Steak and Kidney Pudding

Steak-and-kidney pudding is one of the many foods to appear in the Harry Potter books that Americans view as being categorically British. It is no surprise then, that it is served for lunch at Hogwarts:

"'They wouldn't fire him, would they?' said Hermione anxiously, not touching her steak-and-kidney pudding" (Prisoner of Azkaban 119).

Steak-and-kidney pudding doesn't sound too appetizing, but the steak-and-kidney pie I made in October turned out to be one of my favorite things to appear on 'In the Kitchen with Harry Potter.' So don't judge a food by its name! Today we shall make steak-and-kidney pudding, according to the recipe found in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. 

For the Crust, You Will Need:

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1.5 sticks unsalted butter, cut into chunks

1/2 cup ice water

For the Filling, You Will Need (I've changed the amounts slightly, so heads up!):

1 bag (9 oz) Gardein Beefless Tips

2 Tbs vegetable oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

3 Tbs all-purpose flour

1 cup No-Chicken Broth

3 Tbs tomato paste

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground pepper

3 portobello mushroom caps, diced

1. For the crust, whisk together the flour, salt, and pepper. Scatter the butter over the flour and rub the mixture together with your fingers.

2. Sprinkle the water over the mixture and fold together with a spatula. Eventually you may need to use your hands to form a ball. If the dough is too dry, add more water 1 Tbs at a time.

3. Remove 1/3 of the dough for the lid, reserving the rest for the base. Form both pieces into disks, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate while you make the filling, at least 30 minutes.

4. For the filling, cut your beefless tips into smaller pieces (I just cut them in half), and microwave for 1.5 minutes. Set aside.

5. Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the onions and saute over medium heat until golden brown. Add the garlic and saute a few seconds, until fragrant.

6. (The order from now on is different from the carnivore recipe) Sprinkle the flour over the onions and stir together.

7. Stir in the broth, then stir in the tomato paste. The mixture will be very thick, so be careful to scrape the bottom so nothing burns. 

8. Add the salt, pepper, and mushrooms and stir together well.

9. Add the beefless tips and mix well. Cover and cook for awhile, up to ten minutes.

10. Uncover, raise the heat a bit, and boil another 5 minutes (unless it seems way to thick already!), thickening the mixture even more.

11. Scrape the filling onto a rimmed baking sheet and spread it out so it will cool quickly (you want it to be close to room temperature).

12. Grease and flour a 2-quart casserole/pudding dish with a tight-fitting lid. On a generously floured surface, roll out the large disk of dough into a 14" circle. Fit the circle into the prepared casserole dish, allowing the excess to hang over the rim. Roll the second disk into an 8" circle. *If your dish is smaller than 2-quarts (like mine), judge the necessary circle sizes for yourself.*

13. Scrape the filling into the pastry-lined dish. 

14. Cover the filling with the smaller circle, and fold the excess up over the edges. Seal the edges (as well as you can) with a fork, leaving a bit of room for the dough to expand.

15. Cover the dish with its lid and place it on a "trivet" (the top of a jar works well) inside a large pot. Fill the pot with water so the water reaches halfway up the sides of your pudding dish. Cover the pot and simmer for 2.5 hours. Check the pot often to make sure the water does not boil away.

16. Use oven mitts to remove the pudding from the pot. To serve, you can try to invert the pudding onto a serving dish (if you want to be fancy), or you can simply scoop servings right out of the pudding dish.

YUM! This is delicious! Though I'm not really surprised, since the filling is exactly the same as for steak-and-kidney pie, which I also loved. The only real difference between the pudding and the pie is the way it's cooked (and a slightly different crust). If you have the time (because this recipe takes at least 3 hours from start to finish), I highly recommend that you give this one a try! And if you have slightly less time, I suggest you take a trip through my archives and make the pie version! Enjoy!

Stew

Our next new food item is one that appears quite a few times in the Harry Potter books.

"'Ron, cheer up,' said Hermione, pushing a dish of stew toward him. 'You heard what Professor McGonagall said.' Ron spooned stew onto his plate and picked up his fork but didn't start" (Prisoner of Azkaban 110).

It's always intrigued me that stew is in the same category as soup, but doesn't really have much liquid to it. And the broth that exists is really more like thin gravy. Anyway, I was never a big fan of stew when I was a kid, but maybe I'll be a bigger fan of a vegetarian version. 

There are a couple different recipes for stew in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. Most of them have a whole lot of ingredients, and each one is very different from the others. I'm sure they're delicious, but today I opted instead to find a recipe that kind of combines those other recipes into one simple stew. And I found it at bbcgoodfood.com, so surely it is British to the core. I changed the ingredient amounts so that you can make it with just one bag of vegetarian "beef" instead of 2.5. Today we shall make Stout Stew with Carrots!

