Baking

Today we had a bake sale at work. Its Children in Need, and although I do tend to feel a bit 'bah humbug' about charity events which feel compulsory, I like my work colleagues so I wanted to be helpful and muck in.

I made a batch of Caraway Shortbread biscuits from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day book. I really liked them - they were fragrant from the seeds, crips and buttery. Sweet enough to be a treat, but not so much they're sickly. Yummy.

Sadly (for charitable fundraising) it would appear that most people don't want to risk something new, so I had to take some home again at the end of the day.

This wasn't so sad for me and Dan though - biscuits for the weekend. Marvellous!


PS Kris - I haven't forgotten your baked goods, but these wouldn't survive a trip to New York.

Bakewell

Dan's a Yorkshire boy, and as such one of his favourite puddings is Bakewell Tart. Yet despite it being on the list for quite some time I had never made one.

This weekend I finally put that right. The boy was heading off for a week away for work, so a proper send-off dinner seemed appropriate. And you can't have a proper dinner without a proper pudding.



I took my Bakewell Tart reipe from Tamasin Day-Lewis's Cookery Bible, and it was delicious still warm from the oven, and also lovely cold with a cup of tea when visitors dropped round the next morning.



Here's the recipe:

Bakewell Tart - enough for 6-8 slices

For the filling:
110g Rasberry Jam (preferably homemade)
70g butter
70g ground almonds
70g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond essence
10g flaked almonds

For the pastry:
100g plain flour
50g butter
pinch salt

First make your pastry. Runb the cold butter into the flour and salt until it resembles the consistency of breadcrumbs. Mix to a stiff dough with a spoonful of cold water. Wrap in cligfilm and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Grease a pie tin (approx 16-18cm diameter), roll out the pastry on a floured board and lay it in the tin, letting it slightly overhang the edges.
Return the tin to the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Spread a generous layer of rasberry jam over the pastry base. In a bowl mix together the ground almonds, sugar, vanilla essence and almond essence. Beat in the eggs, mixing well. Then melt the butter over a low heat until it smells slightly nutty and add it to the cakey mixture. Mix well before spooning it into the pastry case on top of the jam.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes then sprinkle the flakes almonds on top and return it to the oven for a further 5 minutes - until the almonds are toasted and the cakey mixture is lightly browned and just set.

Allow to cool for 20 minutes, and serve warm with cream or icecream.

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.

Bread and Jam

Strawberry honey butter.

Doesn't it sound lovely?

The idea for this came from a blog I read last week, although I did tweak the recipe a little to make it a bit less sweet. This is the blog which inspired me.



The butter is nice alternative to jam, and was easier and quicker to make too. You need really good in-season strawberries for the best results; don't bother with inferior under-ripe examples. I enjoyed my strawberry honey butter on a slice of olive bread (basically the same as ciabatta); homemade and fresh from the oven just a few hours before. Tasty.



The bread was a good method: marvellous with in-season asparagus and poached eggs for breakfast, and a life saver when the in-laws came round for sunday lunch with only 4 hours notice. Father-in-law (sort-of, Dan and I aren't actually married we've just been together for ages) declared it the best bread he's ever eaten. The bread recipe was from the Bourke Street Bakery book. Its turning out to have been a very good purchase.

My top tip from today's sunday lunch: steamed new potatoes are way nicer than boiled ones and don't take any longer.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend.

Three ways with chicken

This month we are feeling poor (buying all the bits for a new bathroom will do that to you), so we're eating thriftily. Chicken fillets were on special offer at the butcher's this week, so that's what we've had for three dinners in the last five days. I'm not keen on eating the same thing over-again on successive days, so here are three ways with chicken pieces.



