Eurofeasting 2014 – Part One

To celebrate Gay Christmas (i.e. Eurovision) we’ve decided to go all out and make a song and dance about it, if you’ll pardon the pun. For the week of Eurovision we will be bombarding you with posts celebrating European diversity and cuisine, as well as offering our own unique recipes and euro-inspired creations.

If you’re partaking in a bit of a euro-session next Saturday, or for either of the semi-finals on Tuesday and Thursday of this week, then we have the perfect party food for you. Everything is finger food or hand-held sized and great for sharing if you’re having some friends over like we are. Eurovision is a bit of a tradition amongst our group of friends and every year we congregate and celebrate the Eurovision final together. This year will be our first not living in Ireland, so to honour tradition a couple of friends from home are visiting this weekend and helping us to cheer on the various entrants into this year’s competition. It’s a bit of fun, a bit silly and well worth mindlessly getting into, if at least to watch while you’re tucking into the below grub.

French Gougères

First up, we’ve got little bite-size balls of deliciousness, these are called gougères. We got the recipe for these directly from Rachel Khoo, within her Little Paris Kitchen cookbook. Gougères are savoury choux buns, baked as pop-in-your-mouth sized pieces and flavoured with mature French cheese.

We made ours flavoured with Comté, which is one of our favourites from France, and we topped some with more cheese and others with poppy seeds. We had never made choux before, but after making it and realising how easy it is we can’t wait to make another batch – maybe next time we’ll try the more famous, sweetened versions of these, which are cutely called choucettes.

Rachel has some really useful tips for choux on her website, but doesn’t have the recipe online, if you’re lucky enough to own her book, the recipe is on p.87. If you don’t, David Lebovitz has a great recipe for them on his blog which makes a nice and even 30 little morsels.

Chorizo and Potato Bites

Next up is something just as moreish – chorizo and potato bites. We’re dashing down to Espana and celebrating one of the most obvious, but also most amazing, products Spain has given us – chorizo. These little bite-size chorizo and potato skewers are perfect finger food, and you can bet they are all equally packed with flavour. Chorizo is one of the few ingredients that even when cut in tiny pieces is still bursting with the flavours of chilli and garlic.

These really have to be served stabbed with mini skewers, cocktail sticks, or whatever you have handy, as the chorizo leaks it’s deliciously bright and golden oil when cooking, and may stain fingers when eating too, if gobbled by hand. Here’s how we done it. We cut the chorizo sausages into pound coin-sized rounds and fried them in a dry, hot pan, turning the heat down to medium-hot once the pan has been slicked with the chorizo juices.

Turn the rounds at least once, ensuring they get crispy and deepen in colour. Drain them on some kitchen paper, but reserve as much of the leached oil as possible, as you can then pan-fry the potato cubes (cut in a similar size) in it. When cooked through, you can then crispen them up in a piping hot oven if you wish, but try not to overcook as you don’t want the potato to fall apart, once pierced with the cocktail sticks. Serve hot or cold, and make sure you have at least three of four per person; these will go quickly!

Finally for this first post, we have something we’re really excited about. Earl Grey Bread and Butter Slices. Yes, you heard right. Tea and dessert all in one handheld helping.

We’re back in merry olde Englande and we’re celebrating the cup of tea and the comforting, nourishing and cheap as chips dessert – bread and butter pudding. The delicate vanilla custard is permeated with a backnote of earl grey and the slices make a great party food for any gathering, with a new and unique way to enjoy this iconic pudding. You can, of course, serve this in bowls with extra custard or cream if you wish.

Earl Grey Bread and Butter Slices

• 500ml milk
• 1.5 tsp vanilla paste
• 1 tsp cornflour
• 4 large egg yolks
• 50g caster sugar
• 2 earl grey tea bags (we like both the Waitrose and M&S varieties)
• 1 whole sliced pan of crusty bread (best a day old and left out on the counter, we got ours in the reduced section of the supermarket too)
• lashings of butter
• 200-300g raisins (depending on taste)

