Strong Ginger Beer

This will produce a small batch (5 litres) of strong (~7%abv) warming ginger beer, not as sweet as Crabbies Ginger Beer but richer in maltiness.

Ingredients

1kg of dark or medium, dry malt extract (or 1.3kg of liquid malt extract)
300g root ginger
500g honey (optional, but will up the strength to nearer 8%)
Sachet of Ale Yeast

Method

Cut the ginger into small pieces and bash in a pestle and mortar (or in a freezer bag with a rolling pin)
Boil a litre of water in a large saucepan and add the bashed ginger and the malt extract.
Stir on a high heat until the malt has dissolved, it may form clumps until the water gets hot enough.
Once boiling and all the malt has dissolved, remove from the heat and add 4 litres of cold water, if using honey then add just before the cold water.

Please note: after boiling is over, any equipment coming into contact with this brew should be sanitised and this can be performed with a range of products from a home brew shop.  If you can't get to a home brew shop, you could use a product for sanitising babies' bottles, but if you can't get to a home brew shop, you will probably also need to compromise on two other key ingredients by using bread yeast and ordinary malt extract.  It will still work using these ingredients but the finished beer will not be quite as fine as if ale yeast and brewing grade malt is used.
Check the temperature, if above 22 C, place the pan in a sink of running cold water, stirring until the temperature comes down to a level that the yeast can cope with.  This is usually stated on the pack of yeast, but for an ale yeast, this is typically 18-22 C.  The stirring will serve to speed the cooling process and, if robust enough, will help aerate the malt solution (known as wort in brewing terms, pronounced "wert") dissolving gasses lost from the solution when boiled; An aerated wort is a better environment for the yeast to start-off in.
When at the right temperature, pour the wort into a sanitised fermenting bin.  The fermenting bin or bucket is a food grade plastic bucket, but you can use a container of any food grade material, such as a glass demijohn or carboy.  Sanitisation cleans the container to a level where there is near-as-dammit no microbes present to compete with the yeast for colonisation of the wort that is about to fill the bucket.
Once in the fermenting bin, add the yeast and stir vigorously for a minute to give the yeast a kick start.  Place a lid loosely on the bucket, to prevent anything falling or crawling into the beer but not sealed, so the carbon dioxide gas produced from fermentation can escape.  A sealed container would swell with built-up pressure and eventually blow making quite a mess.  If desired, you could use a container fitted with a bubble trap which allows the gas to escape and better protects the beer from ingress of anything else, but this is not absolutely necessary - I hardly ever bother.  However, the bubble trap will give you an indication of the progress of fermentation:  the frequency of bubbling slows right down then stops when fermentation is over.
After a couple of weeks or when the fermentation is over you are ready to bottle the ginger beer.  To be sure the fermentation is over, you should use a hydrometer and when the reading is low enough and stable for a few days, you can bottle.
As ever: sanitise bottles and equipment.  If using a syphon tube, make sure the bits of ginger won't block it, by using an attachment that sits on the base of the fermenting bin that won't block, or by attaching a small piece of muslin cloth to the end of the tube.
Prime each bottle with household sugar at the rate of one teaspoon per litre of beer.  Seal the bottles and leave at room temperature for a week for the sugar to be fermented to alcohol and carbon dioxide.  Then leave in a cool or cold place for a few weeks for the carbon dioxide to dissolve in the beer, to carbonate it.
If you are unsure if the beer had fully fermented before bottling, use plastic bottles.  If they blow, they will still make a mess, but not quite as scary as exploding glass bottles.
When ready to drink, handle the bottles gently so as not to kick-up the sediment and pour in a slow and smooth single motion, with light behind the bottle so you can see any sediment that may come with the last bit of the beer in the bottle.
Sit back and enjoy the beer, the maltiness and ginger giving a warm feeling on a cold day.

Chocolate Cream Pies

As a child I had a penchant for those clear pots of smooth chocolate dessert topped with sweetened whipped cream. To be honest I could happily demolish one now, but here's my version in pastry cases:

For the pastry cases

Ingredients

4oz plain flour
Pinch salt
2 tsp sugar
2oz butter
30ml or more of cold water

Method

Place the flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl.
Cut the butter into small dice and rub into the flour with finger tips.
Once it all looks like fine bread crumbs, add 2 tablespoons of water and bring together with a butter-knife to start forming a firm dough, you may need a tad more water if it doesn't start coming together. Form a ball of dough in your hands, cover in food wrap and place in the fridge for half an hour.
Roll out the pastry on a floured surface to the thickness of a penny.
Cut out discs with a cm pastry cutter and carefully place the discs in a greased muffin tin, reforming the dough, rolling out and cutting again until you have 12 discs (there is only just enough pastry to do this)
Oven fired up and set to gas mark 5.
Place the lined muffin tin in the fridge while your oven heats up, this should stop the pastry shrinking when it is baked.
Bake in the oven for 7 minutes then remove from the oven, brush with egg wash (egg yolk with a dash of milk) pushing back any pastry that has ballooned up.
Return to the oven for a further 14 minutes.

