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!

Birthday cake

3rd May is Dan's birthday. We decided not to go out this year, but I still wanted to make it special so I gave him the option to choose any dinner he wanted. He chose beef wellington and dauphinoise potatoes - high effort, but his absolute favourite. I made myself a monkfish wellington, which was delicious. (I found the recipe on the BBC website here.)

But a birthday isn't a proper celebration without cake, so I had to make a birthday cake. Dan's not a particular fan of chocolate cakes and sponge cakes, and with just the two of us in our household we wouldn't get through that kind of cake before it went stale anyway. Instead I chose to make an Orange Polenta Cake - the recipe comes from the Ottolenghi cook book. I'm a total amateur with sugar cookery, so I had to make 3 attempts before I managed a proper caramel for the top of the cake, but I got there in the end. The citrusy-fresh orange scent of the cake was AMAZING as it cooked. Here it is straight out of the oven:


(although the colour cast seems a bit odd on this photo.)

And this is it once it had cooled and I'd glazed it with some of my Mum's homemade marmalade:



We had a slice of the cake each on Dan's birthday. Dan had his with a scoop of creme fraiche. The cake had a slightly grittier texture than a normal sponge (possibly because I coudn't find instant polenta). That wasn't unpleasant though - in fact it was rather nice. The cake was moist, slightly bitter on the top, very orangey and utterly gorgeous. I'd buy the recipe book just for this cake!

Traditionally you have to take cakes to work on a birthday, and orange cake didn't seem the most portable variety, so I also made some rasberry cupcakes. (Dan was fitting our new bathroom all weekend, so it seemed only fair that I assume responsibility for work cake snacks for him!) The recipe was from the Primrose Bakery cupcake book - a vanilla sponge swirled with homemade rasberry jam, then filled with a little spot of rasberry jam and iced with vanilla buttercream icing. I decorated them with a little grated white chocolate and silver sugar balls.



I know they look a bit girly and pink and white for a boy's birthday, but if you're going to get your girlfirend to make cakes for your office what do you expect?!



Of course he told everyone he made them himself. Some of them even believed it.

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.

Pad Thai

The BBC is a marvellous thing. I had half a pack of scallops and half a bag of prawns, as well as some red curry paste left over from a thai curry I made last week. Hmmmm...what to make? I didn't have any bright ideas. But then I typed those three ingredients into the BBC food website, and it delivered up Queen scallop Pad Thai.

Here's the work in progress:



It was the perfect quick dinner - I cooked the noodles and chopped most of the vegetables the night before and then it was a matter of 15 minutes to throw it altogether when I got back from my run. I did cheat my using bought curry paste, and I substituted beansprouts for green beans.

It was yummy. Here's the recipe.

Sweet or sour?

Over the last week I have made it my mission to discover if I do actually like Sweet 'n' Sour. For the last 31 years I have always thought I didn't, but I'd only ever had it out of a jar or from a dodgy takeaway. It seemed like time to discover if the real thing was more palatable.

I started out with a Thai sweet and sour recipe. It was subtle - basically just pineapple added to a prawn stirfry - and a good introduction to the concept for someone like me (ie someone who doesn't like gloopy sauces or pineapple very much!).
It was manageable, didn't put me off, but I wouldn't bother to make it again. It was just a little unexciting.

So, next up I thought I'd best go for the real deal - a Chinese version, complete with more pineapple (still not that keen), ketchup (don't like it), sugar and vinegar. It wasn't boding well, but I couldn't give up now! The trusty BBC came up with a recipe I thought I could handle; Simon Rimmer's Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls (find the recipe here).

The verdict? Definitely edible, but just not really my bag. I really liked the chicken meatballs, so I'll make those again, but sweet and sour sauce is not going to become a fixture in my life.

So there you have it. I tried it, and my Mum always said as long as I tried something I didn't have to eat it again if I really didn't like it.

And thinking of childhood things, I also made proper, baked in the oven Rice Pudding at the weekend. Such a childhood favourite for me - served with a spoon of homemade rasberry jam of course! Dan had never had the real deal. His rice pudding had always come out of a tin, which is frankly a horrible travesty of the concept!

Filo

Christmas being a family affair I am heading to my parents' place for Christmas. That means Mum has sorted out all the Christmas dinner, but I do like to contribute in some small way to the Christmas eats.
Last year I made a Christmas cake, but Mum was making one when I was there the other week, so that didn't seem a good idea for this year. Instead I decided to make some sweet nibbles, and I chose baklava: The reasoning was that I love it, I know my younger sister and my Mum both like Baklava, not sure about my Dad, but fingers crossed!

So today saw me melting a truly extraordinary amount of butter, trying to unwrap and divide up the delicate sheets of pastry, and generally having my first filo experience. All before coffee. Co-ordination wasn't too good!

