Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold - Cheesecake

It’s been a quiet week really, nothing happening out of the norm, nothing that really got my juices flowing I was even considering sparing you the chore of reading this old shite.

I say that, there’ve been the obvious stresses of daily life that for some reason take some comedic series of events for me but hey ho.

There was a child’s birthday party, we all know how much I love those, where I encountered the biggest baby I’ve ever seen. This isn’t an exaggeration and I’m not trying to be mean but this lad was huge a behemoth if you will. He must have been a sextuplet but ate his five siblings as a post breakfast snack. I took a picture but Mrs. Vino said that was going a step too far. I couldn’t stop staring though, like some Curio in a turn of the century Travelling Circus.

Very much like the time I was sunbathing and an attractive woman was by the pool, she only had one leg, I tried so hard not to look as I walked back to our apartment but failed miserably my eyes boring into her and the words “one leg, one leg, one leg” ringing in my brain. What can I say, I don’t get out much, rather I shouldn’t be allowed out much.

Nothing has really got my juices flowing on the TV, yes I know the Apprentice is back on but I don’t watch it.

You’d think it would be right up my street, I mean me and The Sugar have so much in common. Both born into the Jewish faith, backgrounds in sales, a predisposition for grumpiness and both have faces like an old bulldog licking piss off a thistle.

Come to think of it I’ll have to check if Mum made any trips down to London in the 70’s, that rich old bugger could be my Dad and I may be in line for a few quid to not sell my story.

This is of course completely fabricated, more worrying is the fact Mummy Vino was given free tickets to Top of The Pops in her youth by a popular DJ in Leeds and my uncontrollable urge to jangle jewelry, wear tracksuits and smoke cigars. 

11 Years Ago in Vegas

Anyway there’s my usual digression, back to the Apprentice, I can’t watch it. Not because as a twitter friend suggested they remind me of me. Simply put they’re a bunch of cocks (maybe they do remind me of me), I think that’s the collective noun for the contemptible arses that try and ‘win’ the poisoned chalice. There aren’t enough swear words available to me in the English language to be able to watch it and without the naughty words spilling forth from my mouth I fear the anger may bubble up to a level where my head would explode and I would die. Fear of death has to be a good enough reason not to watch surely?

By now you’re probably asking yourselves why I'm wittering on at you? Why the change of heart? What could possibly spark me into picking up my virtual pen?

Only the classes being announced for the W I Open Produce & Handicrafts show taking place in the Village Hall Saturday 14^th September 2013. That's bloody what!

If that wasn't enough which it is, there is more. A tale of revenge, retribution, unfinished business, call it what you will.

Let’s just say me and the blue rinsed old dears of the Women’s Institute have got previous!

More of that later.

You may have rightly gathered that Village life is very quiet and uneventful, putting aside the perennial swingers nights, car keys in the middle and all that.

Our Village doesn’t have a pub, this wasn’t a consideration when we were buying I was pretty much tee total at that time, nowadays I’m never more than 3 feet from alcohol at any given time.

There’s no shop, with the phone box being utilised to sell eggs and produce from.

There’s Table Tennis club on a Monday, I’ve already said too much about this, the first rule of table tennis club is….

Think a darker Royston Vasey and you won’t go far wrong, we’ve lived here 8 years and people didn't talk to us for the first 5.

It’s a beautiful place to live, nice and quiet with a lovely park on our doorstep. This does throw up a slight problem for me at this time of year as the cows are back.

Those cud-chewing motherfuckers scare the bejeesus out of me. I’m sure they’ve got it in for me, I’m not being delusional. I think they can smell cow on me, or to put it bluntly, steak. They can sense the amount of meat I’ve consumed in my life and want payback. 

To be honest I don’t even know if they’ve got teeth. How stupid is that? I’m an adult who doesn’t know if cows have teeth. What I do know is that they’re bloody big and every time I set foot in the park they want to kill me.

Yes as Mrs. Vino says I’m a townie at heart and although I try I’m not great at country living, it’s taken me 8 years to succumb to buying a pair of wellies, now the sheep are worried, there’s no escape.

Anyway back to the show, obviously due to the lack of anything going on this is THE biggest event in the village diary.

There are 35 Classes with prizes awarded in each, 1^st, 2^nd & 3^rd, there is an overall Best in Show and a Reserve Best in Show.

