Having waited just over a week for the judges, Julia and James, to choose their winning top 3 entries to the Farewell Floyd Food Blogging Event, I received an email from them yesterday morning, letting me know that my blog post Coq au Vin – A Tribute to Keith Floyd had been chosen as one of their Top 3 Winners, therefore winning myself a copy of ‘Floyd’s Food’ from Absolute Press. It was lovely to receive their email and kind words about my dish, first thing on a Monday morning and it made my day!
I had such great fun creating my tribute to Keith Floyd, for me and my family, and several glasses were consumed on his behalf during the cooking and eating, true Floyd style!
I was astounded by the lovely dishes the other winners and entrants had made and realised that there are other big Floyd fans out there that will miss him.
The other 2 winners were: Going With My Gut: Kenyan Goat Feast — For Farewell Floyd: Food Blogging Event Foodycat: Farewell Floyd – Jambalaya
both of which are fantastic recipes.
I cant wait to cook up my first dish from Floyds first publication and blog about too.
For the announcements and round-up from the judges please read the following posts:
Having had a busy week at work, I have been playing catch up on all my emails, tweets and blog posts. One nice email to receive was from the new Food Social Network – FoodCandy.
After not being able to take part in the ‘Farewell Floyd Food Blogging Event’ last weekend due to feeling ill, I was so happy to read that the deadline for the competition had been extended to the 25th October, meaning I was able to take part after all!
The idea of the event is that we all cook a meal in tribute to this much-loved chef either by cooking up a classic Keith Floyd recipe, an adapted Keith Floyd recipe or a recipe of our own design inspired by, and in tribute to Keith Floyd.
Having been lucky enough to borrow my mum’s original copy of ‘Floyd on France’, I spent an evening trawling all the delicious recipes to find a true classic that I could attempt to cook for this event. I ended up deciding to cook his Coq au Vin recipe which is translated in his book as ‘Cockerel in Red Wine’.
So I set about getting all the ingredients including a decent bottle of red Burgundy as Floyd uses it specifically in his recipe and mentions that “Burgundy is supposed to be famous for Coq au Vin”.
As for my own take on this recipe, I decided to use free-range chicken from Somerset as well as local cider brandy.
Now for my gluten free twist, I used cornflour to make my Beurre Manié and gluten free bread for my Garlic Croutons. This meant that my whole family could enjoy this fantastic dish, as I cooked it in Somerset on a weekend visit home.
I hope everyone that had taken part in this event has had as much fun creating their dishes as I have with mine and I hope that others try this fantastic Coq au Vin recipe. I also hope the late, great Keith Floyd would appreciate my twist of his recipe, as he was born and raised in Somerset too!
According to my mum, she found this in a old recipe book and as it had cider and apples in it and as my home county is Somerset, she thought it would be appropriate to give me this to share with everyone.
This is one of those cakes that is so delicious and moist that I would choose it any day over most other cakes even though it would appear the most rustic of them all!
It has been around as a big family favourite all my life and I know it will keep being one! Shame she can’t put a few of the small ones in the post to me – writing this blog can be very cruel at times!!!
Ingredients:
1¼ lbs Sultanas
½ Pint medium/sweet Cider
1 lb Caster Sugar
12ozs Butter
4 Standard Eggs
1¼ lbs Plain Flour
1½ lbs Cooking Apples
3 Level teaspoons baking powder
2 Level teaspoons mixed spice or ground coriander
Preheat oven to 180C/350F Gas 4 or 170C Fan Oven
Makes 18 muffins and two 1lb loaf cakes. It is also enough to fill a large roasting tin 30cm x 25cm (12″ x10″). Grease and line the tins.
1 Place sultanas in a basin and cover with the cider, leave in a cool place overnight until the sultanas are plump and have absorbed most of the cider.
2 Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add beaten eggs gradually.
3 Add sifted flour, baking powder and spices, the mixture will seem stiff at this stage.
4 Add chopped apples (these can be the size of your choosing but should not be too big), sultanas and any remaining cider, and mix thoroughly.
5 Put mixture into prepared tin/tins and bake in centre of oven.
The muffins take 20/25 minutes. The loaf tins will take 40/45 minutes and the large roasting tin 1¼ to 1½ hours. Test with a skewer to make sure the middle is cooked.
Tip: If the top of the cakes are browning too quickly, place a piece of greaseproof paper lightly on the top and continue cooking until they are done.
When cooked the cake should spring back and have begun to shrink from sides of tin. Leave to cool in the tins.
NB Somerset Cider Apple Cake can be eaten hot, as a pudding, with cream or custard, stored in a tin for up to 1 week and freezes well.
A home for my personal foodie ramblings, culinary attempts, information on local produce and also for collecting my mum's recipes and culinary teachings, before she leaves this mortal coil!
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