Fic: Recipes from Pegasus pt7
Title: Recipes from Pegasus
Rating: PG
Pairing: Subtle McShep and obvious Teyla/Lorne
Spoilers: All 5 seasons
Summary: After the stargate program was de-classified in 2010 and the initial furore died down, the book that captured the zeitgeist of the entire planet, tapping in to the almost insatiable curiosity for all things related to the Stargate Program, was Recipes from Pegasus. It was an accessible way for everyone to understand a little bit more about the people who had spent the last eight years living in an alien galaxy, fighting to keep Earth safe. It's author, Grace Mallory, the head chef of the Atlantis mission became a household name even though she appeared on a very few TV shows during the publicity tour. More importantly her stories about the daily lives of the people of Atlantis made them appear much more human than all the high octane TV specials did.
Note: this is an unformatted version (i.e. without colours and pictures)
Dessert
Everyone's favorite bit of the meal. Well okay, not everyone's. Some people, and I like to call them freaks, claim to not like dessert. These people, and I am prepared to name names (Doctors Simpson and Watson) shouldn't be allowed to travel off Earth because they're clearly not human. Obviously this is a long standing argument that the SGC seem to not be taking seriously.
The SGC's infamous blue jell-o is strangely addictive though. There are some people who think that it's how they keep everyone working for them despite the obvious dangers. Get them all hooked on the crack of the dessert world and they'll always come to work. Maybe those people who claim to hate dessert have a point.
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Grandma Ford's Apple Pie
I don't think there's any of the original members of the Atlantis expedition that don't associate apple pie with Lieutenant Aiden Ford and don't miss him just a little bit with every bite. After he was lost there wasn't one of us on the kitchen staff who wanted to bake it and it took a request from Colonel Sheppard, several months down the line, to get it made again.
Ford was as enthusiastic about food as he was about pretty much everything else, and he had a knack for remembering tastes that would have made him a very good chef. After I made apple pie the first time, with some of the ton or so of the fruit we bought through the gate, he told me about his grandmother's famous apple pie. It was the dessert that everyone hoped she'd bring to church suppers or family gatherings. Once I got the recipe right through a process of trial and tasting, which I'm sure Aiden dragged out for longer than was strictly necessary, I can see why people prayed for pie. It is glorious warm, with a little cream or ice cream.
I tried to make this pie with various apple substitutes from the Pegasus galaxy but nothing quite worked like good old Earth apples. They were nice, but this is the best. You can add a handful of blueberries to this recipe if the fancy takes you. You can miss out the lemon juice and lemon zest if you're cooking for someone with a citrus allergy.
You'll need a quantity of pastry for the crust. I'm not going to give a recipe for it because you'll either have one you love and use all the time, or you hate making pastry and always buy it. There's nothing wrong with bought pastry so go ahead and buy it. You'll need enough for a top and bottom of a 9 inch pie (23cm).
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Ingredients - Makes a 9 inch pie
1½ lb (680g) Golden Delicious, Fuji or Cortland apples, peeled, cored and sliced to ¼ inch (5mm) thick slices (use a food processor if you have one)
1 lb (454g) Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced to ¼ inch (5mm) thick slices (use a food processor if you have one)
1 tbsp lemon juice
2½ tbsp cornstarch
⅓ cup granulated sugar
⅔ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
½ salt
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp chilled, unsalted butter
milk and 1 tsp granulated sugar for the crust
Instructions
Heat the oven to 375°F/190°C
Roll out one piece of the pasty and press into a greased pie plate/tin, trimming the edges to fit. Roll out the other crust onto a piece of waxed paper. Refrigerate the crusts while you make the filling.
Toss the apple slices together with the lemon juice in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl mix together both the sugars, the cornstarch, lemon zest and spices. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the apple slices and stir well to combine.
Spoon the filling into the prepared pie crust and dot the top of it with pieces of butter. Brush the edges of the lower pie crust with milk and then lay the other crust on top. Peel off the waxed paper and trim the upper crust to fit. Pinch the two crusts together to seal them and flute with the tines of a fork.
With a small, sharp knife cut five 1 inch (2.5cm) slices in the top to allow the steam to escape during cooking. Brush milk over the top and then sprinkle on 1 tsp sugar. Bake for 60 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.
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Hot Chocolate Puddings
These little chocolate puddings, fluffy outside and molten within, are a cross between a soufflé and a sponge pudding. They're utterly decadent and wouldn't be out of place on the menu of some pretty fancy restaurants. Even better, they're nice and easy to make.
It was Laura Cadman, on her first posting to Atlantis (back when she was still a lieutenant), who asked for these on her birthday, forgoing the usual chocolate cake. She'd eaten something similar to this the year before at The French Laundry in Napa and had fallen in love with them. I was happy to oblige, at first just a small batch for her and her friends to share, but now they appear on the menu whenever there is something worth celebrating.
I have to admit that I was initially surprised that Laura had eaten at such an expensive, and overbooked, restaurant, but I quickly realized it was just another example of stereotypes being wrong. The fact that Major Cadman seemed to spend her time on Atlantis tormenting Rodney or blowing things up (no matter what her rank), didn't mean those were her only hobbies. She is in fact a bit of an epicure and spends her vacation time, and hard earned pay, on trips to great restaurants around the world.
