General: [Sticky] The Official Post a Recipe Thread

Ginger cake!

Melt 3oz margarine, 2oz soft brown sugar, 4oz black treacle and 3oz golden syrup in a saucepan until sugar is dissolved. Allow mixture to cool, then add to 6oz sifted plain flour, 2tsp ginger, 1tsp mixed spice, 1tsp bicarb soda, a pinch of salt and 2 eggs and mix thoroughly, gradually adding 4floz milk. Bake in a moderate oven (Gas Mark 4 / 180°C) for 40 minutes.

Faster roast potatoes than CeeBee:

Heat the oven to maximum (gas mark 9 / 230°C) and melt some lard in a tin. Add herbs and things to the lard if you like. Chop the potatoes to the appropriate size, put in a saucepan and cover with boiling water. Simmer for 10 minutes and then drain off the water. Put the lid back on and give it a good shake to make the edges fluffy. Put the potatoes in the tin (now with hot melted lard in it) and put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes. Mmm. Perhaps slightly less healthy... For the final touch, drizzle with honey once out of the oven. Now definitely less healthy...

I am going to have to go through mine soon.

Golly!

Add 30 seconds per scoop.

I prefer my ice cream cold. And on a stick.

Icc Cream Sunday

1. Wait for a sunday
2. Get out ice cream
3. Put several scoops in a bowl, or dish, or general ice cream vessel
4. Serve
5. Eat

Ok, I gotta add this recipe - it worked a charm for me recently...

Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza

Dough

I use 4 parts flour to 1 part water (4 large cupfuls of flour, 1 of water). Start by adding some salt and sugar to the flour, (a teaspoonfull and 2 spoonfulls respectively worked for me) then dissolve some yeast in the water (which should ideally be warm). Mix a little of the water/yeast mix into the flour, stirring as you go. Eventually, with all the water in, you should knead the dough until you have something that doesn't stick to the sides of the bowl or your hands (you might have to wash and dry your hands before testing).

The dough should be proved a little (left to rise) in a warm place - but don't put it in the oven to do this, it'll cook it and you'll end up with something akin to scofa bread.

Once it's risen a little, knead it again. Now you need to seperate it into 2 pieces - one about 2/3rds of the dough, to line the pizza dish, and the remaining dough to top it. Roll the dough into flat, round pieces, and line the pizza dish with the larger piece (after spreading a little olive oil - not extra virgin, it'll burn - around the dish). What you're making here is the lovechild of a pizza and a good old pie. Proove the dough.

Topping

Ok, now you need to top your pizza. I take 5 cloves of garlic and put it in a frying pan, then add 1 large chopped onion, and slowly cook until the onion is soft. Then I drain 2 tins of tomatoes, mash them up, and add them to the garlic and a chopped onion, along with a spoonful (no, not teaspoon, full sized spoon) of oregano. Leave to simmer for a few minutes to let the flavours all mix and give the oregano time to go from dried herb to tasty herb. While it simmers, stuff the pizza.

Filling

Your going to need about 1KG of cheese. I've used mozorella (which you should do for authenticity) and I've used a cheap mild cheddar (which worked just as well, thankyouverymuch and cost half as much). Grate it, and dump half of it in the bottom of your pie. Now, throw in anything you'd find on a normal pizza. I tend to go for chicken, various sausage type things (salami, peperoni, garlic sausage etc) and so on, but basically just take whatever you want (so long as it's edible) and just throw it in there. Leave enough room for the rest of the cheese, which goes on now. Now top your pizza with the remaining dough, and pinch the edges of the base dough and the edges of the topping dough together - you want to seal it up tight.

Once done, you can put the garlic/onion/tomato/oregano mixture on the top of the pizza. No cheese goes on top of this - you're done. Adding cheese is a bad idea since it'll just burn (this thing needs half an hour in the oven).

Right, now, pop it in the oven at gas mark 6 for half an hour.

I have no idea if this is anything like authentic chicago style, having never been to chicago - but I sure liked it.

Cor, I could stuff myself silly on that! Although my insides probably couldn't cope with all that cheese.

Something I made the other day:

Satay Chicken

Start by chopping an onion fairly finely, and shallow frying it with some garlic in a tiny bit of olive oil. You want it browned a little, but not seared or burned - overcooked garlic won't be helpful to the taste of the dish.

Add in equal amounts of crunchy peanut butter and creamed coconut, and a little reduced chicken stock. Stir it together with a little soy sauce and some cayenne pepper (if you like) as you heat it gently, and you should have a good satay sauce.

Now just mix some strips of chicken in there, leave it to marinate for a while, then shove it in the oven on gas mark 6 for about 20 minutes (until the chicken is cooked, basically).

Halved button mushrooms can go in the pot before putting it in the oven, as can more onion, chopped peppers etc.

Serve with rice or noodles. Beanz/lolly will probably have a better version of this, but meh.

Beanz, you lazy devil! I bet CeeBee's tastes a lot better.

Although I wouldn't recommend making satay chicken in a bread maker...

Yep. It just makes the dough ready for you to toss (ahem!)

Just stretch the dough out on to a pizza dish* (you can get great ones in Asda for less than £2 IIRC) and add your toppings to choice, then bung in oven.

*Pizza dishes are like pie dishes but have holes in them so the crust cooks more effectively. If you're making a pie, you should 'blind bake' the pastry (cook the base, normally with special baking beans on it so it doesn't rise or deform, separately before you put the filling in.) No need to do this with a pizza dish!

The coyotes would like it known that they are available for tasting events.

I've just made a nice but rather dark looking sweet & sour sauce - it was simplicity itself to make...

4 parts wine vinegar
3 parts sugar/sweetner
3 parts soy sauce
1 part tomato puree
1 part cornflower
16 parts pineapple juice

Mix that lot together in a saucepan (no heat) then when it's a smooth mixture, put it on the heat. Once it's heated through, add chicken, pork, lamb, beef, venison, whatever - and then add pineapple chunks (I always use fresh, I can't stand tinned pineapple) and veg. If it gets too thick during cooking time, just add a little water. Serve.

Yup, it comes out a very dark colour (because of the soy sauce, no doubt) instead of the orange colour that the sweet & sour sauce from the local Chinese I like to visit makes - any ideas on what I could substitute the soy sauce with to make it come out a more pleasing colour?

I'm not too worried about the colour of the sauce though, it tastes great.

I think there are alternatives to soy sauce - there's a white soy sauce out there that you might not be allergic to...

White tamari it's called. Or white golden tamari, or something like that.