Case #2: Agra Treasure Curried Vegetable Pie

Mrs Hudson thinks that “The Sign of the Four” is one of Mr Holmes’s most exciting adventures. So fascinating, with the Indian elements, those peculiar twins, and the one-legged man and his friend the tiny gentleman with the poisoned dart.

All that lovely treasure sunk to the bottom of the Thames, though. It doesn’t bear thinking about. For this adventure I’ve decided to memorialize the lost treasure in a pie full of golden roasted vegetables. I’ve been hearing about the wonderful curries Her Majesty the Queen enjoys at the palace and I think we should add some Indian flavours via a creamy sauce. The star of the dish will be pearl onions. They remind me of the beautiful pearls belonging to that nice Miss Morstan that married Dr Watson.

Agra Treasure Pie with Sign of the Four decoration

Ingredients 

Pastry for single crust pie, plus a little extra for decorations. Any recipe for flaky pastry is fine as long as it's unsweetened. Frozen pie crust will also work. 

Vegetable filling:
5 cups of roasted vegetables. In this recipe I used about 15 pearl onions, 1 yellow pepper, 3 parsnips, 2 medium potatoes, 2 medium sweet potatoes, and a cup of sliced heirloom baby carrots. You can use any combination you like. 

1/2 cup unsalted roasted cashews, chopped

Curry sauce for filling:
2 cups diced canned tomatoes, drained
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic. minced
3 tbsp butter or ghee
1 tbsp cumin
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala or curry powder
1 cup heavy cream

Yogurt sauce for serving:
1 cup of plain thick yogurt 
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt 
1-2 tbsp chopped cilantro 

A selection of vegetables for the filling

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

To prepare the filling, cut up the vegetables, toss in a bit of oil, salt and pepper, and roast in batches in a 400 degree oven. Large pearl onions should be cut in half, or if you'll be serving this to small children, cut them all in half. (Mrs Hudson is paranoid that way.) Put them aside in a large bowl. Stir in the chopped cashews.

To prepare the sauce, heat the butter or ghee in a wide saucepan. Add the onions and garlic and sauté for about 3 minutes or until the onions become translucent. Add all the spices and sauté for about 3 more minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes, and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the heavy cream and simmer for another 10-15 minutes until you have a thick sauce. I pureed mine with a hand blender to make a smooth sauce, but that's optional. Pour the sauce into the bowl of vegetables. It's a good idea to pour in the sauce in stages. Only add enough until you get a creamy, but not liquidy, filling. 

Roll out the pie dough and put in the pie pan. For a decoration,  cut out 4 + (plus) signs from a bit of leftover dough. I baked these separately so that they wouldn't burn, and added them on top of the pie afterwards.

Pour the vegetable filling into the pie pan and cook until the filling is hot and the crust is browned. This will probably take about 30 minutes.

While the pie is baking, prepare the yogurt sauce by mixing all ingredients together and chilling in the refrigerator until serving.

Roasted vegetables and pre-baked decorative "Sign"

Spicy curry sauce

Serve the pie warm with some of the cool yogurt sauce. This recipe can be adapted in many ways. You can use different vegetables, but to suit the treasure theme be sure to include some onion pearls and golden root vegetables. The yogurt sauce can be made more like a proper Indian raita, or you could use your favorite herb and spice combination. If you think cilantro leaves taste like soap, by all means pick something different. Do whatever you like--Mrs Hudson is not the boss of you.

Case #1: STUDmuffins

Hello again!

Mrs Hudson has returned from a six year hiatus to continue celebrating the cases of Mr Sherlock Holmes through baked goods. One thing I’d always wanted to do is to create a recipe for every adventure that Dr Watson set to paper. Here we’ll start with the first of these, “A Study in Scarlet.” I’ve heard that many of Mr Holmes’s devotees abbreviate this title as STUD, so our recipe will be “STUDmuffins.”