She and I have had some great times together discussing food we have eaten, places we have visited and chefs we've met. She is happy to admit she doesn't cook herself but that doesn't stop her being an excellent critic of my cooking and she's always able to offer suggestions that usually improve the dishes greatly. When I'm back on Earth, if she isn't on Atlantis, I always make sure we get to visit at least one good restaurant together.
The hazelnut spread, such as Nutella, sounds an odd addition, but in fact lends a lingering, nutty depth. If you feel the need to offer cream you might like to make it a jug of pouring cream rather than the rich, thick sort.
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Ingredients - serves 4
7oz (200g) 70% chocolate, the best you can get
2oz (60g) butter
3½oz (100g) caster sugar
3 eggs, separated
2tbsp chocolate hazelnut spread, lightly heaped
Instructions
Set the oven at 390˚F/200˚C/Gas 6. Lightly butter 4 small ramekins or ovenproof cups.
Break the chocolate into rough pieces and leave to melt in a basin suspended over gently simmering water. Let it melt without stirring, occasionally poking any unmelted chocolate down into the liquid chocolate. When it's done stir the butter into the chocolate and leave to melt then gently stir in the chocolate hazelnut spread.
Put the sugar into the bowl of the food mixer and add the egg yolks to the sugar. Beat till thick and creamy.
Whisk the egg whites till airy and almost stiff.
Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar then carefully fold in the beaten egg whites with a metal spoon. Take care not to over mix by beating it. Just firmly, calmly mix the egg white into the chocolate making certain there are no floating drifts of egg white.
Scoop into the four buttered dishes and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen. The tops should be cracked and the centers still slightly wobbly.
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Coffee Panna Cotta
Dr Rodney McKay has two real loves, in the world of food and drink at least. One is coffee and the other is pudding. Many of the desserts in this book are inspired by his enthusiasm for all things sweet. Other people love them just as much I'm sure, but he is the most vocal about it and everyone likes an appreciative audience. So, once we had a mostly regular supply of coffee in the second year of the expedition, I decided I'd dust off this recipe, a favorite of at least one secretary of state who stayed with the Ambassador Simm, and make it for Rodney's birthday.
Instead of making it in individual dishes, like the traditional version, I like to make it in a large jello mold and I set it a little firmer than is usual for panna cotta recipes. On a decorative plate, this looks fantastic arriving at the table, scattered with a few chocolate coffee beans. The recipe is also adaptable for vegetarians as you can use agar-agar instead of regular gelatin (or the Pegasus version we make from the seaweed farms under the city) and you can miss out the Tia Maria of those who don't want alcohol.
After their success with the Popsicle molds the science department came up trumps again when I asked them for some large jell-O molds, even keeping them secret despite Rodney's ever inquisitive eyes on their work, so we could surprise him on his birthday.
He loved the dessert, and the fuss we made of him on the day, and tried to convince me I should never make the panna cotta for anyone but him. I'd long since discovered that laughing at McKay when he made ludicrous demands like this was the best option. Fortunately Colonel Sheppard was on hand to shuffle the scientist out of the mess before he got too irate and ruined his big day.
Coffee is still not so abundant a commodity on Atlantis that it can be 'wasted' on pudding and this dessert is still only a really made for special occasions. Or if certain astrophysicists have a very bad day.
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Ingredients - serves 4 to 6
2tbsp powdered gelatin (or agar-agar for a veggie recipe)
4tbsp Tia Maria (or other coffee liqueur)
2½ cups (600ml) single cream
2tbsp superfine/castor sugar
⅔ cup (150ml) strong black coffee (espresso if you can)
Instructions
Put the Tia Maria into a wide, shallow bowl and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Leave it to soften for 5 minutes.
Put the cream and sugar in a small pan and heat gently without boiling. Stir the gelatin into the cream until dissolved. Stir in the coffee.
Swirl cold water inside a 2 pint mold, tip out and fill with the coffee mixture. Chill for about 4 hours (or overnight) until set.
To serve, dip the mold briefly into hot water and then turn it out on to a flat plate. Sprinkle with a few chocolate coffee beans.
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Summer Pudding Jelly
Life in the Pegasus galaxy is odd, something you probably all know from the news reports, but not for the reasons you might think. Yes, there's space vampires and mad pseudo-Amish killers but that's the big stuff. After a while it's the stupid little things that get to you, especially when they get in the way of your work.
For some reason, which the sociologists, botanists, geologists and people a lot more intelligent than I am have failed to explain, most of the agrarian cultures in the Pegasus galaxy seem to have opted for beans as their staple crop.
Don't get me wrong, I like beans, but they're kind of tough to make good flour from. So we constantly find ourselves, even now, careful about how we use our precious wheat flour. Bread doesn't have a chance to go stale in the kitchens of Atlantis and while that may sound like a good thing it does mean I can't make one of my favorite desserts.
Summer pudding is an excellent way to use stale bread and an excess of berry fruit, which is weirdly the second most produced crop in Pegasus. To make up for this I invented summer pudding jell-O. Everyone loves jell-O and this is a hugely decadent wobbly plate of dark red goodness. It's not summer pudding but it's still really good made with whatever berries you can get hold of.