1. Chicken with sumac, za'aatar and lemon
This recipe came from the Ottolenghi recipe book. I marinated the chicken pieces in a mix of middle eastern spices (cinnamon, allspice, sumac) and lemon, then baked it in the oven with an approximation of za'aatar (I used a mix of sesame seeds, dried thyme and sea salt) and lemon slices on top. The lemon went soft and gave a delicious tang to the dish. I served this with couscous and some toasted pinenuts. It was a lot like a tagine: Perhaps not one of the most unusual-tasting recipes in the Ottolanghi recipe book, but easy, filling and certainly a very pleasant dinner.

2. Chicken and bacon burgers
I used the recipe for chicken and bacon sausage rolls from the Bourke Street Bakery book for these burgers. Instead of encasing them in puff pastry I grilled them up and served them in pitta breads with salad, potatoes and fried apple wedges. 'Junk' food but certainly no junk in them. Two chicken fillets and 3 rashers of smokey bacon made 4 burgers, so it was quite a thrifty dinner. The only other ingredients were a few breadcrumbs, a quarter of an onion, and a few spring onions. These burgers weren't quite as fantastic as the pork and fennel sausage roll mix that I adapted into burgers a couple of weeks ago, but they were meaty whilst feeling light on the calorie load.

3. Chicken rolls stuffed with orange, anchovies and chicory
I have a cook book which I've had for years - since my teens I think. It is one that my Mum bought us all as a job-lot for stocking fillers around the time she was trying to encourage us all to cook and fend for ourselves. The book's by Josceline Dimbleby and is called The Nearly Vegetarian Cookbook. It truely is a treasure trove of achieveable, delicious dinners.


We had left-over oranges still sitting in the fruit bowl from making Dan's birthday cake last week, and flicking through the book I spotted this recipe, which had the advantage that it would use the last of my special-offer chicken, some of the oranges, and the recipe described it as a 'delightful' dish. I decided to put my scepticism to one side (orange and anchovies didn't seem like natural partners) and give it a try.
I should have had more faith - it was lovely!
None of the individual flavours dominated the dish, which was subtle but well flavoured, and delicious served with wild rice and baby corn-on-the-cob. Dan liked it so much he licked the plate. Bad manners, but a ringing endorsement!
A first for me on this dish - I'd never used chicory in cooking before.

Here's the recipe:
Chicken rolls stuffed with orange, anchovies and chicory
Serves 2

2 Chicken breast fillets, skin removed
3 anchovy fillets (in oil or salt - drained and/or rinsed), finely chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1cm ginger root, finely chopped
1 medium chicory
Juice and zest of half an orange
150ml milk
5g cornflour, mixed to a paste with a little water
Parsley
Salt (go easy - the anchovies are salty) and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Place the chicken pieces (one at a time) in a plastic sandwich bag and bash them flat with a rolling pin. You need to get them to a thickness of about 1/2cm-1cm. Very theraputic!
Mix together the chicory, garlic, orange, ginger, anchovies and orange zest. Spoon this over the flattened chicken fillets and roll them up to encase the chicory mixture. Secure with a cocktail stick if necessary. Place the chicken rolls in an ovenproof dish and pour the orange juice around them. Cover the dish with foil and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes.
Once the chicken is cooked drain the liquid from the oven dish into a heavy based saucepan and keep the chicken warm while you make the sauce. Add the milk and cornflour paste to the cooking liquid from the chicken and bring it slowly to the boil, stirring all the time so that it doesn't catch. Once the sauce has thickened slightly add the parsley, pepper, and a small amount of salt.
Serve the chicken rolls with fried mushrooms (I loathe them so I left them off my plate), wild rice, lightly steamed baby corn, and spoon the sauce over the top.

Croissants and other pastry delights

Generally speaking I'm not a massive lover of pastries for breakfast. They're one of those things that I occasionally get lured into buying by the smell, but then the taste almost never lives up to that promise. I usually find them too greasy, too flakey, and they just don't have enough flavour.

Of course there are some notable exceptions to every rule - I love the much breadier varieties that they make at the Natural Bread Company (an Oxfordshire bakery with a shop in Woodstock) - they're always buttery but not greasy; flakey, but not so much that you get annoyed with the bits of pastry all over you. They have texture and chewability. This, for me, is definitely how pastries should be.

