Cooking England County by County: Cornwall: Cornish Fairings

I seem to be abandoning this blog more and more as I just don´t have the time to write these days. However, I am still just as keen to cook around England,Spain and around the world little by little and it is time to visit the county of Cornwall. 

Despite being a very beautiful part of England ,I have never visited Cornwall and can you believe it I have never tried one of it´s most famous dishes, Cornish Pasties so I´ll definitely be having a go at making one. I decided to kick off Cornwall to a traditional sweet recipe,not so well-known, called Cornish Fairings,which I´d also never tried. Cornish Fairings are basically a gingerut biscuit and are fairly simple to make and oh so worth it. I used this recipe from Tin And Thyme´s blog but used white flour. Next time I´ll definitely be trying them with wholemeal flour for a slightly healthier version. I did cut down on the butter and sugar,which praobaly resulted in a more chewier and softer biscuit,more like an American cookie rather than a harder, crispier gingernut texture. The problem is trying to stop at one....these biscuits didn´t last very long in our house as we soon polished them off!

 

Cook & Learn About the World: Angola: Chicken Muamba

II first started adding these posts as a way to explore dishes from other countries in an attempt to widen my children´s palettes and also teach them about different countries around the world. Life however got iin the way and cooking the world kind of got put on a backburner...until now...when again my interest iin trying out new dishes,flavours and ingredients has been piqued.

 So, finally, we move onto Angola, an African country, which I  know little about including it´s cuisine. I drew on Global Table Adventure¨s recipe for Angolan Muamba Chicken Stew  for my inspiration, with only a few tweaks to the recipe. Instead of using a  whole chicken, quartered, I used half a chicken, quartered, which was plenty for the four of us. I also only used 2 tomatoes and 200g pumpkin. As I cannot buy okra where I lived , I substituted it for 100-200g courgette. I don´t like very spicy food and as we couldn´t buy any chilli peppers, I omitted it from the recipe. I also added less chilli powder,about 1/4 of a teaspoon as opposed to 1 1/2 teaspoons. As red palm oil is not very healthy and also because I cut down the amount of chicken and vegetables, I used only about half a 1/4 measuring cup of red palm oil ,which I then filled the rest of the 1/4 cup with mild olive oil.I also added salt & pepper to season the stew.

The result was a tasty chicken stew, with the chicken meat being very tender. However, I think it did lack a little in flavour for me so I would add more of the chilli powder and/or the chilli peppers if I were to make it again!