Keeping Him Satisfied The Old-Fashioned Way

[caption id="attachment_944" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Chocolate Butter Biscuits[/caption]

A full biscuit tin can go a long way towards harmony in the home.  Especially when there is chocolate involved.

The Girl was feeling guilty about getting Her Boyfriend in trouble with his parents by leaving his swimming bag on the bus, but he refused to let her pay for the replacements.  Knowing his sweet tooth, and particular love of chocolate, I came up with the idea of a tin full of sugary treats by way of a mea culpa.  In addition to the usual mini muffins etc, I went with some of my Chocolate Butter Biscuits (crumbly, buttery outside with Nutella filling) and some good old-fashioned Chocolate Pinwheels from a recipe in a Good Housekeeping cook book my late ex-mother-in-law gave me twentysomething years ago.

First published in 1953, some of the recipes sound horrendous (kidney and mushroon omelette, anyone?) but others more than withstand the test of time.  I would like to think that the people at Good Housekeeping all those years ago would be pleased to hear that their recipes are still appreciated in 2012, in this case by a teenage boy in the South of France who has no swimshorts but a very full stomach.

Baked Cheese

Ingredients:

• Round of cheese, such as Camembert, that comes in a wooden case


• Clove of garlic, thinly sliced


• Dribble of white wine


• Fresh, crusty bread

• Prep time: 2 minutes


• Oven: 20 minutes at 200

Instructions: 

• Remove any plastic or paper packaging from the cheese, place back in wooden box


• Pierce the top of the cheese and insert thin slices of garlic according to taste


• Drizzle the surface with dry, white wine


• Leaving the lid off the box, wrap the whole thing in tin foil, shiny side in


• Place in preheated oven for 20 mins


• Remove foil and serve with chunks of bread

Getting Baked

When I was a teenager, I thought myself very sophisticated when invited to friends' houses for fondu (gasp!). And all that lovely, melty cheese and crispy baguette (or 'French bread'  as we called it) is not to be sniffed at.  However, these days I have a few issues with fondu:

Cost: Even here in France where we have cheese out the wazoo, if there are maybe six of you at table, enough decent-quality cheese for uninhibited dipping will set you back a fair bit.

Hassle:  After you've fiddled about with the fuel etc etc, someone needs to monitor the heat and cheese levels almost constantly, as the cheese at the bottom of the pan can scorch quite easily.  This gets harder and harder as the wine goes down.

Mess: We, as a family, are definitely not the kind of people that trip off to bed after a dinner party with the dishwasher humming and the worktops gleaming.  Greasy, crusty (possibly burnt) fondu pot is not nice to wake up to.

This is where the northern French favourite of Baked Cheese comes in.  Whilst the cheeses used are stronger than fondu tends to be, and therefore not to everyone's taste, it is a lot less hassle than fondu whilst still as convivial. Rounds of Camembert or similar are wrapped in foil with a little garlic and white wine and baked in the oven for about 20 minutes.  When you open them up, you can tear the 'skin' open and there is nothing but liquid cheese inside for everyone to dip their chunks of bread in.  And when it's over, the foil, cheese box etc all goes straight in the bin. Easy peasy.  Makes a brilliant starter, snack, or part of a buffet-style casual meal amongst good friends.