The squirels nuts

Baked custard that just manages to hold itself up on the plate, real custard comfort food!

Recipe

ingredients

2 desert spoons of roasted and ground acorns (see acorn coffee blog)

100g sugar

375 ml milk

250ml single cream

half a vanilla pod

2 Eggs (well beaten with a whisk)

3 Egg yolk

sugar to make dark caramel

Method

You will need to think about this the day before by first infusing the acorns overnight in the milk and cream or just the milk if you like. Put the milk, cream, vanilla and roasted ground acorns in a heavy bottomed pan and bring to the boil, take off the heat immediately let it cool and put it in a container in the fridge overnight.

Next day make a dark caramel using about a cup of sugar, then carefully add a desert spoon of water (watch out for the bubbling and spitting) pour this into the bottom of the ramekin dishes in a thin layer. you will need to work quickly as it starts to set pretty fast. tip and roll each one to move the caramel across the bottom.

Pass the acorn milk you made the day before through a fine sieve. Put the milk, cream mixture in a heavy bottomed pan and bring back to the boil, stir in the 100g of sugar then briskly but briefly whisk in the egg and yolk.

This is your custard ready to pour into the moulds on top of the caramel. Fill them to the top then sit them in  deep tray containing hot water (not boiling) , the water needs to come nearly to the top of the moulds containing your custard.. temperature should be 70 to 80 degrees c, if you don't have a thermometer then you can hold your finger in the water for a second or two it should be about right.

Put them in the oven at 150 degrees c for 30 to 40 minutes being carefull not to let the water splash into the custards. (Putting the tray into the oven and then pouring the water into the tray can make things easier).

After 25 min you must watch them carefully and check "the wobble", use your finger to tap the top and if you get a kind of ripple as if there is liquid under the skin then they will need longer. you can also give the mould a slight tap to check this.

The perfectly baked custard can take some mastering and may take several attempts, so many factors come into its making like - accuracy of your oven (convection is better) , initial water temperature, how fresh your milk and cream is and the quality of your eggs. Once you get the hang of it you will learn that slower is better, i like to turn the oven down by 5 degrees half way through and cook for a little longer.

You may also decide they are not quite cooked but taking them out of the oven, or turning it off and leaving them in the water bath to cool down will just about finish off the cooking.

The custards are best left in the fridge for 24 hours, this gives the caramel on the bottom time to dissolve which will be your sauce when you turn it out. But also i find the flavour improves in this time.

Gently push your finger into the custard at the edge of the mould to tease it away from the edge, this makes it easier to turn out. You shouldn't need to run a knife around the edge.

Note:  Every oven is different, this is one of the reasons you must start looking closely at the custards before cooking time is supposed to finish.

Acorn coffee

What to do with that sweet-looking nut that comes with its own little pixie hat, and unfortunately, is so full of tannins only squirrels, wild boar, deer & weevils can eat them?

People - only desperate people, I might add - have for a long time roasted and ground acorns up to make a coffee substitute(i have seen an episode of the 1970s Colditz series where the prisoners made a huge pot of it...ra ra ra old bean).

Many countries leech the tannins out of the raw nut by pulverising it and rinsing it in water, and then use the flour in pastries, puddings and pastas.

I  tried the acorn coffee and it does work (albeit a labour of fondness).

After roasting the shelled acorns at 180°C until dark brown, taking care to watch them (I used a timer set to go off every 5 mins once they had started to colour). They do suddenly burn! Taking into account the amount of time it takes to pick and shell them, you may find yourself as wound up as you feel when trying to speak to someone at a bank or an electricity supplier on an automated telephone line. So don't let them turn to charcoal, the flavour is bitter enough!

The acorn trees at the front of our house are not English oaks but evergreens, which means that pigeons shit all year round all over the car in all sorts of wonderful colours. The next wild food meal may just have to be some Kentucky-fried squirrel and roast wood pigeon washed down with a tasty Licor de Bellota

When I was a Spanish food rep for a short time, I was introduced to an acorn liqueur which was surprisingly good and tasted like amaretto. This Licor de Bellota is made from Holm Oak acorns. Holm Oak is the same Mediterranean evergreen that grows outside our house, favours coastal regions and is often used as a wind break(my wife thinks thats handy considering my diet and the beer i consume). My last batch of acorns are definitely going to be turned into this warming tipple! 

I digress... Anyway, back to the acorn-no-caffeine-coffee. Once roasted, grind up the nuts which will now be rock hard and brittle. Grind them to a powder and stick them in a cafetiere. Process as you would for normal coffee and voilà! it looks like coffee, smells exactly like coffee, and tastes worse than crap, cheap percolated coffee you would find at a 'bring and buy' sale in the local church hall!.. Mmm, get out the nice biscuits and bourbons.

So I ask myself,  "What's the point?"...

I then think about the types of food I could get this flavour into. I've never been a great fan of coffee-flavoured anything. I can't abide coffee cake though can tolerate mocha.

It makes sense for the bitterness to be offset by sugar  in a desert, and my first attempt was definitely a surprising success.

Acorn crème caramel.

 And as it so happened. It tasted very much the same as a classic coffee crème caramel.

And that was exactly the point!



Hairy Bittercress.

This is a great little weed if you like hot and bitter like watercress, it tastes like american land cress only the plant is much smaller.Good with smoked fish or in any salad

Mark gets the Horn of Plenty !! Derek and Clive would have loved it......

 The illusive trumpet of death only named so because of their colour, are wonderfully flavoured earthy mushroom and a rare find .

 Also here is the Amethyst Deciever, a deep purple -lilac colour it is common and grows in small troops . The white ball shape is a common puffball , most puffball are edible but you have to identify them 100 % correctly or you could end up in serious ill health .

 Wild rocket, this tastes like the real thing , very peppery and a little bitter, you need patience to pick this little fella but once you start to get accustomed to seeing it you can find a lot.

  We found a lovely crop of perfect watercress close to 3 Kilo

Rocket