The only bad thing about this dish is cleaning and de-stalking the fruit, and then only for large batches. For the 40 or so molds needed in the mess it's the job I hate most. Fortunately there's usually some new scientist who has pissed off McKay so badly he's damned them to my kitchen until they learn to follow orders. I try to be nice and not make the KPs do it because some of them have great recipes and, like Sergeant Stackhouse's baguettes, a hidden skill that can be put to better use than cleaning fruit.
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Ingredients - serves 6 to 8
1lb (500g) bag frozen summer fruits
6oz (175g) superfine/caster sugar
3 cups (750ml) raspberry and cranberry juice
3tbsp gelatin (or agar-agar for a veggie dessert)
3½ oz (100g) fresh summer fruits (such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and black currents)
Instructions
Put a 2 pint (900g) mold in the freezer.
Put the sugar and all but 4 tbsp juice and frozen fruits into a pan and bring to the boil, simmering for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile put the reserved juice into a wide shallow bowl and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Let it soak for 5 minutes.
Strain the fruit liquid through a fine mesh sieve and stir in the gelatin until it has dissolved.
Pour a third of the liquid into the mold and chill in the freezer until beginning to set. Cover with half the fresh fruit and a further third of the liquid. Chill until it's setting again, then repeat with the remainder of the fruit and liquid.
Chill for at least 4 hours (or better overnight). To serve, dip the mold briefly into hot water and then turn out onto a plate. Decorate with fruit.
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Cranachan
This recipe was always going to make it into the book, even without Carson's rather frantic emails when he heard about the project. I think that demonstrates the love that he has for this dessert, something he shares with most of the other residents of Atlantis. It's a very simple, satisfying way to use a glut of raspberries, although we use the berries that grow rampant through the forests of M5H-388 instead. They taste almost exactly like raspberries, but are a rather disconcerting sickly yellow color so the cranachan made with them never looks quite as appetizing as it does made with honest to god, ruby red raspberries.
The berries grow on vines that are slightly more alive than most people raised on Earth are used to. Their tendrils curl round the legs of the unwary harvester and snare arms that reach too far into the bushes. After Major Ortega's team of marines had returned at a rather nervous trot from the planet, with dire warnings of man eating plants, the botanists couldn't resist investigating.
Needless to say the botanists, a weirdly chilled-out bunch of folks, returned with a whole heap of berries they were pretty sure weren't poisonous, and an understanding of how the vines pollinated themselves. The marine they'd made demonstrate this by getting himself caught and then released by the vines was more than a little disgruntled and covered in pollen from head to toe. Once the berries were tested and found to be edible and packed with vitamins (also fantastically tasty), a team was sent back to carefully harvest as many as they could.
Carson came to me that evening, after tasting the berries, and asked if I could make cranachan. I love the dish too so he didn't need to do too much persuading, especially once he promised his precious bottle of Scotch to the cause. I made it the next evening for dessert and after some initial doubts (mostly because of the color of the berries I'm sure) it became a favorite. The standing order for good Scotch on the supply runs from Earth raised some eyebrows but after Daniel Jackson vouched for it's culinary use on his first visit to Atlantis there have been no problems with it's arrival. I have to say that Vala loves this dish with a passion that nearly matches Carson's.
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Ingredients - serves 4
Approx 10½oz (300g) raspberries
10 floz (280ml) double (heavy) cream
2 tablespoons good quality honey
2 tablespoons single malt whiskey
2-3 tablespoons of oatmeal.
Instructions
Place the oatmeal in a cool, dry pan and turn on the heat to simmer. Stirring occasionally, toast the oatmeal until it is golden brown. This process could take between 10-20 minutes but watch so it doesn't burn. Once the oatmeal is brown, turn off the heat and let it cool in the pan.
Place the cream in a bowl and whisk up until soft and relatively thick but not stiff. Add the honey and single malt whiskey and fold it, until it is soft and creamy.
Pick out some of the best raspberries for decoration and add three or four to the bottom of each serving glass, leaving a few for final decoration. Add the rest of the raspberries to the cream mixture and fold in carefully, breaking up a few of the raspberries to obtain a slight coloring to the cream.
Spoon the mixture into the serving glasses, then smooth out the top to make an even base for the oatmeal.
By now the oatmeal will be cooler. Using a teaspoon, evenly sprinkle the oatmeal over the dessert. Add a raspberry for the finishing touch and chill for about three hours, or overnight.
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Plum or Damson Jampote with dipping sauce for free
This is a great nothing's wasted recipe that I just love. Laura Cadman's team found stands of almost-plum trees on MX-489, later known as the forest moon of Endor by all but the most humorless of people, and this was one of the ways we devised to use the crop of the dark purple, slightly sour fruit.
We only ever took a tiny portion of the fruit the trees produced, officially because the ecologists said they were a vital part of the diet of the local fauna. Unofficially, it was the local fauna that scared the crap out of everyone and gave the planet it's nickname. Cute little Ewok looking things that had sharp teeth and cunning minds. To this day Laura has a bite shaped scar on her butt to show just how vicious they are.