Well, having set my bar quite high, I decided it was time to have a go at making breakfast pastries myself. I have a recipe book from the Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney, Australia which gives brilliantly clear instructions on how to make croissants. Time to take the plunge.

So here goes...

The night before, I mixed up a small amount of yeast, flour, milk and sugar, kneeded it well, then left it in the fridge overnight. This is the croissant ferment.


Next day I mixed the dough, kneeded it well and put back in the fridge. The instructions said to leave it there for at least 2 hours; I left mine for about 3 hours.


Next, I weighed out a truely extraordinary amount of butter. I actually used 400g instead of the recipe's 500g, as I wanted to achieve pastries that were a bit less greasy than the norm. I bashed the butter into a square about 1cm thick - I placed the butter between 2 pieces of baking parchement and hit it with a rolling pin. Quite theraputic!


After this I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about the same width as the butter square and about twice the length. I placed the butter in the middle, then folded the dough over the top.


The next step was to roll the dough out into a long rectangle then fold it over; I folded in thirds - one third towards the middle, then the other side over the top of that. I then returned the dough to the fridge to rest for 20 minutes. This had to be repeated twice more, turning the dough through 90 degrees each time I rolled it out. The dough was rolled out 3 times in total.


After a final rest in the fridge I had a laminated dough:

This was now ready to form into pastries.

I had inadvertantly made a hundred-weight of dough, so I had enough to make about 12-15 croissants and also about the same number of bear claws.

Here are the croissants, formed, risen (I let them rise for about an hour and a half, but if its a cool day it may take a bit longer), and ready to go into the oven:


I was very proud that the croissants actually looked like croissants. Amazing!



For the bear claws I made about 150g of frangipane and put a teaspoon of it in the centre of each piece of dough along with a teaspoon of damson jelly then folded the dough over and sealed the edges. Any jam would work nicely but I thought the slight sharpness of damsons would complement the frangipane.

The bear claws looked pretty good as they came out of the oven.



The house smelt lovely for the rest of the day after making these. I was really hoping that their taste would live up to the smell! When I finally did the taste test the next morning (5 minutes in the oven at 180C crisped them up beautifully) they were just as I'd hoped; flakey but still with plenty of dough-texture. The croissants were lovely with some homemade strawberry and mint jam, and the bear claws were tastey just as they came; no extras needed.

Just as well we both liked the outcome as we have freezer full of pastries now! This isn't a recipe I would make often as it is time-consuming and very messy, but I definitely will attempt it again. Its nice to be able to have pastries made to my own preferences. The recipe quantities makes such a lot of pastries that I have several months worth now. I will have to try making the Pain au Raisins recipe next time - its my favourite kind of pastry.



Full marks to the Bourke Street Bakery instructions. Its shaping up to have been an excellent cook-book purchase.

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.

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.

Cocktails and baking

First things first: the most important recipe for this week was clearly tonight's Vodka Gimlets. Yummy. I'm coming over all Mad Men! Shame we didn't have Martini glasses - clearly something for the shopping list.



I don't know what's got into me lately, but I'm really enjoying trying out new bread methods. The freezer's now completely chock full of bready things, so I must stop baking. Afterall, I have enough in store to last me many many weeks!

Having made Bialys the other week, I used up some of the yeast I had leftover from last weekend's baking-fest to try out bagels. Dan Lepard's column in The Guardian gave me the recipes for bagels and bialys. I also tried out the Light Rye Flatbread from his book The Handmade Loaf (bought on impulse when browsing in Foyles last week).



So the verdict? Well clearly I need to make larger holes in my bagels next time! But other than that they were lovely and chewy on the inside with a good crunchy crust. The flatbreads were well-flavoured from the rye flour, and good with soup or houmous.



Flushed with the success of my first bagel batch I tried a second lot - this time my favourite cinnamon and raisin flavour. I should have checked how much white flour I had left! I ended up using 2/3 white to 1/3 wholemeal, which worked out OK, but they didn't have quite that same chewy texture. White flour's clearly the way to go in future. But, as you can see, I did do better on the holes.

