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I do not post much. In fact this is the first thread I've ever posted, but I read GWS a lot and the posters here have inspired and taught me to cook (for which I am very grateful). It's high time I gave one of these a go! PICNICS! I have fond memories of childhood picnics, even though looking back they were clearly just a ploy by our mother to get us out of the house and to fill a day up in the school holidays. Many many years later I find myself sat indoors typing this up on a sunny Summer afternoon... By way of explanation for my entry, I live in the UK (more specifically I live in a market town in the South Downs in the South East of England) so my idea of picnic food is probably slightly different to many of the non-English posters here. For example, the chairman's suggesting of cold fried chicken is just bizarre to me (no matter how delicious fried chicken is) so I'm going to try to recreate the picnic food I remember growing up in England, exactly as my mother would have made. The Menu -Sandwiches -Sausage rolls -Crisps -Jam tarts -Fizzy drink Ok, so I remember that we'd start out with a trip to Tesco to buy the ingredients:  Yup, that looks about right. Start with some slices of cheap white bread  top with what can only generously be described as ham  layer with another slice  and finish with a diagnoal cut.  Perfect. Ok, next for the sausage rolls. Open the package of Tesco value sausage rolls and serve.  Wow, this is easy, why didn't I enter one of these earlier?! The jam tarts and crisps use the same technique as the sausage rolls so I'll just lay this all out with a can of coke and we're done!  Analysis Ah, just how I remember... terrible. The sandwich is both dry and gummy, the sausage rolls tasteless and floury and the jam tarts hit you in the mouth with sugar and nothing else. The crisps are fine but nothing special. I think we can do better. My kitchen assistants arrived home and were keen to help dispose of the first attempt:  Take 2: The Menu -Sandwiches -Sausage rolls -Crisps -Jam tarts -Fizzy drink I'm going to see if we can improve on these same items using actual cooking, proper ingredients and going back to traditional recipes where I can. It happened to be Sunday when I chose to begin which means market day! We have a very good market here with a greengrocer, several butchers, a baker, a cheesemonger, a fishmonger and all sort of other stalls. Unfortunately I had forgotten that it was also a bank holiday weekend. For non-commonwealth readers a bank holiday is what we call a public holiday when everything closes, no-one goes to work and we clog up the roads trying to take of advantage of a three day break. You can also guarantee it will chuck it down with rain, meaning instead of the market I was expecting I was met with the most English thing I've seen in a while...  ... hundreds of people sat in the rain refusing to let it get in the way of the town festival which was going on. "It is not passion which flows through the veins of the English but rain." Sandwiches The shooter's sandwich has been fashionable in recent years so I'm sure it needs no great introduction but it's a traditional English country Gent's sandwich and somehow I've never had one so I'm going to give it a go. Starting with the bread, which will be a three-day no-kneed job. I've never tried a no-kneed recipe before but in the current house surface space is limited so let's give it a go. Ingredients: strong flour, fast acting yeast, salt, water:  All mixed together in a bowl, left out for 24 hours at room temperature and then into the fridge for two more days, resulting in this:  bubbly goop in a bowl. Shaped into a vague loaf shape and left to rise whilst the oven heated to max with a cast iron casserole dish (dutch oven) inside. The only cast iron I have with a lid is oval so this wont be the usual circular sandwich but hopefully it'll come out Ok. Whilst that's baking lets get on with the filling. Starting with a silverside joint of beef  which was reverse seared (something else I've never tried before) resulting in this from the oven:  and then this, having been finished off in the cast iron pan with butter, rosemary from the garden and some rose peppercorns:  I know that a steak is more traditional but I thought that slices of roast meat might be more texturally interesting (and cheaper). By now the bread is done  It's not perfectly shaped but it is drat crusty and it was about midnight when it came out so it will do nicely. Scooped out and flavoured with a layer of English mustard from Norwich  and a mixture of these   Frying the chopped mushrooms until they browned, adding the shallotts and then a good glug of brandy. Let's build a sandwich!  add the meat  another layer of mushrooms etc  then top and wrap in foil and leave in the fridge over night with a weight over the top. This finally resulted in this:  Sausage Rolls I glossed over it before but I think that sausage rolls are another uniquely british thing. They are a sausage (usually of the herby british variety) wrapped in flakey pastry and baked. I suppose it's our version of a hotdog. I've never made them before (surprisingly) but whilst researching recipes I discovered that they are not quite as uniform as I'd previously believed. In Sussex (the next county over) they are classically made with bread dough rather than pastry so let's try a local tradition out. Starting with pork mince, flavoured with salt, sage, thyme, rosemary and more of those peppercorns  rolled into sausage shapes  and wrapped in what was left of the bread dough.  This was a pain because of the super wet no-kneed dough which refused to neatly roll flat but the flavour was worth it in the end. Into the oven  and 30 minutes later   Crisps These are what our friends in the US call potato chips. I thought we could branch out a little and see what else would crisp up nicely. These  turned into these using the broadside of a box-grater  and then into these, having been tossed in salt, pepper, finely chopped rosemary and a small amount of oil and baked for about 10 minutes  Jam tart One of the great pleasures of growing up in the English countryside is eating blackberries straight from the bramble bushes so let's make a blackberry tart to replace the luminous goo we bought earlier. Starting with the pastry then. Ingredients:  Eggs and sugar creamed together with vanilla extract and lemon zest, butter mixed in then the potato starch and flour to produce a lump of pastry  Wrapped in clingfilm and left in the fridge for half an hour. Whilst it was in there I realised that, not being a prolific baker, I have no tins to actually bake the tarts in. Luckily what I do have is these mini cast iron skillets (lemon for scale)  They'll have to do. Whilst the oven was heating the pastry was rolled out and placed inside the pans  filled with a layer of chuckleberry jam from a local farm  and then topped up with blackberries and a sprinkle of sugar  Baked until the pastry was golden  Fizzy drink This is a quick Victorian beverage for a summers day. Start with root ginger, lemon, cloves and sugar  simmer away in half a pint of water for 10 minutes  then top up with soda water and add some sliced oranges and limes for decoration  Altogether The final results  and laid out on the picnic blanket on the heath next to the lake (it was dark by the time we finished so couldn't get a great picture of the view).  