Gravadlax

There are some recipes that have sat on my 'to do' list since the very beginning of this venture. Gravadlax is one of those. It had never made it to the top of the list, not because it was difficult, but because if you are going to cure fish rather than cook it the fish needs to be super-fresh. There just aren't all that many places where you can guarantee that fact.

Last week I had a trip out west to Cheltenham, so I was able to detour back via a very pretty Cotswold village called Bibury, which just so happens to have a trout farm. I cross-questioned the fishmonger and managed to obtain a trout that had been pulled fresh from the river the same day.

Bibury:


Very pleased with my purchase I meandered back home to fillet and cure my fish.

For my one medium-sized trout (about 400g), I chopped a handful of fresh dill and sprinkled it over the flesh of one fillet. I then mixed together a teaspoon each of coarse salt, caster sugar, and crushed black peppercorns. This was layered on top of the dill:



After that I placed the other fillet flesh-side down onto the salt mixture, so that the two fillets were face to face with the skin at top and bottom. I placed the whole lot in a dish, covered it with foil and weighted it down. I just used another dish with a couple of tins in it as a weight. Its important that the weight is as evenly distributed as possible across the fish.

Everything went into the fridge after that for 48 hours. I turned it every 6 or 12 hours (depending when I was actually in to do it!), basting it with the liquid from the dish when I did so.

In the end my fish was actually left curing for closer to 72 hours than 48, but that seemed fine.

When the time is up, scrape/brush off the salt and dill cure and pat the fish dry.



Slice it as thinly as you can, and serve. We had our Gravadlax with toasted sourdough bread, salad, and a yoghurt, mustard and dill dressing:



It was worth the wait! Buttery, flavourful, and gorgeous. For those of a squeemish disposition, it really doesn't taste raw - its more like the texture of smoked salmon.

If you can ever get your hands on fresh trout I highly recommend giving this a go. Its delicious and pleasingly easy!

Summer eating

Our freezer is full of lamb. I mean, literally FULL. We were (extremely generously) given a whole lamb by Dan's parents a week or so ago. However, roast lamb isn't exactly what I fancy during a period of scorchingly hot weather! With the freezer groaning under the strain I had to find a way to have roast lamb on the hottest day of the year without feeling a bit sick and heavy.

I was actually very proud of my solution - spiced roast leg of lamb, with a fennel, pomegranate and feta salad, new potatoes, and a yoghurty minty dip.

I slathered the leg of lamb with a mixture of Ras-el-hanout spice, olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon and some salt and pepper then left it to marinate in the fridge overnight. I then slow cooked it so that I ended up with wonderfully tender lamb, almost falling off the bone.

The real star of the dinner was the salad;

An Ottolenghi masterpiece of fennel, tarragon, parsley, sumac, feta and pomegranate seeds. With this and a spoon of yoghurt (with chopped tomato and mint leaves mixed in), the lamb made a lovely summer meal. Not stodgy at all.

Speaking of Ottolenghi, I'm working my way through the salads in the Ottolenghi cookbook. I've recently made the French bean, orange and hazlenut salad



Which I had with new potatoes and grilled halloumi



and the Peach and Speck salad (I used parma ham instead of speck)



My lunches have been more interesting than usual this week!

Ottolenghi is my favourite person. Really. He makes my lunches and dinners so much more interesting. I hope I get to see him at
Alex James's Harvest festival. If he's there the same day as us Dan plans to tell him that its OK if he fancies coming round to cook for us sometime (and that he's willing to overlook the vegetarian cookbook).

UPDATE: Richard Corrigan, Monty Don and Yottam Ottolenghi will all be at the festival on the day we're going. The music line up sounds fun too. Marvellous!

Breakfast

Once in a while I like to mix things up a bit at breakfast time. I don't eat the same breakfast everyday anyway, but I do have quite a narrow repertoire - muesli, yoghurt and fruit, eggs on toast, porridge (in the winter), or toast and jam. It seems to work just fine, requires mininimal thought when half asleep and fuels me through the morning.

However, every now and then I get bored. This was one of those weeks, so summoning some Scottish inspiration I made oatcakes to have for breakfast.



Boiled eggs, smoked salmon (well, trout), and homemade oatcakes. I must grow some chives - they would be good with this.



I know that this is not going to set the world on fire with its inventiveness, but it was enough to satisfy my need for something new!