Comfort food for a cold weekend

Its been a cold weekend again. Frost in the mornings, icy roads. There's been a beautifully clear and crisp feel to the air.

To my mind freezing weather requires home comforts, and I don't think it can get any more comforting than bangers for tea. Dan's dad and uncle had made a load of sausages and given us a few, so it seemed the perfect time to try out a dish that has been on the 'to do' list for a while: Toad in the Hole. Very traditional, very stodgy, and oh so perfect for a cold night.

I went back to my good old Kitchen Bible for this recipe, so it was Tamasin Day-Lewis' method. It turned out really well, despite the fact that I'd run out of plain white flour so had to use nearly all wholemeal. That didn't seem to spoil it in the least.


It even looked like the picture in the book! I was so proud.

Neither Dan nor I had ever had Toad in the Hole before, but we'll definitely be having it again. Dan had so much that he had to lie down to recover. The combination of crispy yorkshire pudding batter, good sausages, and wholegrain mustard, all dished up with green veg and gravy (me), plus mash (himself) - oh yes, its definitely a keeper.

Also this week, I finally baked the cookie dough I made before Christmas. It has sat in the freezer for over a month feeling unloved, but it is designed to be frozen, and it came out and baked up unspoilt.
So, White chocolate and Pecan Cookies (from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book) were also eaten in quantity over the last couple of days. Yummy. (A few did make it to the intended recipients - my running club - but not as many as I had planned. Dan kept swiping them every time he walked through the kitchen.)

Daring Cooks January 2011 Challenge

Hurrah! The Daring Cooks January Challenge was to make Cassoulet. Last time I had Cassoulet was in Southern France near Carcassonne, and I've been meaning to try making it myself for quite some time. Walking round the walls of Carcassonne in the morning we could smell them starting to make the dish for the lunchtime customers. A wonderful garlic-y waft.



The gap between Christmas and New Year seemed the most logical time to make the recipe. It takes several days to put it all together, so I couldn't see myself feeling inspired once I'm back at the grindstone. Also, since we'd had roast duck for Christmas dinner, the leftovers from that seemed like the perfect starting point for Cassoulet.

So, Monday saw me starting to cook dinner for wednesday.

Here's the method:

I started with breast of lamb: I placed it in a casserole with half an onion, a couple of chopped celery stalks, 1 chopped carrot, some thyme and covered the lot with a glass of white wine and some water. I then put the lid on and cooked it at 140C for 3 hours. I turned and basted the meat 2 or 3 times during the cooking time.
Once it came out of the oven I put the meat between 2 chopping boards, weighed it down with a few tins of beans, and left it for 3 hours. I strained the cooking liquid and put it in a jug in the fridge overnight. Then I chopped the lamb up into long slices, arranged it on a wire rack over a roasting tin and cooked it for 20 minutes at 180C.

I already had a cooked duck leg from Christmas Dinner (otherwise I would have had to roast one at this point), so I chopped the meat off the bone and put that to one side too.

Next up were the beans: I weighed out 200g dried cannelinni beans and covered them in water and left them to soak overnight. The next day I drained the beans, rinsed them a couple of times, then placed them in a heavy based pan. I took the lamb stock out of the fridge, skimmed the fat off the top, and poured the liquid into the pan, topping it up with cold water to cover the beans. Then I added a few sprigs of parsley and a shake of dried thyme (as I had no fresh thyme to hand). I brought this little lot up to the boil, boiled it hard for a couple of minutes, skimmed the top, then turned it down to simmer for about 1hr 20 mins. Once the beans were done I drained them, reserving the liquid again, and fishing out the parsley.

Next were the pork sausages: I twisted each of the 2 sausages into 3 sections and cut them up.