To use the glut of fruit we made jelly, pressing all but the most crucial Atlantis personnel into destoning the fruit and then bottling the finished product. We even found a few surprising jelly making experts (your secret is safe with me, Chuck). We made cobblers, crumbles, pies and every other type of dessert. This recipe makes a kind of cross between a jelly and a compote, although we call jelly jam in the UK hence the name. It has the added bonus of producing a brilliant dipping sauce almost for free.
The jampote will keep for about 3 months in the fridge if you're careful with sterilizing your jars, but if you don't make too much then you don't have to worry about that, it'll be eaten in moments. It's great with a spoonful of custard and a spoonful of cream, like a dissembled plum fool. The dipping sauce lasts for about a year in the fridge, if you can manage not to eat it at every meal.
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Ingredients
For the jampote
2¼ lb (1kg) of small, sour cooking plums, not big watery eating plums
18 oz (500g) caster sugar
For the sauce
1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1-2 small, hot fresh chilies, finely chopped
3½ fl oz (100ml) light soy sauce
3½ fl oz (100ml) brown rice vinegar or cider vinegar
Instructions
Put the whole plums and the sugar in a large, heavy based pan and add enough water to come half way up the plums. Heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar and then simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the plums are tender. Strain off 17 fl oz (500ml) of the liquid and sieve into a clean pan. Attend to this syrup while the pan with the plums in cools off a little.
Add the garlic, chilies, soy sauce and vinegar to the syrup. Stir well and bring to the boil for 5 minutes, keeping your nose out of the vinegary fumes. While still hot, pour into sterilized jars or bottles. Serve with anything you want, but it's really good with Thai fish cakes or Chinese pot stickers.
Once the plums are cool enough to handle, lift them out of the pan with a large spoon, removing the stones, and some of the skins (if you want), and transfer each stone free plum to a clean bowl. Once you've gotten all the plums out, return the sorted, stoneless plums to the pan.
Bring the mixture back to the boil and boil hard for about 5 minutes to give a thick, pulpy compote, which is on its way to being a jam. Transfer it to sterilized jars when still hot.
This is not as reliable a keeper as a regular jelly, and may eventually start to ferment. But if you pot it up in sterilized jars, it will keep for up to 3 months in the refrigerator. After the first time I just boxed it into plastic containers when it was cool as it was always gone in a couple of days, if it lasted even that long. You can freeze it too, of course.
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Magic Sticky Toffee Pudding
This one is a proper British classic, at least in recent years, and is nothing like what many nations think of as pudding. It's a baked dish that has a spongey 'cake' portion and a whole heap of dark, sticky sauce. I think it's my most favorite dessert but it really is a special occasion dish for two reasons. One, it'll stick to you hips like you wouldn't believe, especially with cream, and two, it tends to put all but the most hyperactive of people into a kind of food coma about an hour after eating it. That's probably okay at a dinner party, not so good if you're supposed to be guarding a Wraith!
Rodney became fascinated with this pudding because of the process it undergoes as it cooks. There are apparently equations somewhere that describe the way the ingredients for the sauce that start off on top of the pudding, end up on the bottom when it's finished cooking. He did all this of course just to prove that the use of the word magic in the name is wrong.
On one of Rodney's enforced days off he demanded, in that friendly way he has, a corner of my experimental kitchen and this recipe so he could examine the process in detail. For some reason I gave in, even though we couldn't really afford to waste the flour, and stood back and watched the chaos.
Except it wasn't really chaos, not once John arrived. I think initially he came to mock and then couldn't stand to see Rodney's frustration with his inability to follow a simple recipe, or rather that even though he followed the recipe it didn't work. Some people just can't bake, they suck the air out of cakes, they make pastry hard and tasteless, they curdle batter, they are anti-cooks. Rodney is however the only person I've ever met who can't make this simple recipe even with someone watching over him. John, it seems has the baking 'gene', something he didn't know until that day, and he still slips down to the kitchen occasionally to make something. I'm not sure if he uses his cakes as bribes, rewards or comfort. Maybe they're all three and more for the person who receives them.
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Ingredients - serves 6-8
For the spongy bit
3.5oz (100g) dark muscavado sugar
6oz (175g) cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup (125ml) full fat milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.7oz (50g) unsalted butter, melted (I know that's an awkward amount but it's 2/5 of a stick)
7oz (200g) chopped, rolled dates or sultanas
For the sauce
7oz (200g) dark muscavado sugar
approx. 1oz (25g) unsalted butter (1/5 stick for the US)
1 pint (500ml) boiling water
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375ºF/190ºC and grease a 3 pint (1.5L) capacity oven proof dish.
Combine the dark muscavado sugar, flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Pour the milk into a measuring jug, beat in the egg, vanilla and melted butter, and then pour into the bowl with the flour and sugar. Mix with a wooden spoon to combine and then fold in the dates or sultanas. Scrape into the prepared dish.
Sprinkle the sugar for the sauce over the top of the pudding mixture in the dish and dot the top with butter for the sauce, pinched into small pieces. Pour over the boiling water (really!) and transfer to the oven. Cook for 45 minutes and check the pudding. It should be springy and spongy on top when it's cooked. If it's still a little doughy cook for another 5-10 minutes. Underneath the sugar, butter and water will be a lovely sauce.
Serve hot with vanilla ice cream, cream, custard, whatever takes your fancy I like it with cream best but that's just my preference.
