Coming over all Cornish

Dartmouth Harbour

Last week we extended our weekend by a couple of days on either side and took a little road trip.



We meandered down through Dorset and Devon to St Ives in Cornwall, then back via the north Devon coast and a flying visit onto Exmoor. It was lovely to have some time to explore our own country, and made us remember that the UK is a lovely place and that its great to spend time just chilling out together.



To get into the spirit of the trip, the recipe I attempted this week was Hugh's curried trout pasty, from the River Cottage Fish Cook book. The pasties would make great picnic food, although they perhaps were not the perfect dinner - I couldn't come up with a very satisfactory accompaniment. Given that Dan sampled a real, home-cooked, Cornish Steak pasty while we were away I was glad to have attempted a lighter interpretation. I think I'd still be living off one of those 3 days later!


St Ives

One or two mini pieces of cookery inspiration from the trip:
Seville Orange Tart - an amazing dessert served up with creme fraiche at Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. A little bit bitter and fresh. We had a really lovely, rather over-indulgent Sunday lunch there - this is Dan with his Lobster and Prawn Tourte, which was delicious too:


Leek and Walnut quiche - a surprisingly brilliant combination.
Also, fantastic cake from a bakery in Dorchester in Dorset - we sampled half a slice each of Rhubarb and Ginger loaf cake and Chocolate, Pear and Almond loaf cake in our beachside picnic that day. Yummy scrummy. Glad I don't live close to that bakery - I'd definitely end up over-eating every day!


Padstow

In praise of spontaneity

A couple of weeks ago Dan came back from town bringing treats in brown paper bags: One small blueberry amandine tart, one strawberry tart, and one bakewell tart. They were much appreciated in my cold-filled state. We very democratically divided each into thirds, sharing them out for lunch with our guest.

That blueberry tart really stuck in my mind, so when blueberries were on special offer this week I stocked up and hunted high and low to find a recipe for the Amandine tart. Eventually achieved (it was surprisingly tricky to track one down), I made mini tarts so that the leftovers would be more portable for lunches.



The tart is a wonderful combination of crisp, flakey pastry, filled with sweet, juicy blueberries and a custardy sponge, all topped off with the crunch of flaked almonds. YUM. A new favourite. Keeps well in the fridge too; it may be the perfect pudding.



A different kind of serendipity lead me to the other subject of this post; griddled vegetables and halloumi. I'd never eaten or cooked halloumi before, but the cheese man at the farmer's market had made some Halloumi-esque cheese and so it seemed like the perfect time to try it. I griddled a load of aubergine, courgette and red onion slices, topped it with the griddled cheese, and hey presto, lunch was served. It certainly helped me get over my long hilly run! It will have to become a regular feature, if only so that I get more use out of the griddle pan which is sadly underused.

Ottolenghi on Masterchef

I was rather intrigued by the guest judge on Masterchef this week. They had Yotam Ottolenghi on and he set a challenge involving vegetarian dishes. I think that most of the contestants didn't really get it, which seems wierd to me. I would think that if you have any curiosity about food and cookery then you would be looking to expand your repertoire of dishes all the time, and that would include the odd veggie one. Eating meat all the time is more expensive and worse for the environment too. How strange that the cooks didn't really take to it.

After watching the programme I remembered that Yotam Ottolenhgi writes a column in The Guardian saturday supplement. A browse around online resulted in loads of lovely sounding new recipes to try. I'll have to take a look at his recipe books sometime.

Anyway, back to the cooking; we've had a very Ottolenghi weekend. Starting on friday with fried rice cakes served with creamed (well, yoghurted) leeks and poached eggs, and finishing on sunday with Smokey Cheesey Polenta chips with our roast pork. The flavours of both dishes were great, but I clearly don't have the presentational finesse of Ottolenghi as they both looked a mess!

I had never cooked polenta before (other than using it to dust things before frying), but I will be doing so again as this recipe was very good. The flavour of the rice dish was wonderful too, although I used sumac instead of saffron. Amazingly, Dan didn't complain about having veggie dinners two days in a row, so it must have been good!

So, top tip: check out Ottolenghi's recipes, but just don't expect them to look great the first time!

Both of these recipes can be found on The Guardian website, along with loads of other brilliant ones.

An on-going love affair

I do love rhubarb.

