World's Quorn Fakin' Mad

I've eaten everything from the Fanny Cradock Cookery Programme I have made. So far. I've tucked into an array of sweet omelettes, despite my better judgement. I've wolfed down green mashed piped potatoes, although my eyes have said 'no'. I've willingly deep-throated bananas smeared with jam and nuts. I've gladly gobbled eggs transformed into a variety of disguises without complaint. I've swiftly swallowed all kinds of things Fanny has made to go further than my purse, or my mind, was able to stretch. Until today. I. Just. Can't.

Of course, as I've made Fanny's fascinations minus the meat, at least I've this far been safe in the knowledge that her creations may taste okay. I like vegetables. I've steered clear of using processed meat substitutes, mostly, simply because I rarely eat them myself. However, on a recent trip to the supermarket I was 'amazed' to see so many 'fake' meat products. Perhaps bemused. Perhaps perplexed. Perhaps baffled. Who was buying these things made to look, taste and feel like meat? Before I knew it I was hearing the self-service checkout beep in shame as I loaded up my bag. With. Sliced. Ham. Vegetarian Sliced Ham. What was I thinking?

I hadn't gone completely loopy. I was curious, and of course Fanny was guiding me to make a Cold Ham Soufflé with her, so part of me didn't want to miss out. Would this ham-hoax cut the mustard? Fanny starts by mincing up her ham. Mine minces fabulously, just like a seventies game show host. Fanny makes a velouté sauce, essentially a white sauce made with stock instead of milk, as the backbone of her dish. Mine whips up like the best bad-ass dominatrix. Or so I've heard anyway. Fanny sets her soufflé with Aspic. I need to adapt the recipe a little, adding Agar Agar to the stock, boiling and then making the velouté like a cutie. That's just how I rock. Nearly.

I can barely bring myself to touch the phoney-ham. Thankfully I am able to distract myself by whipping up egg whites and double cream. Separately of course. Fanny staples. All good here. I. Can. Cope. Except I can't. The pseudo-ham is mocking me. The whole sorry lot needs to be folded together and plopped into a wetted soufflé mould, so that it will come out smoothly. Fanny has taught me that. She hasn't trained me to cope with the horror of this. It's time to chill. The soufflé. And. Me. Too.

However, the shudders continue as Fanny suggests a stomach-churning staging. Apparently what this bogus Cold Ham Soufflé needs is to be topped with a further glaze of Aspic-y Agar Agar before being surrounded by more rolls of fabricated ham. It looks convincingly like the one Fanny made. I am sure it will feel faithfully like it too. Oh. The. Smell.  I have absolutely no doubt that this sham-ham would also taste just like the one Fanny made. I. Am. Not. Trying. It. Sorry. Not. Sorry. Does anyone want it?

Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Aspic

Fanny feels that folks are frightened of Aspic. She's not wrong. However she finds that people are fearful of forming the jelly stuff, not forcing to down their fragile throats. I'd say it's definitely the other way round. Fanny would scold me though. I clearly do not know how to make it properly to a high quality. We've already made a simple aspic together, but now it's time to step up a gear and make real aspic. I'm scared. She tells me that once I am familiar with it I will discover in fact it is much easier to make than any Yorkshire Pudding or Soufflé. I think I'd rather eat those.

Fanny's idea is to make a classic hors d'oeuvre that would delight any buffet party - Oeufs en Cocotte en Gelée. You may remember that they were a favourite, or not, of the lovely Beryl Reid at her very own 70s Dinner party. Surely then this is the one to learn with, and hopefully to change my mind? Fanny reminds us that when working with aspic, moulds must be prepared carefully. She insists that if the intended jelly is creamy, moulds should be oiled. If the jelly is sweet or savoury, they should be simply wetted with water. Be careful not to let the oil or water collect in puddles at the base of the mould by using a small brush to sweep it upwards. This dish is a savoury jelly. Look searchingly at my photos to spot a shocking slip-up that we shall sweep under the carpet.

If I'd spotted that I'd have gone into the panic that Fanny details that most eager home cooks find themselves in when dealing with aspic. She reassures me that provided that the aspic is played 'like a fish on a hook at the end of a line' that all will be well. I'm not entirely sure I understand, not being a fishing kind of person, but I set to with the set too. Fanny prefers soft boiled eggs, or Oeufs Mollets. Normal everyday eggs should be lowered into steadily bubbling water for 4 minutes precisely, then plunged into cold water. To peel them, tap them all over until the shell resembles the fine veins of a neglected oil painting, and get in under it with your finger nails. Carefully of course, as one would presumably handle an old master. If you were peeling it.