Then, slice 1/2 an onion and 4 garlic cloves finely. Melt about a dessertspoon of duck fat and gently fry the onion. Add the garlic after about 5 mins and continue to fry until the whole lot is soft. Then add a handful of chopped pancetta or streaky bacon. Continue to fry gently for a few more minutes.

Then, layering up the casserole. I started with a layer of beans (1/3 of the quantity) in the bottom of your casserole dish, then added 1/2 of the onion mix, 1/2 of the lamb, 1 or the sausages, 1/2 of the duck slices, repeated the layering, then topped with the final 1/3 of the beans. I poured the stock over the lot, added a little more water until it comes about 2/3 of the way up the mixture. I sprinkled the mix with a small handful of breadcrumbs.
This is what it looked like (remarkably, a lot like it should really!):



I put the mix to one side for several hours for the flavours to develop (overnight is perfect).

The next day, I preheated the oven to 170C and put the casserole in for 1 hour (without the lid); once it had formed a gold crust I stirred it all through, put it back for another hour until another crust had formed, then repeated once more.



At this point I took the cassoulet out of the oven, spooned 2 portions into small casserole pots (there were 2 more portions left over after this), splashed a little more water in, and allowed it about 40 further minutes in the oven.

Once a final crust had formed, I served it with crunchy crusty bread and green salad. Very filling. A very appropriate dinner for a cold winter's day, and goodness I felt like I deserved it after all the effort of cooking it!



Another major hit with Dan (unsurprisingly - lots of fat and meat is always a hit with him!).

BlogChecking lines: Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.
My recipe was a cross between the Anthony Bourdain recipe and Elizabeth David's one from French Country Cooking, adapted slightly to my own tastes and fridge contents.

Hi-Lo

This week I have mainly been cooking from Silvana Franco's Hi-Lo Cook book. Well, you know, it is that 'got to lose the Christmas weight' time of year!



This recipe book is actually one of my favourites - it has a carefully chosen range of low fat and healthy recipes. I think that's something that is lacking in most recipe books - they seem to assume people only use their recipe books once in a while when they are happy to splurge on the oil and butter consumption. What about the every day stuff? - we don't all want uninspiring diet recipe books when we feel like going on a health drive for a bit! I want a book that gives me a range of dishes - some super healthy, some super indulgent, some that hit the middle ground.

Anyway, rant over, because Silvana Franco's Hi Lo Cook Book does fill the niche beautifully, and its one I come back to over and over again. I first came across it through making one of her recipes that I found on the BBC website. Then I came across a couple of others from the same book online, and they were great too. The book doesn't seem to be in print as far as I can tell, but I found it on ebay easily.

So back to the cooking...I made the Spanish Orange Creme Caramels for a girls lunch (with orange and passionfruit juice rather than plain orange), which were delicate and refreshing but with enough sweetness to feel a bit indulgent. Find the recipe on the BBC here.
Saturday's lunch was the lemon, rice and courgette soup. The soup was nice and light but still warming. A good recipe for winter or spring.
I also had a sunday breakfast of banana soda bread, warm from the oven, with honey.

So January lightening-up is on track, without much sense of deprivation thanks to these lovely treats.

what to do with Tofu?

When I was little my older sister went through a vegetarian phase. Given that the period of vegetarianism broadly coincided with her worst teenage behaviour I rather suspect that the whole thing was thought up just to be awkward. However, my mum did go to quite a lot of effort to accomodate her, and some tasty discoveries were made.

On the otherhand, there was also tofu.

I don't quite know what made me decide to try cooking with it this week. Perhaps it was that my new cookbook (the Wagamama one) has loads of recipes which use it, but whatever the reason was, I decided it was time to cast aside some old prejudices and give tofu another chance.



I chose a flavoursome-sounding stirfry recipe in the Wagamama book, made an expedition to the chinese supermarket for tofu (a feat in itself given the icy state of the pavements!), and set to work on moyashi soba. And it was easy. Also the tofu was not bad - it took on the flavour of the other ingredients very well, and bumped up the meal so that it was filling. Definitely edible.