I made a recipe from the BBC website (I really do use that a lot!) by James Martin, for Walnut and pistachio baklava. It had ginger in the syrup which appealled, plus I already had all the ingredients in the cupboard - a major advantage when the snow is as annoying as it is right now. I did forget to score the top of the pastry before it went in the oven, which was none too clever, but other than that I seem to have ended up with something which does resemble baklava.



The taste was more citrus-y than baklava I have bought in the past, and its less sweet too (although I did reduce the sugar quantities so that may not be due to the recipe!). It has a definite tendency towards falling apart, but then baklava always does, and it is deliciously crunchy.

NB: I didn't need anything like the amount of butter directed in the recipe - I only used about 2/3 or 3/4 of the amount, and I was being pretty generous with it.

As I was left with about 100g of filo pastry from the roll I'd bought I then had to find something else to make with it, and once again James Martin and the BBC came up trumps with a Banana, apricot and cinnamon filo parcel. It sounded like it would make a fab pudding for tonight. After my overly buttery baklava experience I adjusted the quantities slightly. Also, I generally like things slightly less sweet than in recipes, so I also cut down the amount of sugar and honey a bit. It all cooked up just fine though.



The best accompaniment would have been vanilla icecream, served on the parcels warm from the oven, but in the absence of any of that in the freezer I served it up with cream instead. A yummy, wintery, pudding. I do love cinnamon.

This post makes me realise how rarely I do sweet recipes. I really should do so more often.

TV dinner

We were idly watching Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers programme the other evening when all of a sudden I pricked up my ears. Why was this? Because he was demonstrating a duck recipe.

Now I really do like duck. And my hunt for the perfect duck recipe has been tracked on this blog. We've tried duck accompanied by mango, cherry, and plum sauces, but tonight it was Nigel Slater's Duck with honey and figs on the menu.

The recipe is very citrusy, with orange zest and juice and lemon zest included, as well as ginger. It certainly sounded like it would be a good pick-me-up for a cold snowy night. And it did prove to be a good dinner - the citrus was refreshing but not overwhelming, the figs went lovely and soft, and with the addition of rice steamed with star anise and pak choi it was filling and warming.



Find the recipe on the BBC food website here.

So all in all, Nigel did not let us down, but the favourite Duck accompaniment remains as cherries. Will anything ever knock that off the top spot I wonder?

PS One day I will start taking beautifully lit, perfectly poised, photos of the food I make. For the time-being you will have to continue to suffer my "snap and eat" approach to food photography! Sorry about that!

Teriyaki Cod

Sorry to say that I had an uninspired week. Maybe it was the cold. Or pehaps just that we were away over the weekend, but I made one quite tastey, but a bit unexciting new recipe this week.

It was teriyaki cod with noodle broth, found on the BBC website, chosen purely because I had some cod in the freezer.

Find the recipe here. Its very easy, and a nice, quick week-night dinner. I suggest that you pimp your noodles with some ginger and garlic - its just better that way.

This week's colour is green

Green...It's the new black.

And it was the theme of this week's cooking. First up I made Lamb koftas's with green sauce. This is an indian dish of mildly spiced lamb meatballs in a yoghurty-herby sauce. It was something I found here on the BBC website and I've been meaning to make it for a little while. It makes a good winter night dinner with its comforting blend of warming spices and the creamy yoghurt sauce. You can make most of it ahead of time so it can be made quickly when you're ready to eat. Its definitely a tasty dinner, but not extraordinary in any way in my opinion.

Then at the weekend I made slow-cooked courgettes with lemons and dill to have on toast for lunch. This was from the Riverford Farm cook book, and can also be found here on their website. It was very good. I love the distinctive flavour of dill, so perhaps its unsurprising that I enjoyed the dish so much.

Not green, but a new twist on an old favourite, was a goats cheese souffle topping for fish pie. It worked well. Dan really enjoyed it. Because the souffle only needs a short time in the oven everything else does need to be cooked before you put the topping on - it doesn't spend long enough in the oven to cook the other ingredients.

Hope you enjoyed bonfire night!

Halloween cookery

Surely, it has to be Pumpkin for dinner on Halloween night? Once we had waved goodbye to the last trick-or-treater we sat down to a dinner of duck with a plum and chilli sauce (very tasty - find the recipe here) followed by pumpkin pie.



The pie was lightly spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. It was a good mix, and a comforting wintery pudding. I served it still warm from the oven with some cream.



Halloween duty done.



I have to confess that fruity pies are still my favourite, but I did enjoy this. It would definitely be a better portable pie for a picnic, whereas fruit pies go soggy and don't travel at all well.

cherries two ways

On friday I had a strange craving for cherries. Who knows why, but something reminded me of some amazing cherries I bought last summer, and that was it. I HAD to have some.

Sainsbury's didn't have any. Nor did Tesco or the Co-op. I was getting desperate....Some people crave chocolate, some alcohol or crack. Apparently my drug of choice is fruit.