These classes are varied and encompass, produce, flower, flower arranging, preserves, baking, handicraft and children’s classes.

The rules within each are very specific and you will be disqualified for not adhering to them. There are also some odd ones, a collection of herbs displayed in an unusual container no larger than 15 inches. I found out last year that having a few sprigs of rosemary hanging out of your arse is frowned upon, only being good enough for 3^rd prize.

To say it’s competitive is an understatement, people have committed unspeakable crimes for a 1^st prize certificate. One competitor carries a tape measure and reports her fellow competitors to the judges should they contravene any guidelines. My neighbour’s collection of 3 types of vegetables was thrown out because of her grassing him up and he has never entered again.

My issue is two second prizes, second prizes???? You’ve all seen my cakes there is no way they were second prize entries. No the only explanation is that judging is fixed, rigged, bent whatever you want to call it.

Two years running I’ve been beaten by an 80 year old, once in the Victoria Sponge class and the following year in the Gateaux Class. Now I’ll admit refusing to accept my certificate, like it was an MBE I was turning down as a political statement then upturning the baking exhibit table, may have been a slight overreaction but I cannot stand corruption.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, yes W I judges I’m pointing my finger at you. They’re the rural mafia, think Mary Berry meets Tony Soprano but meaner. It’s ok raising money for charity and all that but deep down I know there lies a dark underbelly.

This year will be different, this year will be my year. Watch this space a first prize certificate will be adorning the walls of Vino’s Kitchen. Even if I have to steal one.

The recipe this week should really be an entry for the show but there’s not a chance I’m sharing this. I know there is a very slim chance that out of the 3 people that read this any of you will be entering the show but I’m not willing to take the risk.

So here’s a favourite recipe of mine, it’s a Hugh Fearnley baked cheesecake with some of the steps removed. It’s amazing, although you can feel your arteries clogging with every mouthful.

New York Cheesecake

Ingredients

For the base


100g butter –15g softened and 85g melted


170g digestive biscuits


1 tbsp caster sugar


Pinch of flaky sea salt

For the filling


200g caster sugar


3 tbsp plain flour


Pinch of flaky sea salt


900g full-fat soft cream cheese, at room temperature 


200ml sour cream


2 tsp vanilla extract


3 large eggs, plus 1 yolk

Method

Heat the oven to 190C

Generously grease the base and sides of a 23cm springform cake tin with the soft butter, line the base with baking paper and butter the paper

Wrap the cake tin in several layers of tinfoil – it needs to encase the tin completely, with no holes or gaps, because you're going to cook the cheesecake in a bain-marie and you don't want any water to sneak in at the base and ruin it – I have only once succeeded to stop water getting in once and it hasn’t ruined it. Try a foil and oven proof cling film combo , it may be the only way

Next make the crust

Put the biscuits into a food processor with the sugar and salt

Pulse to fine crumbs

Pour the melted butter through the feed tube and pulse until the mixture looks like wet sand

Press it into the bottom of the cake tin in an even layer (use the bottom of a glass to smooth it out)

Bake for 10-12 minutes until firm, then leave to cool on a wire rack

Reduce the oven temperature to 170c

Whisk together the sugar, flour and salt

In a mixer or a large mixing bowl with a handheld electric mixer, beat the soft cheese until light and fluffy, scraping down the bowl and beaters a couple of times

With the mixer on low, beat in a third of the sugar mixture, then half the sour cream

Repeat, then beat in the last of the sugar mixture

Beat in the vanilla extract

Beat in the eggs one at a time, and the yolk, beating well after each addition, until smooth and creamy

Brush the inside of the cake tin above the biscuit base with more butter and place in a roasting tin

Pour the filling into the cake tin

Put the roasting tin in the oven and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the outside of the cake tin

Bake for an hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters, until just set in the centre

Let the cake cool

Refrigerate overnight

Run a thin-bladed knife around the sides of the tin to loosen any stuck edges, then release the sides of the tin

Carefully slide the cheesecake on to a plate and gently slide the parchment out from underneath – I have never achieved this, I slice the cake and making sure I don’t get the paper

Enjoy.

A

Bank Holiday Blues - Oreo Brownies

Aren't Bank Holidays brilliant? Are they fuck!

