Buffalo Ricotta

I think I've documented reasonably often on these pages my prolems with dairy products. I can't seem to get along with cow cheese and other milk products at all. I have however been gradually exploring the non-cow options out there. In the last year or so I have discovered a number of soft cheeses which I like and don't make my tummy hurt - buffalo mozzarella, halloumi, feta. I can cope with one or two hard cheeses (manchego mostly), although I still wouldn't eat them in chunks - just grated into other food. And, surprisingly, I have overcome my childhood hatred of yoghurt. I'm sure my bones and joints are grateful for the extra calcium!

Last week I was in London so I paid a visit to the Whole Foods Supermarket on Kensington High Street (they do the best olives of anywhere I've found in the UK). I was interested to spot Buffalo Ricotta in their fridge, and I couldn't resist buying some to try.



I didn't have a plan for it, but when I got home I flicked through my books and decided on Fennel and Ricotta Risotto from the Jamie's Italy cookbook.

The recipe can be found here.

I was a little worried that the fennel flavour would be overwhelming, but the risotto turned out really well - creamy with nicely balanced flavours. It was pretty simple and quick to make, so I would definitely recommend it for an easy week night dinner.

PS I also discovered that you can mix ricotta with a little honey, berries, lemon juice and zest for a creamy but surprisingly low calorie dessert.

Pizza!

I have finally achieved a decent pizza base. Would it be blasphemous to say 'Allelujah!', particularly on Easter Sunday?

Until now my pizza bases have been a bit too thick and doughy for my liking, and although tonight's wasn't quite as thin and crispy as I would like, it was a definite massive improvement on previous attempts. Oh yes, I'm developing an all consuming love of the Bourke Street Bakery methods, of which this was one. I'll have to make a pilgrimage to Sydney some day.

The Easter weekend seemed to call for junk food, so sunday night was pizza night. I made a pizza bianco (no tomato puree on the base) using the Bourke Street Bakery base method.The topping I chose was wild garlic pesto mixed with a little yoghurt to loosen it (I went out foraging on saturday as I had spotted loads of wild garlic in one of the patches of woodland near us), roast purple sprouting broccoli, finely chopped preserved lemons, and buffalo mozzarella.



Not exactly your traditional topping choices. And yummy with it.

lunch boxes

It felt like high time to expand my lunch options. I've been having the same sort of soups and salads for lunch for weeks, with only minor variations. Time to shake things up a little and make the work day just a little more interesting.

My Seattle-dwelling friend Carisa is a Mexican food fiend, so when she recommended this Mexican soup recipe I figured it must be a good one. Monday was not a good day at work, and it didn't seem like Tuesday was likely to be much better, so a burst of Mexican sunshine in a bowl seemed like the thing to lift my spirits.

I made a few changes to the recipe due to the contents of my cupboards and to adapt it to my taste buds - I didn't have quite enough chickpeas, I used pheasant instead of chicken (we had roast pheasant on sunday and there was just enough left over for this recipe), and added a sprinkle of chilli flakes for heat, and a handful of spinach. Also, we were out of oregano so I used thyme. The measurements in cups instead of grams added a little complication to the process, but I think I got the quantities about right.

I made a rookie-error and under-seasoned the dish, but that was easily rectified at the eating stage. I think if I made this again I'd add a bit more spice - it could do with being a little punchier flavoured for my tastes.



Overall? Sopa Ranchera was tasty, easy to make, with one or two minor adjustments it will make a good spring or autumn lunch.

My second lunchbox experiment was Ottolenghi's Aubergine Cheesecake. I ordered the Ottolenghi cookbook the other day, so while I waited for it to arrive I figured I would browse his recipes from The Guardian newspaper and get some practice in!

I do love it when something looks this colourful and enticing before its even finished:


I adapted the recipe again to suit my fridge contents, using a mild soft goats cheese instead of cream cheese and yoghurt instead of double cream, so my version is probably a bit sharper flavoured than the recipe intended.



It is like a pastry-less quiche. I can completely see why Ottolenghi describes it as a savoury cheesecake as it has a similar texture to it.



It travelled well to work and made a more interesting lunch box than usual, so I'll definitely make this again. Creamy and delicious.

Find the recipe here.

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.

Lobster - at last!

Week 52 of this project seemed to call for something extraordinary. Who'd have thought it would last a year?
And so, given that Lobster Thermidor was the first recipe onto the list it was time to finally cross it off.