I finally found some in the garden centre (not as odd as it sounds - they have freezers of frozen fruit too). Hurrah! Not the ripe and ready to eat cherries I had originally wanted, but frankly by this stage I would take anything, so frozen cherries were an acceptable substitute.

I drove home dreaming of yummy desserts and consequently clafoutis found itself leap-frogged to the top of my 'to do' list.

I don't think I'd ever eaten clafoutis before, let alone made it, but it's the classic cherry recipe is it not?
Now, I realise that the picture below looks like a disaster, but they were just very dark cherries - not burnt. I promise.



I completely destroyed the pudding taking it out of the tin (time for a new non-stick pie dish - mine is antique), but it tasted lovely. So much so that Dan literally licked his plate clean.

Clearly I will be making this again.

Almost as successful was sunday's cherry recipe; a savoury one this time. Simon Rimmer's recipe for Duck with Cherry sauce. Find it here. I added a little thyme to the sauce, but that was the only change I made to the recipe.

I have to admit to feeling dubious about how likely this was to be edible, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I rolled up my sleeves and gave it a go.

I should have had faith. (Both in Mr Rimmer and also in the fact that duck and fruit go together wonderfully.) The dinner was good. Actually, very good.



So that's that. Cherry-craving satisfied.

coming over all biblical

This weekend I have been mainly baking loaves and fishes. Ironic for a dyed-in-the-wool athiest!

Friday night we ate Greek Roast Cod. I came across the recipe on the BBC website. Its here.



This is the 2nd recipe I've made from Silvana Franco - the 1st was lemony meatballs with pasta. Both recipes are from her Hi-Low Cookbook, and after this one I figured that two really tasty dinners was enough evidence for me... The recipe book is on the way via ebay.

Saturday was a French trout recipe - whole roast trout with sorrel sauce. I had to adapt a little; there was no sorrel to be found anywhere in the shops near me so I substituted spinach, and I used yoghurt instead of creme fraiche. I got the trout at the Banbury farmer's market, and it was a lovely subtle flavour and superbly fresh.

Trout with Sorrel sauce

2 whole trout - cleaned, gutted, heads removed (always sounds gruesome to type that!)

200g baby spinach or sorrel leaves
1/4 onion or 3 shallots - finely chopped
10g butter
100g plain yoghurt
75ml dry white wine
A shake of nutmeg
salt, pepper

Put oven on to heat to 180C.
Melt the butter over a low heat and gently fry the shallots or onions until soft.
Add the spinach or sorrel leaves and a small splash of water. Cover and allow to cook gently for 3 or 4 minutes, until the leaves have wilted.
Add 1/2 the yoghurt, salt and pepper, and a shake of nutmeg, and allow to cook for a minute or so more before taking off the heat and allowing to cool slightly.
Stuff the trout with the sorrel mixture (don't worry if you don't use it all - keep it for making the sauce later), then place the fish in a roasting tin, pour over the wine and cover with foil.
Bake in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes depending on the size of your fish.
5 minutes before the end of the cooking time pour the juices from the roasting tin into a small saucepan. Return the fish to the oven.
Add the remaining yoghurt to the saucepan, and any of the sorrel mix that you may have left. Place over a fairly high heat and allow to reduce to about 1/2 the volume.
Serve the trout with the sauce from the saucepan poured round it.
It goes well with boiled potatoes or mash, and leafy green veg or salad.

Now then I realise I haven't addressed the loaves bit.

A few weeks back I watched a Raymond Blanc cookery programme in which he made bread. I also watched a programme on BBC4 about craft bakers, and it got me thinking about bread-making again.

I have made bread fairly regularly in the past, but I haven't hit upon a recipe/method that I think is really my ultimate process. All of my attempts have been quite nice, but not write-home about it delicious.

Until this weekend that is.
I tried out the Raymond Blanc method (find it here) and it was just GORGEOUS. Even Dan liked it, and he's never particularly liked the bread I've made in the past.



I made it by hand in 2 batches of 2 loaves - I mean, really; who has an oven large enough for 4 loaves in their home kitchen? Or a food mixer big enough for over a kilo of bread dough?! But lack of reality for us home cooks aside, the bread tasted really good.
I will have a try at baking the bread in tins in future so that its easier to use for sandwiches.

And then lastly; pizza from my little old Carluccio recipe book (I had a little yeast left over). I didn't eat any of it, but Dan tells me it was lovely. Praise indeed!

This seems to sum up our weekend eating (Dan's sunday lunch) rather well, even if it is a somewhat unorthodox mixture!:



The sushi is from the deli a couple of villages away - turns out moving to deepest-darkest rural Oxfordshire doesn't mean you have to abandon all interest in foods from round the world after all. Hurrah for that!

PS This was week 30. Wonder how long I'll keep feeling inclined to be an enquiring cook? I think its a habit now...I can't imagine going back to a routine of similar dinners all the time.