Cheese Ball

 

To set the scene, it’s New Year’s Eve (2020 style) and you have a hot date with a pair of pyjamas and a jigsaw. You feel the need to add a little something to the celebration. You also feel the need to avoid doing any housework whatsoever and need a displacement activity. What are you going to do? You’re going to knock up this retro ball of gelatinous lard to eat later, that’s what.

Cheese balls were a mid century staple of the cheese and wine night. You’ll be happy to hear that they are easy to make and don’t have to be served with a bottle of Blue Nun (although do consider this if you’re after authenticity and/or Covid has damaged your tastebuds).

Let’s assemble some ingredients:

You will need:

A tub of full fat cream cheese

200g strong grated cheese (I used extra nature cheddar)

A bit of shallot, onion or garlic 

Worcestershire sauce

Aaaaaand...it’s time to bring out that bottle of cheap Aldi whisky again. 

You will also need some crunchy stuff for later. Much googling suggests that it’s not really important what the crunchy stuff is. I used toasted chopped almonds and chives.

Method:

1. Dump the cream cheese, grated cheese, 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, a little bit of grated shallot/garlic/whatever And a generous splash of whisky into a bowl. By the way, all photos for this recipe will be taking place in front of my kitchen window because the rest of the kitchen currently looks like a bin.

2. Get your hand blender out and blend the lot together until smooth-ish. Eat a celebratory cherry liqueur chocolate because it’s still sort of Christmas.

3. Dollop the mixture into the centre of some cling film and try not to think of dog sick.

4. Form the whole thing into a ball by gathering the cling film up and twisting it at the top. Wrap this in foil and put it in the fridge to firm up for a few hours.

5. Later on, assemble your crunchy stuff. I used toasted chopped almonds, chives and salt and pepper but you can use anything. Crunchy bacon bits, fried breadcrumbs or crispy fried onions  would work well. Put crunchy gubbins on a plate and roll your unwrapped cheese ball all over it so that it gets covered in crunchy bits. You are aiming for the effect of kicking it across a pub carpet at closing time.

6. Serve with crudités and eat.

This was actually very good. Shockingly so considering the ingredients. Booze and cheese forever. Try not to eat the entire thing at once - it will keep in the fridge for a few days so you’ve got no excuse really. And wash it down with more liqueur chocolates because we’ve got to get our kicks where we can at the moment.

Whisky Marinated Grapes: a Dinner Party Abomination

Sometimes the best ideas are so simple. Think a plate of good quality dark chocolate with coffee in place of dessert after a civilised yet slightly bohemian dinner party; all the guests just helping themselves to a rustic chunk to savour as they tinkle with laughter in the candlelight a la Nigella Lawson’s hired friends on every cookery programme she’s ever done. Or, you know, cheesy puffs. So simple. So classic.

Sometimes the worst ideas are really simple too. Worryingly simple. So simple that any moron with a knife and a bottle of cheap booze could end up inflicting them on anybody. And that, friends, is what we are exploring today:

Whisky marinated grapes. Part of a bygone trend of the 70s to the 90s for wasting alcohol by pouring it on fruit. Remember melon with a shot of port inexplicably poured into its centre? Like that. I had a memory of grapes being subject to the same treatment for fancy dinner parties so I searched through old recipe books until I found the basic premise. And here we are.

You will need:

Some grapes.
Whisky. I am not a whisky drinker but, as luck would have it, I had half a bottle of Aldi’s finest in my cupboard from an attempt at making homemade Baileys at Christmas. It cost about £8.99. I’ll leave you to imagine the flavour and quality.
A lemon
Some honey
Wine glasses

Method:

1. Slice your grapes in half. You’ll need enough to fill about one third of each wine glass you’re using.

2. In a bowl, mix whisky, honey and lemon. Amounts can be left to your imagination but you want a bit more whisky than honey and only a little bit of lemon juice. Put the grapes in the bowl with the liquid, cover and put them in the fridge for a few hours. Have a little taste of the whisky mixture. Mmmmm, Benylin.

3. Take the grapes out of the fridge, whisk up some double cream and dollop it into the bottom of each wine glass. I used a Babycham glass for authenticity and frosted it with sugar, because who doesn’t enjoy something special happening around their rim?

4. Divide the grapes between the glasses then pour on the weird cough mixture juice.

Elegant.

