Homemade Toffee Popcorn

This is a cheap alternative to packs of butterkist or cinema popcorns. It's easy to make, delicious and free of additives like lecithins and sulphites. When you make your own, you can use organic butter and fairly traded sugar and you are guaranteed not to get the stale tasting leftovers that cinemas seem to think it is acceptable to sell for £4 or more.

Measure out 75g of popcorn, pour a glug of light olive oil or other flavourless oil into a saucepan and chuck the corn in. Give it a quick stir to coat with the oil, put the lid on and leave it on a medium heat until the corn has all popped. Pour it out onto a large baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.

Depending on how many calories you want to consume, and how sweet you like your popcorn, either make the amount of toffee below or double it. The original recipe by Rachel Allen calls for twice the ratio of toffee to popcorn that I use.

Put 40g brown sugar, 40g butter, 2 tablespoons of golden syrup and a large pinch of salt into a saucepan. Bring to a simmer and keep it bubbling for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. I use a peice of greaseproof paper to occasionally drip some of the mixture on and test it, like jam, to see whether it will set.

Use a spoon to drizzle the toffee over the cooked popcorn and leave out to cool and harden slightly. The best thing to transport it in are those plastic containers you get with takeaways or any tupperware.

Links
Times article with a popcorn price peice at the bottom (145g popcorn = £4 at the cinema, 26p homemade)
Lecithin Wiki
Sulphite Wiki

Hedonethical Holidays: The Montagu Arms, Beaulieu (and Terrace Restaurant)

Anyone who follows this blog regularly (and I know from the stats page that it's not just my imagination, there are a few of you!) will have noticed there's been a bit of slacking going on this month.

This is because I went on holiday. As we're trying to live with hedonethics in mind, we extended these principles to our holiday this year. I'm not going to lie, it did "help" that the boiler packed up a few months ago: replacing it ate all the savings we'd put together for a trip to Italy. Hey-ho we said and set our sights on the new forest.

I've got two Hedonethical Holiday posts to make, at each end of the price scale - the first week is at a high class hotel, the second one, camping in a "tipi" in Dorset. This post is about the hotel we stayed at during the first week. Photographs are at the bottom.

We stayed at The Montagu Arms, in Beaulieu (pronounced B'yoo-lee). Some things about this hotel were spectacular from a hedonethicists point of view, particularly the michelin starred restaurant headed by chef Matthew Tomkinson. Other things made me wonder why they hadn't done them, such as the lack of that now familiar little card, which usually informs guests that they should put their towels in the bath if they want them changed, or leave them on the rack if they will use them again.

So, here are the main ethical positives:

1. The obvious: their location in the uk. 
2. There are 28 healthy, free range chickens onsite supplying the hotel's eggs, which you can visit if you love chickens as I do, puckuuuuck! 
3. They compost the hotel food waste. 
4. They are reclaiming waste ground to create wildlife-friendly organic gardens. 
5. They source some of their ingredients from their own organic kitchen gardens. 
6. Wherever possible they use local meat and fish. 
7. They bottle chilled and filtered tap water, rather than serving imported products. They carbonate it for you if you request sparkling. 
8. There's a lot of happy wildlife around - there were loads of fat birds in the garden, along with bees and butterflies. 
9. There is sustainable fish such as gurnard on the menu. 
10. The menu makes the most of seasonal produce. 
11. Double glazing has been installed behind the traditional windows, to conserve energy. 
12. The hotel's newspaper of choice is The Independent, which is available for free.

And the main hedonistic ones:

1. Sumptuous surroundings with a lovely victorian feel. wood panelling, grandfather clocks, gorgeous wallpaper, interesting paintings and historical artefacts, good weight linens, soft towels, moulton brown and organic toiletries, wooden loo seats etc.
2. Incredibly good food. 
3. Beautiful, well-kept garden with a fountain and fat, friendly little wild birds.
4. Fabulous service and extremely friendly staff, these guys are great and will tailor their approach to your reactions: be informal and so will they (without compromising service), be formal and they will follow suit. The night porter stays awake all night, ready to provide you with wines, spirits, tea, coffee or sandwiches at any hour.
5. Complimentary coffee or tea and a newspaper every morning.
6. They have a truly huge cheese selection, some cheeses I'd never even heard of before.
7. There are nice smoking areas provided at both the front and back of the hotel.
8. The pub next door, Monty's, serves excellent food, local beers and is very comfy with a pool table, darts boards and other games available from behind the bar on request.
9. The sommelier is a lovely young man, just into the job and very keen to share his knowledge and funny stories if you ask him. I wouldn't say the cellar is extensive (I've seen the wine list at the Ritz), but there are a lot of choices on there.
10. There are a wide selection of teas, including fresh mint, gunpowder and russian caravan. The coffee is also very good.
11. When we checked out, the receptionist handed us a paper bag containing "goodbye" water and apples for the road. When we got to our car, we discovered a note letting us know that our windscreen had been washed in advance of our homeward journey.

There are still some ethical items that I hope they will rectify over time:

1. There's no option for you to retain your towels for more than one night.
2. I didn't see evidence of them using energy saving light bulbs, however I could be wrong - I know there are energy efficient bulbs for sale that look like ordinary bulbs.
3. I suspect that cleaning and laundry products are not going to be eco-friendly. If a hotel paid the extra for these products, they'd probably tell us about it.