Part 8
Rating: PG
Pairing: Subtle McShep and obvious Teyla/Lorne
Spoilers: All 5 seasons
Summary: After the stargate program was de-classified in 2010 and the initial furore died down, the book that captured the zeitgeist of the entire planet, tapping in to the almost insatiable curiosity for all things related to the Stargate Program, was Recipes from Pegasus. It was an accessible way for everyone to understand a little bit more about the people who had spent the last eight years living in an alien galaxy, fighting to keep Earth safe. It's author, Grace Mallory, the head chef of the Atlantis mission became a household name even though she appeared on a very few TV shows during the publicity tour. More importantly her stories about the daily lives of the people of Atlantis made them appear much more human than all the high octane TV specials did.
Note: this is an unformatted version (i.e. without colours and pictures)
Dessert
Everyone's favorite bit of the meal. Well okay, not everyone's. Some people, and I like to call them freaks, claim to not like dessert. These people, and I am prepared to name names (Doctors Simpson and Watson) shouldn't be allowed to travel off Earth because they're clearly not human. Obviously this is a long standing argument that the SGC seem to not be taking seriously.
The SGC's infamous blue jell-o is strangely addictive though. There are some people who think that it's how they keep everyone working for them despite the obvious dangers. Get them all hooked on the crack of the dessert world and they'll always come to work. Maybe those people who claim to hate dessert have a point.
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Grandma Ford's Apple Pie
I don't think there's any of the original members of the Atlantis expedition that don't associate apple pie with Lieutenant Aiden Ford and don't miss him just a little bit with every bite. After he was lost there wasn't one of us on the kitchen staff who wanted to bake it and it took a request from Colonel Sheppard, several months down the line, to get it made again.
Ford was as enthusiastic about food as he was about pretty much everything else, and he had a knack for remembering tastes that would have made him a very good chef. After I made apple pie the first time, with some of the ton or so of the fruit we bought through the gate, he told me about his grandmother's famous apple pie. It was the dessert that everyone hoped she'd bring to church suppers or family gatherings. Once I got the recipe right through a process of trial and tasting, which I'm sure Aiden dragged out for longer than was strictly necessary, I can see why people prayed for pie. It is glorious warm, with a little cream or ice cream.
I tried to make this pie with various apple substitutes from the Pegasus galaxy but nothing quite worked like good old Earth apples. They were nice, but this is the best. You can add a handful of blueberries to this recipe if the fancy takes you. You can miss out the lemon juice and lemon zest if you're cooking for someone with a citrus allergy.
You'll need a quantity of pastry for the crust. I'm not going to give a recipe for it because you'll either have one you love and use all the time, or you hate making pastry and always buy it. There's nothing wrong with bought pastry so go ahead and buy it. You'll need enough for a top and bottom of a 9 inch pie (23cm).
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Ingredients - Makes a 9 inch pie
1½ lb (680g) Golden Delicious, Fuji or Cortland apples, peeled, cored and sliced to ¼ inch (5mm) thick slices (use a food processor if you have one)
1 lb (454g) Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced to ¼ inch (5mm) thick slices (use a food processor if you have one)
1 tbsp lemon juice
2½ tbsp cornstarch
⅓ cup granulated sugar
⅔ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
½ salt
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 tbsp chilled, unsalted butter
milk and 1 tsp granulated sugar for the crust
Instructions
Heat the oven to 375°F/190°C
Roll out one piece of the pasty and press into a greased pie plate/tin, trimming the edges to fit. Roll out the other crust onto a piece of waxed paper. Refrigerate the crusts while you make the filling.
Toss the apple slices together with the lemon juice in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl mix together both the sugars, the cornstarch, lemon zest and spices. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the apple slices and stir well to combine.
Spoon the filling into the prepared pie crust and dot the top of it with pieces of butter. Brush the edges of the lower pie crust with milk and then lay the other crust on top. Peel off the waxed paper and trim the upper crust to fit. Pinch the two crusts together to seal them and flute with the tines of a fork.
With a small, sharp knife cut five 1 inch (2.5cm) slices in the top to allow the steam to escape during cooking. Brush milk over the top and then sprinkle on 1 tsp sugar. Bake for 60 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.
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Hot Chocolate Puddings
These little chocolate puddings, fluffy outside and molten within, are a cross between a soufflé and a sponge pudding. They're utterly decadent and wouldn't be out of place on the menu of some pretty fancy restaurants. Even better, they're nice and easy to make.
It was Laura Cadman, on her first posting to Atlantis (back when she was still a lieutenant), who asked for these on her birthday, forgoing the usual chocolate cake. She'd eaten something similar to this the year before at The French Laundry in Napa and had fallen in love with them. I was happy to oblige, at first just a small batch for her and her friends to share, but now they appear on the menu whenever there is something worth celebrating.
I have to admit that I was initially surprised that Laura had eaten at such an expensive, and overbooked, restaurant, but I quickly realized it was just another example of stereotypes being wrong. The fact that Major Cadman seemed to spend her time on Atlantis tormenting Rodney or blowing things up (no matter what her rank), didn't mean those were her only hobbies. She is in fact a bit of an epicure and spends her vacation time, and hard earned pay, on trips to great restaurants around the world.
