Salty and sweet is a thing. A real honest to goodness thing. I was out with my lovely sister and my genius nephew (true story) a couple of weeks back, we popped into M&S ostensibly for a cardigan and picked up an elderly lady (also true story) and some chocolate and caramel pretzel bites. We demolished them happily, as Noah napped and removed his socks in the back of the car. I went away that evening thinking about those sweets (what can I say? I need to get out more) and wondering if I could make those flavours work in a cookie. Pinterest threw up a few suggestions but as it tends towards American recipes I wasn't entirely sold on their ingredients.
When Nigella Express came out I made her Totally chocolate, chocolate chip cookies a handful of times, whilst I love them, they are amazingly rich and sometimes the chocolate feels a bit headachey. Plus M can't eat dark chocolate as it makes him feel sick. So I needed to adapt the recipe and this is my adaptation of that
Chocolate chip and pretzel cookies
125g milk chocolate, melted (I used leftover Christmas and Easter chocolate) 150g flour 30g Cadbury's drinking chocolate (the one you make up with milk) 1 tsp bicarb 1/2 tsp salt 125g softened butter 50g white sugar 75g soft brown sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 egg 200g chopped up chocolate - a mix of white and milk 150g pretzels (about 2 handfuls) lightly crushed - reserve about 24 whole ones Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a cookie sheet with baking parchment Beat the butter and sugar in your mixer (or with a hand beater) Add the melted chocolate, egg and vanilla continuing to beat until well combined Fold the flour, bicarb drinking chocolate and salt into the batter Stir in the chopped chocolate and pretzels
Using a tablespoon measure out big dollops (technical term) of cookie batter onto the sheet. Don't press them flat as the mixture spreads, so leave big gaps between the spoonfuls. I can fit about 8 cookies at once on a sheet. Top each ball of batter with a whole pretzel - just push it lightly into the cookie
Bake for 15 minutes - remove from the cookie sheet straightaway with a spatula and cool on a wire rack - this helps mine stay smooshy in the middle (which is how I prefer them). If you like your cookies crispy then cool them on the tray for 5-10 minutes first as they'll continue to cook using the residual heat from the tray. This mix makes at least 24 cookies and they keep in an airtight tin for up to 5 days. You can freeze the original Nigella recipe - but I don't think you could with the pretzels as they would go soggy. Just a note for the Guiders out there - I know that our girls would go mad for these - try doing them with teaspoonfuls of mix instead of tablespoons and you'll get - 2-3 times as many! As they're such a quick bake (and in smaller measures would be even quicker, 9-10 mins) they're ideal for a chocolate badge evening, or to be bagged up for a bake sale, father's day or mother's day treats... well the list is endless so I'll leave the reason up to you.
I have a lot of love for Patti LuPone, and the very exciting time I saw Gypsy with my friend Lauren in New York. This is a slightly tenuous link to what I actually cooked, but I completely failed at finding any lyrics that included noodles. I contemplated going down the campfire route and quoting "On top of spaghetti" but these were rice noodles and I'm nothing if not a stickler for the details. Plus this way I get to talk about Patti LuPone and the amazingness of Gypsy. In case you missed the revival, here's the performance from the 2008 Tony's (I know it's the wrong song... but still GreaT! PlaTe! *faints*).
Sorry, I got a bit carried away there, forgetting that I had actually cooked something for this post, but first I must apologise for the photo quality. The light in my kitchen is rubbish, but I normally manage to get a passable shot. I have no idea what went wrong this time, it's out of focus and the colours are a bit peculiar. I can only grovel. I swear if my local Adult Ed college does a photography course that doesn't clash with my Guiding activities I will be there, plate of cakes and digital camera in hand.
As you probably know I'm quite a hardcore Nigella fan (the woman, not the flowers) but mainly stick to her baking recipes which I must say I largely find faultless. This month's challenge was to try her Seared Salmon with Singapore noodles (from Nigella Express). The rules for our challenge are that if you don't like something about the recipe you can make substitutions but you should stick to the main idea as much as possible. For me this was the first month I needed to make a substitution, but I loathe Singapore noodles because of the curry flavour in the stir fried noodles. I love noodles, pad thai is one of my all time favourite dishes, and although Singapore noodles has a different flavour, the idea of it is one that I like in theory, just not in execution.
Seared Salmon with Singapore Noodles - serves 4
Nigella says: I know the list of ingredients is long but a lot of this is stuff that will help you generally if it's part of your storecupboard stash. If you don't want to go in for specialist shopping at all, replace the tiny dried shrimp with about 100g of frozen prawns (thaw them first). Sherry could be used instead of the Chinese cooking wine, though I should tell you I get this very easily from my local supermarket.
Salmon 2 teaspoons medium madras curry powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 4 salmon fillets approx 200g each Tablespoon of garlic oil.
Mix the curry powder, salt and sugar in a wide shallow dish and dredge the salmon in this. Turn all the pieces over in the rub.
Heat the oil in a heavy based pan and cook the salmon fillets on a high heat for about 2-3 minutes a side, searing the sides as well if the fillets are very thick.
