and allow to infuse for 15 minutes.

Add the brandy and serve with a few flaked almonds and raisins in the glass

Verdict: An excellent (and more potent) alternative to mulled wine. Ours didn’t taste much of cardamon, but that could have been because our pods were bought sometime in the last millennium.

Food: We had ours as a precursor to Raclette.

Entertainment: An accidental second viewing of ‘Surrogates’ on DVD. We spent the first hour trying to decide whether it’s familiarity was due to a previous viewing or the cliché-ridden storyline. Turned out to be both.

* Completely optional – we happened to have recently bought an unexpectedly expensive packet of the stuff at a Berlin Christmas market and wanted to use some before it got as old and stale as the cardamon pods. That said, once re-hydrated in booze, these apple slices made a very agreeable nibble.

Unpleasant food photograph of the week: ‘Snowflake Cake (with pubic hair decoration)’, GoodFood, 101 Christmas Dishes.

Preparation time: 15 minutes plus 1½ hours rising
Cooking time: 35-40 minutes
Skill level: easy
Makes: 1 loaf

Ingredients

• ripe bananas – 300g (about 2)
• lemon juice – 2 tsp
• strong white flour – 500g
• milk powder – 2 tbsp
• butter – 2 tbsp
• fast-action dried yeast – 1½ tsp
• cocoa powder – 50 – 75g
• warm water – 200 ml
• caster sugar – 2 tbsp
• salt – ½ tsp
• plus icing sugar to dust

Peel your bananas and mush them on a plate with a fork.

Pour over the lemon juice and work in with the fork.

Put the flour, milk powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub in with your finger tips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Stir in the dried yeast and mashed bananas. Gradually add enough of the warm water to form a soft dough.

Knead for 5 minutes on a floured surface – the dough should be smooth and elastic.

Return to the bowl, cover with oiled clingfilm, and set aside somewhere warm (not so easy here at chilly Yumblog Cottage) for an hour or so until it has doubled in size.

Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and knead well.

Sprinkle over the cocoa powder and knead until it is incorporated into the dough – you should get a rough marble effect.

Put the dough into a suitably sized and greased bread tin (1.8 litre).

Cover with oiled clingfilm and set aside somewhere warm for 30 minutes or until the dough has risen to the top of the tin.

Preheat your oven to 200c (gas mark 6).

Remove the clingfilm (obviously) and bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown (and hollow sounding when tapped). Check after 20 minutes and cover with foil if it looks like it might be getting too dark.

Tip out onto a cooling rack and dust with icing sugar and a little more cocoa.

Verdict: Delicious as is, even better toasted.

Drink: The perfect companion to a brew.

Entertainment: Watching the stream at the end of the garden turn from a tranquil trickle to an angry torrent

* Full list available on request. Please send self-addressed stamped envelope to: Flossy Flossington’s Vocab, Yumblog Cottage, Yorkshire, Up North. YUM 123

Here in the UK Gordon Ramsay has them on the menu at his authentic East End pub ‘Gordon Ramsay’s The Boozer’ as ‘Marrowfat Cassoulet with a Mint Persillade Suggestion’ and charges a reasonable £16.99 per portion, and on her ground-breaking cookery series ‘The Delicious Miss Dahl‘ Sophie added her own inimitable tweest and reimagined them as ‘Sophie’s Luvely Wubly Mushy Wushy Fluffy Wuffy Ploppy Pea Poos’. But that is as maybe, here up north us no nonsense northerners simply call them as they are – ‘Mushy Peas’. And they are reet good.

Preparation time: pretty much none – plus 12 hours soaking time
Cooking time: 30 – 45 minutes
Skill level: easy
Serves: 4

Ingredients

• dried marrowfat peas – 300g
• bicarbonate of soda – 2tsp
• butter – knob
• mint sauce – 1-2tsp (optional)
• salt ‘n’ pepper

Start by soaking your peas overnight (or for at least 12 hours) in plenty of cold water mixed with the bicarbonate of soda (the more you use, the mushier the end result). The peas will expand by about three times, so make sure you have a large enough bowl and sufficient water.

Drain the peas and place in a saucepan. Cover (just) with cold water, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, and simmer until the peas are at your preferred level of mushiness. Keep an eye on the water level and top up if it looks like it is getting too dry.

Stir in a knob of butter and season to taste.

If using, stir in some mint sauce.

Also, if so inclined you could add some food colouring at this stage:

Hi-vis Green (aka E120) – for that authentic Batchelors look
Kooky Blue – for all those scatter-brained Bridget Jones types
Bloody Red – to scare the vegans

Serve as an accompaniment to whatever you fancy, or alternatively as a snack on its own with a splash of malt vinegar.

Verdict: Delicious. We had ours with the Simon Hopkinson cheese and onion pie we serve it up to all our first time guests, plus sage-roasted new potatoes. If you like mushy peas, you’ll love these. If you don’t like the mushy peas you’ve had in the past, you still might love these. The (trad) way of eating them on their own with just a dash of vinegar is also thoroughly endorsed here at Yumblog. Tuck in.

Drink: We had guests up from that there London, so plenty.

Entertainment: Our guests talked long into the night of their sophisticated London ways. We sat slack jawed as they regaled phantasmagorical tales of bright lights, a giant metal eye, trains that travel underground, and most fanciful of all, beer at £4.60 a pint.

Warren sucks eggs says Charlie

Preparation time: 10 minutes plus 30 minutes soaking
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Skill level: easy
Serves: 2

Ingredients

• mushrooms (we used portabello from our bargain box) – roughly chopped – 800g
• dried porcini – reconstituted (retain the soaking water) – small handful
• 2 large shallots (or 1 posh onion) – finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic – finely chopped
• butter – 50g
• vegetable stock – 800ml
• milk – 400ml
• olive oil
• s and p
• double cream, crème fraiche or yoghurt – to serve
• juice and zest of half a lemon – to serve

Start by soaking your porcini in just warm water for at least 30 minutes. Strain the soaking water through a sieve lined with kitchen paper and set aside. Roughly chop the porcini and also set aside.

In a large heavy-bottomed pan, sweat the shallots (or onion) and garlic in the butter until soft (but not coloured).

Add the chopped mushrooms and continue to sweat down until they are soft.

Add the porcini, soaking water, stock and milk and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes.

Here at Yumblog we pride ourselves on offering you, dear reader, choice. So at this stage you have three options depending on your fancy. You can either liquidise half the soup and return it to the pan for a rough texture, liquidise all of the soup for a smoother texture, or liquidise all the soup and then pass through a sieve for a texture smoother than Smooth Jack McSmooth lounging in a velvet smoking jacket.

Which ever you choose, return the soup to the pan, bring back up to heat, taste and season with salt and black pepper.

Finally, mix together the lemon juice and zest with a sprinkling of salt and a twist of pepper.

Serve the soup with a blob of cream (or crème fraiche or yoghurt) and a splash of the lemon mixture.

Verdict: This, like most mushroom-heavy recipes, is necessarily brown and therefore not particularly pretty, and so is probably a dish to cook for yourself rather than serve up to guests (or Michelle Roux Jr) as the centre-piece of a swanky dinner party. However, don’t be put off by its tawny appearance, as this is a very tasty soup indeed.

Drink: A strong mug of lunchtime tea. It must be something to do with the water but tea definitely brews stronger up north.

Entertainment: Watching the constant parade of dogs (and their walkers) outside our window.

* Damp was his profession, not his demeanour.