This week:
Ghoulash with Eyeballs from Delia's Complete Cookery Course, p. 166.
Blood Red Soup from Leiths Simple Cookery, p. 89.
Accompanied by: lots of garlic bread, and festively decorated cupcakes (courtesy of my wife).
Liquor: Hobgoblin Ale, naturally.
Difficulty: A brisk run.
The Blood Red Soup was, in fact, a delicious cherry tomato and basil creme fraiche recipe, and eyeballs in the Hungarian Ghoulash were hard-boiled quail's eggs. Waitrose, eh?
Unfortunately, due to the time interval between cooking and posting I cannot remember much about the cooking process, but I will attempt to recall it with some photographs.
First, I browned the meat quickly a few at a time. I then fried the onions and returned the meat, throwing the paprika and flour in, and stirring thoroughly so as to form a uniform coating on the meat.
In hindsight, I should have done two things: firstly, I should have coated the meat with paprika and flour before browning it, and secondly, I should have browned the meat more quickly. In the final dish, the meat was both tough and lacking in paprika flavour.
I did use a heavy-based dish (vital when cooking at high temperature), but I'm still too afraid to really let the oil heat up enough to brown the meat without cooking it too much. On that note, if anyone could tell me how to throw meat into a sizzling pan without getting spattered with hissing and popping oil as the moisture escapes, please tell me. My eyebrows will appreciate it.
After this relatively easy start, I simply put the tin of Italian tomatoes into the mix, brought all to a gentle boil and then covered and simmered it, allowing me to get on with the cherry tomato soup.
Another simple recipe, this was really the winner on the night. The fruity cherry tomato flavours in the hot soup contrast beautifully with the more subtle basil flavours of the dollop of cool creme fraiche.
I'm not sure we served it exactly as we were supposed to, but it tasted very good, so I think we'll continue to go off-piste in future.
I basically fried up the cherry tomatoes with some basil stalks and the red onion:
After they'd begun 'to release their juices' (in the words of the recipe-writer), I liquidised it all with a hand-held blender to a fine consistency and forced it through a sieve into another pan.
The basil creme fraiche was easy to whip up, just requiring 8 shredded basil leaves some seasoning mixed with four table-spoons of creme fraiche. I didn't know what shredding meant exactly, so I just tore it up by hand. Much as I do on a fret-board. In my dreams.
Meanwhile, the ghoulash was ready for red-pepper and cream ...
... and most importantly, the eyeballs!
I tried to make dark pupils with black food colouring, but failed miserably, achieving a kind of marbled affect and staining my figures and the work surface.
Meanwhile, my wife had tricked out the table halloween style, and we were ready for the starter: Blood Red Soup (with Pus?)
After which, we had the Ghoulash with Eyeballs (with precautionary garlic bread).
All of which was washed down with tasty Halloween-edition Hobgoblin Ale (at least in my case):
We finished with a selection of home-made-and-decorated cupcakes, with which I had nothing to do, which is why they look so good.
Then we turned off the lights and hid from trick-or-treaters.
In terms of success, the soup was really quite good, the ghoulash was okay, but a little tasteless and tough, and the cupcakes were, of course, brilliant.