Noodles 250g Vermicelli rice noodles 50g dried shrimp (or 100g prawns) 125ml chinese cooking wine (or sherry) Tablespoon garlic oil 100g finely sliced chinese leaf 125g baby corn cut into rounds 2 spring onions finely sliced 2 teaspoons medium madras curry powder 1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger 250ml chicken stock 3 tablespoons soy sauce 150g beansprouts handful of fresh chopped coriander
Put the rice noodles in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave to soak for 4 minutes and then drain.
Soak the dried shrimp in the wine.
Heat the oil in a wok and fry the chinese leaf, baby corn and spring onions for a few minutes.
Add the curry powder and ginger to the wok, and add the stock and soy sauce. Pour in the shrimps and their wine and the drained noodles. Toss everything together.
Finally, stir in the beansprouts and give everything one final toss before turning out into a bowl and sprinking with coriander.
OK, so as always, these are the changes I made, and my random ramblings about it.
Firstly, it's a lovely easy recipe - if for some reason you've stumbled across my blog and found this page - try this. Like her banana bread, it's lovely and easy. I probably doubled the veg she suggested you put in. I just think on something like this the more veg the better, it's healthier, it's economical (as you can use up everything in your veg tray)and it goes further. All bonus points in my book. I substitued the chinese leaf for savoy cabbage. Sainsos wanted £1.79 for a tiny amount of pak choi, but only 69p for a whole savoy cabbage. I love dark green cabbage so it was a winner for me. I used about half in the noodles. North London is a veritable wasteland where dried shrimp is concerned - I trawled the supermarkets and grocers in a desperate attempt to find it - all the while knowing that I could probably schlep to Whole Foods and get them (albeit exorbitantly priced) so decided to do without. As I said, I don't like the curry flavour in Singapore noodles so omitted the curry powder (although I do still have the leftover curry powder from the Malay Korma which is still begging to be used up) Oh, I forgot the coriander. Again. This was a lovely dish, I would definitely cook it again, but I might try it with the curry powder just to see. I was so sure that I wouldn't like it that now I'd quite like to try it as I felt the dish needed more oomph.
This bowl food, has a lovely soothing effect. The fact that you cook the noodles in stock gave some fantastic extra flavour - I used homemade chicken stock which I think made a real difference as you get the flavour without the saltiness of stock cubes. Have I done a post about how I make stock? I'll check and if not, next time I do a roast will do a post on making stock.
Things here are still quiet, reserved and a bit down, although I did a better job at being a bit more like my usual perky self today (a large quantitiy of skittles helped here). I'm making the Easter chocolate truffles with the Guides on Tuesday, so will do a picture post of the glittery goodness we come up with. Other than that I was going to have a freezer week so there's unlikely to be anything thrilling to blog, although I might make some scones tomorrow morning to take over to my sister's for a bridesmaid dress fitting. If I manage to get up and get organised to do that you can expect another post soonish.
There is a part b to this challenge which was a sweet dish from Nigella Express, Caramel Croissant pudding. As I'm a bit lacking in the appetite department at the moment I feel no real urge to make this, but I might give it a shot!
For which I humbly, truly and sincerely apologise. I have had serious words with myself and as I type in the process of rectifying the situation...
Chocolate. Five and a half months of blogging (bloggage perhaps?) and not one post on chocolate. To my eternal shame. The odd passing mention when talking about the goodness that is cupcakes but that's it. And I'm a woman, as far as I'm concerned chocolate is a food group all by itself. As I said, my eternal shame.
However, as I type 6 of Nigella's Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies (from Nigella Express) are in the oven. And they smell good. She says herself that they are "chocolatey to the point of madness" and she may be right. But Holy Hell the mixture was as close as anything I have ever tasted has come to a full on cure for all ills (patent pending). Now I do think Nigella's suggestion that you bake half and freeze half, is possibly the nearest thing to insanity I have ever seen in print, but then I haven't tasted one. Yet. The plan is to have 2 as pudding sandwiched together with some vanilla icecream I've found in the freezer (when I say found I do mean forgotten about otherwise ice cream doesn't last more than one Saturday night in this house). Seeing as I fully intend to be ensconsed in pyjamas and under a blanket by the time Pushing Daisies comes on I feel that a fabulously kitsch and retro ice cream sandwich may be the perfect accompaniment.
Going back to the matter in question (that was Chocolate in case my rambling had meant you've forgotten) I would just like to dwell, for a moment on the "chocolatey to the point of madness" quote. These cookies contain:
125g dark chocolate 30g cocoa 350g dark chocolate chips
In other words, thats a HELL of a lot. Not that I'm complaining, not me, not at all. In fact the only complaining going on here is that 18 minutes plus cooling time seems to be a very long time to wait for some chocolatey goodness. Not that I'm impatient, and checking the oven between sentences. Nope. 15 minutes.
I think I'll upload some pictures to distract myself from the fact that there's 12 minutes to go. Enjoy...