Never have been, picture the scene, a small boy with a really miserable look on his face having his picture taken stood in the pissing down rain next to his mum with Blackpool Pier providing the backdrop.

Then substitute that backdrop for Scarborough, Bridlington or Whitby, pretty much any seaside town within a 2 to 3 hour radius of Leeds.

This my friends is the story of my childhood, those Polaroids still exist as proof.

So this is what I don’t understand, why does a day off work compel families to do something? What's this need we have to be doing something, anything got to do something. Why does convention dictate that you can't spend a bank holiday doing what you want - bugger all?


It'd be great to do nothing wouldn't it? 

Imagine a whole extra day off work where you could actually relax and enjoy. Problem is you then you go in to work the next day and the conversation would probably go along the lines of : -

“What did you do yesterday?”

“Nothing, just stayed at home”

“That was a bit of a waste wasn’t it?”

They'd look at you like you'd just taken a dump on their living room floor.

Why?

Is it human nature that forces us to get into a car or onto a bus and travel somewhere to spend a miserable couple of hours with other people who have had the same ridiculous idea?


Just think about it rationally, if someone asked you the following would you do it?

“Darling, how about tomorrow we sit in traffic for four hours, pay a fortune for shit food, have a massive argument on the way there and back and want to kill the kids within 30 minutes of leaving?”

“Sounds great, what time shall we set off?

“4am”


Of course you bloody wouldn't - but you do.

The Answer is we are all pursuing the Holy Grail of family life, that is - quality time, sharing common interests as a family the whole 'we wanna be together' syndrome. Bloody people on TV and in books giving us advice telling us we’ve got to have it, we can’t survive without it.

Well my interests are going to the football, playing golf and drinking beer. Fit that one into your family time Denise Robertson.

So obviously given my 39 year hatred of Bank Holiday outings we stayed at home this Monday.

Did we buggery. We went on a trip.

Cadbury World this was our day out and all I can say is wow. 

Against my preconception I actually found it interesting, the history, the chocolate making process, manufacturing and marketing etc.

They obviously glossed over the links to the slave trade and the Spanish massacre of the Mexicans to get the cocoa beans in the first place but hey who hasn’t changed the actual facts for a good story? *looks at shoes*

The wow really comes from the amount of chocolate they try and push on you, like some crack dealer trying to get you to try it for the first time.

We had an allocated time of 9:40 so queued up to enter, had our tickets scanned and were immediately furnished with 8 bars “to start with” – to bloody start with? What the hell was I going to finish with? A diabetic coma?

Unsurprisingly the descendants of the Gloop Family, who seemed to be having a reunion there on the same day, had no issues consuming this amount before being presented with more and then more again.

Throw in some liquid chocolate as a taster and then the make your own concoction with jelly babies, biscuit or marshmallow and the result was  500 Mr. Kreosotes waddling around the gift shop buying the obligatory crap. This crap consisted of chocolate bars as big as your head.

Our trip down was actually ok, mainly as I’d had the foresight to break up the journey with a visit and overnight stay at Mrs. Vino’s Aunties.

The trip back however went as expected….

I’m an only child and have never had to share the back seat with anyone, being a short arse as well meant that I’d usually lie out and go to sleep across the full length of the seat. I’ve actually missed entire countries by being asleep.

However put N & M together in a car for 5 minutes and they bicker, 10 minutes and they start to prod and pinch, so taking it to its natural outcome an hour in they’re kicking the crap out of each other.

Now the perceived wisdom when disciplining children is to not threaten anything that you can’t follow through on. 

However I am a massive failure at this. The whole "if you keep doing that I’ll send you to your room routine" just doesn’t cut it for me. Yes I can follow it through but frankly it’s dull.

So here are some of my Top Punishment Threats – frankly you’ll see they’re completely useless but even if I do say so myself they are quite creative :-

1 – Arguing in the car - I’ll make you walk home from here (we were in Birmingham)

2 – Moaning about having a hair wash - I’ll get all your hair shaved off

3 – Arguing in the car – I’ll turn the car around and we’ll go home (we’d driven 3 hours and were 2 minutes from the destination)

4 – Not listening to me – I’ll give you away to another family

5 – Complaining about dinner – I’m going to throw your dinner in the bin and send you to live with the school cook if her food is so much better

Basically without shouting at them I’ve got nothing.