For the aspic, the very best stock is required. Add to a pan with some vinegar, sherry, a bay leaf, peppercorns and of course some gelatine. Or Agar Agar powder for me. I get mine from the Chinese supermarket. It does feel a little odd weighing out a few grams of the white powder in my kitchen. The mixture should be heated to just above blood temperature (test by sticking your clean finger in it) and then whisking it while it comes to boil. Fanny says that a normal whisk is fine, but exhausting. A rotary whisk is tiresome. An electric whisk however is ideal. I go 'normal' and 'exhausting'. The end result should not be set into the form of an India Rubber substance but should be a light, holding, savoury jelly. Let's hope so.

Fanny can not give enough emphasis to the whisking. Do not stop. She does acknowledge that this is particularly difficult for people who have little children running around at their feet, or those with tradespeople arriving at the back door. Even those who may have a telephone ringing off the hook. Fanny's advice is to ignore it, make the aspic when the children are securely tucked up in bed and hopefully all tradespeople are safely in their own homes. Whisk away, and set a little aspic in your mould (or tea cup as I am using) before adding the carefully de-shelled egg. Top up with aspic and leave it all to set before turning out the mould to delight your guests. Fanny says that aspic is ideal for making ordinary things look as attractive as possible, as you can see. But still, it's an egg in a slightly vinegar-y savoury jelly. I'm still petrified.

Zest for Life - Fanny Cradock's Lemon Soufflé Jelly Cake

Fanny says that you can make a jelly out of any fruits you might happen to have lying around the house. She even recommends replacing sweet wine wine for any water when making a jelly, for adults only, I like that. Alcoholic jellies always seem like a naughty treat. For this final creation in the Jelly partwork Fanny gives the humble lemon centre stage. I've been learning a lot about Agar Agar as a replacement for gelatine over the past few weeks as I turn all Fannys jellies vegetarian, and the main thing to learn is that it doesn't mix well with acid, in particular citrus fruits. I wonder though how it would react to that Italian Lemon liqueur, Limoncello, often found lurking at the back of even the most respectable cocktail cabinet. Certainly in mine. So, would an alcoholic Limincello Soufflé Cake be fitting of a finale (for now) for Fannys jellies?

Fanny whips eggs, extra yolks and icing sugar together until they are thick and almost white. Fanny does warn that the mixture needs to be whipped for a VERY long time in a very large bowl. My KitchenAid Mixer, Sarah, comes in super handy for this task. I click my fingers, give her a very fake smile and she sets to work while I get on with the rest of the cake. Well actually, when I say cake I really mean assembly of the cake. Fanny suggests making a sponge, but I've bought a Madeira cake in the supermarket. Shoot me. 

Fanny says that this cake can have two presentation styles - individual or party for very special occasions. I think it might be fun to combine the two and have an 'individual party' - I'm celebrating the last of the jellies after all! So while Sarah works away without complaint, such a dedicated assistant, I exhaust myself by cutting two semi circles from the cake, which will make a full circle base. I really should've bought a bigger cake, or maybe used a smaller cutter, it's all too strenuous. 

Sarah does a marvellous job of whipping the eggs and sugar. Unfortunately I need to prepare the lemon jelly all by myself, but it's all the usual way so I am well rehearsed. The Agar flakes go into cold Limoncello (replacing the lemon juice and grated rind) brought to the boil then simmered for a few minutes until the flakes are all dissolved and mingled in nicely. Sarah continues to assist to whip the mixture as I add the hot lemony jellied Limoncello slowly. Fanny warns that the light mixture will collapse a lot as it combines, and sure enough it does. At this stage some double cream is blended in before heading straight into a pot, which is the same size as my cake base, to set. At least I hope it will.

I needn't have worried, after around an hour the Souffléd Lemon Creamy Jelly is set with still a good quiver evident when it's released from the mould. It comes away easily, as I wetted it before adding the mixture, naturally. Fanny assembles her party cake in layers and pipes cream stars. So do I. Almost apologetically she urges me to rush to the supermarket again to buy some candied lemon slice decorations. She's apologising because she simply doesn't have time to teach me how to make my own just yet, that will be saved for a future partwork. I don't have time to learn either, it's my party and I'll continue to add shop bought ingredients if I want to. The finished cake is really tasty, quite zingy and a more than a little bit naughty. I'm a little bit sad and a little bit happy to be saying goodbye, for now, to the wonderfully wibbly wobbly world of jellies, but this is a great send off. 

Bright and Breezy, it's Cheesy à la Zizi

Fanny clearly feels that her own creations may not be entirely eccentric enough, so introduces us to the creator of 'à la Zizi' for our next lesson in 'making it jell'. Fanny says we can learn a great deal from the whimsicality of Alexis Soyer, who was a one time chef at London's great Reform Club. Some say he was the very first celebrity chef. For Fanny to recognise outlandishness in someone else must've meant he was REALLY out there, which no doubt sealed his celebrity. He was seemingly obsessed with everything being 'at the slant' - Fanny notes that his ties, waistcoats and hats were all 'à la Zizi', either slanting in pattern or cut or being worn at an angle. Food presentation was not immune. Fanny says his lesson to us is to create 'charming and unusual vari-coloured sweet or savoury moulds' to match his diagonal obsession, so let's get our slant on!