For the filling

Ingredients

2 Tbsp Cocoa powder
1 heaped tsp instant coffee (optional)
1oz Cornflour
2 Tbsp Milk
15 fl oz Milk
Sugar
Butter

Method

Slake the cocoa and cornflour (and possibly the coffee, decaff if preferred) with the 2 tbsp milk.
Heat the 3/4 pint milk to boiling then whisk into the cocoa paste and place in a pan and boil for 2 mins, whisking.
Heat off.
Whisk in 1oz butter and 4 tbsp caster sugar.
Whisk for 2 mins.
Pour into pastry cases.
Cool over night.

For the Chantilly Cream topping

Ingredients

10 fl oz Whipping cream
2 tsp icing sugar
2 tsp Amaretto (optional)
Part of a small bar of chocolate

Method 

Whip the cream, then add the icing sugar or use only 1 tsp icing sugar and add the Amaretto liqueur before whisking again.

Pipe the cream onto the pies and grate chocolate over the top.

Lemony Butter Biscuits

Makes: 2 lots of 18-20 biscuits
Prep time: 10 mins prep then 30 mins fridge plus 2 hrs more fridge time or over-night
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Skill level: Piece of pith
Equipment:  Mixing bowl and wooden spoon / food mixer; zester or fine grater; Sharp knife; cling film; baking sheet; cooling rack

Ingredients

175g Butter (unsalted)
Zest of a whole lemon
50g Caster sugar
50g Demerara sugar
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
225g Plain flour

To coat
100g or so of Demerara sugar

Method

Beat the butter until soft and creamy.

Mix in the zest, caster sugar, Demerara sugar and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy.
Sift in the flour and mix / bring together the dough.
Lightly kneed the dough until smooth (a matter of seconds should do)
Divide into two, wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Shape each piece of dough in to a 15cm long cylinder and roll in the Demerara sugar to coat before wrapping in cling film and refrigerating for at least 2 hours.

I normally put one cyclinder in the freezer for another day.
Once out of the fridge or defrosted slice 15 discs (1cm thick) and place on a baking sheet about 2 cm apart.
Bake at 160C for about 20 minutes or until a light golden colour and firm.
Remove from the oven and wait for a few minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

Quick Chicken Bhuna

Serves: 4 people
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: about 20 minutes
Skill level: Competent
Equipment: Pestle and Mortar or spice mill; Frying pan

I think we all have a dish up our sleeve that we can cook without too much effort or too many ingredients, which yields a fantastic result at variance to the effort put in to it.  This recipe is a perfect example: Not a jar of sauce or tub of curry powder in sight, but no lengthy prep or extensive list of spices to buy-in and leave to expire, should you not cook spicy food often.
The sauce for this bhuna is aromatic with a gentle warmth and quite thick. Perfect for eating with chapati but goes equally well with rice or naan bread.

Ingredients

1 tbsp cardamon pods

8 cloves
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
8 pepper corns
Salt
Oil or ghee
6 diced chicken thighs or a whole chicken, jointed
4 cloves of garlic
Root ginger (about the same amount as the garlic)
Tub of onion salad crispies
Greek yoghurt
Coriander leaves

Method

Place the cardamon, cloves, chilli, peppercorns and a pinch of salt in the mortar then bash and grind with the pestle to reduce the spices to the size of ground pepper (the green pods of the cardamon won't go very small but that's fine)
Place the ground spices in a dry pan and place on a moderate or high heat until the spices start to smoke.
Pour in the oil or ghee and add the diced chicken.

Fry until browned all over.
Place a teaspoon of salt flakes in the mortar (add less if fine table salt), add the garlic cloves, peeled, and the same amount, by eye, of peeled root ginger.
Bash with the pestle to a paste and add to the pan.
Fry, stirring, for a few minutes until the chicken is essentially cooked through.
Add the tub of crispy, fried onions then a generous amount of Greek yoghurt to get a nice, thick sauce.
Heat through then add a handful of chopped coriander leaf before serving.


Note: You can substitute the tub of crispy onions with a whole onion fried in advance until browned.