She and I have had some great times together discussing food we have eaten, places we have visited and chefs we've met. She is happy to admit she doesn't cook herself but that doesn't stop her being an excellent critic of my cooking and she's always able to offer suggestions that usually improve the dishes greatly. When I'm back on Earth, if she isn't on Atlantis, I always make sure we get to visit at least one good restaurant together.
The hazelnut spread, such as Nutella, sounds an odd addition, but in fact lends a lingering, nutty depth. If you feel the need to offer cream you might like to make it a jug of pouring cream rather than the rich, thick sort.
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Ingredients - serves 4
7oz (200g) 70% chocolate, the best you can get
2oz (60g) butter
3½oz (100g) caster sugar
3 eggs, separated
2tbsp chocolate hazelnut spread, lightly heaped
Instructions
Set the oven at 390˚F/200˚C/Gas 6. Lightly butter 4 small ramekins or ovenproof cups.
Break the chocolate into rough pieces and leave to melt in a basin suspended over gently simmering water. Let it melt without stirring, occasionally poking any unmelted chocolate down into the liquid chocolate. When it's done stir the butter into the chocolate and leave to melt then gently stir in the chocolate hazelnut spread.
Put the sugar into the bowl of the food mixer and add the egg yolks to the sugar. Beat till thick and creamy.
Whisk the egg whites till airy and almost stiff.
Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar then carefully fold in the beaten egg whites with a metal spoon. Take care not to over mix by beating it. Just firmly, calmly mix the egg white into the chocolate making certain there are no floating drifts of egg white.
Scoop into the four buttered dishes and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen. The tops should be cracked and the centers still slightly wobbly.
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Coffee Panna Cotta
Dr Rodney McKay has two real loves, in the world of food and drink at least. One is coffee and the other is pudding. Many of the desserts in this book are inspired by his enthusiasm for all things sweet. Other people love them just as much I'm sure, but he is the most vocal about it and everyone likes an appreciative audience. So, once we had a mostly regular supply of coffee in the second year of the expedition, I decided I'd dust off this recipe, a favorite of at least one secretary of state who stayed with the Ambassador Simm, and make it for Rodney's birthday.
Instead of making it in individual dishes, like the traditional version, I like to make it in a large jello mold and I set it a little firmer than is usual for panna cotta recipes. On a decorative plate, this looks fantastic arriving at the table, scattered with a few chocolate coffee beans. The recipe is also adaptable for vegetarians as you can use agar-agar instead of regular gelatin (or the Pegasus version we make from the seaweed farms under the city) and you can miss out the Tia Maria of those who don't want alcohol.
After their success with the Popsicle molds the science department came up trumps again when I asked them for some large jell-O molds, even keeping them secret despite Rodney's ever inquisitive eyes on their work, so we could surprise him on his birthday.
He loved the dessert, and the fuss we made of him on the day, and tried to convince me I should never make the panna cotta for anyone but him. I'd long since discovered that laughing at McKay when he made ludicrous demands like this was the best option. Fortunately Colonel Sheppard was on hand to shuffle the scientist out of the mess before he got too irate and ruined his big day.
Coffee is still not so abundant a commodity on Atlantis that it can be 'wasted' on pudding and this dessert is still only a really made for special occasions. Or if certain astrophysicists have a very bad day.
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Ingredients - serves 4 to 6
2tbsp powdered gelatin (or agar-agar for a veggie recipe)
4tbsp Tia Maria (or other coffee liqueur)
2½ cups (600ml) single cream
2tbsp superfine/castor sugar
⅔ cup (150ml) strong black coffee (espresso if you can)
Instructions
Put the Tia Maria into a wide, shallow bowl and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Leave it to soften for 5 minutes.
Put the cream and sugar in a small pan and heat gently without boiling. Stir the gelatin into the cream until dissolved. Stir in the coffee.
Swirl cold water inside a 2 pint mold, tip out and fill with the coffee mixture. Chill for about 4 hours (or overnight) until set.
To serve, dip the mold briefly into hot water and then turn it out on to a flat plate. Sprinkle with a few chocolate coffee beans.
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Summer Pudding Jelly
Life in the Pegasus galaxy is odd, something you probably all know from the news reports, but not for the reasons you might think. Yes, there's space vampires and mad pseudo-Amish killers but that's the big stuff. After a while it's the stupid little things that get to you, especially when they get in the way of your work.
For some reason, which the sociologists, botanists, geologists and people a lot more intelligent than I am have failed to explain, most of the agrarian cultures in the Pegasus galaxy seem to have opted for beans as their staple crop.
Don't get me wrong, I like beans, but they're kind of tough to make good flour from. So we constantly find ourselves, even now, careful about how we use our precious wheat flour. Bread doesn't have a chance to go stale in the kitchens of Atlantis and while that may sound like a good thing it does mean I can't make one of my favorite desserts.
Summer pudding is an excellent way to use stale bread and an excess of berry fruit, which is weirdly the second most produced crop in Pegasus. To make up for this I invented summer pudding jell-O. Everyone loves jell-O and this is a hugely decadent wobbly plate of dark red goodness. It's not summer pudding but it's still really good made with whatever berries you can get hold of.