Fanny recommends this treatment for any and all jellies or aspics, be they sweet or savoury, but notes that the effect is especially charming in creamy creations. She suggests savoury creamed mousses filled with chicken, salmon, cod or shrimp. Not for me. Her own pic-strip and example is a savoury cheese tower in pastel shades of pink, orange and green surrounded by Scottish Oatcakes. It feels only right for me to recreate it just as is, no tweaks, no tiddling, just as Fanny intended. No slant on the original ;-)

The base of the savoury mousse is a custard of egg yolks and milk. I use Almond Milk for mine, I'm really not a fan of large amounts of cows milk in anything, and I imagine it will give an even more savoury, nutty flavour to the finished dish. Fanny whisks the eggs, milk and seasoning together over a double boiler before adding the grated cheese. Fanny waits until the mix is thick to add her gelatine, but as I'm using Agar Agar it goes in while the mixture is cold and heats up and dissolves with everything else. The final additions are single cream (Fanny says you can use coffee cream if you can't get single, but that's not something I've ever seen) and whipped up egg whites. The cheesy mix is really thick and quite stringy to mix, but tastes great - ok I'd admit it I dipped my fingers in. Fanny does recommend tasting for seasoning though at this stage, so I'm only doing as I'm told. 

Fannys trick to present the moulded mousse 'at the slant' is to rest the mould, in my case (following Fanny) a simple wetted - I'm learning - Pyrex bowl, on a wooden spoon while pouring in the first slanted layer. Fannys first layer is pink, therefore so is mine. Once set, the bowl is slanted in the other direction and a green layer added, followed by a purple one and finally an orange one. The cheesy mousse takes the colour well - I use Wilton Gels and only a very small dot is required. Fanny doesn't give any tips for doing this successfully to allow each layer to set without the rest of the mix also setting meantime. The benefit of using Agar is that the mixture can be reheated and liquified when required, poured on and left to set again, but this wouldn't be possible with gelatine. When the mousse is unmoulded it's very firm - probably due to the Agar Agar which seems to turn everything the same solid structure - but tastes good. It's hard to see past the slants of colour and rubbery feel that trick your brain into thinking it's sweet. (Slanted) hats off to Chef Soyer though, it most definitely an eccentric presentation for cheese. It's very savoury, certainly 'à la Zizi', but if I'm honest leaves me feeling a little queasy. 

My Cherry Amour

Fanny Cradock probably never had Jelly Fluff, she probably never even heard of it, but for me that's the only childhood memory of creamy jellies I have. I'm not sure I ever had cream that wasn't in a tin or a squirty can now that I think of it. Not real cream anyway, I'm not sure when I first had real cream! Jelly Fluff was made in my house anyway with a packet of brightly coloured jelly and a tin of Carnation Evaporated Milk, then served with maybe a digestive biscuit or two. It wasn't even a favourite, in secret I couldn't stand the evaporated milk at all. At least in Jelly Fluff it was slightly more bearable than the other dessert option, which was just digestive biscuits with a tin of everything-tastes-the-same Fruit Cocktail and the dreaded evaporated milk poured on top. My favourite 'fruit' from the tin was the hard to find bright pink cherry half - there was usually just the one! Probably just as well Fanny wasn't party to any of this, she'd give it a withering look sure to make it curdle.

Fannys version is a much fancier affair, naturally. A lovingly set mixture of cherry juice and cream. Fanny does say that a tin of cherries may be considered here, but only if out of season. It never occurred to me when I was young that there might be a whole can of those bright pink cherry halves available! Fanny was a big supporter of canning and packing her own produce, so she probably had a few tins or jars of cherries squirrelled away, and never had to resort to the Del Monte. Luckily for me, cherries are bang in season and I found some gorgeous dark black ones to use in this dessert.

The kitchen did resemble a crime scene from Dexter once I'd pitted the cherries mind you. I wonder what the splatter analysis would show? Fanny uses the fresh cherries for a garnish on the finished dessert, so just need to be 'flicked' with a little Kirsch at this stage. To make the very cherry cream Fanny suggests juicing up some cherries, or using the juice from the can. I found some lovely natural cherry syrup in my local Polish deli recently, so that's good enough for me!