You Will Need:

1 Tbs vegetable oil

1 bag (8 or 9 oz) Gardein Beefless Tips

1 small onion, roughly chopped

2.5 carrots, chopped

1/2 Tbs flour

250mL (1/2 a can) Guiness

1/2 a No-Beef Boullion Cube (Though after tasting the finished product, I might recommend using a whole cube, even though they're bigger than normal cubes!)

Pinch of sugar

1 Bay Leaf

Small spring of Thyme (or a little shake of ground thyme, which is what I did)

Mashed potatoes or parsnips, for serving

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Heat the oil in a large oven-proof skillet (with a lid! ...or I guess you could use tinfoil).

2. Add the onion and carrot to the dish, stirring occasionally, until starting to brown.

3. Scatter over the flour and quickly stir so it doesn't burn. Immediately add the beefless tips. Stir occasionally, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan so the flour doesn't burn.

4. After a few minutes (I kind of played it by ear, since vegetarian "meat" doesn't really have to cook to a specific temperature), add the Guiness and crumble in the boullion cube. Season with a pinch of sugar and salt and pepper to taste. "Tuck in" (such a British phrase, I love it) the bay leaf and thyme and bring to a simmer.

5. Give one more good stir, cover the skillet and place in the oven. This is the time to make your mashed potatoes/parsnips!

6. When your mash is ready, pull the stew out of the oven and serve over a mound of your chosen mashed veggie.

This is pretty tasty! However, I definitely recommend being heavy-handed with your spices. Also, I personally think it tastes better the next day (yay for yummy leftovers!). So the next time you want something hearty and simple, give this stew a try!

Fried Tomatoes

Fried tomatoes are a major component to a traditional English breakfast, so it is no surprise that they appear on the Hogwarts breakfast tables:

"Feeling slightly more cheerful, Harry helped himself to sausages and fried tomatoes" (Prisoner of Azkaban 97).

A recipe for fried tomatoes appears in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, but it is for what I consider to be a more Southern-American-style fried tomato rather than the fried tomatoes I recall from my study abroad program in Grantham, England. Regardless, they are tasty, so we shall prepare our tomatoes according to Ms. Bucholz' recipe.

You Will Need:

Tomatoes, sliced into 1/4" slices

3 Tbs vegetable oil

Flour for dredging

salt and pepper to taste

toast, for serving if desired

1. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.

2. Dredge the sliced tomatoes in the flour.

3. Place the dreged tomatoes in the hot oil and fry on both sides until golden.

4. Transfer the fried tomatoes to a paper-towel-line plate and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Serve immediately with hot buttered toast (and baked beans, and veggie sausage, and fried mushrooms, if you want to get really authentic!).

These fried tomatoes may not be authentically British, but they certainly are delicious! I highly recommend you whip some up for breakfast (or lunch, or a snack, or whatever) sometime soon! Enjoy!

Pumpkin Tart

Pumpkins seem to be a favorite ingredient in Wizarding World fare. Add tarts to the equation and you have the perfect dessert for a British Start-of-Term Feast at Hogwarts:

"At long last, when the last morsels of pumpkin tart had melted from the golden platters, Dumbledore gave the word that it was time for them all to go to bed, and they got their chance" (Prisoner of Azkaban 94).

The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook contains a recipe that takes this pumpkin tart a step further than simple pumpkin pie. So today we shall make No-Bake Chocolate-Bottom Tart. Except that you do actually bake the crust... so... yeah. Here we go!

For the crust, You Will Need:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
3 Tbs granulated sugar
3/4 stick (6 Tbs) cold butter, cut into chunks
1 large egg yolk
2 Tbs heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla

For the chocolate bottom, You Will Need:
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped

For the pumpkin filling, You Will Need:
1.5 cups canned pumpkin (not pie filling)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 large eggs
1 Tbs cornstarch
1.5 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted, for drizzling, if desired

1. To make the tart dough, place the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Scatter the butter pieces over the flour and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse yellow meal. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
2. Whisk together the egg yolk, cream, and vanilla and pour over the flour mixture.

3. Toss with a spatula until the dough begins to stick together. Knead into a ball, press into a disk, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to 3 days.
4. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. On a generously floured surface, roll out the tart dough into an 11" disk. Tart dough is hard to roll out, I recommend rolling it twice, and using a lot of flour.  Fit the dough into a 9" tart pan (I don't have one, so I use a pie pan. If you do this, keep in mind that pie pans are deeper!).

5. Prick the bottom of the crust with a fork, cover completely with aluminum foil, and fill with pie weights or beans. Bake for 20 minutes or until the dough is dry and set.