The recipe starts with a whole wheat muffin base, harkening back to the golden fields of wheat that John and Lucy Ferrier found in their would-be promised land of Utah. The next essential ingredient is the “scarlet thread of murder,” which we’ll represent with a ribbon of raspberry jam. The muffins will also be studded with fresh or frozen raspberries, and topped with cream cheese icing anchoring two jelly beans to represent the two pills in Jefferson Hope’s game of Russian roulette.

Ingredients for 12 muffins:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour 
• 1 cup all purpose flour 
• 1/2 cup sugar 
• 1/3 cup brown sugar 
• 1 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 
• 1 cup milk or buttermilk 
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries 
• 1/2 cup raspberry jam

Ingredients for frosting and decoration:

• 1/2 cup cream cheese 
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter 
• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla 

• Jelly bean “pills” in colour of choice 
• Cheerios for an additional wedding ring garnish, if handy

Mix together the two flours. Heat jam in microwave about 30-40 seconds to loosen it up and put aside. (Mrs. Hudson’s microwave is from 1895 so it took a little longer.) In another bowl, cream together the butter, two sugars and baking soda. Mix in the egg and vanilla. Add the milk and stir until well combined. Add the flour and mix until combined—don’t over mix. Gently stir in raspberries. If frozen, do not defrost them first. 

To create the scarlet thread of murder, pour the jam onto the batter in a few places and run a knife gently through the batter to make a ribbon. Ladle the batter into muffin cups set into a muffin pan. (Gently again so as not to disturb the jam ribbon.) Bake at 400 F for about 15 minutes. The top of the muffin should spring back a bit when touched.

Using large muffin pans yields 18 muffins.

Optional topping and decoration:

Unadorned, the muffins make a good, not-too-sweet breakfast option. To fancy them up, combine butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla until creamy. Spread on top of the cooled muffins and top with two jellybeans in scarlet or pink or whatever colour you choose. If you like, add a piece of oat ring cereal for Lucy’s wedding ring.

Red Circles, or, Tra-la-la...Taralli!

During Mrs. Hudson's Grand Tour of Europe, she spent a month in the beautiful city of Florence. She had access to a kitchen again, giving her ample opportunities to create something with an Italian flair for this blog. When one thinks "Italy and Sherlock Holmes" it is natural to think of Mr. Holmes' encounter with the Neopolitan group The Red Circle. Napoli is known throughout the world for the wonderful things its citizens do with dough, so Mrs. Hudson decided that she would tweak the tarallo, a classic Italian snack cracker, to create Red Circle Taralli.

Red Circles at the Ponte Vecchio

Taralli are boiled like tiny bagels and then baked until they are crunchy. They are often flavored with fennel seeds, hot pepper, or other such spices. To make a nice red dough, Mrs. Hudson experimented with adding concentrated tomato paste and quite a bit of paprika.

Here are the ingredients you need:
4 cups flour
1 cup olive oil (a good one--you can taste it in the final product)
2/3 cup white wine
1/4 cup concentrated tomato paste (not pureed tomatoes)
1 1/2 tablespoon mild red paprika
1 teaspoon hot pepper flakes, or to taste
(Attenta! Attenta! Attenta! There were no measuring cups in Mrs. Hudson's student apartment so she had to use an empty Nutella jar as a stand in. It may be necessary for her to test these proportions again in her Baker Street kitchen.)

This is not intended as an ad for Conad supermarkets. Mrs. Hudson was on a budget.

If she had it all to do over again she would have picked a decent bottle of wine

 because leftover Conad box wine is undrinkable.

1. Mix all the ingredients together and knead into a smooth dough.

A dough as bright as a sunny day in Italy. Admittedly, more orange than red, but 

Mrs. Hudson did not wish to use red food coloring.

2. Let the dough rest for about 15 minutes.

3. Start boiling a big pot of water.

4. Pinch off bits of dough, roll each into a long thin logs, then connect them at the end to form circles.

5. Drop a few taralli in the boiling water at a time and let them boil a minute or two. They should rise to the top. Take them out of the water, set them to dry on a clean kitchen towel, and repeat until all are boiled.
6. Put them on a baking tray and bake at about 325 degrees until they are crunchy. This should take 20 to 30 minutes depending on their size.

Buon appetito!

