Cheesy pumpkin muffins

Herewith another of the trio of recipes "cuisine express" by Flavie Degrave that I found in a magazine, the name of which I no longer recall, in the physotherapists' waiting room. Muffins with Beaufort cheese and red onion squash - simple enough store-cupboard ingredients, we have a couple of potimarrons left and several cheeses in the fridge, "certainly what it takes to make [this recipe]".

The original recipe - muffins with beaufort cheese and red onion squash

So here's cheesy pumpkin muffins.

Shared between twelve cases, they look tasty but rather miserly

• I substituted St Nectaire, which we had lots of in the freezer, for the Beaufort which is 22 euros a kilo on promo. Both are a "cooked" cheese with a soft but firm texture and a distinctive flavour. Both have AOP status (several paragraphs deleted here burbling on about "patrimoine" and "terroir", both untranslatable unless you are allowed to include a 12-page essay).
• The recipe says "half a potimarron". Now that's a moveable feast: a potimarron (a.k.a. Red Onion /  Red Kuri / Uchiki Kuri squash) can easily weigh a kilo and a half. I used a small butternut squash which yielded 300 grammes prepared weight of pumpkin flesh and it was too much. No more than 250g, let's say 200g.
• I split the mixture between 12 muffin cases. The muffins did not rise much, with so much pumpkin to flour, and they looked lost in the paper cases, to which they stuck firmly. The recipe makes six standard muffins and I recommend using silicon moulds rather than paper cases. 
• I had no fresh chives, so I used a sprinkling of dried lovage; dried thyme could add an interesting dimension. 
• I added a pinch of cayenne. Naughty, but nice.
• Most of the time was taken up with the chopping. Once it was all done, the recipe is a doddle. 
• After the recommended cooking time of 25 minutes using a fan-assisted oven the muffins were not done and I gave them another 10 minutes. They really needed a bit longer - I'd say don't use fan assist to avoid burning the top. It will take longer to cook the same mixture divided into six instead of twelve, but the removal of the paper case will speed things up ... the square on the hypotenuse ... windage ... let g be the acceleration due to gravity... oh, give it another ten minutes and poke one with a skewer!

Next time I'll do this mix as six muffins

Muffins with Beaufort / St Nectaire cheese and red onion squash

Ingredients
200g peeled potimarron, butternut or Crown Prince squash, cut into small dice
80g Beaufort or St Nectaire cheese, cut into small dice
10 leaves chives, rinsed and snipped into short lengths
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
50 g onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 eggs
110g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
65ml olive/sunflower oil
50ml milk
Nutmeg
Freshly ground pepper
A pinch of salt

Method
Soften the onion and garlic in a tablespoon (15 ml) of the oil for 3 minutes. Stir in the pumpkin, sprinkle with pepper, put on the lid and let it cook for 5 minutes. Add the chives or other herbs of your choice, stir and allow the mixture to cool (immerse the bottom of the pan in cold water if necessary).. Meanwhile, lay out six silicone muffin moulds on a baking sheet, or line 6 muffin moulds with greaseproof paper or muffin cases.

Heat the oven to 180°C. Beat the eggs. Putting the pumpkin and the cheese to one side for a minute, mix the remaining wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry ingredients in another. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and give a good stir, but don't overmix or your muffin will be hard on the outside. Add the pumpkin, then the cheese. Share out the mixture between the muffin cases. Cook for 25-40 minutes until done.

Serve at room temperature.

Very tasty, very very tasty ....

And the last recipe - brouillade d'oeufs aux cèpes (scrambled eggs with ceps / bolete mushrooms) - is exactly what it says on the tin. Or in my case, jar.

Spuds and leeks and stuff

There's not much left in the potager at the moment - just leeks, rather unhappy chard and broccoli that can't be expected to produce until March. One hopeful sign is the emergence of the first broad beans (Aquadulce aux longues cosses), just in time to be hit by a wave of cold weather. I am buoyed up by the arrival from Jacques Briant of a bag of Hercules onion sets Hoorah! These were removed from their bag, picked over and a couple with mould on removed, counted (199 of them), put back in the bag and hung in a cool place. They will be planted as soon as the weather allows.

