Soft shelled crab

Soft shelled crab, a photo by anam_uk on Flickr.

Oh I love soft-shelled crab, so when my fishmonger had a pile of them, well I just had to buy a couple.

In the top right they are sat in my sink ready to be rinsed off. Our fishmonger is a nice person & had removed the gills, face & tails. That left me with the all important decision, how to cook them. Now I was tempted to go with tempura, but all that mucking about with icy soda water¹ was  putting me off. So I just dredged them in seasoned flour & chucked them in a hot pan with a bit of chilli & a bit of oil. 2 minutes each side and onto the plate, with a bit of salad, mainly leaves & fennel from the allotment and a very satisfying light lunch² was just there. 

¹OK not strictly necessary, but to get a light batter chilled carbonated water is the easiest thing to use 
²You eat the whole thing, which is pretty rich. I could probably mange 2, but 1 is an ideal light lunch, half makes a fine appetizer  

Clearly irresponsible

I was invited to compete in a Havana club rum competition, I originally got the wrong rum, thinking we were using the 5 or 7 yr old gold rums not the 3yr old, that shaped my idea for the drink. As a result of that & the article on agar clarification I'd read  and some pouring over Embury I decided to go with a new variation on the Hemingway Daiquiri. 

The first job was to get & taste Havana club 3yr old. Its a white rum, but aged in oak barrels, giving it depth and a very pale straw colour, a great cocktailing rum really. Then it was time to try the gel clarification. The first test gave glorious results as a thin stream of pale yellow juice ran & dripped from the muslin. For some reason though the clarified grapefruit & lime didn't play well together. Using cordial instead of juice for the lime fixed the problem, which meant the daiquiri was a bit less Hemingway, but seriously how much of that diabetes was due to the great man's rum habits ? I now had a working recipe so it was time to clarify more grapefruit ready for the actual competition. 

Disaster this came out less than crystal clear (not a technique problem, just a hiccup in the process). A bit of filtration took care of that (after a tense couple of hours where I worried enough juice would make it through the filter). Daiquiris are normally shaken to get them good and cold, that wasn't going to work here, so a bit of mucking about with an instant freeze pack allowed me to chill my rum and away we went 

I was up against some seriously stiff competition, so I'm reasonably happy not to win and it was a great night of mixology & rum, so here is my take on the Hemingway daiquiri,

The clearly irresponsible 

60ml Havana club 3yr old rum (another white rum will work, but won't be as good)

20ml Clarified Grapefruit juice 

15ml Maraschino liqueur

10ml Lime cordial (I use Roses' see debates about the Gimlet)

Stir over ice, double strain (Hemingway was particular about ice in his drinks) and garnish with a grapefruit twist.

Here it is with an ordinary Hemingway for comparison purposes.(Hemingway left, Clearly right)

    

A Christmas Martini

I don't really like vodka Martinis, they just aren't right. Now that's off my chest let's look at the advantage of the vodka Martini. Its an easy base to work from and you can infuse vodka with all manner of tastes, including Mince pie. Yup mince pie.

Get some good mincemeat (like this) and put 4 good table spoons into a bottle of vodka, leave 48 hours and your vodka should turn a pale gold colour, strain out the fruit (you may need to filter spices & stuff too) and enjoy.

Or make a Christmas Martini
There were a couple of inspirations here, including a random conversation about bitters heavy drinks, you can make this without all the bitters, but they really help intensify the mince pie flavour.

2 dashes Angastoura Bitters
2 dashes Peychauds Bitters
2 dashes Orange Bitters
2 dashes Chocolate bitters
3 Parts mince pie Vodka
1 Part Noily Prat vermouth

Stir down over ice, strain & garnish with a cherry

Enjoy the extra winter cheer

Winter:- deep red fruit

You probably know Crème de cassis from the Kir & Kir Royale. You might be a Poirot fan and have tried drinking it on its own (its an experience), but you can use it in many more drinks than that. It's a joyous ingredient mainly because of its colour, but also when diluted down from its intrinsic syrupiness  the fruit taste shines through. Here are a couple of less well known Cassis drinks

The Mississippi mule

4pts Gin
1pt Lemon Juice
1pt crème de cassis

Shake with ice

It's smooth, the lemon cuts some of the sweetness & you end up with a strong dry fruity 30's style drink.

The Gotham

60ml Cognac
30ml Noilly Prat (feel free to substitute any French vermouth)
15 ml crème de cassis
2 dashes of lemon juice

Stir over ice

It'd been a long day & I ended up shaking rather than stirring, but given it wasn't the best of cognacs I doubt that mattered too much, its a great drink. I could probably spend a happy evening drinking these (I doubt the morning after would be fun but ...)

So if you have Cassis & are bored of Kirs try these curranty concoctions

The Last Rose of Summer

So I might just be a hopeless romantic. Remember the Blue rose vodka ? Well I found a drink for it, taking inspiration from James Bond ...

""A dry martini," [Bond] said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."
"Oui, monsieur."
"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"
"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea."
Ian Fleming,Casino Royale

Now substitute Hendricks (which uses rose & cucumber in its botanicals) for the Gordon's and use the rose vodka for vodka and a rose petal as garnish (instead of the lemon peel) and you have the "Last rose of summer"

Enjoy

Mixmo LXII :- The Hard stare

Well its another Mixology Monday and this time the theme of Morning drinks has been chosen by Kevin at the cocktail enthusiast.

