cowbridge food festival

the food festival started badly for me when i agreed to a late transfer in to do a demonstration, sleep seemed to come harder for a couple of days. then, when watching the watchmen on friday in the champagne tent, my glasses were sent flying whilst pogoing to teenage kicks. a frenzied three minutes bopping later and my legs were aching, then my head joined in in the morning. another no show last night (please ring and let us know)and then up to write the recipes. i forgot to write the gnocchi recipe, so i'll put that in the next newsletter.

so the news is that we're on at 3.00, closing the festival. here are the recipes that i'll be doing.

Recipes for Cowbridge Food Festival.

Chocolate fudge cake:

175g self raising flour
125g caster sugar
50g cocoa powder
1 heaped teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

175g pitted prunes

Place prunes in a one litre jug and top with water until it hits 475 ml. Place in a microwave and microwave on full power for 2 minutes, checking that it does not boil over. Remove and add 100ml of veg oil. Using a hand blender, blitz until smooth. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and then add the hot wet mix and whisk together. Once incorporated add 100ml of maple syrup and mix again. Place into a cake tin and bake at 175C until springy. It will fall back a little.

Chocolate sauce:

Equal quantities of water and sugar to make a sugar syrup. Heat this in a microwave or pan until hot. Add the same volume of chocolate to syrup and whisk until smooth. You can flavour the syrup with lemon grass, star anise, vanilla, cardamom by steeping the syrup with the spices.

Pasta:
200g plain flour.
1 tablespoon of oil
Water

Place the flour into a food processor, add the oil and set the blade running at full speed. Add the water slowly until breadcrumbs form. You need these to form a dough under pressure. If the dough comes together too easily, it is too wet. Place the dough in cling film and leave in the fridge.

Ravioli

1. Casumziei


Filling: 2 medium-size cooked beetroot
50g Ricotta cheese (or vegan ricotta)
lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.

Blitz everything together in the cleaned food processor. Put in the fridge.

Sauce: 100g butter, melted in a pan until the solids turn nutty brown (beurre noisette). Poppy seeds.

Roll the dough in a pasta maker to its thinnest setting. Place on a floured surface and cut into squares about two and a half inches across. Place some beetroot mix in the centre, then close the pasta over and stick together, forming ravioli. Boil in salted water for two minutes, plate and top with the butter sauce and grated vegetarian parmesan.

Simple alternative: 1 pack of wonton wrappers from a Chinese grocery store can be used instead of making fresh pasta.

2. Celeriac and lemon thyme:

Roast or boil celeriac in salted water. Mash and flavour with lemon juice, lemon thyme and salt and pepper. Fill ravioli as above and serve with the butter sauce.

3. Butternut, fennel and amaretti

Roast a butternut squash with fennel seeds. Mash and add crumbled amaretti. Fill ravioli as in 1 and serve with lemon sage-butter sauce.

Lemon sage butter sauce:

Sweat a shallot in oil (do not use butter at this point) until soft, add sage (to taste), lemon juice (to taste) and stock (100ml). Dice butter (100g) and using a hand blender, blend into the sauce. (Vegan alternative, blend soya margarine rather than butter).

4. Vanilla ravioli with chocolate hazelnut filling and chocolate custard.

Prepare the ravioli as above but add vanilla extract and vanilla sugar. The filling is made by making a ganache. This was a hot mix of cashew milk (any milk or cream will do here) and maple syrup. Then add the chocolate as above for the chocolate sauce, whisk and finally add the hazelnuts. Place in the fridge to set. (this ganache would mage very nice truffles dusted in cocoa powder, very ferrero roche).

Make as above and top with chocolate custard.

Chocolate custard: equal quantities of vegan custard and chocolate sauce.

Curry base:

Chillies, ginger, garlic, shallots.

Chop then blitz together. This is the base for several curry pastes that we use.

Thai: add lemon grass, lime zest and juice, fresh coriander, ground coriander and cumin and jaggery (brown sugar will do) and oil. Blitz until a paste forms.

Rendang: add lemon grass, ground coriander, cumin, fennel and cardamom and toasted desiccated coconut. (This is my favorite curry and made the best samosa)

Indian: add garam masala, curry leaves, fresh coriander. Really the list here is exhaustive.

Indonesian peanut sauce: fry onion and add thai curry paste. Add peanuts and coconut milk and blitz. (for satay, add jaggery) To cook, sir-fry and add splas of soy sauce and splash of rice wine vinegar.

Laksa

Fry thai curry paste with a little onion. Add stock and coconut milk. Add tofu, noodles and veg.