I’ll let you into a little parenting secret, though it may not be the pc approach, it works. Yes there may be a few tears occasionally but it never did me any harm.

The recipe this week had to be something with chocolate, I mean what else could it be.

This is a Lorraine Pascal recipe and although I usually don’t go in for all her baking made easy crap but this works really well.

Oreo Brownies

Ingredients

165g Butter plus extra for greasing

200g Dark Chocolate - grated or finely chopped

3 Eggs

2 Egg Yolks

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

165g Soft Light Brown Sugar

2 tbsp Plain Flour

1 tbsp Cocoa Powder

Pinch of Salt

154g Oreos, broken into quarters – or whatever chocolate biscuits you like

Icing Sugar for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 180c

Grease a 20cm Square baking tin with butter, then line with baking paper, the paper overlapping the sides a little

Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat

When the butter has melted, remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate

Leave to stand until the chocolate melts and then stir together

Using an electric whisk, whisk the eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together until the eggs begin to get light and fluffy

Add the sugar in two lots, whisking well between each. Try to pour it around the side of the egg mixture as you want to keep as much of the air that has been whisked in as possible

Whisk until the mixture becomes stiffer

Once the egg mixture is ready, pour the chocolate into it - again around

the sides trying to keep the air in

Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt and a third of the biscuits and stir until fully combined

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin

Scatter the remaining biscuits over the top, pressing them in slightly

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25–30 minutes. The middle should be very slightly gooey

Leave the brownies to cool in the tin - the top will sink and crack a little

Pull the brownies out using the overlapping paper and cut into squares

Dust with icing sugar

Enjoy.

A

NB – We did make it home unscathed and all talking to each other, we’ve still got 10 bars of chocolate left and I can’t wait until the 27^th for the next Bank Holiday, if you see me that day you might as well kick me in the nuts to complete the experience.

Their Method, My Madness - Ginger Honey Cake

The purpose of these ramblings, rants, blogs or embarrassing insights into our daily life as Mrs. Vino calls them, through gritted teeth, is to share my love for cooking and baking.

Any of you who follow me on twitter will see I hate this and hate that, I bake this and bake that and most of all drink this and drink all of that.

On Instagram you’ll be bored senseless with endless photos of what I’ve made and now on Vine you can see six-second videos of the cooking process.

It really is awfully dull and I can’t believe any of you actually look at or read any of it. To be honest I bore the arse off myself with it.

So this week to celebrate my passion for the culinary art I’ve decided to turn my attention back to recipes namely those of our celebrity chef friends.

I make no apologies for this, after all these people are meant to entertain, inspire and educate us.

However as Frank Costanza my favourite comic character says, "I've got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about it!"

A recent report in The Metro stated "TV chefs 'adding to obesity crisis by encouraging us to eat fatty dishes'," with similar stories blaming celebrity chefs for our bulging waistlines in much of the media.

I kind of wished the story had been in The Mail, I’m sure they would have taken it to the nth degree characterising Worrall Thompson as a carcinogenic gnome.

This is not the issue I have though. Anyone that has watched a cookery programme or owns a recipe book can’t be surprised to find out that when on a Saturday our James, oozing manliness, adds 14 packets of butter to a pan of double cream to make a sauce to pour over his extra Belly Belly Pork, it isn’t particularly good for you.

With Nigella, yes I'm once again fixating on her, it’s more a case of being slightly concerned as to where her hands have been. Watching her seductively dip a finger in to taste the food rather than using a spoon may stir ‘those’ feelings but I’m surprised the council haven’t been round to shut her down or at least given her kitchen a low hygiene rating. 

I’m waiting for the day she dispenses with using her fingers altogether and simply dunks her left breast in, come on we all know that’s where it’s heading.

Now if you don’t realise that eating this 'celebrity way' all the time isn’t healthy then you’re probably already 38 stone. I actually look forward to watching the future channel 5 documentary about you. I’ll sit there with baited breath waiting to see if they can remove your front window so they can airlift you to McDonalds for your breakfast while a soundtrack of Elbow’s One Day Like This plays, “throw your curtains wide and stuff 24 McMuffins down your gullet before 8:30."

Please be aware this blog isn’t sponsored by Maccy D’s and in the interest of fairness and balance there are other fast food chains available who can make you equally as fat should you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there every day.

