Biscuits for Bartok 5 – Lunettes ( jammy dodgers?)

The ubiquitous and popular British biscuit the jammy dodger must surely have been inspired by the infinitely more decadent and elegant French ‘lunettes’. These traditionally oval-shaped sablé biscuits, two of which are sandwiched together, typically using raspberry jam, have with two distinctive jammy holes on top that give the traditional form its name. I read that these butter biscuits may originally date back to the Middle Ages in Italy where they were called ‘Milanais’

Despite my less traditional monocular jam aperture, round shape and un-fluted edge, these lunettes are a cut above the much-loved jammy dodger. The alluring sablé biscuit is similar to shortbread. The jam is ‘real’, although there appears to be some debate over whether seedless or seeded jams are preferable. I initially tried the recipe with seedless raspberry, but later used the same jam with seeds and found it to have much better depth of flavour and texture within – less runny too. Importantly for biscuit lovers, they are substantially bigger than our jammy dodgers, with a film of icing sugar dusted over to give their otherwise demure appearance an irresistible appeal (as if one would need much encouragement to eat these beauties).

Although I have got into the rhythm of ensuring the musicians are supplied with biscuits on a weekly basis, my offerings are lagging behind in posts due to my other commitments. I have actually made seven offerings in this series of 10 biscuit-making recipes, alas, my drafts continue to accumulate. These include my posts about the recent Old Spot butchery, sausage and bacon production and an associated new gadget purchase – all to be accompanied with my inevitable butchery musical sound track.  Hope to cover this soon for discerning carnivores (and any fans of extreme music…).

To add to the malaise, sadly, I have had some food photography disasters of late.  The quality of the photographs of some of the dishes has been so poor (even for me) that they did not do the food justice and I could not possibly include the images in posts.  Unfortunately, this included a pretty splendid vegetarian Mexican banquet and a colourful and enticing dish of home made tagliatelle with mussels, fennel and parmesan. Never mind, onwards and upwards, good tasting food is paramount!

Lunettes

This recipe is courtesy of Annie Bell. It makes about 14 lunettes. The biscuits can be made a few days in advance and sandwiched together with your jam of choice just before serving.  I prefer raspberry, The Man Named Sous, strawberry jam, but any jam could be used, depending on what floats your boat at the time – or what you have in the store cupboard.  I’m hopeful my raspberry crop will yield enough for my own jam this year.  Fingers crossed.

Ingredients

220g unsalted butter

120g icing sugar

zest of 1 lemon

2 medium egg yolks

300g plain flour

100g of jam of your choice

Method

• Cream the butter and sugar together in a food processor or food mixer, add the lemon zest, the egg yolks then flour to form a sticky dough.
• Wrap in cling film, flatten into a block and chill for a few hours or overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 160C and cover 2 baking sheets in silicone sheeting or parchment paper.
• Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about 5 mm. Use an 8 cm cutter to make the biscuits and cut out a hole 2 cm wide with a cutter from the centre of half of them.
• Place on the baking sheets slightly apart and bake for 10-12 minutes until just starting to colour.
• Use a palette knife to loosen them, place on a baking tray and allow to cool.
• Dust the tops with the holes in icing sugar, spread about 3/4 teaspoon of jam in the centre of the bottom biscuit and place the sugar-coated half on top.

Biscuits with Bartok 3 – Spiced orange blossom and chocolate cookies

I’ve had a pretty hectic week, not least because I was away for work for half of it.  As a result, my indulgence in the blogosphere has been restricted to access on my phone on the go – and my backlog of draft posts is growing.  The opportunity to write posts relevant to Shrove Tuesday and Valentine’s Day passed me by.  We enjoyed a couple of very nice venison-based meals that I did not photograph so I let them slip by for our own personal indulgence only. I will make these again, so there will be other opportunities to write a post for these recipes in the future.

We also have the good fortune to be benefiting from the adaptive management programme initiated to reduce greylag goose numbers and limit the significant damage they are currently doing to crops here.  Geese are being shot under licence and we are very grateful to receive another 6 wild geese, all in excellent condition, to keep our freezer stocked. Of course, this means considerable time preparing the goose, so we also had to get this done on my return.

I arrived home on a morning flight a couple of hours before the musicians were due to play, so I didn’t have time to make my 3rd biscuit of the series for them.  I decided to go ahead anyway as I wanted to try a biscuit flavoured with orange blossom water, an itch I just had to scratch.

Signs of spring

Despite the inconvenience of the snow on the mainland, here spring is showing signs of progression.  On my return, I heard the first song thrush singing from the corner of our garden.  A chipping snipe in the marshy grassland around the house means I will most likely enjoy the sound of the first drumming snipe imminently. If I stood outside for long enough at dusk, I would probably hear one – usually around Valentine’s Day each year we hear the first.  I can see the lapwings beginning to assemble again on the croftland in pre-breeding readiness.

The lighter nights mean I have no excuse to get out for a run after work, or start getting more serious about the garden other than whimsically reviewing my seed collection and plans for 2013.