So it's turn to the store cupboard and add leeks to whatever you find. Something that emerges in abundance is potatoes. So it's leek and potato soup, cheesyleekymash, colcannon and ... er .... turn to the internet for inspiration. I came across this recipe for cheesy leek and potato pie, from Good Food Magazine of March 2006, on the BBC Good Food site, and went so far as to make my own short crust pastry, having learned at this advanced age to use the food processor.

Pie about to be broached.

My father made the best shortcrust pastry I have ever tasted, mainly because he had huge hands and rather a poor circulation so his fingers were always cold. It was as though he waved his hands once through the fat and flour and suddenly it was all perfectly rubbed in. The pastry turned out light, never hard or leathery, firm but crumbly, crisp but not dry, and his apple pies were what dreams are made of. He used self-raising flour instead of plain, as well. I used dad's recipe for shortcrust pastry - 4 ounces of flour to a scant 3 ounces of fat, half lard / half butter or marge - dad would use Stork - and upped it by a factor of 3 to get the equivalent of a 500gm pack of paté brisé. And don't forget the pinch of salt.

Part pie

I weighed the flour (artisanal farine demi-complet, the equivalent of "brown flour") into the food processor jug, and added a pinch of salt. Then I cut small cubes of lard (saindoux) and unsalted St Hubert soft unsalted (doux) margarine,  dropping them into the flour until I had four ounces of each. The mixture  was pulsed in the processor to the texture of fine breadcrumbs (almost instantaneous - so much better than rubbing it in, it doesn't get warm from sticky fingers and much less mess). I switched the processor to slow but steady, poured about 55-60ml of cold water in a steady stream onto the whizzing blades and watched it convert the breadcrumbs into a smooth lump. The only tricky bit was to get the lump out - this is just as much pastry as our processor can take. I patted the lump into a ball, wrapped it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge while I made the filling.

I cannot improve on Barney Desmazery's recipe for the filling and baking of the pie, so I'll refer you to that again. Except I upped the potato a bit. Actually I used more like 900 grammes (2lb) of Red Duke of York potatoes. The red skin of the potato added a touch of extra colour.

Pie and scramble

It was served with Black Tuscan kale scramble. Chop up two portions of kale, cook in boiling salted water, beat an egg in a small jug and pour it over the cooked and drained kale while it's still good and hot, season, stir until the kale is well coated and the egg is cooked. We used the spare egg wash left over from making the pie.

This is a very satisfying pie for a cold day, and it would make excellent picnic food, too.
 

Fromageopoly

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the table.... something new comes out and bites you. The latest idea to give a whole new meaning to the term "cheese board" was highlighted in Phillippe Samzun's article "Cheese? It's childs play!" in La Nouvelle République of 15 December 2014. Here's what he said.

A cheese maker from Fondettes has created a board game dedicated to the cheeses of France. A sort of Monopoly in soft cheese for children and adults.

Play and learn! Photograph - La Nouvelle République

Charles de Gaulle used to say that a country possessing 365 different sorts of cheese was by  its very nature ungovernable. Today you can find 1,200 ... how well do you think President Hollande can get away with it?

Cheeses are the speciality of Jean-Louis Bulté. This chap lives in St Maure - which places him already in the lap of destiny - and he runs three creameries at Fondettes, Bléré and Loches. (*) Creameries which, from now on, will be selling a home made board game dedicated "to this jewel in the crown of our national heritage".

In the matter of board games, his wife got there before him. "She's mad about history, and she created Histofoly, and it's now sold at the Chateaux of Chenonceau and Amboise. JTS, a games producer in Joué-les-Tours, encouraged us to do it again."

It must be said that, in this matter, there is what to say and what to do. Expert in AOP (**),  Jean-Louis Bulté is unstoppable on the subject of cheeses with a powdery crust, pressed cheeses cooked and uncooked, soft cheeses with a washed crust, blue cheese, goat cheese and the "petits laits" name given uniquely to Corsican cheeses. The proliferation of brands is a result of the work put in by the dairy industry to try to soften the blows of the economic difficulties they are encountering. This board game results from the same sort of logic.

"It's a game and educational at the same time. The principle is simple. You have to bring together, on one card, a whole family of cheese. The first to have filled their plate is the winner."

Getting there, but not a winner yet.
 Amazingly, the only cheese picture in my photo library -
a St Maure (left)  and a Pouligny soft goats cheese,
both from our neighbours at Pré,
served with love at La Promenade, Le Petit Pressigny in August 2012.
The hole in the St Maure is for the traditional straw.