The failure in all of this was the fact that I had bought silken tofu rather than the firm tofu I should have used. This did mean that it disintegrated more than would have been ideal for a stirfry. Ah well, I'll do it right next time.

This left me with 200g silken tofu that I now knew would not be much use for stirfrying, but I do hate to throw food away. What to do with it?

A bit of googleing told me that silken tofu is often used in desserts, and is also quite a good egg-substitute, so I decided to make a mousse-ish pudding. My made-up recipe needs a bit of refinement, but we did both enjoy it as it was, so here it is (without final tweaks which may or may not come in time):

Dairy-free Chocolate Mousse with Apricots (for 2)
200g silken tofu
20g icing sugar
35-40g dark chocolate (I used a chocolate with orange and ginger, but any dark chocolate would work)
35g dried, ready-to-eat apricots

Mix the sugar into the tofu.
Melt the dark choclate in a bowl over gently simmering water. Once completely melted pour it into the tofu and mix through.
Divide the apricots between 2 ramekins. Spoon the chocolate-tofu mixture on top of the apricots. Refridgerate overnight. Serve.

NB: I like my choclate quite dark and slightly bitter, but if you prefer yours sweeter then add a little more sugar to the tofu.

PS I also made the smoked salmon salad from the Wagamama book this week. Seriously delicious. I wolfed it all down in about 5 minutes flat. Yum scrum! I would never have thought to put apricots, noodles and smoked salmon together, but it definitley works.

A year in review

Given that I've been cooking a new recipe (at least 1) every week for a year now it seems like the right moment to review the high and low points of the Recipe-of-the-Week challenge.

Gallettes and Goats Cheese were early successes which I've made frequently throughout the year.
Other more than one-hit wonders:
Eggs Benedict
Mint and Cannellini bean dip (Bethan's favourite)
Goats Cheese souffle
Yorkshire pudds
Spiced red cabbage with apple
Salt and pepper squid
Dauphinoise potatoes (Dan loves this way of doing potatoes)
Cuban quail egg-stuffed meatballs
Guacamole - I never thought I liked guacamole, but the homemade one is great

Fruit in main meals has been a revelation - Salmon and mango sauce stretched our European tastebuds a bit far, but a range of Thai-style salads using mango were delicious, parma ham and figs has become a firm favourite, and both Duck with Mango and Duck with Cherry sauce were gorgeous.

Good week night dinners that have become regulars:
Steamed chicken spirals
Stroganoff
Fish cooked in yoghurt
Cauliflower risotto
Roasted new potatoes
Tomato and pepper eggs

Surprisingly good combinations:
Rhubarb and strawberries
Yoghurt can be used in cooking loads of stuff. Particularly surprising since I don't like yoghurt really.

Failures:
Crumpets. Boringly time consuming and fiddly.
Venison stew - the most disgusting meal of the year
Lamb stew
Aromatic Madura chicken

Occasion cookery which I enjoyed:
Christmas cake
Peanut caramel popcorn
Jam and chutney
Lobster!

Things I found an excellent recipe for, even if I have made them previously:
Bread
Custard

Things to refine:
Parkin
Steamed toffee pudding
Hollandaise sauce (not having good success rate with this of late! It keeps splitting at the last stages.)
Salmon en croute (try again using puff pastry)

Things I should definitely make again soon:
Terbiyeli Kofte (Turkish Lamb meatballs in lemon sauce)
Middle Eastern spinach with almonds
Zanzibar chicken
Crackers
Shahi Murg
Jerk Chicken
Torta di Spinachi
Aubergine Parmigiana
Steamed couscous with Fish
Frozen Yoghurt
Asian noodle salad with Cashew butter
Mexican one pot courgettes

Favourite recipe books:
A runaway winner, despite being a late addition to the shelf has to be the Riverford Farm Cook Book. Its simply excellent for lovely ideas for vegetables.
Silvana Franco has a great range of low-fat recipes that you'd never guess were low-fat recipes if you weren't "in the know".
Jamie Oliver has some lovely recipes and good tips but I don't find that his recipe books are all that user-friendly. I can't place my finger on why not. Perhaps its that they're very visual and chatty which is lovely for the coffee table, but a bit annoyng if you want clear instructions.
Angela Hartnett is fantastic, but unless you want to gain several stone its probably best to keep her dishes as occasional treats.

