Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

A couple of months ago, Monkey Girl’s very generous father gave us a shoulder of frozen venison.

It was humungous. I popped it into the freezer and would open the door occasionally, stare at it, and then close the door again. It took me several weeks of deep breathing to build up my chi enough to tackle it.

I was keen to roast it, but was concerned that it would dry out too much. Most instructions say to roast it quickly and serve it rare, but my Pete is suspicious of game meats at the best of times, and he was never going to eat a barely cooked one.

So…I took a deep breath and adapted the Jamie Oliver lamb shoulder recipe that we’d made several times before. It worked a treat! I wrapped the venison in strips of streaky bacon and laid it in an oiled pan over two onions that had been cut into eighths. 100mls of water was added to the pan and then it was covered in a double layer of thick, oiled foil and baked at 175C (no fan) for four hours…

After four hours, I uncovered the pan and let it roast for a further 45 minutes until the bacon had crisped up. There were oodles of pan juices which Pete turned into a thin gravy…

The meat was incredibly dark and very tender. And despite how the photo below looks, it wasn’t dry at all. Between five of us (Monkey Girl stayed for dinner), we managed to eat half the shoulder. It was absolutely delicious – even Pete had seconds…

The following day, I turned most of the remaining meat into a pie filling, cooking it with peas, a little water and the remaining gravy. It was topped with our lard pastry, but the boys smashed it and I didn’t get a chance to take a photo. It looked like this, only without the stars…

As I was making the pie filling, I kept back 200g of the meat to make a barley soup on day three…

This came together very simply, using the few vegetables I had in the fridge and freezer…

• 200g roasted venison, chopped
• ½ cup pearl barley, washed
• 1 onion, peeled and diced
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 potato, peeled and chopped
• a handful of frozen peas
• 1 litre water
• 2 teaspoons Massel beef stock powder
• splash of Worcestershire sauce
• light olive oil
• salt and pepper

I fried the chopped onion, carrot and potato in a little light olive oil in our Emile Henry clay pot, then added the water and stock powder. The barley and venison was added, along with the Worcestershire sauce, and the pot was brought to a gentle boil for an hour or so. The frozen peas went in after the first half an hour or so of cooking. Once the barley had swollen, I seasoned with a little salt and pepper. I think this would work with other leftover roast meats as well. It was simple and very delicious!

. . . . .

Our venison shoulder fed us for three meals and not a scrap was wasted. It was a great treat to have such wonderful, healthy meat to cook with!

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It was my darling friend Carol’s birthday last week, so I made her a box of treats.

I filled it with her favourite chestnut flour brownies, dark hazelnut praline chocolates, roasted hazelnut amaretti, and chocolate chip cookies.

The cookies are an old favourite, but this time I made them in two sizes. I’ve tweaked the methodology a bit as well…

The secret is to start with cold butter, and then to let the dough rest in the fridge overnight. This ensures the cookies won’t spread too much when baked. Oh, and watch the egg size – large eggs are good, but huge jumbo ones will result in a sloppy dough. I shaped my cookies with icecream scoops – a regular sized one and a small one that I normally use to make truffle centres.

These quantities make a double batch for sharing, but the recipe works perfectly well halved…

• 330g plain flour
• 70g bread or bakers flour
• ½ tsp fine sea salt
• 240g white sugar
• 200g brown sugar
• 250g unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
• 2 large (59g) eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract (I used homemade)
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), sifted
• 300g semisweet chocolate callets (Callebaut 811, 54% cocoa)
• 100g bittersweet chocolate callets (Callebaut 70% cocoa Sao Thome Origin)
• 200g bake stable dark choc chips (Callebaut 44% cocoa baking sticks, broken into small pieces)

Note : As you can see, there is a very high ratio of chocolate to flour (3:2). I use all dark in my cookies, but please use any combination you prefer. Try to use the best chocolate you can get your hands on!

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the cold butter and sugars together, until they form a grainy paste.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla until just combined. Do not overmix.

2. In a separate large bowl, stir together the flour, salt and sifted bicarbonate of soda (it’s important to sift the bicarb, or you’ll get bitter lumps in the finished cookie). Add the chocolate bits to the flour and stir to combine. Add the whole lot to the batter and mix until just incorporated. It’s important not to overmix at any stage, or the cookies will flatten out while baking.

3. Cover the bowl and pop the dough into the fridge overnight to chill. These cookies are notorious spreaders, and chilling them helps to minimise this.

4. Preheat oven to 150C (with fan). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

5. Scoop balls of cold dough and place them on the lined trays, about 10cm apart. The dough should be quite stiff. If you’re using the larger 5cm scoop, flatten the bottoms out a little (so they sit on the tray like half domes); for the smaller cookies, shape the dough into small round balls (around the size of a melon ball). It’s best to bake large and small ones separately because of the different baking times.

6. Bake the large cookies for 16-18 minutes until golden brown, rotating the trays once during the baking time. Bake the small cookies for about 10-12 minutes, rotating once at the 8 minute mark. The cookies are done when they move a bit on the tray when gently pushed. Experiment to see how you like them – a slightly shorter time will result in more fragile cookies with a wafery crumb, a minute or so longer and the cookies will be chewier, more robust and store better.

7. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to sit on the trays for a minute or so. Instead of transferring them onto a wire rack to cool, I prefer to carefully drag the sheet of parchment with all the cookies on it off the tray and onto a cold bench. This allows the melted chocolate to reform before the cookies are moved.

The big and little cookies will keep well for several days in airtight containers…

We love these – they’re less doughy than most chocolate chip cookies, which makes them a bit fiddlier to make, but much easier to eat!

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