In total, there are 640 questions, some of which are designed for children, colour cubes, puzzles, stories, with the possibility at the end of the day of becoming unbeatable on the subject of the cheesemaking, maturing, salting processes; an expert in raw milk; a know-it-all about PDOs (***). Aside from which, a player might just end up the possessor of a degree of competence ...in running France!

* La balade des fromages, 6, rue du Général-de-Gaulle, Bléré. La passion des fromages, 9 rue de la République, Fondettes, La crémerie du Château, rue Picois à Loches. 
** Appellation d'origine protégée.
*** Protected Designation of Origin.

The game is for sale for 19.90 € in the three shops.

Discovered treasures...

We have a barn full of boxes....
And amongst those boxes are ones containing beers....

I was searching for the box K39 containing the Moulinex Juicer for Susan and found a box with beers that had remained packed since leaving our cellar in Leeds.
I never found K39... it didn't exist!!
But it turned out that the juicer was in box K38... which wasn't on the list. They were amongst the last boxes to be packed and Pauline, who was attempting to supervise the contents of the boxes and record them.... was getting very frazzled!!

However, back to the beers discovered....
we decided to rescue a couple tonight.
Rescue?...
We lost a few bottles in the big freeze this February...
fortunately nothing that cannot be replaced...
but still a sticky waste!

So our evening meal was cream of pumpkin, carrot and tomato soup, bread, cheeses and beer.
Luverly!

The ones we chose were from Briscoe's Brewery in Otley, West Yorkshire.
Dr. Paul Briscoe started brewing commercially in 1998 having been made redundant... he had been brewing successfully on a non-commercial basis for years... making special beers for friends and colleagues... as well as 'special' bottled runs for the Fell Runners that Paul competes against... yes, he's a brewer with the runs!
The 'brewery' in his cellar was expanded... by using a garden shed for the messy first stages of the process, and then piping the wort down into the cellar for the fermentation and racking of the final result.
He has three 'core' brews, available in local pubs and at the Otley Beer Festival...

3 Peaks Ale (4.5% ABV) a strong pale premium bitter;
Chevin Chaser (4.3% ABV) a refreshing pale-coloured all malt bitter with a distinct hop finish.; 
Chevin Light (3.8% ABV) a classic "Yorkshire-styled" session bitter;

....all very tasty.

The beers we had tonight are:
Puddled & Barmy Ale (5.8% ABV) a sweetish, smooth dark old ale. [1998]

The crown cork on the bottle had rusted somewhat... and the beer poured into the jug on the flat side of petillant... so I served it in small wine glasses.... it was very nice despite being almost flat... answering to the above description perfectly... not bad for a bottle of beer that was 14 years old. It was dry enough not to be too slippery! The yeast was 'nailed' to the bottom of the bottle.

this was followed by:
Shane’s Shamrock Stout (4.5% ABV) a slightly less dry Irish-style stout with a hint of chocolate.[1999 - a special bottling for our wedding!!]

This bottle was in much better condition... and as you can see from the photograph had a good head... much dryer than the Puddled & Barmy. There is a hint of choclate... 
hold on I'll just try another sip... 
yes, because of the dryness, it does come across as an 80% cocoa mass bar. 
[Well, if wine writers want to go all descriptive so can I...] 
Seriously, I am drinking it as I type, and the flavour is of a very dry chocolate...  
the beer is much dryer than Guinness.
Pauline commented that we should have drunk it on our aniversary... 

oh well....  
only 40 days late... 
so I'll raise a glass to the Keighley Beer Festival where we met over the Foreign Beers counter. 
And now go and refill it!!
Why had these beers kept? The secret is in the bottle... both brews were on the yeast. Had the crown cork not rusted on the first bottle, it would have had a full head... not a vinho verde bubbliness.

The cheeses were Salers, Forme d'Ambert [blue] and two St.Maure Chevre logs... cheese goes very well with dark dry beers, but the Forme d'Ambert went with sables anglais... McVities Digestives.

There's a bit more about Paul's brewery here... it is somewhat out of date... the Bowling Green venture collapsed when Paul broke an arm fell running and couldn't brew... then the pub owner decided to retire and sold the pub to Weatherspoons... sadly, it is not what it was!!