I find it particularly appealling at this time of year when its the forced variety available. It comes out a beautiful shade of pink when its stewed. Sadly, I think there's probably only a very short amount time left in the forced rhubarb season, so I've been eek out every last morsel of enjoyment I can from it! (Although it does feel wierd to buy rhubarb after years of having it in the garden - I must plant some for next year.)

So far my rhubarb experiments haven't got much further than crumble, stewed with strawberries, or cheesecake. All fantastic. However, browsing the internet I stumbled across Rhubarb Custard cake, and that sounded like it just had to be tried.



And indeed it was delicious. Lovely and crunchy on the top, with the moist texture of drizzle cake on the inside. Perfect served warm for pudding, but also a big hit with my work colleagues the next day.

The recipe can be found here on the Lazy Giraffe blog. She makes pretty jewellery too.

Daring Cooks March Challenge

This month's challenge from the Daring Cooks was a Peruvian speciality; Ceviche.
What a treat! I love fish and seafood and adore sushi and sashimi. When I think about it its strange that I'd never thought to try Ceviche before, so it was brilliant to have it suggested.

Ceviche is fish or seafood cured in citrus fruit rather than cooked. I chose scallops and cured them in lime juice, nectarine and tarragon. I sliced each scallop into 3 or 4 rounds so they were pretty thin, and they took just 20 minutes to cure in the fridge.



I served them up with some salad leaves and toasted pecan nuts as a starter:



I took the idea of adding the tarragon and nectarine from a recipe I found on the BBC website, and they were definitely tasty additions. I also enjoyed having the earthiness of the pecan nuts to balance out the sharper citrus flavours. I think walnuts would also work. I spooned the marinade liquid over the top of the scallops when I served them, and I would caution against this - in future I will drain it off before serving as otherwise the dish does become a bit too sharp.

All in all, this recipe is definitely one I would do again, but its best either as a starter or a light meal on a hot day.

The monthly challenge did suggest that we could also try Papas Rellenas, which are a kind of potato cake - stuffed with a meat mixture (typically beef) and fried. They sound delicious and I'm sure I'll give them a go at some point, but this month was a bit busy so I decided to stop at one Daring Cooks recipe.

Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenges us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.

Sushi

Using an amalgamation of techniques from my new Fish cookbook by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and the Japanese cookery book I've had for a while, I finally had a try at making one of my favourite dinners - sushi.

I don't think my efforts matched up to the sushi from my favourite place, Yoshino Sushi on Shaftesbury Avenue in London, but I was still pretty proud of my efforts.

I made california rolls with smoked salmon, spring onion, cucumber and a hint of wasabi, wrapped in nori (seaweed):

Step one, assemble the roll on the sushi mat:


Step two, roll the roll and allow the nori to seal at the edges:


Step three, slice the column into pieces:


Finally, serve with soy sauce, pickled ginger, some wasabi, and a little extra cucumber and spring onion:


I also made nori with a streak of wasabi paste and smoked mackerel on the top, which you can see in the last couple of images. The mackerel could have done with being a little thinner, but it was a great flavour.

We had some chilli marinated seared tuna and jumbo prawns with the sushi. We dipped the prawns in lovely homemade garlicky mayonnaise. Fab dinner - probably our fish quota for the week!

Pancake Day!

I love pancake day: Pancakes for every meal should be the rule of the day.

Handily, I found a pancake recipe that used egg whites, so I could use up the remaining whites from my icecream making at the weekend. I feel a bit bad actually, because I was terribly sniffy about Sophie Dahl's cookery/life style programme when it was on the BBC, but it was an adaptation of her Buckwheat blini recipe that I ended up using this morning. It was pretty good too. I still don't think she was particularly skilled or inventive, but the girl can come up with a decent breakfast pancake.

So, this morning's menu was Buckwheat blinis (basically a fluffy American-style Buckwheat pancake) with smoked salmon and scrambled egg. A very decadent start to the day.

Buckwheat Blinis (for 2-3 people)

85g buckwheat flour
1 tspn baking powder
150ml milk
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
salt and pepper
Chopped chives
2 egg whites - beaten until they hold soft peaks

Mix together the flour, baking powder, milk, mustard powder, chives. Beat well and season with salt and pepper.
In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites, then gently fold them into the flour batter using a metal spoon.
Heat a non-stick frying pan over a moderate heat, add a little vegetable oil to the pan. Ladle in a scoop of pancake batter and allow to cook for a couple of minutes until bubbles appear on the upper side and the underneath is a toasted brown colour. Flip the pancake and cook for a couple of minutes on the other side. Keep warm while you cook the rest of the batter.

