Satan's Kitchen

Killer Mashed Potato

2 baking potatoes
1 leak
300g tub of crème fraiche (You might not need all of it, depending on how big the potatoes are)
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
200g vintage cheddar cheese, grated
2 tbsp wholegrain mustard
Sea salt
Mixed peppercorns
Whole nutmeg

Dice the potatoes but do not peel them, otherwise I will be angry. Cut the leak in half lengthways and rinse out any soil under a running tap. Chop the leak into small pieces and use the entire thing, excepting for the very tip where the roots are and the dry bit at the top of the leaves. Put the potatoes into a pan of water, bring to the boil and simmer with a lid on until they are starting to soften. At this point, throw the leaks into the pan and simmer until the potatoes are cooked. Whilst waiting for the potatoes to cook, try to resist the urge to eat all of the cheese. There's something about grated cheese...

Drain the potatoes and leaks and drizzle with the oil. Pass the potato mixture through a potato ricer or use a masher. You want to have not-quite-smooth mash with big chunks of skin and leak in it. Put this into a large bowl and add the garlic and mix well. Start adding the crème fraiche a spoonful at a time and mix really well until you have something resembling a course version of "normal" mashed-potato. At this stage, season with plenty of salt and pepper and a good 1/2 tsp nutmeg. Add in the mustard and the cheese and mix very, very, very well.

Don't bother cooking anything to go with it. Just eat it as it comes, for it is sublime.

The recipe is a bastardisation (as my recipes so often are!) of something else - in this case, a Columbian recipe.

Pink Potato Salad

4 large baking potatoes
500g pickled baby beetroot
2 bunches spring onions (these are known by various other names but whatever you call Allium fistulosum L. in your area is what you need to use)
2 carrots
8 cloves of garlic
Whole nutmeg
1 bunch coriander (cilantro, if you're from the US)
1 large jar full-fat mayonnaise (the actually amount you will be much less than a whole jar)
Mixed peppercorns
Salt

Firstly, cut the potatoes into 1cm thick slices, then cut each of these in half. NEVER peel potatoes, for this recipe or any other, for that matter. Put the potato pieces in to a large saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer with a lid on until the potatoes are cooked, then drain them thoroughly before returning to the heat to drive off that last bit of moisture. Run the potatoes through a potato-ricer or mash them very, very well with a masher. You need to have soft, white fluffy potato with nice chunks of skin.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking, chop the spring onions, crush the garlic and put these into a large bowl with the drained chickpeas and grate the carrots into the mixture. Mix very thoroughly and wait for the potatoes to be ready.

To the still-warm potatoes, beat in mayonnaise by the serving-spoon-full until you get a nice, whipped, creamy mash-with-lumps. To this, add the vegetable mixture and mix in very thoroughly. Season with plenty of salt and pepper and a good grating of nutmeg - and I mean about 1/2 a nutmeg! There is very little that Delia Smith and I agree on but I'm with her on nutmeg. Freshly grated Myristica fragrans Gronov. is simply one of the most amazing flavours ever and to use pre-ground nutmeg is a sin beyond all belief.

Give the seasoned mixture a good mix and add some more mayonnaise if it's starting to fall into chunks. Now for the fun part! Strain and quarter the beetroot and cover the potato mixture with them, so that the surface is completely covered. If you are me, you will now drink the bright-pink beetroot vinegar because it is adorable and sweet. Tear the coriander into pieces and sprinkle over the top of the beetroot. Now, take a large metal spoon and gently fold the mixture. You want to end up with a pink-and-white marbled colour as the beetroot juices soak into the potato.

Finally, put the whole lot into a Tupperware container and seal the lid. After about 1 hour (the time it takes to get ready for and go to the party, conveniently), it will be superb. The garlic will have given up its flavour to the potatoes and the beetroot will be bleeding dark purple juice into the surrounding pink potato. It looks very odd (hence no photo!) but it is superyummy!