6. Remove the foil and weights, reduce the heat to 350 degrees, and bake for another 10 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Remove from the oven to cool.
7. Place the chocolate and cream in a microwavable bowl and melt them together, stirring at intervals until smooth.
8. Pour the melted chocolate into the crust and let it cool until set. Heads up, this takes a long time. I even put mine in the fridge for awhile, and it still wasn't 100% set when I got impatient and moved on to the next step.

9. While your chocolate is firming up, combine the pumpkin, sugar, spices, and cream in a medium saucepan and cook, stirring frequently, until hot but not bubbling.

10. Whisk the eggs with the cornstarch and add to the pan. Continue cooking, (gently) stirring constantly, until thickened and bubbling. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature.

11. Pour the cooled filling into the tart shell and smooth the top with a spatula. If desired, drizzle melted chocolate on top. Refrigerate until firm.

It turns out that you really need to let this tart set overnight, otherwise the chocolate will still be liquidy when you eat it. If I made it again, I would definitely use a little less cream in the chocolate bottom mixture, since it didn't become remotely solid until about 12 hours in the fridge. But regardless of the texture (which is kind of like melty pumpkin pie...), this tart is actually quite tasty. The chocolate is very subtle, and compliments the pumpkin flavors very well. So if you decide to try this one out, go easy on the cream. Enjoy!

Chocolate

There are several times throughout the Harry Potter series when chocolate is mentioned without a specification of what kind of chocolate the characters eat. But the first mention of "chocolate" on its own also occurs hand-in-hand with our trio's first conversation with the lovable Professor Lupin:

"A loud snap made them all jump. Professor Lupin was breaking an enormous slab of chocolate into pieces" (Prisoner of Azkaban 84).

Chocolate is kind of an art. Making chocolate is a very involved process that takes place over several days with equipment I definitely don't own. So today, we'll make chocolates, not chocolate. And we're going to use a super easy recipe for "Chocolate Nutella Shapes" I found on the Internet.

A cop out you say?

Who cares? It's delicious, and I want some chocolates.

You Will Need (this recipe makes A LOT of chocolates!):
1 16oz tub chocolate frosting
1 cup Nutella or other Chocolate-Hazelnut spread
2 1/4cups Powdered Sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Meltable candy coating

1. Place the frosting and nutella in a mixing bowl and beat together on low until combined.

2. Add the powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Mix together on low until completely incorporated. You may need to use a spatula after awhile.

3. After mixing, you should have a mixture with a texture like play-doh (mine was very grainy, but smushed together well. Gather the dough into a ball and roll it out between two sheets of wax paper until it's approximately 1/2" thick.
4. Use a small cookie cutter (really, a small one! these candies are super-sweet!) and cut out as many "cookies" as you can, re-rolling the dough as necessary.

5. Melt your candy coating according to the manufacturer's instructions. Either dip the candies into the coating, using toothpicks, or cut a small corner off the bag and artistically drizzle the melted coating over the candies.

6. Let the candies set. Store in an air-tight container or bag. I recommend keeping them in the fridge.

Very tasty! They taste a lot like frosting... but that is a major ingredient after all. And I would certainly feel much better about myself after eating a couple of these instead of eating a couple scoops of frosting right out of the can! Bonus, they're super cute to give as gifts! Enjoy!

Sugar Quills

And so we continue with Ron's introduction to Honeydukes sweets:

"'It's this sweetshop,' said Ron, a dreamy look coming over his face, 'where they've got everything... Pepper Imps-- they make you smoke at the mouth-- and great fat Chocoballs full of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, and really excellent sugar quills, which you can suck in class and just look like you're thinking what to write next'" (Prisoner of Azkaban 77).

To make Sugar Quills like the ones pictured above (from Honeydukes at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter), you should follow my recipe for Pepper Imps, but leave out the cayenne and Tabasco sauce, and add in your choice of food coloring. Then you'll want to either use a feather-shaped mold, or very quickly drizzle your feather shape on a sheet of wax paper.

That seems pretty labor-intensive.

I decided to use Wilton's Candy Melts: Way faster, and they taste like chocolate! Another plus? A pastry bag filled with melted couverture is much easier to free-hand feathers with than a teaspoon of melted sugar syrup!

You Will Need:
A bag of Wilton's Candy Melts in your chosen color
Wax paper

1. Melt your candy/chocolate according to the bag's instructions.
2. Cut a tiny hole in one corner of the bag and quickly begin using the melted chocolate to "draw" your feathers on the wax paper.

3. If you want to get really fancy, after the feathers have hardened, you can melt two feathers together with an ink pen in between! That way you really can suck on your sugar quill while thinking about what to write next!

These are super easy to make, and would make a cute addition to a dessert table at a Harry Potter party! Enjoy!