Analysis Well, spending literal days making a picnic is a huge improvement and forces you to try out things you've never done before! It also reinforces the stereotype that all British food is brown... The shooter's sandwich was pretty good, I'm pleased with every part of it individually but I have to admit that it could have done with something extra in the filling. Must work on my bread shaping too! The Sausage rolls were really the stars of this show. I'm completely converted to the Sussex style. They're far less messy and greasy that usual and the crispy browning on the outside where the pork fat had leaked out and cooked the bread was amazing! They didn't look great but they were delicious. Could probably have done without the rosemary though. The crisps were probably the hardest thing to get right and the only thing I practiced with before hand. They all crisped up amazingly, with the parsnip and sweet potato the most crunchy, though after a few hours had softened up a little. I think a cooling rack might have helped but, again, not a huge baker. The jam tarts were lovely. Very sweet but balanced by the zest and the blackberries. I did have to give up on getting them out of the shallow pans in one piece. The ginger drink was also very good and really easy to make. I've had bad experiences boiling ginger in the past but the fieriness was just right this time. Might become a regular summer drink. All in all an interesting and (ultimately) tasty experience. I'm not sure I've sold anyone on traditional English food but it's been fun. Take that childhood!
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Jun 11, 2017 14:12
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:48 |
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Absolutely lovely! Thanks for breaking the seal, i'm inspired to hurry up on my entry now!
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Jun 11, 2017 15:08
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Love it. Looks like a great picnic that I want to eat
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Jun 11, 2017 15:59
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That was a very good post.
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Jun 11, 2017 18:39
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This is an excellent entry! I very much want to eat all of that.  I'm especially a fan of that sandwich, it looks substantial and delicious.
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Jun 11, 2017 21:06
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Great work. Made me most homesick. Love the sausage roll variation. Might well give it a go.
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Jun 11, 2017 23:36
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Awesome work, Oski. (your name reminds me of the dog from Curb Your Enthusiasm) Try spraying or greasing the little cast iron pans next time? Might make it easier to remove the tarts. If the shooter sandwich was missing something, maybe you could add either an acidic element like sun-dried tomatoes or something rich like feta or blue cheese. Overall, awesome work and great joke post to start.
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Jun 12, 2017 13:56
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Thanks chaps! As I learned to cook form this forum it's very gratifying that it went down well. Midniter, I think you're on the money with the sandwich - blue cheese would have been just the thing. I didn't think of it because I've become intolerant to dairy so there's never any in the house anymore (I know there was butter in the pastry and browning the beef, I suffered for it the next morning). Cavenagh, I cant recommend the sausage rolls enough. Probably go with sausage meat or an actual sausage instead of pork mince though. Make them and think of Blighty!  I have no idea what Curb Your Enthusiasm is, but I'm sure looking forward to reading the other entries!
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Jun 13, 2017 19:34
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Good show, it all looks great. No gin or Pimm's or something in the drink though?
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Jun 24, 2017 23:50
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I really like the look of that shooter sandwich, and using slices of roast instead of a steak for it. I'm too lazy to not use slices of bread instead of a whole one, though  Your picnic looks really good! Reminds me of when I ate an entire meat pie sitting outside some large-ish mall in London. I felt kinda gross, but the meat pie was soooo good.
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Jun 25, 2017 00:58
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Excellent stuff (and loved the bait and switch haha)! I'm sure your mother is a lovely woman, but she didn't even butter/marg/spread the bread for your formative sandwiches? The monster. All the entries were great but you nabbed my vote P.S. Those are clearly Tesco standard and not Value sausage rolls - still rubbish, but I must nitpick  Cavenagh posted:Great work. Made me most homesick. You know I was always curious that your posts suggested you were in the states but you had a Wildhearts av - expat mystery solved
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Jun 26, 2017 07:13
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:48 |
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No gin in the drink but there were some G&Ts had off to the side. It is summer after all! My sausage roll deception has been called out! I had meant to buy tesco value but they didn't have any. Fortunately these turned out pretty much as bad..
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Jun 26, 2017 19:11
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