The oatcakes were a little less crisp than the ones you buy in shops, and I imagine they will be very well suited to jams and honeys as well as the savoury accompaniments.

Here's how to make them:

Oatcakes
Mix together 50g fine oatmeal with 50g plain flour (white, wholemeal or a mixture) and a pinch of salt.
Rub in 30g chilled butter.
Mix to a dough consistency with water.
Roll out and cut into shapes, or do as I did and form golf ball sized lumps and flatten them with a rolling pin. I added a scrunch of black pepper to the top at this stage.
Heat a heavy frying pan and dry-fry the coatcakes until starting to go golddn at the edges, flip over and bake the other side. Set aside to cool as you cook the rest.

Jelly

I seem to have been cooking with fruit a lot recently.

This time I added wine too.

Red wine and rhubarb jellies:



Very alcoholic tasting, a little bit fruity and a little bit citrusy. Grown up jellies for jelly and icecream. Or rhubarb and custard. Or just on their own...perhaps add just a little drizzle of cream? These turn out with a very strong and rich flavour - a love it or hate it dish I expect. I loved them, but they weren't Dan's thing AT ALL (all the more for me!).

If you have a bottle of red wine, some rhubarb, sugar, ginger, some gelatine (or agar-agar flakes) an orange and a lemon then do give it a try. Its elderflower season now, and a few elderflower heads added to the mix gives a nice floral fragrance to the jelly. You may love it, you may hate it, but its definitely worth a go!

Go on.

Please.

They're easy - I made mine while simulateously chatting to my boyfriend's mother, making her a coffee, and cooking pasta for our dinner.

See? Must be easy.

Rhubarb and Red Wine Jelly

250g rhubarb - chopped into chunks
450ml Red Wine
50g sugar (you could risk a little more if you like your desserts sweet)
2.5cm chunk root ginger - peeled & sliced
3 elderflower heads (optional)
40ml lemon juice
Juice of 1 orange (or about 100ml)
4-5 sheets of gelatine

Put all the ingredients except the gelatine in a pan and bring to a simmer over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the rhubarb is soft.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly then strain the liquid, pressing as much of the fruit as possible through the sieve. Discard any remaining fruity puree.
Cut the gelatine sheets into small pieces and soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Then scoop the softened gelatine out of the water and mix it into the (still warm) red wine liquid. Stir until the gelatine dissolves then pour the liquid into jelly moulds.
Allow to cool to room temperature then refridgerate overnight to set.

Being foolish

This week I meandered out to the Pick Your Own farm again during my lunch break. This time I picked enough strawberries to have some to gobble straight away and a load to make jam. I made strawberry and mint jam using leaves from the chocolate mint in my garden. (I'd never heard of choclate mint, but came across it on a plant stall at a craft show: It has a richer flavour than normal garden mint - much more pudding-y.)

Gooseberries were also ready for picking at the farm.



When I was a child we had a gooseberry bush in the garden. They were my mum's favourite, but I never liked them. It could have been a reaction to getting prickled fingers when picking them I suppose but ever since I have assumed that I don't like gooseberries. Since they were ripe for picking I thought I would challenge myself to try one.

Revelatory moment: they're really nice!

I made Dan eat one when I got home: He was very dubious about the idea as he swore they were the kind of sharp fruit that could only be eaten stewed with lots of sugar. The look on his face when he realised how nice these ones were was priceless.

So, preconceptions squashed...what to do with 350g of gooseberries?

Last week I made a Rhubarb, Strawberry and Orange Flower Water Fool based on the recipe in Silvana Franco's Hi-Lo Cook Book. Dan and I both enjoyed it as a light, refreshing pudding, so I decided to try something similar with my gooseberries. I decided to go for a classic flavour combination of gooseberries and elderflowers, so I stewed 200g of gooseberries in 2 tablespoons of the elderflower cordial I made a couple of weeks ago, and used this to make a Gooseberry Fool.

The following recipe is mainly based on the Silvano Franco Rhubarb Fool recipe, but also takes elements from various other recipes that I found in the Riverford Cook Book, on BBC Good Food, and in Tamasin Day Lewis's Kitchen Bible.


