Mint Chocolate Mousse

Here is another mousse from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer, it’s not full of mousses, I just seem to be in mousse mode at the moment! Nigella says the mint makes it a Summery dessert and you know she is right.

I spent ages looking for mint chocolate when Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer came out, but to now avail, although I would add that I was not au fait with the internet then. I know some criticize Nigella for including ingredients that are hard to find, but I know I’m not alone in enjoying the challenge of foodie hunting - finding different ingredients. Last week I spotted it though, and had to buy it of course.

Fortunately because I’ve been re-reading the book again recently I actually managed to remember what I wanted it for! For this is the downside of hunting for ingredients, by the time you find them you can’t remember what it was you wanted them for in the first place. I used to be able to remember, but once you get beyond a certain number of cookbooks it becomes harder, well that and life’s general requirements.

I bought Lindt mint chocolate, and it was smooth and minty without being too dark. I’m not advertising here, just saying what I bought!

I got 12 small cups of mousse, and they were rich, so this was fine by me. There were a couple leftover, and they came to no harm in the fridge overnight. They set to a good texture as well, not to as far gone as to be cakey , but firm enough to hold, and no cream so the chocolate taste was undiluted minty and pure. Mint leaf decoration optional!

White Chocolate and Passion Fruit Mousse

Thamks to Lisa and Yvonne who are running an event about seasonal fresh produce - La Festa al Fresco 2007 . There are so many good things about just now to buy or pick – it’s hard to choose! I managed though =)

I’ve been really bad over the summer at trying to fit in blogging events, but it just hasn’t worked out. This Fresh event however, fitted right in with the way I’m cooking at the moment and I chose raspberries for this seasonal fresh event.

This is from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer book. This is a simple dessert where you place raspberries in the bottom of glasses, cups, ramekins – you know the sort of things. Then you make an egg white puffed white chocolate mousse. You can leave them to sit overnight and get the raspberries soused with the passion fruit juice, but I like them after 4 – 6 hours in the fridge.

I would never have come up with a three way matching of white chocolate, passion fruit and raspberries, but it does work very well. My hubby is a white chocolate fan, I don’t mind it but wouldn’t eat it by the square, here though the passion fruit takes the tickle away from the chocolate and leaves a good flavour. I halved the recipe for 6 six servings.

WHITE CHOCOLATE AND PASSIONFRUIT MOUSSE
From Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer.

300g white chocolate
6 eggs, separated
10 passion fruit
300g - 500g raspberries
Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in the microwave for about 3 minutes, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water then set the bowl aside, and let the chocolate cool a little. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Mix the egg yolks into the cooled chocolate, though be gentle to ensure it doesn’t seize. Cut the passion fruit in half and scoop them, juice, pulp, seeds, into the yolk and chocolate mixture, then fold into the egg whites until completely incorporated.Line the bottom of either a big glass bowl or 8-10 small glasses with a layer of raspberries – it’s hard to be specific: it depends on the diameter of the glasses, or bowl, at the base really - and pour over the mousse. Leave for a couple of hours to set in the fridge, or for at least 4 if you’re using one large bowl. Strangely, given that I lean normally towards the communal rather than individual serving, I generally go the one-glass-one-person route. I think it’s because this is intense enough to require - even for me - small portions, and it’s impossible to dollop out as little as would fill a small glass without seeming mean. (my note: this dessert contains uncooked eggs).
Serves 8 -10 depending on the size of glass used

Courgette Fritters, Rhubarb Fool & Vanilla Shortbread

Courgette Fritters

In recent weeks I saw these being made a few times on other blogs. I have made them before, and can remember liking them, but the memory was quite hazy. So every time I saw them I thought I’ve got to make them again, and eventually I did!

I know why I put it off. I dislike grating things, particularly cheese. Everyone has their thing in the kitchen that they don’t like and mine is grating and sifting icing (confectioners sugar). A couple of birthdays ago a friend gave me a baby grater, and I grated some cheese and carrots on it and thought it wasn’t too bad. Recently when out and about I came across the Mama grater in the same design, so I thought, well anything that gets me over my grating thing, and home it came. I don’t know if it’s the design of the grater or just the joy of new gadgetry, but it works so fast and smoothly that I don’t seem to have the dread of grating that I used too. They even go in the dishwasher!

Back to the courgette fritters though Nigella, Bill Granger and Delia all have version of this fritter, these come from Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer. I’ve been cooking a lot from it these last couple of weeks and have more planned. They are quick to mix, although take a little while to shallow fry. I served them with the lime for lunch one day, and we had the leftovers reheated in the oven the next night for supper, hubby actually preferred them like that. The reheated ones needed a sauce I decided, so I just made a one minute sauce by mixing a small tub of low fat yoghurt (5 fl oz) and a heaping teaspoon of ready made mint sauce (from a jar) and hey presto a refreshing minty dip. Next time I’m adding the sauce for sure, because it just seemed to compliment the courgette fritters so well, made them seem fresher somehow. Very summery either way.

The Mama and baby graters

In case courgettes are not your thing, here is an easy summery pudding with rhubarb – and a little biscuit to have with it!

Rhubarb Fool and Vanilla Shortbread

This is a pudding that Nigella makes on the TV series which accompanies Forever Summer, and the thing that pulled me to make it the first time I saw it was seeing Nigella drizzling over her beautiful magenta rhubarb syrup on top. You really have to have the very pinkest rhubarb, I made this one with some I’d frozen when I saw some lovely pink slim rhubarb. It’s just as well because all that I could find in the shops was thick and green and I’m sure it’d have been sour as a lemon too! I have copied these recipes from a Nigella article here.

