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Showing posts from November, 2013

Caghuse Or Something A Bit Like It

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The cuisine of Picardy is not the best-known or trendiest style of French cooking but I don’t care. I like it anyway. The dishes tend to be straightforward, made with familiar ingredients and are full of strong, comforting flavours. Admittedly, some of them can also be pretty rich and a stranger to the notion of portion control. Caghuse is one of the more restrained Picardy recipes. It’s often served cold in Picardy but, while there’s nothing wrong with that,  I think it’s nicest served hot on a cold day. There are different ways of spelling the name of this dish and there are many different ways to make it too. Essentially it’s a one pot dish of slow-cooked pork with onions and vinegar but there are plenty of possible variations along the way. I use chicken stock and cider but beef stock and beer can be used instead. You could also add some herbs to the dish, if you fancy – sage and thyme work well. Strictly speaking, the pork should be cut from the leg and should be on the bone, bu

Black Sticky Gingerbread – A Random Recipe

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It's probably just another one of my odd ideas, but gingerbread always seems to be the perfect thing to take on a country walk, especially in the autumn or winter. For some reason, though, it's something that I rarely bake. On this occasion I had no choice since it's the recipe that came up as my random selection for this month’s Random Recipe challenge hosted by Dom over at Belleau Kitchen . The book that I randomly selected this month is ‘Leith’s Book of Baking’ by Prue Leith and Caroline Waldegrave published back in the 1990s. I don’t think this book is in print any longer, but it consists of recipes taken from the Leith’s Cookery Bible, which is still available. I've rarely used this book, but I now realise that there’s no good reason for that. This turned out to be a lovely, moist gingerbread with the blackness coming from a healthy dose of treacle. You can find the recipe  here . The original recipe calls for 1½ hours baking time uncovered followed by 1 hour