1. Warm the milk, with the tea bags immersed, in a saucepan on a medium heat until steam begins to emerge and little bubbles appear on the bottom of the pan while stirring. Take the tea bags out at this point.
2. Meanwhile, soak the raisins. You can soak them in hot water, a little tipple of your choice or in some pre-made hot tea. If you prefer the taste of a less pungent and powerful tea, by all means change to your preferred brand/flavour.
3. Incorporate the egg yolks, sugar, cornflour and vanilla in a pyrex bowl until gloopy and combined.
4. Acting quickly, vigorously stir the egg mixture as the hot milk is poured in. Once all in the same bowl, put the mixture quickly back in the pan, turning the heat down to low, and stir continuously with a wooden spoon for about three or four minutes, until the mixture has thickened and now comfortably coats the back of the spoon and a line can be drawn down the middle. Leave to cool slightly.
5. Slather the butter on the bread, choosing to do one side of each or both sides.
6. Cut the top and bottom crust off the slices of bread, leaving the crusts on the sides. Roughly tear up the cut crusts and put to one side – they will form the topping later.
7. Now form layers of bread in a deep baking or casserole dish (depending on what you have, the smaller and deeper the chunkier your slices will be, the more elongated and shallow the thinner your slices will be). Make sure to leave no gaps, especially on the bottom layer as you want slices to hold their own when cut. Sprinkle half of the raisins and pour over a third of the custard, repeat a bread layer, then strew the rest of the raisins, followed by another third of the custard. Finish on another layer of bread (if you have one), the rest of the custard and top with fistfuls of the torn crusts. Leave to absorb for at least twenty minutes, or as long as you can wait.
8. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C S, sprinkle with some demerera or brown sugar and pop into an oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. It will come out golden and crispy on top.
9. Wait until completely cooled to cut into slices, and trust us this will taste better the day after, so by all means make this a day or day and a half in advance.

We also wanted to continue our foray into music, where we fuse some of our favourite tracks and artists into the cookery process and give them pride of place in the kitchen while cooking. (Hope you’ve checked out our previous ‘Songs Of Proves’ playlists on Youtube!) We’ve chosen some of the best entries for this year’s ESC and collaborated our opinions, as well as those of some of our die-hard Eurovision-obsessive friends, into our top five picks for Eurovision 2014 success… [See a video playlist of all of our favourites at the bottom of this post]

There’s lots of ballads and slower-set songs this year, which is a huge departure for the competition, and slow songs don’t tend to fare too well. Some of the bookies’ favourites and instant frontrunners for the title include Spain, Austria, Norway and Azerbaijan, all of which are sending forth a ballad. Also, once the Contest comes around every May, Ireland and next-door neighbours the United Kingdom both become fierce rivals, and what’s interesting is their respective entries are quite similar this year in style.

It will be interesting to see how both fare, even though Molly is guaranteed to perform in the final for the UK, but we would comfortably bet that Can-Linn with Kasey Smith will be there too.

France: Twin Twin’s Moustache song is an absolute banger and such a different Euro entry! The beat is so infectious and it’s fun but not taking the piss, they get that balance so right when so many Eurovision entrants fall either side of that. It’s a fantastic effort from one of the Top 5 and it’s refreshing to see a real effort put into the French entry, even though it’s guaranteed a fast-pass into the finals. You know, like the ones you get in Disneyland Paris.

Hungary: Andras Kallay-Saunders brings a very current and modern tune to the table with this dubstep-fuelled lament. The subject matter is a bit heavy, as is the video, but we’re going to be so intrigued as to how this is performed on the night. It’s faring within the bookies’ top ten, but is quite similar in style to favourite-to-win Aram MP3 (Armenia), and is performed by a good-looking male just like theirs is as well, so in the grander scheme of things it will be tough for Hungary to differentiate themselves and it will come down to which of the two countries performs better on the night of the final.

Denmark: We get a real Bruno Mars/Olly Murs vibe from both the song and the performance in preview clips. Denmark have little to lose, and really could put anything on the stage as they are the host nation and so are guaranteed a final night spot, but we get the feeling the viewers and fans will really warm to this fun and silly song from Basim that’s quite catchy and of it’s time.

Austria: The song is a pretty run of the mill ballad, not dissimilar to many of the Bond themes over the years. However Austria’s wannabe Shirley Bassey or Adele comes in the form of Conchita Wurst – a fierce drag queen with a dark beard and a smize that Tyra would be proud of. It ticks all the boxes for Euro eccentricity and could be as shocking and groundbreaking as it was for Israel when Dana International rose to victory in the Nineties.

The Netherlands: There will always be that one song every year that is so polished and almost above Eurovision, and yet because it’s lumped into a very eccentric, over the top and camp contest, it never seems to fare too well and at the best tends to linger just shy of the top spots. Last year it was Anouk, who was the Dutch entry just like this one and which finished just outside the top ten. We both adored ‘Birds’ and how much of a departure it was from your typical Eurovision entry, but it was a real risk. The Dutch have done it again with this romantic country duet and it will divide opinion.

 Who are you most looking forward to performing this year?

Get a sneak peek at our favourites in the below playlist, curated by us.