Pheasant Bombe and Marmalade Duck. A Week of Meals 005/6

It's been a while since I did one of these 'what I've been eating' posts.  For this delay you have my unreserved apologies, but between preparing to move house, assorted birthdays and trips to darkest Hull, things have been getting on top of me a bit.  Indeed, all I have to remind me of what I've been eating are a load of pictures from my digital camera, which I just spent half an hour trying to figure out what dishes they were actually of.

Anyway, in the spirit of CSI : Soup Kitchen, I think I managed to figure it out, so here we go

Pheasant Bombe

This is an Italian recipe from a book of 'celebration dishes' and it was meant to be pigeon, but we couldn't get hold of any of that particular bird on a trip to the butchers, so we decided to substitute pheasant instead.  It was baked in a sort of risotto, in a dish, and kind of resembles a steak and kidney pudding, but with a game surprise inside.  It got us thinking about what other fillings we could include in further bombes - rabbit seems like a good choice.

Asian Mushroom Risotto

Risotto using rice is my enemy, as I may have mentioned before.  However, using pearl barley it is a dream, easy to cook, tasty and with a really nice texture (also, none of the swearing that accompanies me trying to get the rice cooked perfectly)  I spent quite a bit on various exotic mushrooms, including straw, enoki, shitake, oyster and king oyster but it was worth it as they had such a rich, almost meaty flavour.  It's almost (But not quite) enough to make a boy turn vegetarian...

Fennel and Leek Gratin with Roasted Squash and Sage

This was a veg box meal, as I have started calling them, using up lots of vegetables.  I often think that vegetable dishes feel like side dishes in search of a steak and this was no exception, apart from combining two of them with some couscous made for a perfectly satisfactory meal

Duck with Marmalade

It was Mrs Soup's birthday and as is the time-honoured tradition in our house,  she got to pick what dish she would eat on her special day.  She is a big fan of duck, which was combined with some home made marmalade and then just roasted.  Which would all be fine, I was regularly basting to make sure the meat didn't dry out and it was looking amazing, smelling even better, when I realised that I WAS COOKING THE DUCK UPSIDE DOWN!!! How did I even do that?  I have no idea, but I spent two hours making sure the bird was perfect, only to has wasted my time as the breasts hadn't been basted at all...

All was not lost however, as it was perfectly tasty, but the swearing I had avoided whilst cooking the risotto returned with a vengeance after realising my mistake with the duck...

Orange, Lemon and Brandy Marmalade

In preparation for this week's BakeOff, I thought I'd post my recipe for marmalade. This was my first bash at making marmalade, and it was so successful that the resulting jars made it into our Christmas hampers, along with assorted jams and Chocolate and ginger biscotti.

(That's Crab apple and Chilli Jelly on the left, Bilberry jam in the middle, and a jar of marmalade on the right. And all artistically wrapped below...)

This recipe uses 1.6kg of fruit - you might want to reduce this as I found this amount filled even our biggest pot and there were a few tense moments during the boiling stage! It also made a huge number of jars - far more than any of my other batches of preserves - not that I'm complaining - apart from giving some away as presents I now have gorgeous homemade marmalade to last me through the next year!
You'll need :

1.2kg Oranges
400g Lemons
2.2kg Sugar
2.5l Water

Some brandy (you decide how much!)

Juice the fruit, retaining the peels. Chop the peel into chunks (fine or thick depending on how you like your marmalade!). Place the juice, peel, sugar and water into a large saucepan and warm to dissolve the sugar.

Bring to the boil and cook until it reaches setting point (test by cooling a few drops on a chilled plate). This stage smells absolutely fabulous! Once it has reached setting point, cool a little then stir in some brandy (I added about 100ml - will probably use more next time as I didn't notice the flavour that strongly). Pour into jars, and allow to set.

Chocolate and Orange Meringue Roulade

I was extremely lucky to receive a copy of Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes this Christmas, and can't wait to join in the Weekly Bake Off! While perusing, I came across a recipe which has already been covered by the Weekly Bakers, and with some leftover egg whites and double cream in mind, I decided to whip up something based on the Raspberry Meringue Roulade (pg 175, and see the Weekly Bakers' fantastic looking versions here).

For my version I halved the mix, added some cocoa to make a chocolate meringue, and used homemade marmalade mixed with cream for the filling.

Considering this was thrown together in 5 minutes and the only things I measured accurately were the caster sugar and the baking tray (to ensure I was using an appropriate size to get the thickness right), I'm amazed by just how well it worked...

Here is the meringue just after it came out of the oven - it puffed up nicely :

And here is the freshly rolled roulade :


According to Mr Soup, it looks rather like a sand worm from Dune :

This is being served as dessert this evening with our traditional (3rd year running!) New Year antisocial celebration where we stay in, drink bubbly, eat snacks and watch trashy action movies! Happy New Year to you all - I hope you're doing something equally enjoyable (to you) to see in 2012! We'll be back in the new year with all sorts of excitement - pasta machine (responsible for the leftover egg whites), tagine dish, jam thermometer and various cookbooks were discovered under the tree this year, so there will definitely be more than soup on the menu!