June 2020

I don’t do many puddings but one I can make is a crumble. The great thing about a crumble is you can use whatever fruit is available, and mix it up to suit your taste (or the contents of your fridge or fruit bowl). Apples (eating or cooking ones), plums, pears, gooseberries, and rhubarb – all of these are great in crumbles.

And making a crumble topping is also dead easy and again, you can make it with whatever there is in your cupboards – well almost!

Today I made a plum and apple crumble because that’s what I had: 4 plums and 3 largish red eating apples. I used a mixture of flour, porridge oats, ground almonds, nuts, sugar and butter to make the crumble topping. Here’s how I did it.

First, wash you hands! 🙂

You will need:

A saucepan, a largish mixing bowl, a baking tray, and an oven proof dish to cook the crumble in.

Start with the fruit.

Peel and core the apples and chop or slice them fairly thickly (about 3/4 cm). Next cut the plums in half around the stone, twist and you should have two halves, one with a stone in, the other without. Cut the stone half carefully to extract the stone (if they are very ripe it will come out more easily). Discard the stone and slice the plums into quarters.

Place the fruit into the saucepan and give it a squeeze of lemon juice. Lemon juice stops the fruit discolouring and it also acts as seasoning. Sprinkle over some sugar – you can use granulated sugar, or caster sugar, but I prefer some light brown soft (muscovado) sugar. How much is up to you, but better to start with less and taste it later to see if it wants some more.

Add a splash of water and put it on a low heat for about 10-15 minutes. You are aiming to soften the fruit not completely cook it. NB: it isn’t necessary to pre-cook the fruit like this but I like to give it a helping hand, especially if it quite hard (like my plums are).

At the end of the process you should have some just soft fruit with a lovely sweet cooking liquid (DON’T throw this away!), so leave it to cool while you make the crumble.

You can find recipes for crumble online if you like but the principle I follow is a mix of dry ingredients with butter and sugar. Making crumble is a bit like making pastry, except you don’t add water to bind it all together. In fact it’s a lot easier than making pastry!

Get you bowl and start to add ingredients. You can measure if you have scales, or guesstimate if you don’t.

I started with 100g of flour (I had gluten free plain flour but ordinary plain flour or self-raising would be just as good). Then I threw in 50g of porridge oats and 50g of ground almonds, and large handful of chopped nuts (almonds and hazelnuts because I had them, but walnuts or pecans would work too).

NB: You can make crumble with just flour, or just oats, but I like the mix of different textures and flavours.

Now I added 75g of muscovado sugar (again add more if you have a sweet tooth) but bog standard white sugar would work (you might need less though because its sweeter). Finally I added about 100g of cubed unsalted butter (salted butter is just as good) and a pinch of salt (see below, left).

Wash your hands again and then mix everything together with your fingers until is looks, well, mixed and crumbly.

Ok, now its time to put it all together.

Set your oven to about 180 (electric) or gas mark 4.

Get your oven dish and spread the fruit in the bottom of it. It should mostly fill this with about an inch to spare. Don’t waste that juice, pour it over the fruit and just check the taste. If it is a bit too sharp sprinkle on a bit more sugar, if it’s too sweet, add a squeeze of lemon. Add a little more liquid (water – or some apple juice if you have it) if there’s not much left in the fruit.

Now sprinkle your crumble mixture over the fruit evenly so it is all covered. If you are feeling particularly indulgent you can dot a little bit more butter over the crumble but you don’t need to.

Place your ovenproof dish on a baking tray (to catch the oozing fruit juices later!) and bake in the middle of the over for 40-45 minutes. You can check it after about 35 minutes to make sure the top isn’t burning. Since you’ve par-cooked the fruit it shouldn’t take too long. What you are looking for is to see that the top is nicely browned and the fruit is beginning to bubble up through the crumble.

All you need now is some custard, some cream, or ice cream (or all three!), a bowl and a spoon and there you have it: comfort crumble to chase away the lockdown blues!

Enjoy!

Drew

This recipe is pretty easy and pretty healthy but also quite delicious! If you are missing your KFC or Nandos this might be a good way to pretend we’re all out of lockdown.

For this you will need:

A large frying pan, a meat tenderiser or rolling pin, some cling film, a spatula/cooking turner, and some bowls or plates.

These are your basic ingredients (serves 2):

2 chicken breasts (skins removed)

2 tablespoons of Plain flour

about the same of breadcrumbs (Panko crumbs are best but ordinary breadcrumbs will do)

1 egg

salt and pepper, and vegetable or sunflower oil for frying.

Ok, start by washing your hands. NB whenever you handle chicken (or any raw meat) you must wash your hands and not use the same utensils or other equipment (such as chopping boards) that you use for something else. Or wash them after placing meat on them.

Start by prepping the chicken breasts. Take each one and lightly wrap it in a piece of cling film. Don’t wrap it too tightly as it needs space to expand.

Now for the fun bit.

Start bashing it with your meat tenderiser (or rolling pin) – not too violently; the idea is to flatten it out so it is about half to a centimetre thick (5-10mm). This will mean it cooks quickly when you fry it. Repeat with the other breast, set them aside still wrapped in clingfilm.

Now take three bowls or plates and add flour )add some seasoning to this) to one, beaten egg to the second, and breadcrumbs to the third. Set these out next to each other in a row.

First, take a breast, unwrap and dip it in the flour, coating both sides evenly.

Then quickly dip the floured breast in the egg, on both sides, before lifting it out and coating it in breadcrumbs. You can now set this aside on a clean chopping board or a large plate. Do the same with the other one.

You are now ready to cook but as this won’t take long you might want to set the table and sort out whatever is going to accompany your chicken.

I made a green salad with croutons (basically fry off some cubes of bread in a frying pan with a little olive oil, and add to lettuce, cucumber, celery and some tomatoes). Add a dressing if you like, or simply some lemon juice and olive oil.

Alternatively oven chips or rice would go well with this – its up to you!

Now, turn on the heat under your frying pan and add some oil. You need enough oil for the chicken to cook evenly in but this is shallow frying – don’t go mad with the oil. And be careful, NEVER leave oil on the heat unattended, it can catch fire!

When the oil is hot (a tip is to use a small piece of bread – drop it in and if it quickly starts to sizzle you are good to go) add the breast one by one. If your pan is small then do one at  a time.

Depending on the size of the chicken breasts these will take around 8-10 minutes to cook. Don’t have the gas or electric too high or all your will do is burn the oil and the breadcrumbs and not cook the meat.

After about 4 minutes check the underside of the chicken – is it turning a lovely golden colour? If it is flip it over (gently, don’t splash yourself) and cook the other side. When both sides are golden it should be done but there is a foolproof way to check.

Using a spatula/cooking turner) lift out the breast onto a chopping board and cut it in half. Is the meat still raw, or pink? If so it needs a minute or so more so pop it back in. If its white and there’s no sign of pink meat it is cooked. NB eating raw chicken is dangerous, don’t do it!

Now you plate it up, add a squeeze of lemon, and/or some salt and pepper, maybe serve with mayonnaise or ketchup, or whatever your relish of choice is.

And that’s it, fried chicken in less than 30 minutes. If you have it with a salad then its actually a pretty healthy dinner, if you add chips well, I’m not judging you!

Enjoy,

Drew