The only bad thing about this dish is cleaning and de-stalking the fruit, and then only for large batches. For the 40 or so molds needed in the mess it's the job I hate most. Fortunately there's usually some new scientist who has pissed off McKay so badly he's damned them to my kitchen until they learn to follow orders. I try to be nice and not make the KPs do it because some of them have great recipes and, like Sergeant Stackhouse's baguettes, a hidden skill that can be put to better use than cleaning fruit.
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Ingredients - serves 6 to 8
1lb (500g) bag frozen summer fruits
6oz (175g) superfine/caster sugar
3 cups (750ml) raspberry and cranberry juice
3tbsp gelatin (or agar-agar for a veggie dessert)
3½ oz (100g) fresh summer fruits (such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and black currents)
Instructions
Put a 2 pint (900g) mold in the freezer.
Put the sugar and all but 4 tbsp juice and frozen fruits into a pan and bring to the boil, simmering for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile put the reserved juice into a wide shallow bowl and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Let it soak for 5 minutes.
Strain the fruit liquid through a fine mesh sieve and stir in the gelatin until it has dissolved.
Pour a third of the liquid into the mold and chill in the freezer until beginning to set. Cover with half the fresh fruit and a further third of the liquid. Chill until it's setting again, then repeat with the remainder of the fruit and liquid.
Chill for at least 4 hours (or better overnight). To serve, dip the mold briefly into hot water and then turn out onto a plate. Decorate with fruit.
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Cranachan
This recipe was always going to make it into the book, even without Carson's rather frantic emails when he heard about the project. I think that demonstrates the love that he has for this dessert, something he shares with most of the other residents of Atlantis. It's a very simple, satisfying way to use a glut of raspberries, although we use the berries that grow rampant through the forests of M5H-388 instead. They taste almost exactly like raspberries, but are a rather disconcerting sickly yellow color so the cranachan made with them never looks quite as appetizing as it does made with honest to god, ruby red raspberries.
The berries grow on vines that are slightly more alive than most people raised on Earth are used to. Their tendrils curl round the legs of the unwary harvester and snare arms that reach too far into the bushes. After Major Ortega's team of marines had returned at a rather nervous trot from the planet, with dire warnings of man eating plants, the botanists couldn't resist investigating.
Needless to say the botanists, a weirdly chilled-out bunch of folks, returned with a whole heap of berries they were pretty sure weren't poisonous, and an understanding of how the vines pollinated themselves. The marine they'd made demonstrate this by getting himself caught and then released by the vines was more than a little disgruntled and covered in pollen from head to toe. Once the berries were tested and found to be edible and packed with vitamins (also fantastically tasty), a team was sent back to carefully harvest as many as they could.
Carson came to me that evening, after tasting the berries, and asked if I could make cranachan. I love the dish too so he didn't need to do too much persuading, especially once he promised his precious bottle of Scotch to the cause. I made it the next evening for dessert and after some initial doubts (mostly because of the color of the berries I'm sure) it became a favorite. The standing order for good Scotch on the supply runs from Earth raised some eyebrows but after Daniel Jackson vouched for it's culinary use on his first visit to Atlantis there have been no problems with it's arrival. I have to say that Vala loves this dish with a passion that nearly matches Carson's.
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Ingredients - serves 4
Approx 10½oz (300g) raspberries
10 floz (280ml) double (heavy) cream
2 tablespoons good quality honey
2 tablespoons single malt whiskey
2-3 tablespoons of oatmeal.
Instructions
Place the oatmeal in a cool, dry pan and turn on the heat to simmer. Stirring occasionally, toast the oatmeal until it is golden brown. This process could take between 10-20 minutes but watch so it doesn't burn. Once the oatmeal is brown, turn off the heat and let it cool in the pan.
Place the cream in a bowl and whisk up until soft and relatively thick but not stiff. Add the honey and single malt whiskey and fold it, until it is soft and creamy.
Pick out some of the best raspberries for decoration and add three or four to the bottom of each serving glass, leaving a few for final decoration. Add the rest of the raspberries to the cream mixture and fold in carefully, breaking up a few of the raspberries to obtain a slight coloring to the cream.
Spoon the mixture into the serving glasses, then smooth out the top to make an even base for the oatmeal.
By now the oatmeal will be cooler. Using a teaspoon, evenly sprinkle the oatmeal over the dessert. Add a raspberry for the finishing touch and chill for about three hours, or overnight.
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Plum or Damson Jampote with dipping sauce for free
This is a great nothing's wasted recipe that I just love. Laura Cadman's team found stands of almost-plum trees on MX-489, later known as the forest moon of Endor by all but the most humorless of people, and this was one of the ways we devised to use the crop of the dark purple, slightly sour fruit.
We only ever took a tiny portion of the fruit the trees produced, officially because the ecologists said they were a vital part of the diet of the local fauna. Unofficially, it was the local fauna that scared the crap out of everyone and gave the planet it's nickname. Cute little Ewok looking things that had sharp teeth and cunning minds. To this day Laura has a bite shaped scar on her butt to show just how vicious they are.