Lessons learnt:
Most recipes don't need as much fat or oil as they say.
Quite often poaching, steaming, or baking will do just as well as frying.
Often recipe books play it safe on amounts of spices - the quantities should be increased a bit if you like food to have a bit more punch.
I enjoy eating vegetarian meals fairly regularly, and they can be as varied and satisfying as meat/fish based dishes.
Meringues are unbelievably simple.
Homemade pasta definitely needs a pasta rolling machine.
A good fruity olive oil is worth paying more for. But keep it for moments when you can actually taste it - salad dressings, dipping bread.
I'm rubbish at making cakes.

Dishes still on the list:
Beef Wellington
Onion Bhajis
Chocolate steamed pudding with custard (Chocolate duff)
Cranachan
Rice Pudding
Semifreddo
Gravlax
Pear Jam

Future Ideas:
Make more Middle-Eastern recipes. I adore the warm spices and aromatic flavours that are used in the cuisine.
Explore some Japanese cooking. I might have to do this at times I'm eating on my own if I'm seriously considering tofu. Dan would be horrified. I've managed to get him to eat both lentils and pulses, but fear this would be a step too far!
Cook some old-fashioned recipes from Mrs Beeton's old fashioned cook book.

Shopping list:
Pasta rolling machine
Bread mixing bowl that holds enough douch for 3 loaves.
Icecream machine (a bit over indulgent - How often would I really use it?!)

Build a pizza oven in the garden!

Fried Green Tomatoes

but not at the Whistle-Stop Cafe.

As I mentioned in my last post I spotted the recipe for these in my new cookbook, the Riverford Farm recipe book. And how could I resist the recipe when I have a vegetable patch completely taken over by monster tomato plants covered in not-yet-ripe tomatoes?



Another lure of the recipe was the opportunity to finally crack open my bag of polenta; an ingredient I have never used.

So I picked tomatoes, dipped them in egg then polenta. Fried some streaky bacon, then fried the tomatoes in the bacon fat. DONE (as Mr Ramsay would say).



They would make an excellent side dish, or part of a tapas selection. The same method would probably be nice with ripe tomatoes too, and a hint of paprika or chilli in the polenta could be good.

We had the tomatoes with new potatoes baked in parchment paper - the recipe came from the same book. I'd never thought to bake new potatoes before, but you just toss a handful of new potatoes in olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper. Parcel them up with a couple of cloves of garlice inside some baking parchment and bake for about 40 minutes. Simples.



So the verdict on the new cook book is a resounding thumbs up so far. The verdict on the tomato growing probably should be deferred until we see if they survive until they're ripe, but at least we've had one meal from the plants, and they were pretty good.

Aubergine Parmigiana

I have noticed that recently this blog has been rather sparse on pictures. I'll be attempting to put that right next week, as this weekend we're heading to Bergen (Norway) for the weekend. I'm planning to gorge myself on fish and seafood and take lots of pictures at the fish market on the harbour.

I'm really looking forward to introducing Dan to the best fish and chips in the world, courtesy of the Bergen fish market, as well as the beautiful Norwegian scenery. I'm really excited to be staying more than a day, which gives us the opportunity to take a bit more time over walks, wanders, lunches, day trips. Always before I've had to hotfoot it back to the cruise ship at the end of the day which curtails how much you can explore.

So, hurrah for mini breaks!

In the mean time, this week's recipe was Aubergine Parmigiana, from Angela Hartnett's recipe book which I borrowed from the library last week. Its quite time consuming to put together, just as any layered dish is, but you can prepare it all a day or so ahead and it can happily sit in the fridge overnight - then all that needs doing in the evening after work is to just bung it in the oven.