Pomegranate & Grenadine Jam

6 Pomegranates
1/2 cup Grenadine
1 1/4 cups water
2 oranges
Sugar (about 2 1/2 cups, but see below for full details)

Firstly, the very slow and messy part - separating the good bits from the pomegranates. I find scoring round the edges then snapping them in half works well. Put the inards into a bowl of cold water and brush the red arils off of the white pith. The arils sink to the bottom and all the pith (along with any unripe arils) floats to the top. Just skim off all the floaty bits and discard, then throw the water/aril mixture through a sieve and there you have all of the arils nicely separated. Lovely. Throw these into a cooking pot with a lid (I used a 4L one) and give them a good mash with a potato masher to break some of them open. Add the water and grenadine along with the juice and the pips from the 2 oranges - make sure every pip goes in otherwise the jam won't set! Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 2 hours.

Once the arils have softened, remove from the heat and give them a 30 second blast with a stick-blender to break most-but-not-all of them open. Pass the mixture through a sieve and measure how much juice you have. For every 600mL juice, you need 2 1/4 cups of sugar. Use ordinary granulated sugar - there's no point using preserving sugar for this recipe as the jam doesn't come out clear anyway. Throw the juice and sugar into a Maslin pan along with about 1/5th of the gunk which didn't go through the sieve. Heat it gently until the sugar has completely dissolved then whack the heat up and maintain a rolling boil for at least 5 minutes. Test for a set by taking out about 1/2 tsp on a cold teaspoon and leaving it to rest for a few minutes.

Quince Gin

20 ripe quince
About 3L of gin (you can use cheap, nasty gin like supermarket own-brand for this recipe, but what I do is to use 2.5L cheap gin and 0.5L something fairly decent (like Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire - do not waste anything good like Gordon's Distiller's Cut or Martin Miller's gin on this recipe!)
600g white caster sugar

Firstly, you need to find and prepare a suitable container to make this in - an amber-glass demijohn is the best thing I've found. It needs to have a proper stopper though, not an air-lock (as you would use if you were making wine). You can divide up the recipe and use lots of smaller preserving jars - whatever you do, don't use the SLOM ones from Ikea - they may well be very cheap but they don't seal properly and you'll lose your product. Wash your containers out well with hot, soapy water then dry in the oven at 110°C for 30 minutes, cover with a clean cloth and allow to cool before filling.

Secondly, you'll need to prepare your quinces. You'll need to give them a little rinse under the tap and remove any leaves. Quinces have the consistancy of solid marble when raw and it will take you and absolute age to chop 20 of the little buggers. I usually grate them into a bowl - make sure you catch every drop of the juice - rather than dice them, but you can do that if you prefer. Either way, don't peel or core them, just chop/grate them. Cram the quince pieces into the demijohn or jars and add the sugar. Pour in any quince juice which has escaped from the fruit, then pour in the gin, seal and shake well.

Now the part which requires patience - leave the mixture to infuse for 12 months, giving it a good shake every 2 months. It's best to leave it somewhere cool and dark (I dump mine behind the recycling bin the kitchen, near the window). After a year, crack it open and pour the gin out through a sieve into a bowl. Next, filter the gin - which will be quite syrupy in texture - through muslin and then dispense into bottles.

It's a lovely drink which can be enjoyed all year round, much in the same way as sloe gin can be enjoyed. If you're interested in making some sloe gin, check out this recipe from the eversolovely Liz at Gastronomy Domine.

As for what to do with the bits of quince which have been soaking in gin for a year (they will look vile and brown but they are still delicious) - you can make them into a nice quince cheese (using this recipe, also from Gastronomy Domine - just shorten the initial 3h cooking time to about 1 1/2h. The quince won't turn pink though - they will go a lovely warm shade similar to burnt umber. You will be able to taste the juniper from the gin in the finished cheese and it goes really well with superstrong cheeses like vintage cheddar or a good stilton. In the last batch I made, I added 1tbsp rosewater to every pint of the juice in the recipe which gave an interesting twist. I personally always use rosewater from the English Provender Co. in my recipes because it has a nice flavour without anything wierd added, which seems to be the case with most of the cheaper brands.