I went with a breakfast drink rather than a pick me up/hair of the dog. Taking inspiration from Harry Craddock and a rather famous bear we get the Hard Stare.

1 Good large measure of dry gin
1 barspoon of marmalade
a large dash of orange bitters
Shake very hard over ice, single strain & serve

Normally I'd double strain a clear shaken drink, but with this you want the marmalade fragments in the glass as they provide a sparkle. As you can see from the photo I've used shredless marmalade, it makes a better looking drink. Also the orange bitters I use for this are quite odd, they are more of a bitter orange liqueur, that comes in at 20% abv, so I use almost a spoon full rather than the more traditional dash. They replace the lemon juice (which turns the drink cloudy) in Harry's original recipe.

As an aside I tried to order this drink for breakfast a couple of times in Las Vegas, unfortunately they don't seem to keep marmalade behind the bars out there, so I had to go with out.

Mincemeat

Last time I made mince pies I vowed I was going to make my own mince meat & here it is (sort of)
I used Delia's recipe but I left out the almonds and used mixed fruits (a pre-mix of currants, sultanas & citrus peel) with some spare windfall apples from the orchard. I may also have used more booze than Delia does because I like my mince pies boozy.

 

There it all is in the bowl, absorbing the fluids, before it goes into the oven for the suet to melt.

Whilst making this batch I realised that the smoker runs at about the temperature required, so I whipped up another batch adjusting the mixed spice to be a bit more BBQish by adding a pinch of 5 spice & a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper. I swapped the brandy for Bourbon too and smoked it over maple for sweetness.

Right now both batches are in large jars in the cellar, in another couple of weeks I'll put them in smaller jars (with another splash of booze) and then give some as gifts & turn the rest into delicious mince pies. Watch this space  

Lincolnshire sausages

I've a superabundance of sage & a sausage stuffer.
So Lincolnshires (or as they are known in our house hippopotamus & duckweed). Its a simple recipe (though you need to tone down the pepper)

1kg pork shoulder
200g breadcrumbs
15g pepper
15g salt
50g fresh sage

That's a lot of fresh sage: look

the next 10 grammes, pretty much obscured the scales to the extent that it wasn't worth photographing them.

The sage, bread, salt & pepper went into the minichop & got blitzed up into a homogeneous mass of "filler". Meanwhile the pork gets chopped into rough cubes & gets fed through the mincer on a medium plate. Mix the whole lot together (get your hands in and get it evenly distributed). I then put the whole lot in the fridge for a couple of hours, even though this isn't an emulsified sausage it's probably a good idea to let the meat rest. Then its out with the stuffer. This time we tried the more orthodox stuff a large ring & then twist technique, which didn't really work out for us so we went back to stuff & twist.

Lincolnshire sausages aren't really a breakfast sausage, you want a banger or a pure pork sausage for that. The over pepperiness of these was a bit of a challenge, but using them in a nice warming sausage casserole seemed to find them a perfect home.

The Seelbach cocktail

A good champagne cocktail is a thing of beauty.This is both good & not all that well known, which is a shame.
Its a slightly odd beast as it uses a lot of bitters, calling for anywhere between 7 dashes & a barspoon of both Angastoura & Peychaud's, which is responsible for the awesome colour.

Bourbon is used as a base rather than the more usual (in champagne circles) cognac. That & Cointreau provide sweetness, the Champagne brings dryness and the bitters depth & complexity. There are a couple of ways of making it, this is my preferred method.

25ml Bourbon
15ml Cointreau
7 dashes Angastoura bitters
7 dashes Peychaud's bitters

Stir down over ice & then strain into a champagne flute, top with good Champagne.

As you can see we tried a cherry garnish, which works well enough.

Filé gumbo

Its more than the line from a song, its an actual thing, that you can eat. You need filé powder (which is ground sassafras leaves) and Andouille sausage and some other bits & pieces too. Most importantly the Holy trinity of Cajun/Creole cooking :- Green bell pepper, Onion & Celery. I'll come clean of the 3 I only really like Onions, fortunately the others dissolve if you cook them long enough and gumbo gets cooked for a Loooong time.

The base of gumbo is a roux. Every single recipe I found suggests you need to drink whilst making the roux, so here goes. Fry some chicken thighs, till brown and the sausage, pour the fat into a big old pan, add butter & melt it and then add flour, turn the heat low & stir and scrape and stir & scrape. Keep stirring & scraping till the roux is Milk chocolatey coloured (about 2 beers of time, or 45 minutes for the more scientifically minded).

 DO NOT LET THE FLOUR BURN ! Because that wrecks everything & you have to start again. Whilst the roux is going on boil the chicken, which will make you a light chicken stock as well as cooking the chicken down for you.

Once you've a lovely roux, throw in the trinity veggies and any others you are using (I know Okra should go in at this point, but I'm not that keen, even if its where gumbo gets its name) and soften them. Add seasonings & spices. Then add your stock and your meat (Sausage & chicken) and let it bubble over a low heat for hours. I reduced my gumbo a little too much at the end, so it was thicker than most. Serve with white rice, a sprinkle of filé and some buttery bread.

Maybe not the most authentic gumbo as I amalgamated 3 recipes and information from an ex-NOLA resident, but it was damn tasty and next time there is cheap shellfish going I'll be making another.

The recipes are here

Chef rick duck & sausage

nolacuisine's filé gumbo

and the highly recommended baconconcentrate's gumbo-shops recipe