My last long run (12km) had the usual smattering of Uist-based incidents.  I spent about 2 miles running behind a sheep flock being herded by a land rover and a collie from fields and along the roads to a fank.  Nice waft of urine all the way along the road, followed by copious amount of fresh sheep droppings in my trainer treads.  I opted to turn back when I caught the sheep up at the fank as I didn’t want to scatter them and the scene looked chaotic enough with one sheepdog doing his best to filter a large, tired flock into the fank.

On the way back, I passed a croft and a collie ran out to greet me. Sometimes they nip your heels as if you are a sheep but this one was friendly, too friendly, in fact.  She followed me all the way back to my car, about 5 km.  She had no road sense and although not much traffic passed us on the single track road, I had to keep stopping and grabbing her and had to wait on the verge until cars passed.  They probably either thought I was an idiot for taking a dog with no traffic-sense out on the road for a run, or were possibly laughing, having recognised the dog as local and saw it had tagged along with me.  I had to put her in the car and drive back to the croft.  I did this just as the crofter was getting in his tractor to look for her.  Not the first time apparently.

Where Eagles Dare

I was glad to get back and into my usual routine of dog walking over the moor near our house. Friday was a beautiful clear day and there was some bird activity up there too.  The dogs flushed a couple of snipe and a woodcock and a pair of ravens passed noisily overhead.  As we were coming over a rise, I could see another bird in the distance.  The profile initially looked like a raven, but then it became apparent it was very much bigger and was in fact a golden eagle.

It is not uncommon for us to see golden eagles, or sea eagles around this area.  It is part of a local golden eagle territory and there is a regularly used nest not too far away.  The first job I had when I moved to Uist was a role for a certain well known NGO that involved checking golden and sea eagle nests.  Golden eagles are much shyer than sea eagles and tend to keep their distance.  I know this pair have a regular plucking spot overlooking a loch on the walk and I often see the silhouette of an eagle there.  The pair regularly fly together over the hills surrounding the loch prior to settling down to breed.

The eagle was unusually inquisitive and passed directly overhead before turning and circling.  Since it was directly above me and at a height of about 15 metres and began circling, I decided it would be pertinent to keep the dogs close.  Though there was only an outside chance that an eagle would come down so close to a person and attempt to take a dog, it’s not unheard of.  I had known of a falconer’s dog to be killed by a golden eagle they were working. The eagle stayed with us, circling close overhead continuously for about 3-4 minutes before heading back over its territory to the hill near the nest.  Certainly a new experience for me. I managed to capture a few shots on my iPhone as it circled.  It was certainly an unusually close and spectacular view of this beautiful raptor.

Spiced orange blossom biscuits with chocolate

I wanted to incorporate orange blossom water into a biscuit, as I plan to with other aromatic flavourings such as lavender and rose and I thought orange blossom was probably a safe place to start experimenting.  I had some ingredients I wanted to incorporate including some lovely spiced orange slices given to me as a gift, golden sultanas and I also wanted to add a decadent garnish of candied orange. I had just made some to incorporate into Turron ice cream, the recipe courtesy of David Leibovitz. Cointreau was added for additional oranginess and decadence.

I added chocolate because there’s no denying that the marriage of chocolate and orange is tried and tested.  I don’t often use milk chocolate, hence the inclusion.  The Co-op’s Fairtrade milk chocolate is reasonably good, with 30% cocoa solids. I based the quantities of the basics of the dry ingredients on Ottolenghi’s spiced cookies from ‘Jerusalem’, but there is significant variation from that recipe.  The biscuit-making stabilisers aren’t quite off, so wanted to use the basis of the recipe to ensure success.

Ingredients

125g golden sultanas

2 tbsp cointreau

240g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

75g golden caster sugar

75g light muscovado sugar

125g unsalted butter

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp orange blossom water

zest of 1/2 lemon

zest of 1/2 orange

1/2 a medium egg

1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice

100g milk chocolate

3 slices of preserved spiced oranges (optional)

Method

• Soak the sultanas in the cointreau for 10 minutes.
• Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarb, spices and salt together in a bowl.
• Put butter, sugar, vanilla and zests in a food mixer and beat for 1 minute.
• Add the egg, slowly while the machine is running and mix for another minute.
• Add the dry ingredients, then the soaked raisins.
• Divide the dough into roughly 50g balls and place a couple of cm apart on a lined baking sheet.
• Rest in the fridge for about an hour.
• Preheat the oven to 190C and bake for 15-20 minutes.  Allow to cool for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.
• Melt the chocolate in a bain marie and drizzle over the cookies. Top with candied orange just before serving.

Candied orange

Making this is vaguely reminiscent to marmalade-making and the resulting candied orange will keep for a couple of months in the fridge and can be added to cakes, biscuits and ice cream.

Ingredients

Zest of 4 large oranges

500ml water

200g sugar

1 tbsp glucose syrup

Pinch of salt

Method

• Using a veg. peeler, remove 3 cm strips of peel (no pith) from the oranges.
• Slice length-ways into very fine strips, no wider than a toothpick.
• Place the strips in a pan, cover with a few cm of water, bring to the boil, then reduce to a gentle boil for 15 minutes.
• Combine the water, sugar, glucose and salt in a pan. Bring to the boil, add the peel and cook at a low boil for 25 minutes. Add a sugar thermometer and when the mix is at 110C, take off the heat.  Store the peel in the syrup in the fridge.