Thai Green Curry Paste

3 Green chilis (I like bird's eye myself, but you could use any kind, just use more of them if they're the weaker kind)
2 shallots
2 sticks of lemongrass
3" ginger
2 garlic cloves
2 × 1 inch pieces of dried galangal
1 bunch of fresh corriander
1 lime
10 small (or 8 large) dried kaffir lime leaves
1 tbsp corriander seeds
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp mixed peppercorns
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1 × 50g pack of creamed coconut

Bruise the lemongrass then peel and chop it, along with the shallots, ginger and garlic. Top and tail the chillis, cut them in half and remove about 1/2 of the seeds and pith - it's the pith which gives the heat, not the seeds. Zest the lime and then chop it in half and squeeze the juice - get a few bits of the flesh out with the juice too. Put all the ingredients so far into a bowl and add everything else except for the creamed coconut and the corriander leaves. Blitz with a stick-blinder then chop and add the corriander. Finally, add the creamed coconut (it helps if you melt the contents of the sachet in boiling water first) and mix really well. If you store it in a sealed jar, it keeps for about two to three weeks in the fridge. To use it, just give it a mix then fry a few tablespoons of the paste (no need to use any oil - just a hot non-stick pan) before adding the rest of your curry ingredients. It's normal for the paste to become quite hard in the fridge.

Thai Yellow Curry Paste

4 shallots
4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp shrimp paste
2 tbsp ground turmeric
1" galangal
1" ginger
8 very small, very hot green chillis
2 tbsp mustard oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
4 tbsp sunflower oil
1 stick of lemongrass
10 dried kaffir lime leaves
Zest and juice of a lime

This is a very simple recipe - just throw everything into a blender and blend into a thick, yellow paste. Fry before use, as you would with any other curry paste. Keeps in the fridge in a tightly sealed jar for a few weeks.

It's a bastardisation of one of Liz's fine recipes.

Chocolate & Coffee Fudge Cake

For the cake:
2 tbsp cocoa power (it is important that the cocoa is at least 3 years out-of-date)
1 tbsp freshly ground coffee (espresso grind)
6 tbsp boiling water
175g salted butter
175g self-raising flour
3 large eggs
175g granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
4 squares of posh expensive >75% (w/w) cocoa solids chocolate

For the icing
50g salted butter
35g cocoa powder (again, the older, the better)
3 tbsp milk
225g icing sugar

Firstly pre-heat the oven to 180°C then mix the cocoa, coffee and boiling water to make a thin paste then pop the bowl in the freezer for 5 minutes until it's cold. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture, ensuring that you get plenty of flour in your hair and all over your T-shirt. Chop the butter into small cubes and add this, along with the eggs and sugar. Remember to crack the eggs before adding them.

Beat the fuck out of it with an electric whisk for about 2 minutes until it looks like you've been rather unwell. At this stage, eat a large spoonful. Nice, eh? Crumble 3 of the chocolate squares and mix them into the batter then eat the spare one. Plonk the lot into an oiled baking tin and bake for 35 minutes. Remember when adding the mixture to the tin to leave plenty in the bowl to eat with a spoon whilst sat infront of the TV watching Emmerdale Farm with your feet up on the tumpty and a nice mug of tea.

When the cake is cooked, remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack. Meanwhile, in a small pan, melt the butter and stir in the cocoa. Cook on a low heat for around 1 minute, then remove from the heat and add the milk and sugar. It is vital to get icing sugar everywhere, otherwise the recipe won't work. Beat with a wooden spoon until thick and shiny and spread all over the cooled cake.

Ensure that you eat it all yourself and don't take any into work to share around.