Eurofeasting 2014 – Part Two

The other half of our Eurovision super-post this year is all about the grand final on Saturday. This year Copenhagan are hosting and we have a group of friends coming round to cheer on our favourite acts and eat some delicious European food. It’s often hard to remember that we are all one big continent because each country has such a different personality and cuisine that it’s hard to find a few common dishes that signify Europe as a whole.

Eurovision parties have become the norm and a treasured tradition amongst our group of friends, and it’s always such a laugh to have a few drinks, some food, and watch the final together. People have their opinions about Eurovision but it truly is always a good show and such guaranteed entertainment for a week, every May. It’s so important to us that, since we’ve moved country, a couple of friends have decided to fly over to London this year to continue the tradition and watch the final with us on Saturday.

Because the Danes are hosting this year, and as Denmark is truly world-renowned for it’s amazing cuisine and Michelin-starred restaurants, we decided to kick Saturday night off with a bit of an open smorrebord/kolt bord to welcome all our guests. That’s a selection of cold cuts, cheeses, breads and other fruit and vegetables on a platter, to you and us.

Danish Kolt Bord

We have some Danish Castello Blue cheese taking centre stage, naturally, alongside lots of mustards, pickles, patés, gravalax and beetroot. We also have some potato salad, flecked with dill, and some rye bread to bring it all together and to eat with some cold-cuts and Frikadeller (meat patties).

Homemade Filled Pitta

For another savoury choice for guests, tuck into some homemade pitta breads filled with feta, spinach and caramelised onions. This dish is inspired by Greece. You can switch out the feta for halloumi if you prefer, but the feta adds a real sharpness and is beautifully crumbly and creamy alongside the sweet onions and earthy and soft spinach.

For the wholemeal pitta recipe, we obviously used Paul Hollywood’s recipe that he taught us. If you’re unsure what the hell we’re talking about this post might explain more and you can watch the video we are in for Waitrose TV in the same post.

The star of the show is going to be brought out while the votes are all being tallied and it’s somewhat of a melting pot cake. It’s dark, rich and commands attention. Dense, fudgey and chocolately with a hint of sweet and bitterness. It’s our chocolate and cherry porter cake. Fusing inspiration from the UK, Ireland, Germany and Belgium, this cake has been cupcakes, muffins, a loaf and various other incarnations of itself before morphing into this beauty.

It’s filled with cocoa, both in powder and chocolate chunks, and sweetened with tinned cherries, then darkened and matured with a subtle background of rich Porter beer. Don’t worry, it doesn’t taste like a beer cake, it’s merely to add another earthy, flavoursome element to the cake. Here’s how we made it, and we hope you will make it too!

Chocolate and Cherry, Porter Cake

• 175g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 50g cocoa powder (we use Green & Black’s Organic)
• 50g ground almonds
• 10g salt
• 125g soft dark brown sugar
• 125g butter, at room temperature
• 2 large, free-range or organic eggs
• 50-100g chocolate, chopped into small chunks
• 200ml Fuller’s London Porter (under half a bottle)
• 125g Cherries in syrup (half a tin or so)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170°C and grease and line a springform tin. We used a 9″/22cm sized one.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together for a good five minutes at least, until whipped and lightened in colour. Slowly add the eggs, beaten together quickly before, into the creamed mixture. It will look like it’s curdling but just keep beating ferociously and it will come back together.
3. Weigh the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cocoa, salt) into a bowl, and open the beer nearby.
4. Alternate sifting in the dry mix with pouring in the beer, beginning and ending with dry. Here’s a tip if it helps, mentally portion the dry ingredients into four and judge the beer into three pours, that way you always have one extra flour portion to incorporate – so it will go flour–beer–flour–beer–flour–beer–flour.
5. Now add in the cherries in syrup (you can chop beforehand or just fling them in whole) and the chocolate chunks.
6. Bake in the centre of the oven for thirty minutes, then drop the temperature down to 150 for another 20-30 minutes, until the cake has settled, slightly risen and a skewer comes out clean when inserted.
7. Leave in the tin to almost completely cool before trying to take it out.
8. Slice and enjoy, this will feed ten comfortably, or six greedily.

 

 

 

Decorate it how you like, you can pipe on a sweet buttercream, slab over some thick whipped cream and possible add some fresh cherries, grated chocolate or finely chopped nuts on top. For us, it needs nothing more than to be the star of the show -served on it’s own, sliced into a generous sliver alongside some whipped cream and a tumbler of Coole Swan Irish Cream Liqeur and lots of ice.

Coole Swan is an amazingly indulgent cream and white chocolate liquer from Ireland, and we cannot champion it enough. It’s a little bit more expensive than other (more notable) cream liquers, but this one is truly special. They also have lots of cocktail and food recipes on their website.

 

For more choice, check out the first part of this post, which has recipes for gougeres, spanish potato bites and our very special earl grey bread and butter pudding slices – perfect for sharing!

We will, of course, be live-tweeting the Eurovision grand final on Saturday night, as we do every year and just like our semi-final tweets, from about 8pm. Do follow us on Twitter and join in the conversation.

Now hum along with us…

In exciting news, our Eurovision fan-girling got us into the Guardian of all places, if you don’t mind! Did you pick up a copy? We were thrilled to be featured across a two-page spread in May 2014, and special thanks to Eve and the Guardian Cook team, as well as Jasper White and Natasha Lees who came and shot the entire party. You can see the online version of the feature on the Guardian website.