To use the glut of fruit we made jelly, pressing all but the most crucial Atlantis personnel into destoning the fruit and then bottling the finished product. We even found a few surprising jelly making experts (your secret is safe with me, Chuck). We made cobblers, crumbles, pies and every other type of dessert. This recipe makes a kind of cross between a jelly and a compote, although we call jelly jam in the UK hence the name. It has the added bonus of producing a brilliant dipping sauce almost for free.
The jampote will keep for about 3 months in the fridge if you're careful with sterilizing your jars, but if you don't make too much then you don't have to worry about that, it'll be eaten in moments. It's great with a spoonful of custard and a spoonful of cream, like a dissembled plum fool. The dipping sauce lasts for about a year in the fridge, if you can manage not to eat it at every meal.
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Ingredients
For the jampote
2¼ lb (1kg) of small, sour cooking plums, not big watery eating plums
18 oz (500g) caster sugar
For the sauce
1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1-2 small, hot fresh chilies, finely chopped
3½ fl oz (100ml) light soy sauce
3½ fl oz (100ml) brown rice vinegar or cider vinegar
Instructions
Put the whole plums and the sugar in a large, heavy based pan and add enough water to come half way up the plums. Heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar and then simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the plums are tender. Strain off 17 fl oz (500ml) of the liquid and sieve into a clean pan. Attend to this syrup while the pan with the plums in cools off a little.
Add the garlic, chilies, soy sauce and vinegar to the syrup. Stir well and bring to the boil for 5 minutes, keeping your nose out of the vinegary fumes. While still hot, pour into sterilized jars or bottles. Serve with anything you want, but it's really good with Thai fish cakes or Chinese pot stickers.
Once the plums are cool enough to handle, lift them out of the pan with a large spoon, removing the stones, and some of the skins (if you want), and transfer each stone free plum to a clean bowl. Once you've gotten all the plums out, return the sorted, stoneless plums to the pan.
Bring the mixture back to the boil and boil hard for about 5 minutes to give a thick, pulpy compote, which is on its way to being a jam. Transfer it to sterilized jars when still hot.
This is not as reliable a keeper as a regular jelly, and may eventually start to ferment. But if you pot it up in sterilized jars, it will keep for up to 3 months in the refrigerator. After the first time I just boxed it into plastic containers when it was cool as it was always gone in a couple of days, if it lasted even that long. You can freeze it too, of course.
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Magic Sticky Toffee Pudding
This one is a proper British classic, at least in recent years, and is nothing like what many nations think of as pudding. It's a baked dish that has a spongey 'cake' portion and a whole heap of dark, sticky sauce. I think it's my most favorite dessert but it really is a special occasion dish for two reasons. One, it'll stick to you hips like you wouldn't believe, especially with cream, and two, it tends to put all but the most hyperactive of people into a kind of food coma about an hour after eating it. That's probably okay at a dinner party, not so good if you're supposed to be guarding a Wraith!
Rodney became fascinated with this pudding because of the process it undergoes as it cooks. There are apparently equations somewhere that describe the way the ingredients for the sauce that start off on top of the pudding, end up on the bottom when it's finished cooking. He did all this of course just to prove that the use of the word magic in the name is wrong.
On one of Rodney's enforced days off he demanded, in that friendly way he has, a corner of my experimental kitchen and this recipe so he could examine the process in detail. For some reason I gave in, even though we couldn't really afford to waste the flour, and stood back and watched the chaos.
Except it wasn't really chaos, not once John arrived. I think initially he came to mock and then couldn't stand to see Rodney's frustration with his inability to follow a simple recipe, or rather that even though he followed the recipe it didn't work. Some people just can't bake, they suck the air out of cakes, they make pastry hard and tasteless, they curdle batter, they are anti-cooks. Rodney is however the only person I've ever met who can't make this simple recipe even with someone watching over him. John, it seems has the baking 'gene', something he didn't know until that day, and he still slips down to the kitchen occasionally to make something. I'm not sure if he uses his cakes as bribes, rewards or comfort. Maybe they're all three and more for the person who receives them.
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Ingredients - serves 6-8
For the spongy bit
3.5oz (100g) dark muscavado sugar
6oz (175g) cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup (125ml) full fat milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.7oz (50g) unsalted butter, melted (I know that's an awkward amount but it's 2/5 of a stick)
7oz (200g) chopped, rolled dates or sultanas
For the sauce
7oz (200g) dark muscavado sugar
approx. 1oz (25g) unsalted butter (1/5 stick for the US)
1 pint (500ml) boiling water
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375ºF/190ºC and grease a 3 pint (1.5L) capacity oven proof dish.
Combine the dark muscavado sugar, flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Pour the milk into a measuring jug, beat in the egg, vanilla and melted butter, and then pour into the bowl with the flour and sugar. Mix with a wooden spoon to combine and then fold in the dates or sultanas. Scrape into the prepared dish.
Sprinkle the sugar for the sauce over the top of the pudding mixture in the dish and dot the top with butter for the sauce, pinched into small pieces. Pour over the boiling water (really!) and transfer to the oven. Cook for 45 minutes and check the pudding. It should be springy and spongy on top when it's cooked. If it's still a little doughy cook for another 5-10 minutes. Underneath the sugar, butter and water will be a lovely sauce.
Serve hot with vanilla ice cream, cream, custard, whatever takes your fancy I like it with cream best but that's just my preference.
Part 8