No my issue isn’t with chefs making me fat it’s with their bloody recipes not working. They're meant to work, I've paid a fortune for all these posh ingredients.

A perfect Tag Line would be - You’ve seen the show, you’ve bought the book, you’ve thrown the bastard cake in the bin.

I’m obviously exaggerating a touch here, lumping all chefs in to this bracket, when really I have only one man in mind, Paul ‘the Hollywood’ Hollywood - I'm sure his real name is Paulo Avanti, he just fancied something altogether more ‘glitzy’.

I’ve tried to get on with his book, thinking I’d done something wrong. Was the oven too high? Am I using the right tin? Had I misread the recipe?

Yes I’m man enough to admit making a mistake or cooking something distinctly average. Case in point was this week I tried a new curry recipe out on the family. 

N marked it 4 out of 10 and then made me promise I would never ever make ‘that’ again. Everything in our house is bloody marked and judged out of ten these days, I blame Strictly, N loves it. I just find it a little off putting that Mrs. Vino has adopted this scoring system. I'm not telling you what I was given a 3 for the other day.

So with Paulo I have tried the same recipes numerous times and I’m glad to report that it’s definitely not me it’s him.

He makes it so bloody hard to dislike him though, sauntering on to our screens with his piercing eyes, chiseled good looks and well coiffured silver hair. Looking down the camera lens setting many a middle-aged woman’s knees a trembling. He might as well just open his shows with this line - “Before we get started I apologise for making you moist.”

Well Hollywood I’m glad something is because your bloody cakes aren’t.

One person I’d like to admonish from this piece and all future pieces I may write is Mother Delia. The woman can do no wrong. The funny thing is I have no ulterior motive with Delia, she’s one of the few women on TV that I don’t want to do unmentionables to. Maybe it’s because she’s a bit too Mumsy or Saintly. Now Mary Berry on the other hand, I’d give my left nut for a couple of minutes with her.

In my book Delia has indeed inspired a generation of people to cook and her recipes are foolproof. If she says it’s 100g of flour it’s exactly that, no more no less. As her tirade on the pitch at Carrow Road proved, you don’t fuck with Delia.

I toyed with the idea of using a Hollywood recipe and seeing if it worked for any of you. However I know one person who has no problem with them and I couldn’t bare the *smug face* comment that would undoubtedly follow.

So I’m going to go for a recipe from my current favourite baker – Dan Lepard. His recipes are usually in the Guardian each week. The fact that he’s replied to me on twitter, commenting that my cakes made with his recipes look good, may also have a little to do with this favouritism. What can I say, I’m fickle.

Ginger Honey Cake

This is quite a fiery little number with 3 types of ginger but not so much so that N & M didn’t enjoy it. To be honest though I’m yet to find a cake M doesn’t like.

Ingredients

300g Honey – runny

75g Unsalted Butter - Melted

50ml Sunflower oil

3 Medium size eggs

400g Stem Ginger – Chopped (the jar I bought was 350g and this had no ill effects on the cake)

2 cm Piece of Fresh Ginger - peeled and finely grated (this is what I like about Dan’s recipes they’re very prescriptive- most people would say a thumb sized piece but whose thumb?)

4 Teaspoons Ground Ginger

1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

250g Plain Flour

2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

Extra Butter

Extra Honey to glaze the cake

Loaf tin – anything you’ve got will do

Method

Line the tin with Baking Parchment

Set the oven to 170c or 150c on a Fan Oven

Put the Eggs, Honey, Oil and Butter in to a bowl and beat until it is smooth and everything is incorporated. I used a hand whisk.

Stir in the Stem and Grated Gingers plus the spices. Finally add the flour and baking powder.

Stir really well the spoon the mixture in to your tin.

You then want to lay a thin line of butter centrally down the length of your cake. I cut a thin strip off the end of a pack of butter then cut that in half, repeating until the length of the cake was covered. Apparently this butter technique forces the cake to crack along this line and gives you an even bake.

Put the cake in the oven for 70-80 minutes, don’t touch it before 70 minutes as this cake will collapse if you as much as look at it wrongly.

Test it with a skewer after 70 minutes and it should come out clean. Mine was done after 70 minutes and didn’t need any extra.

The cake may look a little burnt on top – mine didn’t.

While it’s still warm brush the top with some honey to glaze and soften the crust.

Enjoy.

A