And a few hedonistic ones:

1. A cup of tea in your room costs £8.95, that's £4.95 for the tea and £5 to deliver it. However, you can get around this by requesting a hospitality tray which makes sense if, like us, you get a suite with a living room and want to spend some time in there.
2. The shower in our suite was brilliant. The shower in our second room, a four-poster superior room, was less excellent. Plumming isn't standard across the hotel.
3. You do need to dress up a bit for dinner, which is fair enough but be warned that it has to be done even if you don't feel like it - a proper dinner from the restaurant menu isn't available in your room.
4. The lounge is likely to be hushed and make you whisper. You get used to this atmosphere just in time to be disturbed by a loud, wealthy family or obnoxious twit making a big fuss of themselves. The hotel can't do much about that, but at least they try.
5. We didn't get bedside tables in the suite, although we did in the superior double.

We got the 3-nights-for-2 package, which included a bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne, a cream tea, breakfast and dinner in the michelin starred restaurant. We opted to stay an extra day because we liked it so much and they were very accomodating; our request was handled directly by the manager as soon as it became apparent our current suite wouldn't be available.

The local area offers, by way of attractions, a very sweet community garden, Palace House and grounds, Buckler's Hard (Nelson's ship building yard) which is reached by a beautiful 2 mile walk along the river, Exbury Gardens, the otter and wildlife sanctuary, Milton-on-sea shingle beach with a view of the Isle of Wight, Highcliffe beach and Lymington high street, which has proper charity shops selling good items at an affordable price.

 

Spaghetti with Mushroom & Bacon Sauce

I make my own pasta fairly regularly these days, the general method I use can be found here. 

A quick refresher though: 100g flour and 1 egg per portion, mixed together with a pinch of salt, kneaded for 10 minutes and rested in the fridge for about half an hour. Roll it out really flat and cut into the shape you want, using a pasta machine if you have one. I started using semolina flour to coat the pasta to stop it sticking together and it works much better than ordinary flour does.

So, assuming you've made (or bought) your spaghetti you can turn your attention to the sauce, which is really simple but very tasty. If you don't fancy this sauce, you can find other recipes by doing a search for "pasta sauce" (which shows a list of links) or clicking here to display posts in chronological order.

First of all fry up a sliced purple onion and some garlic, then add in some thick cut bacon or lardons. When the bacon is pretty much cooked add in the mushrooms and cook through. Right at the end, stir in a little cream, the juice of half a lemon, lots grated parmesan and finely chopped parsley. Season with lots of pepper and a pinch of salt. Easy peasy!

Homemade Pizza

It's not as though we never get pizza delivered, but most of the time I'd much rather have a homemade one...

I originally got the recipe for this from the River Cottage Bread book by Daniel Stevens but, over time, I've refined the recipe until it's exactly how I like it - a thin, crispy, slightly wholemeal base is my favourite. 
Pre-cooking some of the more watery veg, like mushrooms, and reducing down the sauce prevents the base from getting soggy. This amount will amply feed two hungry people.

Measure out into a bowl 125g white bread flour, 65g wholemeal flour and 60g plain white flour. Add 3g dried yeast, 5g of salt, a drizzle of olive oil and 165ml warm water. Bring these together until they form a dough and then knead it for 10 minutes. Then pop it into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a plastic bag. Leave to rise for half an hour.


In the meantime, make the tomato sauce. Use a tin of tomatoes, a jar of passata or, in my case, half and half. Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry off some crushed garlic and a pinch of dried chilli. Add the tomatoes, some dried oregano, salt, pepper and a shot of vodka (or lemon juice). Bring it to a simmer and leave it cooking until the liquid has reduced thoroughly, leaving quite a thick sauce. Stir in fresh basil leaves at the end.


Slice, dice and prepare the rest of your toppings as needed - items like mushrooms are best pre-cooked. One of my favourite toppings is spinach and egg with black olives. Pre-heat the oven to the highest setting it will go and, if you have a baking stone, put it in to heat up.

When the dough has risen, break it into two and roll each one out into a circular shape on the worksurface. Use semolina flour to prevent it sticking.

Retrieve the baking stone from the oven and ay a pizza round onto it. Coat with tomato sauce and whatever other toppings you've chosen. Pop in the oven for about 10 minutes, remove and replace with the second one which can cook while you're eating the first. Mmm.

Some good topping ideas:

• Simple tomato, mozzarella and basil leaves
• Tomato, mozzarella, baby spinach, egg and black olives
• Tomato, goat's cheese, purple onion, balsamic syrup
• Tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms, ham, sweetcorn
• Tomato, ricotta, mushrooms
  

Warm Crispy Chicken Salad with Bacon & Garlic Croutons

This is one of those dinners that is made up of very simple ingredients but which, when put together, becomes much more than the sum of its parts. It's just crispy chicken, bacon, garlic croutons, sesame seeds, raspberry dressing and mixed herb and flower salad. It's soooo good though. Yum, yum, yum.

Season some boneless chicken thighs and brush them with oil. Pop them onto a skillet or heavy based frying pan, skin side first to get crispy before turning them over to do the other side. We've got one of those non-stick grilling machines which makes this pretty fast and easy. Once the chicken is cooked, put it to one side to rest, while you cook some thick-cut bacon peices (sometimes called lardons in the shops). When the chicken has had 5 mins or so to rest, slice it up ready to serve.


To make the croutons, take a couple of thick slices of bread, preferably a day or two old, slice off the crusts and cut it into cubes. Arrange on a shallow tray, drizzle with garlic oil and put under the grill until toasted.

For the salad I used raw courgette slices, cooked chioggia beetroot, cherry tomatoes, nasturtium leaves, sorrel, parsley, marjoram, chives, rocket, spinach, looseleaf lettuce and mixed edible flowers.


The dressing is a mix of extra virgin and light olive oils, raspberry vinegar, salt and pepper, whisked until they combined. If you haven't had raspberry vinegar before, give it a go, it's fabulous stuff.

Finally, toast some sesame seeds to be sprinkled on the top. I served all of the items separately, as they looked really appealing like that, but they combine on the plate perfectly.