Sweden, a study in licorice

Mrs. Hudson is currently on hiatus from her Baker Street kitchen. She has been spending time in Europe and expects that the intensive pastry research that she has been conducting will eventually inspire some baked goods for this blog.

Meanwhile, having been shown a wonderful time by some of Mr. Holmes' friends in Stockholm and Uppsala, Mrs. Hudson feels that she must at least offer a no-bake tribute to Sweden. Herewith, a short photo essay on a few of the country's tangentially Sherlockian candies:

"It is quite a three-pipe problem..."

--The only problem is whether to choose original flavor or the local specialty, salty licorice.

"Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S.H."

--Sweden is a peaceful country, but open carry of licorice weapons is widely tolerated.

"It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess, I covet your skull."

--Did Dr. Mortimer join the Swedish Pathological Society thinking that they provided mail order licorice delivery?

"He held out his hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a scintillating blue stone..."

--Okay, well this candy doesn't really look that much like blue carbuncles, and it's not even licorice. However, these little gems revel in the name "Bumlingar blåbär" which, if nothing else, is now definitely going to be the name of Mrs. Hudson's next cat.

Holmesian Cat Buns

The other day, Mrs. Hudson's friend Judith commented on the popularity of social media posts that involve cats, food, or Sherlock Holmes. When the Facebook Brain Trust replied with the suggestion that a combination of all three would be the best of all, Mrs. Hudson attempted to break the Internet with some hot Holmesian cat buns. Here's how they turned out:

How to:
Prepare a shape-able bread dough. Mrs. Hudson used this recipe:
www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/turtle-bread/02a87ed3-d9ae-4488-8985-15ab094e1b97

Shape the dough into balls. Roll a cylinder of dough and make diagonal cuts to create ears. Add 2 ears to each ball, tucking them underneath a bit so they attach securely during the baking.

 

For Holmes cats, shape a deerstalker cap out of a circle of dough topped by two half-circles for the flaps. For Watson, omit the cap and add a couple of small pieces of dough for a mustache.

Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown. Add chocolate chips or raisins for eyes and drawn on facial details with piped icing or a food coloring pen. Add a small twine bow to the top of the deerstalker cap. Brush your buns with melted butter to make them shiny.

We can't all be Photoshopped, so old-fashioned lady that Mrs. Hudson is, she feels that honesty is the best policy and would like to mention that it's actually kind of tricky to form Holmes' hat. They tend to puff up strangely during the baking and quite a few of them turned out looking something like this:

Still good with butter and jam. Me-ow!

Magnifying Glass Cookies

Ho, ho, ho! In addition to baking her family's traditional favorites this year, Mrs. Hudson decided to give stained glass cookies a canonical makeover by creating a magnifying glass cookie. In the photo below the end product is taken through its paces by Mrs. Hudson's daughter Mrs. Turner:

How to:

1. Get hold of some blue-and-white candy canes or another appropriately-colored type of hard candy. Crush them up. 

2. Make or purchase some basic sugar cookie dough. Roll out, cut into circles and cut smaller circles out of the circles. Roll and shape the inner circle that you just cut out into a handle for the magnifying glass and press onto an edge of the circle. Fill the middle of the circle with the crushed candies.

3. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes, or until the cookies are slightly golden and the sugar is melted. Give the melted sugar a little swirl with a knife. Add a cocoa glaze if you want.

Benedict Cookiebatch

Mrs. Hudson probably could have done something more useful with her day off than creating a large cookie portrait of Benedict Cumberbatch in his role as Sherlock Holmes. However.

How to:
There aren't any cookie cutters for this, so you'll have to prepare a template. Draw one on cardboard or regular paper. Make it large since you'll be using an entire batch of cookie dough for one cookie. Sketch in some details about the face and hair to use as guidelines later. Don't worry too much about the resemblance--people are remarkably forgiving about portraiture when it means they get to eat a cookie. Mix up a batch of your favourite sugar cookie dough. Roll it out. Cut out the cookie using the template. Decorate with frosting. Use a food colouring pen for details. Put some curly chocolate hair on that bad boy. Share with your closest friends.