Gooseberry and Elderflower Fool (for 2)

200g gooseberries
2 tablespoons elderflower cordial

60g double cream
60g thick yoghurt

Icing sugar to taste

Top and tail the gooseberries and place them in a pan with the elderflower cordial. Heat over a low-medium heat until the gooseberries soften (probably about 10-15 minutes in total). Set aside to cool.
Mix together the double cream and yoghurt with a whisk. Spoon alternate layers of yogurt-cream mixture and stewed gooseberries into a tall glass (sprinkle the gooseberry layers with a little icing sugar if you prefer your desserts on the sweet-side). Put in the fridge to chill over night.



Such an easy dessert, and not that bad for you really. It feels creamy and indulgent enough to be a treat whilst not being a heart-attack in a glass! It could handle a little more elderflower flavour if you like the taste of elderflowers, as the gooseberries are very dominant in the proportions above.

PS Its entirely irrelevant, but gooseberries really remind me of Chinese lanterns. I love that.

Three ways with Potato Salad - Daring Cooks

The June Daring Cooks Challenge was to make a delicious, healthy potato salad.

This is a challenge which really suits me as I like to make myself varied lunches to take to the office rather than always having a soggy sandwich. Potato salad falls into this system rather well, and expanding my lunchtime menu is always a good thing.

I decided to take this challenge seriously and do some decent experimentation rather than just making one version of the dish.

First up; Lemony potato salad with asparagus

A lunchtime outing took me to a farm which was selling fresh asparagus. It seemed a crime to walk away without some while its in-season and fresh from the field. This was the starting point for my potato salad. What goes with asparagus and potatoes? Lemon seemed like a good, tangy choice.

Also in the fridge that morning; spring onions, half a red chilli, some yellow pepper, parsley, and a packet of ham, so I chopped them all up and added them to my tupperware tub. Some mint from the garden too.


The dressing was a dessertspoon of olive oil, a couple of dessertspoons of lemon juice, a squeeze of lime and 1/2 teaspoon of sumac whisked together.



The resulting salad was colourful, flavourful and tangy. I suppose it might be pushing it to describe it as potato salad since it had lots of other things in it too!

At the weekend I was back home for my sister's wedding. I needed a decent lunch on saturday before the ceremony - filling but not bloating. Potatoes were perfect for this.
On this occasion I decided to go with a more Oriental flavour combination, so I ended up with:
Potato, plum sauce and sesame seed Salad
This is how I made it:
Steam the potatoes, add a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a splash of light soy sauce. Make a dressing from a dash of plum sauce, about a dessertspoon of rice wine vinegar, a squeeze of lime, some chopped coriander leaves and a sprinkle of chilli flakes.
I served the potato salad with a sliced smoked chicken breast, some lettuce leaves, and a handful of fresh mint leaves. The weather was appropriately warm and sunny to eat in the garden, close the eyes, and pretend I was really in Asia.

And finally....a bit of a wild card. I came across a recipe on the BBC website which intrigued me, Potato, green bean and rhubarb salad with almond pesto. Find the recipe here.

Raw rhubarb? I'd never thought to have rhubarb any way but stewed. I like it when my preconceptions are challenged so I resolved to make this one. I kept it for a day at home though, just in case it was nasty and I had to make a different lunch!
I should have had more faith. The salad was beautiful. Colourful and a fantastic balance of flavours. The raw rhubarb was tart and crunchy but not sour, the warmth from the chilli flakes enlivened the potatoes, and the almond and parsley pesto tied the whole dish together. I highly recommend this!



I amended the BBC dish slightly, so here's my final version:

Potato, Rhubarb and Green Bean Salad with Almond and Parsley Pesto (for 1 person)
150g new potatoes (I used Cornish Royals as they're in season here and delicious)
pinch of chilli flakes
salt and pepper
50g green beans (trimmed)
2 spring onions - white part only, sliced
1/2 stick of rhubarb (approx 35-40g) finely sliced
Squeeze lemon juice

For the pesto
20g blanched almonds
1 clove fresh garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
Handful of fresh parsley

Scrub the potatoes, sprinkle with a small amount of salt, then steam them over simmering water for 20 minutes, or until cooked.
Add the green beans for the last 5 minutes in the steamer so that they are lightly cooked but retain a slight crunch.
Meanwhile make the pesto by blending all the ingredients together. Add more olive oil if you aren't eating the salad that day.

Remove the potatoes and beans from the heat, sprinkle with a pinch of chilli flakes and some freshly ground black pepper. Put aside to cool.
Chop the spring onions and rhubarb and arrange potatoes, beans, rhubarb and spring onion on a plate. Dab the pesto round the plate and squeeze a little lemon juice over the top.
Serve and enjoy.