The usual jelling rules apply here, add the vegetarian alternative to cold liquid and bring to the boil. For Fanny, it's the same with her gelatine powder. I'm using Agar flakes this time instead of powder, which take a little longer to dissolve and are a little harder to measure accurately. The packet suggests a tablespoon per 250ml of liquid. After the diluted cherry syrup reaches boiling point, it simmers for a few minutes before the tub of whipping cream is plunged in. Quickly, Fanny insists, it should be whipped together. I never really use whipping cream, even for whipping. It's a mystery to me really. 

Remembering Fannys sage advice for jellies I oil my mould well in preparation, with a spray oil which gets into all the nooks and crannys. Oil for cream, wet for not. It's a glorious deep pink colour, and sets really well at room temperature in about an hour. It looks like it has a good wibble wobble as I take my deep breath and turn it out. It slips out of the mould perfectly. Phew! Some whipped double cream and those kirsch soaked cherries finish things off nicely. Maybe I should've added some more agar flakes though, it begins to crack a little under the weight of the fruit, which is good enough reason for me to eat it VERY quickly. It thankfully tastes nothing like the Jelly Fluff of old, not that I had that with alcoholic cherries of course. It's smooth, sharp and creamy, like a thicker cheery cherry mousse. Ever the nostalgic though, I'm really wishing I'd bought some digestives to have with it...

Well (veggie) Jel

Many believed that Fanny Cradock may herself have been preserved in Aspic by the time she appeared in full technicolour in the 1970's, such was her outdated yet strangely fascinating style and technique. She brought to mind 'days of old' and labour intensive preparation in the kitchen, when in actual fact her aim (she said) was to save the ordinary housewife the shackles of such things. Even in the 70's the thought of making elaborate jellies and aspics to present to your guests was frowned upon, but not by Fanny. Her feeling was that the fault lay with the home cooks who had a number of 'culinary bogeys', which of course included gelatine, and it was her role to eliminate them! Fanny insisted that if you treated gelatine properly, it would ALWAYS behave as good as gold for you. Who knows what she'd have made of me trying to turn all her gelatine laden dishes vegetarian mind you...

It's always a little frustrating when chefs dream up a delicious dessert using gelatine, as I never quite know how to switch it up to a vegetarian friendly version... What quantity of those funny slippery sheets of slime they use do you substitute for whichever vegetarian version you are lucky enough to find. There are gels, flakes and powders, but no slippery sheets. Fanny provides detailed charts showing how much gelatine to use for each type and quantity of any given liquid. Here's the good news, she's not a fan of slippery sheets and instead uses gelatine powder. Maybe this conversion malarkey won't be so tricky after all?

Fanny insists that we are all firm with ourselves over accuracy. We MUST measure out not only the powder but also the liquids, making sure we give our scales a good prodding before we do so to ensure they behave. I do like to measure things anyway, clearly I am teachers pet in the jelly class. She has not time whatsoever for those women who write to her to moan that there gelatine has sunk to the bottom of their dishes, or has clumped in lumps. Fanny gets down with the kids in her response and can only think of a one word reply... 'punk!' I am pretty sure her exact response may have rhymed with that but was unprintable in the 70's. Her method is to scatter gelatine powder onto the given quantities of cold liquid in the charts, heat and stir over a low flame and then add it to the bulk liquid. The instructions for the Agar powder I am using first (from Experichef) are more or less the same, except I add the powder to the total amount of liquid before heating. It's 1g of powder to 100ml of liquid. Fanny says this is 'POPPYCOCK' but in fairness I don't think she was really referring to Agar...

Fannys' first foray into the land of wibble wobble is entirely decorative. She wants to show us the wonders of jelly by helping us recreate a Victorian table centrepiece for a ball or supper, which of course would have always been homemade. I didn't really imagine they had packet jelly in those days anyway, but I think she's warning us not to dissolve some flavoured cubes from the supermarket here. Fanny says all I need to produce an quick and easy 'elaboration' is some fluted pastry cutters and a sharp knife. As long as I prepare my jelly moulds correctly that is. If my mixture if contains cream they should be oiled, if they don't they should be thoroughly wetted. I'm trying out a range of different moulds for this Victorian sensation, but no cream. Wet it is! 

I am taking my inspiration from Fannys own illustration which shows a colourful plateful of cut jelly stacked high. I whip up a large batch of clear Agar jelly, just until the mixture boils, and decide to colour it in my moulds so I can get more variation. A muffin tin doubles up as a mould, as well as some individual baking trays, and of course some 'real' jelly moulds. They all take well to the gel colours (I like to use Wilton) mixed together with the ends of cocktail sticks) and set well while they cool. The cutters do their job and all there is to manage is the assembly. Fanny uses some pretty a Aspic cutters, and I have a modern day set of small shapes. I feel that I have well and truly eliminated the 'jelly bogey' and am ready to progress to a whole partwork of equally weird and wonderful 'set' creations! Are you ready to join me?