The grapes are an absolute abomination. They taste like frogspawn that’s been left to marinate in a vat of Night Nurse. I tentatively added a bit of cream to the spoon, expecting the flavour to be an advert for veganism. Weirdly, not so. I didn’t realise how strongly the early 80s tasted like cream dunked in cheap booze until I put this in my mouth. A hundred weird food related memories came flooding back, which is concerning as I was aged 2-11 in that particular decade. Maybe it was acceptable to lace your kids jelly and ice cream with alcohol back then. It wouldn’t surprise me. Either way, I’ve just consumed a lot of cream, some questionable grapes and some a lot of cheap alcohol that’s given me that “I smoke 40 a day” feeling in my chest. I am nostalgic, somewhat nauseous and full of remorse.

Creamy cough syrup grapes: try them if you dare.

Silver swans - a children’s party classic. Apparently.

It’s been a while. Last time I was here, I taste tested enough grim Christmas breakfasts to kick start a range of gastrointestinal symptoms to put me off of retro food adventuring for...oh, about two and a half years.

I thought I’d ease myself back into it with something inoffensive. Something without any comedy 1970s ingredients. Something with fond memories.

So, we’re revisiting this classic 80s recipe book.

We’ve been here before. This is not our first rodeo. Remember the cheese twigs? They were pretty much the only thing my mum would make for my birthday parties from this book. Being a child of particularly refined taste, I used to beg her to make something a bit more sophisticated instead. Such as these beautiful, dainty choux pastry swans (scroll back up for a look).

Aren’t they pretty? Funnily enough, she always told me to jog on at this point and started huffing about, emptying bags of Safeway Savers cheesy puffs into bowls. Amateur. How hard could it be? Let’s have a bake-along:

You will need:

75g butter
200ml water
125g plain flour
3 large eggs, beaten
250ml double cream
2 tablespoons icing sugar

You will also need baking paper, a 10mm piping nozzle and something to make a piping bag out of (I used a plastic sandwich bag). See what I mean? Nothing weird about this recipe. Stay tuned though because I added a couple of mystery ingredients later on just to keep things fresh.

Method:
1. Use the butter, water, flour and eggs to make a batch of choux pastry. I can’t be bothered to tell you how to do that. If you’re not on board with this level of apathy, this is not the blog for you. Google a recipe and join me when you’ve done it.

2. Stuff some of your choux pastry in your piping bag (nozzle already attached). Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Don’t forget to slightly moisten your baking sheets, bitches.

3. Pipe some ‘2s’ for the necks. They should be about 3” high and apparently you should pull away sharply at the top to make a ‘beak’. I wouldn’t worry about that though because whatever you do, you’re going to end up with a tray full of what look like of anaemic cat turds. Form the rest of the dough into ovals about 3” long. LIKE SO:

Well, that looks shit. Oh well. They’re sure to look better when they’re baked.

LOL, nope.

4. There are various instructions about how long to bake everything for and at what temperature. This should pretty much be disregarded because everything came out flaccid and inedible, but if you enjoy rules, bake in a preheated oven at 220C for 10 minutes, then lower the temperature to 190C and bake the necks for a further 10 minutes and the bodies for 20 more minutes. Remove from the oven, make a slit in the side of each and leave to cool.

5. Whisk up your cream until stiff and stir in half of the icing sugar. Cut each body in half horizontally and stuff the bottom part with cream. Wedge the neck in the cream then cut the remaining half of the body in half lengthways and stick haphazardly on the body to resemble wings. Sprinkle with the remaining icing sugar (preferably using a sieve, but I remembered too late that I used mine to strain floating slugs out of the paddling pool the other day so I had to do without).

I managed to make one vaguely recognisable swan out of all of the various body parts, and it was held together with hazardous amounts of cocktail sticks. It also looks a bit like an old tissue that someone has sneezed in and crumpled up, but it does have a few swan-like traits so I’m calling it a win. However, I did feel that it was lacking something. 

Fixed it. Because if a delectable choux pastry swan is desirable at birthday parties, a delectable choux pastry swan that looks like it’s dropped a load of acid is surely preferable. I also fashioned it a little pond out of some blue WKD. For realism. 

Now all that’s left is to eat it. You’ll need some chocolate sauce.

Job done.