Col. Mustard Macaroni Cheese

Important disclaimer; my iPhonetography is unusually bad here because some of the spotlights in our kitchen have blown - I was also trying to take pictures with the hand that wasn't covered in cheese!

We had a Clue party at our house yesterday (if you have not seen this movie, watch it NOW!) which not only necessitated dressing as our favourite fictional detectives but also prompted the idea of tying in as much of our food as possible with the characters. My housemate suggested adding some (Colonel) Mustard to the mac & cheese I was already planning to make and thus this recipe was born! It's a mishmash of recipes from my flatmate's mom/Nigella/Delia/my pastor/me, so about par for the course with my cooking, really!

These proportions make for a fairly balanced flavour - if you'd like it to be more cheesy/mustardy, then adjust accordingly!

Ingredients:

500g (17 1/2 ounces) macaroni

Half an onion

250g (9 ounces) extra mature cheddar cheese

3/4 cup of butter

3/4 cup of flour

About 3 cups full fat milk (judgement call)

Pepper

2 slices of bread

2 British teaspoons/1 American tablespoon wholegrain mustard

1 clove garlic OR equivalent amount of garlic paste

Method:

1. If you can multitask, set your macaroni cooking while you start to make the sauce. Add some oil to the water and ensure that you stir often - macaroni loves to stick together. You can easily make the macaroni when the sauce is done if you're not a fan of trying to stir two pans at once!

2. Chop the onion and garlic (if using a clove) and fry in a little of the butter until soft. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and add the remaining butter - stirring until it melts.

3. Add the flour by increments until a thick dough is formed. If you are using garlic paste, add it at this point.

4. Continue to stir on a low heat for 3 or 4 minutes to cook the flour - otherwise your sauce will simply taste of flour (I've done this - don't try it!). If you've not made a roux (the flour/butter mix) before - DON'T PANIC! It will try to stick to the pan and do all sorts of alarming things - just keep stirring and if it does look as though it's going to burn, add a small bit of milk to thin it.

Now is the time to preheat the oven - 200°C/390°F.

5. Add 1 cup of milk and stir until the consistency is even. Add the mustard, and much pepper as you would like. If the sauce is quite fluid at this point, just stir a while until it thickens. If it stays fluid, add some more flour and a bit of butter.

6. Add another cup of milk and whisk until there are no lumps (aside from the onion of course). Allow the sauce to cook, stirring occasionally, while you grate your cheese (hold back a handful of cheese for the topping). Add this bit by bit and stir until it melts into the sauce. By the time you have finished, the sauce should have thickened. Add milk until you are happy with the consistency (therein lies the judgement call) and take the pan off the heat.

7. Place the cooked macaroni in the dish you are planning to use and pour the sauce over the top. Cover with foil and place in the oven for 10 minutes.

8. Take 2 slices of ordinary bread/any bread you like/crackers even and roll between your hands to make breadcrumbs (I really don't understand why people buy premade breadcrumbs). Mix these with the cheese to make the topping. Add this to the dish after 10 minutes and cook at the bottom of the oven for 5 minutes/until the cheese has melted and the breadcrumbs are crispy.

9. Watch family/friends devour it. I was expecting leftovers and got none! Serves 5/6 - adjust quantities to make more/less.

Cornbread with Bacon

This week is a mission to use up my excess storecupboard contents - both because I'm post-Christmas broke and not very in the mood for the supermarket after work! Cornbread is a favourite of mine - a throwback to the amazing Southern pastor we had at my church when I was a teenager and her almost insanely good cooking! I had made some a while back and still had tonnes of cornmeal in the cupboard. Helpfully, when I rooted out the packet, it had a recipe on the back for precisely what I intended to try!

You'll notice that my recipes are in cups - I long ago switched to cooking solely with cup measures as I like to enjoy my cooking and baking and there's nothing I hate more than fiddling around with scales. If you know anyone in the States, I recommend you have them send you some - a cheap set costs about $3 and you won't know yourself!

If you want to convert to grams, be careful how you go about it - as cup measurements vary according to the ingredients you're using. You can use this table to convert the most common ingredients and use your intuition for things not listed... cornmeal = tapioca et al. If you have an iPhone (yes - I'm about to tell you there's an app for that. I'm SO sorry - but there is!) you can use Kitchen Calculator Pro, which I love! It's a paid one, but worth it.

Enough rambling - you're here for the food!

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups cornmeal (NOT cornflour - big difference)

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking bowder

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

1/2 cup butter

1 cup milk

3/4 cup diced bacon (I usually buy this pre-packaged)

Method:

1. Heat a frying pan and fry the bacon pieces on a high heat until cooked but only slightly crispy. Don't add oil to the pan - the bacon fat will melt and be quite sufficient.

2. While the bacon is frying, put the cornmeal in a bowl and sieve in the flour, baking powder and baking soda.

3. Once the bacon is done, turn off the heat and transfer it to a bowl, leaving the melted fat in the pan on the hob.

4. Beat the eggs.

5. Put the butter in the frying pan - it should melt easily as the pan will still be warm. If not - microwave it for a couple of seconds. Add the milk and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan so that the mixture absorbs the bacon fat - as the bacon and the remaining fat are so salty, I don't add salt to this recipe.

6. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the eggs and the milk mixture. Mix together gently. Fold in the cooked bacon.

7. My favourite new Nigella tip - brush a cake tin with olive oil instead of greasing with butter. N.B Use only a little oil here, to ensure that the bread becomes crunchy on the outside. Use oil liberally if you are making a cake that you want to remain moist and also line the bottom of the tin with a circle of greaseproof paper. Pour the mixture into the tin and spread it out evenly.