We had it with spicey baked pork meatballs and a green salad. It was delicious - A really good balance of tomato, basil, mozzarella, parmesan and aubergine. Not as heart-attack inducing as you might expect either as I cut down the oil and cheese quantities a bit. There was still enough of both to make it a good flavour but not so much that the cheese overwhelmed it or the oil made it horribly greasy.



It can be found in Angela Harnett's Cucina, but I suspect there will be versions in a million-and-one other Italian recipe books too.

The delights of the library

woohoo!

I temporarily forgot that I could borrow recipe books from the library. I'm like a kid in a sweet shop....what to try first?!

I have gone with one by Angela Hartnett and one by Rick Stein.

Both look like they have some reasonably challenging recipes in them, and I'm definitely up for trying making some more complicated dinners - something to make me feel like I've made an effort!

Also, both have lots of fish ideas. Why do so few recipe books have a decent fish section? It makes me sad. I love fish and seafood.

Couscous Jamie O style

I feel a bit guilty about the lack of use of my Jamie Oliver Italy recipe book. I keep taking it off the shelf and looking at the recipes and the beautiful photography, but then rarely get round to cooking from it. The recipes on the whole look like they would take more time to make than I generally have on a weekday evening. Although they also sound like they'd be worth the effort.

Nonna Giusy's Fish with Couscous was on the menu for us on bank holiday monday. I felt that with a little more time available it was the ideal time to delve into the book.

The method was an interesting one - you mix the couscous with finely chopped onion, garlic and parsley and then steam it for half an hour before mixing in some tomato sauce (made while the couscous steams) and putting it in the oven on a very low heat (80C max) to keep the couscous warm while it absorbs the tomato sauce. It was delicious cooked that way.
We used gilt-head bream as our fish (I had to gut it! Don't think I've ever had to gut my fish before. Chop the heads off, yes, but not scoop out its insides. Fortunately I'm not overly squeemish). This was poached in the tomato sauce, then I skinned and de-boned it, flaked the flesh into big chunks and mixed it back into the remaining tomato sauce.

Dan and I thought that a handful of raisins would go well in this recipe. Also, we thought chorizo and prawns could be substituted for the fish to good effect. The dish does take over an hour to prepare, but it is simple to do and, as always with tomato based recipes, the long slow cooking makes it rich and adds a wonderful depth to the flavour.

Sicilian pasta

No great excitments on these week's recipe of the week. It was a quick and easy recipe from my Quick and Easy recipe book. It did exactly what it said on the tin and provided a speedy and tasty dinner.

I noticed a very similar recipe in the Jamie Oliver Jamie's Italy book, Pasta con acciughe e pomodoro (anchovies in tomato sauce with pasta).
Its a poor man's pasta sauce recipe with very minimal ingredients. Basically just a handful of toasted pinenuts, and handful of sultanas (soaked in warm water for a few minutes to soften them), 2 or 3 skinned chopped tomatoes, a couple of cloves of garlic, 4 anchovy fillets and a tablespoon of tomato puree.

Put your pasta on to cook.
Fry the garlic in olive oil to soften it. Add the anchovies and stir until 'melted', then add all the other ingredients and heat through. Season.
Drain thge pasta, toss the sauce and pasta together.
Serve.

Can't be exciting every week!

Delegation is the name of the game

Last time I made chocolate cake it was a DISASTER.

More of it ended up on the bottom of the oven than in the cake tin, and it had to be turned into a trifle-style dessert instead of being proper cake. Having spent a morning scraping burnt choclate goo off the oven I haven't been too keen to try my hand at cake-baking again.

But for a birthday, chocolate cake is the law, so I delegated the task to my younger sister. And she really came up trumps with a chocolatey-jammy deliciously sinful concoction.

Apparently it was from the recipe book published by this bakery, which both makes me want to go to the bakery to over-indulge in cake, and makes me think that I might just have to buy the recipe book and try making cake again.

I'm tempted.