Cooking England County by County: Cambridgeshire: Duke Of Cambridge Pudding

 I´ve been blogging my way round England county by county to get to know more English regional dishes and recipes to prove that English cooking is not quite as bad as everyone makes out and that it is more varied than you might think . However, with time constraints, I haven´t got much further than Cambridgeshire!!

I discovered this Duke of Cambridge pudding that I´d never even heard of,let alone tried, and as I had mixed peel, which I needed to use up as I hadn´t got round to making a Christmas cake last Christmas, decided to go ahead and make it. Despite it´s name, Duke of Cambridge Pudding is more like a tart or pie rather than a pudding.

I followed this recipe by Pasta Grannies substituting the ready to roll shortcrust pastry for my homemade shortcrust pastry and I think I halved the recipe. The end result is a sticky, gooey tart which reminds me a little of a treacle or syrup tart. It´s quite rich and sweet though so only one helping is enough! It´s delicious served warm and lots of cream...even better I imagine with a dollop of clotted cream or thick double cream!!

Eat More Variety Alphabet Challenge: Avocado: Avocado, Bacon & Poached Egg On Toast

Thought it was about time for another avocado recipe before moving on to the letter B of the Eat More Variety challenge. I´ve seen a lot of avocado on toast recipes popping up everywhere lately so I thought I´d try it as it seems a perfect thing for lunch or in my case, tea or supper  and appears to be quite healthy. Unfortunately, I didn´t manage to persuade my husband & daughter to try this dish so it didn´t suceed in getting them to eat a more varied diet, which is one of the whole points of this challenge!!So, for now the winning dish is the creamed chicken & avocado but I enjoyed this tasty suppertime treat and avocado is going to become if not a staple, a more frequent food in our diets...I just have to figure out how to sneek it into my husband´s and daughter´s meals!!!I´ll be giving some of these avocado recipes a go too.I´d love to hear any of your favourite avocado recipes and hopefully some of you might participate in this month´s letter B challenge.

After looking at various avocado on toast recipes and a trial avocado on toast recipe, which was a bit of an epic fail, I came up with this recipe as I had some leftover bacon bits, or lardons, that needed using up and based on a recipe for Avocado & Onion sandwich in The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, came up with the following:

Ingredients: (1 person)
2 slices of wholemeal(or white,according to preference) bread
1 small-medium ripe avocado
leftover bacon bits or lardons
2 eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
2 tbsp cream or milk (optional)
Olive oil


1.Mash the avocado with lemon juice, cream and paprika.
2. Poach egg in some boiling water and a splash of malt vinegar
3..Fry the bacon or lardons in some olive oil
4. While bacon is frying, toast the slices of bread
5. Place mashed avocado on top of toasted bread, then the poached egg and place the bacon on top.

I actually only made 1 egg as you can see in the photo and just grated some cheese on top of the avocado & bacon on my second slice of bread but I much prefered the avocado on toast with the poached egg...it just seemed to have more flavour with the runny egg yolk merged with the bacon

Cooking England County by County: Buckinghamshire: Buckinghamshire Stokenchurch Pie

It´s been a while in coming but finally I have got round to cooking the next county,Buckinghamshire.

Buckinghamshire is in South East England and is a largely populated county with heavy industry and rich in agriculture.I suppose that in the past farming might have been predominant in this county and this is reflected in the dishes typical of this county although I haven´t found many dishes from this county. One of the traditional recipes, I came aross is Buckinghamshire Stokenchurch Pie, which I´d never heard of nor tried and the very sound of it intrigued me. A pie filled with meat, macaroni and hard boiled egg!!Ummm, it didn´t sound very convincing to me so highly skeptical,I decided to make it.
I´m certainly glad I did though as it is surprisingly tasty!! The only complaint I had with it,is that it was slightly on the dry side....I´d have liked a bit more gravy style sauce in the pie...although that might mean risking a soggy bottom(and we can´t have that, can we?) Also, I could hardly get my daughter to try it, despite being one of the main reasons I am making dishes from the different counties in England so my daughter can experience and learn about English food & culture!!! I have to learn how to make smaller pies as well though as there was far too much for the two of us and we ended up stuffed and feeling like: Who ate all the pies?!!! This recipe is also good because it uses up leftovers and so fulfills my New Year´s Resolution of reducing food waste.

I refered to the following recipes from the Green Chronicle and The Foody and sort of amalgamated the two and came up with the following recipe:
 Ingredients:
(for shortcrust pastry):
200g plain flour
100g cold butter
1/4 tsp salt
6-8 tsp cold water
Filling:
270g leftover cooked lamb(you could use any meat),minced or finely chopped (I actually found that this was too much and would probably use about half the amount if it´s only for 2!)
55g cooked macaroni (again I found this too much for just for the two of us and would use about 25g next time!)
145ml beef stock (I used an Oxo cube but you could use leftover stock or gravy from the meat)-The cooked meat soaked up the stock very quickly so I would use more next time!)
2 hard boiled eggs
salt & pepper to taste

Method:
1. Prepare the shortcrust pastry by sieving the flour and salt together, then rub in the butter till it looks like breadcrumbs, then add the water tsp by tsp and mix to form a dough(add more water if it doesn´t come together) either leave in fridge for 30 mins or use straight away.
2. Roll out pastry thinly and line a pie dish with it.
3. Add stock to minced meat and then add cooked macaroni and place in the pie.
4. Slice the hard boiled eggs and place on top of meat mixture, then cover eggs with more meat filling and season with salt & pepper.(I actually forgot to season it but it was still tasty!)
5.Roll out remaining pastry to make a lid and crimp the edges, make some holes in the centre of the pie to allow steam to escape.
6. Bake in a preheated oven at 190ºC for 30 minutes until pastry is a golden brown.