Thank you to the Daring Cooks for helping me to expand my lunchtime salad options!


Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

Seriously chocolatey cookies

My niece came to stay for the weekend and since the weather was shocking, what else were we going to do other than hit the kitchen to bake up a choclatey storm?

It took us a while to narrow our recipe choices down to chocolate cookies. We actually used a recipe for chocolate and sour cherry cookies, but we rejected the sour cherry element for two reasons: Natasha thought they sounded gross, and I didn't have any anyway!

Apparently the mixture tasted gorgeous even before baking - its a wonder that we had any left to bake!



We made 11 enormous cookies and had one each for pudding, accompanied by strawberry icecream.



Here's the cherry-less version of the recipe, but I do think the cherries would be good in them, just perhaps not for teenagers who don't like their chocolate diluted by fruit!

Chocolate Cookies

235g dark chocolate
150g plain flour
40g drinking chocolate
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
100g butter
240g soft brown sugar
2 eggs

Sieve the bicarbonate of soda, flour, salt and drinking chocolate.
Beat the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well as you add each one. Fold in the flour mixture in 3 stages, beating well after each addition.
Melt the chocolate and mix it into the cookie mixture.
Line baking trays with non stick baking parchment. Form balls of mixture (about a tablespon per cookie) and place them on the baking sheet. Put in the fridge to firm up for 1/2 hour.
Heat the oven to 165C.
Bake the cookies for 15-20 mins until crackled on top. Cool on the tray for 5 mins then on a wire rack until cold.



Yummmmmmmmmm. (But go easy on them - they're very very very chocolatey.)

If you want to add dried sour cherries then use about 85g and mix them in after the dark chocolate.

10 on 10

I've recently been checking in fairly regularly on a lovely blog called A bit of Sunshine. Its written by a lady called Rebekah over in the US, and she has had the fantastic idea to start a bloggers photo day. In her own words, the idea is that "once a month on the tenth taking a photo an hour for ten consecutive hours. Finding much life and beauty among the ordinary things of our day!" Read all about it here.

This is my first month taking part, and the 10th was an unusual day for me, involving a road trip across the Gloucestershire countryside and down to Wells for a day of music at the cathedral. Having said that it was unusual, that isn't so much of a rare occurence in my job in music publishing, but nonetheless I can't really claim that this was an average day!

Here are my 10 (I haven't meddled with them beyond some cropping of the images):

from the garden

Don't the roses in my garden look lovely?



It's purely by chance - I have the ungreenest of thumbs, but these appear to have thrived on a diet of neglect.

I have recently been reading Josceline Dimbleby's memoir Orchards in the Oasis, which talks of her time in Damascus as a child and the wonderful scents of orange blossom and rosewater in the sweets.

Its a wonderful book.

I felt inspired to try making my own rosewater for use in my cooking. Since there were so many roses climbing up the side of the house I thought they wouldn't come to any harm if I pinched a few of the petals. Rosewater can only be made with petals that haven't been sprayed with anything nasty (like pesticides), and I know my own haven't (that would be a result of the neglect).

So here's what I did:

Step 1 - Pick half a pint of rose petals


Step 2 - put in a saucepan (ceramic not metal) with 1 teaspoon of honey


Step 3 - Pour a pint of boiling water over the petals

Step 4 - Simmer until the colour of the petals bleaches out into the water (10-15 minutes)


Step 5 - Cover and leave to infuse overnight

Step 6 - Strain the liquid into a sterilised jar and refridgerate.

I'm hoping that this will keep for a couple of weeks, but I plan to try using it soon as I'm VERY curious about what it will be like. I confess I have no frame of reference as I don't think I've tasted rosewater before. I shall be blissfully ignorant if mine doesn't taste right!

Yummmm

I love Oxford. Really I do.

In what other city can you hop on your bike at lunchtime and 2 minutes later be cycling past this....



On your way to an idyllic little spot that feels like the deepest darkest most rural of countryside...



To pick lovely sweet, fresh strawberries



And eat a few as you pick of course - why make the effort to pick your own otherwise?

The asparagus and fresh garlic on sale were an added bonus.

This little haul is for me and Dan to eat fresh, but next time I'll buy enough to make jam.



How wholesome.