Sophie Dahl also added cheese to her pancake batter, but I thought that was a bit heavy and greasy for breakfast. It might be good at lunchtime. If you omitted the mustard powder you could add fruit to these and serve them just like American pancakes.

Presents!

I do like presents. Particularly unexpected ones. I did well this week: Dan brought me home the River Cottage Fish cook book. Just my kind of thing. Good gift. Then through the post arrived a jams and preserves book - a 'just because' present from my sister. Aaaahhh.

My Christmas bread bowl is yet to materialise, so I also got a consolation gift of an icecream maker. Totally unnecessary kitchen equipment really, but I have been lusting after one for quite a while.

So, this weekend I just had to use at least 2 out of 3. Jam seemed like I needed a bit more planning so fish and icecream were on the menu.

Dan & I very democratically went through the Fish cook book and agreed on a recipe to make for Sunday dinner to Christen the book: Mussel, bacon and spinach gratin.
It is a time consuming dish, so only really appropriate for a day when you have plenty of time.

First up, clean and cook the mussels.



Remove them from the shells, cook bacon & garlic, make bechemal sauce, wilt & chop spinach. Mix together, sprinkle with breadcrumbs & parmesan, bake.



Totally worth the effort - very delicious indeed.

And for pudding.....Mexican Chocolate Icecream.

It was a bit of a gamble, but I couldn't find quite the recipe I wanted, so I took the basics from a couple of different recipes and adapted it to suit me. Maybe a bit silly for the first attempt, but it seems to have worked out OK.
So this is what I ended up with:

Mexican Chocolate Ice-Cream

150ml double cream
570ml goat's milk
125g caster sugar
100g dark chocolate
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon corn flour
50g almonds - chopped

Put the double cream and milk in a pan with the cinnamon stick (broken in half), 25g sugar, cloves. Warm over a gentle heat until it comes to a simmer. Take off the heat, cover, and leave to infuse for 30 mins. Strain.
Beat the egg yolks and 100g sugar together until a pale lemony colour. Put the egg yolks in another saucepan, add a ladleful of the strained milk and stir to mix. Put over a very gentle heat & gradually add the remaining milk, stirring to amalgamate. Cook gently, stirring frequently until the mixture starts to thicken. Add a teaspoon of cornflour if needed to help thickening.
Strain again through a fine sieve.
Grate the dark chocolate and stir it into the milky custard. Stir until completely melted. Sieve again.
Place in a jug, cover with clingfilm (let the film touch the surface of the liquid to prevent it forming a skin), cool, then chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
Churn in an icecream maker according to the machine instructions, adding the chopped almonds 5 minutes before the end of the churning time.



Transfer to a freezer container and freeze for a couple of hours
Et voila...spiced chocolate icecream with almond chips.



Dan and I both thought that this was yummy, but the addition of a note of citrus would elevate it to stupendous - so next time I will also add some mixed peel when I add the almonds.

Warmth and spice

A cold snap always makes me want to up my cinnamon consumption considerably, so the combination of our recent cold spell and my horrible virus bug has had me reaching for the spice rack this week.

So, first up on the menu were Jamie Oliver's South American Fishcakes - fennel seeds and chilli from the spice rack. I tweaked the method very slightly by baking the cakes instead of deep-frying (deep-frying seemed a bit too fatty, indulgent and messy for a week-night supper) and by using a combination of plain flour and polenta to coat them. I thought the slight crunch of polenta might be a tasty addition to the mix.



I couldn't imagine what to serve these with, and although the wilted pak choi was good, in future I would make a tomato salsa and more vegetables, but lose the tortilla chips. Perhaps some garlic flatbreads or brazilian cheese breads on the side. The flavours of the fishcakes were good - punchy chilli and fennel seeds made a good combination, but I might try a slightly stronger fish than cod in future or mix in some crab meat. A good start, but this one needs some tinkering!


Then, baked apples stuffed with blackberries and dusted with cinnamon sugar. I've had the blackberries in the freezer since the autumn, but they're now nearly all used up. So sad...we shall be blackberry-less until september. Please don't tell me I can buy them inthe supermarket - the ones on sale are a pale imitation of the real, wild, sharply flavoured variety!
The apples were good - crunchy on the outside from the cinnamon sugar but softly baked and juicy from the blackberries. Very nice.

Sunday? Cinnamon toast for breakfast. Tasty. I was finally feeling better from my cold by then, so the spice overload clearly worked!