Rhubabrb Fool

From Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer

1 kg rhubarb, trimmed and coarsely chopped
300g vanilla sugar
500ml double cream

Preheat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5.
Mix the rhubarb and vanilla sugar together in an ovenproof dish. Do not add water. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the fruit is completely soft.
Drain in a colander, or sieve, and pour the juice (you should have about 500ml) into a saucepan, then heat and let bubble away until reduced by about half.
Pour into a jug and leave to cool; do not, however refrigerate as the syrup might crystallise and lose its fabulous puce clarity.
Puree the fruit until totally smooth, then cool and chill this as well.
Whip the cream in a large chilled bowl until lusciously thick but not stiff.
Carefully fold in the rhubarb puree, then some of the reduced juice, so the mixture is streaked, rather like raspberry ripple ice cream.
Put the juice in a glass jug so that people can add more, if they want, as they eat. Or frankly, you could instead use half the amount of rhubarb juice in the pan for reducing and use the remaining 250ml for adding to champagne for a fabulous, blush-pink summer drink.

Vanilla Shortbread

From Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer

I know that biscuits sound like the sort of cooking someone else does, but you need never have baked anything ever in your life to be able to make these with ease. And I hate to say this, but they are so much better than anything out of a packet.

Makes 33 fingers
100g icing sugar

200g plain flour, preferably Italian OO

100g cornflour

200g very soft unsalted butter

seeds from 1 vanilla pod

vanilla or ordinary caster sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3. Put the icing sugar, plain flour and cornflour into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the double-bladed knife and give them a quick blitz (just to save you sieving, which is my most-hated job in the kitchen) before adding the butter along with the vanilla seeds you've scraped out of a pod. (Don't even think of throwing the deseeded bits of pod away: stash them in a jar of caster to use next time a recipe requires vanilla sugar.)
Process again until the soft mixture coheres and begins to form a ball, loosely clumping around the blade. Turn this out on to a Swiss roll tin and press to form an even (or as even as you can make it) layer, using fingers or the back of a spoon, or both. Be patient, it will fit smoothly.
Using the tip of a sharp knife cut the pressed-out shortbread into fingers. I make two incisions lengthways - ie to form three layers - and then make 10 cuts down - so that you end up with 11 fingers per layer. Obviously, the aim should be to cut at regular intervals but don't start getting your ruler out.
Just go by eye: uniformity is the province of the conveyor belt not of home cooking. Use the tines of a fork to make little holes in each marked-out biscuit: I press down about three times, diagonally, on each finger.
Now that you've pressed, incised, and punctured, slide the Swiss roll tin into the oven and bake for about 20-25 minutes, by which time the shortbread will be pale still, but not doughy. Expect a little goldenness around the edges, but shortbread should be not crisp but melting. Remove the tin from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes or so, before removing, with a palette knife and your fingers, to a wire rack. Sprinkle with sugar and leave them to cool completely before storing in a tin.

Slut Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly

Slut Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly

I’ve been making this pudding every year since Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer was published, some years more than once! They are very pretty summery jellies, and if you can get the sun to glint on them, so much the better. I used to be a bit appalled by the name of this recipe, but I seem to have gotten over that eventually!

I usually use an Australian Chardonnay, because I like the fruity taste of Australian wines, and they are easily available to me here, and of course it came to Nigella from a fellow Australian food writer, so I’m keeping in with the original.

I like to burn off most of the alcohol (see method), because I think it tastes better, but it’s your call. Either way they are lovely fruity jellies and you only need a little cream to blend the flavours to prefection.

Just as an extra, do most of you have Nigella’s books? I’m heading towards a Nigella run of recipes and just wondered!

Slut Red Raspberries in Chardonnay Jelly
From Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer

You might think that no recipe could live up to this title. It's a reasonable presumption, but thank God, a wrong one. This is heaven on the plate: the wine-soused raspberries take on a stained glass, lucent red, their very raspberriness enhanced; the soft, translucently pale coral just-set jelly in which they sit has a heady, floral fragrance that could make a grateful eater weep. This recipe was emailed to me from Australia from my erstwhile editor, Eugenie Boyd. I've fiddled with it a bit, but it is the best present a foodwriter could ever have. Now it's yours.

1 bottle Chardonnay, choose a good fruity variety
300g raspberries
1 vanilla
pod, split lengthways (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
5 gelatine leaves
250g caster sugar

1 carton double cream, to serve
1. Place the wine and berries in a bowl and allow to steep for half an hour.
2. Strain the wine into a saucepan and keep the raspberries to one side. Heat the wine with vanilla pod until nearly boiling and leave to steep on one side for 15 minutes.
3. Soak the gelatine leaves - which you can find in the supermarket these days - in cold water for about 5 minutes.
4. Remove the vanilla pod and reheat the wine stirring the sugar in until it dissolves; allow to boil if you want to lose the alcohol.
5. Add a third of the hot wine to the wrung-out gelatine leaves in a measuring jug and stir to dissolve, then add this mixture back into the rest of the wine and stir well. Strain into a large jug.
6. Place the raspberries, equally, into 6 flattish, clear glass serving bowls, and pour the strained wine over the top.
7. Allow to set in the fridge for at least 3 hours, though a day would be fine if you want to make this well ahead, and take out of the fridge 15 minutes before serving. Serve with some double cream in a jug, and let people pour this into the fragrant, tender, fruit-jewelled jelly as they eat.

Dime Bar Ice Cream

The dime bar ice cream is one that we absolutely love in our house. I have made it often since Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer was published.

It is just so creamy, chocolate-y and the caramel shards offer a little bit of crunch. I quite like Dime Bars as they are, but in this ice cream Nigella makes them something much more. Real comfort in a bowl.