8. Bake at 200°C until risen and golden brown on top - I know it's unhelpful not to give timings here, but this depends so much on your oven. This took 18 minutes in my fan oven in a 12 inch round cake tin.

9. Turn out on to a wire rack - this is where the springform cake tin is your friend!

This makes for the ideal lazy dinner or cheeky late night snack as the plain, creamy richness of the cornbread is brought out by the sharp tang of the bacon and it is very filling. This is gorgeous either straight out of the oven, or when allowed to cool and then eaten with butter spread on top.

To make regular cornbread, substitute 1/2 cup of sugar for the bacon and make sure you have something tasty and lots of butter to go with it!

Simple Rum Cake (with Rum Syrup)

Ever wonder what the heck to do with all the leftover alcohol you have in the house after a party? Quite a few of my more recent kitchen adventures were borne of the need to eliminate the leftovers from our Halloween party this year. Having only some Bacardi, and not the dark rum usually used in cakes, I decided to play fast and loose with whatever recipe sounded good and just see how it turned out. It's one of those chuck-it-all-in-a-bowl-and-stir recipes that I'm quite fond of.

I still don't think this is perfect, and I will continue to work out the kinks, but it's a lovely, rich, heavyish cake if you just want to sit down with a large chunk of something to nibble on. It feels like a Sunday afternoon cake and tastes even better when made on a Saturday and left out overnight for the syrup to soak through ;)

The original recipe can be found here, I've edited it a little.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup dark rum (you can get away with light rum)

1/4 cup banana liqueur (I've always substituted rum here)

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup whipping cream

Rum Syrup (recipe below this one)

Powdered sugar

Method:

1. Beat butter and granulated sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, egg yolk, and vanilla, beating until blended. Gradually add the rum and banana liqueur, beating until blended. The batter will look curdled at this point - that's normal.

2. Stir together the flour, baking powder and baking soda; add to the batter alternately with the whipping cream, beginning and ending with the flour. Beat the batter at a low speed just until blended after each addition.

3. Pour the batter into a greased and floured 10-inch Bundt cake tin. Don't panic if you don't have a Bundt tin. I compensate by filling a clean, used tin can with dried beans (or pie beads for blind baking pie crusts if you have them) and placing it in the middle of a regular cake tin. This cake is a little heavy so if you don't have a Bundt tin and don't fancy the can method, I'd recommend using a fan oven and keeping a close eye or putting the cake on the lowest shelf of the oven covered with foil for the first 30-40 mins of baking.

4. Bake at 350°F/180°C for 55 to 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

5. Cool in the tin on a wire rack for 15 minutes before turning out. Pierce the cake multiple times using a wooden skewer and pour the Rum Syrup evenly over the cake. It will look as though you have too much syrup, but allow it to soak in and then keep adding more - and ensure that you have pierced the cake multiple times to allow the syrup to run through. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.

Rum Syrup Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1 teaspoon butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons rum

Method:

1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes.

2. Add butter, rum and vanilla - stirring continuously.

3. Continue to boil for 8-10 minutes. It won't look syrupy until after it has cooled on the cake.

Banoffee Pie

I used to work in a hospital and, contrary to popular belief, it was the best I've ever been fed at work! The highlight of my week was Banoffee Pie day - this amazing dessert was only €1 thanks to subsidised meal prices for staff and my passion for it became somewhat of a running joke.

When I left that job I spent a great deal of time testing out Banoffee Pie recipes to try and recreate it - and this was the fruit of my labours! It's a bit time intensive, but you can make the toffee beforehand and it can be stored in the tins for months! This will definitely make you some friends at the office ;)

Ingredients:
1 packet digestive biscuits/graham crackers if you're in the US
1 1/2 cups butter
3 tins condensed milk
2 bananas
whipping cream

Ingredients totally depend on the size of dish you are using. It's a very adaptable recipe. The only important figure to remember is that the base needs to be at least 1 part butter to 2 parts biscuit or it won't stick together. You can add more butter to get a very firm base.

Method:

1. Place the tins of condensed milk in a deep pan of boiling water and boil (NOT simmer) for 2 1/2 hours. Turn the tins halfway through and keep the water topped up at all times or you will be cleaning toffee from the ceiling!

2. Put the digestive biscuits in a ziplock bag (leaving one corner slightly open to prevent epic explosion) and beat the hell out of it to your heart's content until they have been reduced to crumbs. It does help to keep the edge of your hand against the opening of the bag so it doesn't get any ideas.

3. Melt the butter gently in a pan and mix in the crumbs.

4. Line the dish with the biscuit mix and use a spoon to firm down the bottom and sides.

5. Put in the fridge (extra effective if you have a freezer big enough) to set.

6. When 2 1/2 hours are up, turn the heat off and leave the tins to sit in the pan for half an hour to cool. Then tip out the water and allow to stand for another couple of minutes.

7. Run the tins under cold running water until they are cold enough to handle comfortably. Scoop the toffee into a bowl and mix thoroughly until homogeneous. You could tip the cans straight into the dish, but you will end up with three tin-shaped toffee lumps.

8. Spread over the biscuit base and leave in the fridge to set for half an hour.

9. Slice the bananas thinly on top of the toffee. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks and add to the top of the bananas ensuring that you cover them all completely - any banana slices left exposed to the air will turn brown and put people off just a little...

10. You can put it in the fridge for a while longer or allow your eager guests/housemates/neighbours who smelled the noms and called over to fall upon it ravenously.

As the ingredients are so fresh, I would generally aim to finish it the day after making it. Keep it in the fridge to keep the cream from turning.