Lobster is not a meal that you can just throw together easily - it required planning and skiving off work early to make it to the fishmonger before they closed. (I didn't think my colleagues would appreciate live lobsters crawling round the communal fridge all afternoon if I bought them at lunch time!)

So lobsters procured, I headed home to start the preparation.
Fortunately Dan had been away for a few days, so he wasn't there while I was preparing the lobsters. Which saved me from enduring him laughing himself silly when I jumped about 6 foot from shock when one of the lobsters wriggled as I picked it up. I'd put them in the freezer for an hour and expected them to be alot more lethargic than they were!

I decided to go with the Hugh F-W version of Lobster Thermidor, which uses bechemal sauce instead of double cream. I made a good thick sauce, then fried some shallots in a little butter until they were softened and added a glass of white wine. Once the wine had mostly reduced I added the bechemal and some tarragon, stirred everything together and allowed it to bubble for a minute or so. After that I seasoned it, added a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a small handful of grated gruyere. This can be set aside until needed.

So to the lobster.....I plunged it straight into a pot of rapidly boiling, heavily salted water, slammed the lid on and felt like a murderer.



It died fairly fast though, so I wasn't too badly traumatised. I don't imagine the lobster appreciated it much though. 12 -15 minutes later...voila...cooked lobster.



Then I had to dismember it - twist off the claws, crack them, and haul out the meat; cut the lobster in half, fish out the inedible bits; Mix the edible parts (including the claw meat) with the sauce made earlier, then pile it back into the lobster shells. Grate a little more gruyere over the top then whack it under a hot grill for 5 minutes.

I served it with crunchy bread and salad.



The occasion seemed to demand a fire in the room and a glass of champagne...




And then a treat for pudding. I have to confess that I didn't make it, but it was all the better for that. Passionfruit mousse cake from Patisserie Blanc.



Yum.

Daring Cooks Challenge August

May I present this month's Daring Cook's challenge; pierogi.



Bear with me here. I know they don't look that tasty.

Pierogi are basically a heavier version of stuffed pasta as far as I can tell, although they were described in the recipe as a dumpling. They seem to be a Polish thing. The filling was a free choice but was meant to reflect your locality. I went for garlic, basil, goats cheese and whizzed up courgette. It may be tenuous, but we have a lot of basil in the garden right now and courgettes seem to be in season. The stuffing mix was a bit too liquid really but just about manageable.

Given how like a heavier stuffed tortellini pasta this was, I made a tomato sauce and toasted some pinenuts to sprinkle over the top.


I think I'll experiment with other fillings. I have a hunch that roast squash, garlic and pancetta would be a good combo.

The really good thing about this dinner was that the work could be done in advance leaving just boiling the pierogi for when you are ready to eat.

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Pao de Queijo

hurrah....I made the Pao de Queijo (Brazilian cheese breads).



They were a bit chewy and doughy, not overly cheesy but enough to taste, and very nice warm with a salad of scallops and chorizo.

They definitely wouldn't be any good cold, but you can freeze them cooked or uncooked and just bake or heat them up when you're ready for them (just as well because even just 1/2 the recipe quantities made 15!).

They breads weren't all that bready - I guess there was less flour and more cheese in this recipe than in the ones I had before in London. I imagine a breadier version would keep better for selling in a shop, but I don't think I'll bother trying to amend the recipe as I liked them as they turned out.

I think these would be good with tomato soup, salads, pasta dishes (as an alternative to garlic bread). Quite versatile really. And quick too as there's no rising involved in the bread making.

The recipe came from by Cuban recipe book, but there are versions to be found all over the internet.

Torta di Spinachi

This was my second Angela Hartnett recipe, and it turned out just as tasty as the first ( Aubergine Parmigiana).



As always, I adapted it slightly to suit the ingredients in the shops and in my fridge - I used half spinach, half asparagus, and changed the parmesan to a creamy goats cheese I bought from Crudge's Cheese at the weekend farmer's market.

The recipe directs you to make the pastry using olive oil instead of butter. I've tried this a couple of times before; once was a disater and once was passable. This version was actually good! The difference was the flour I think - Angela Hartnett's recipe suggests using '0' type flour, which is the same kind you would use for pasta. Its a much finer flour and worked well for the pastry with olive oil.

The torta was easy to make on a busy day - I made the pastry and mixed the filling together in the morning then they just sat in the fridge all day until I was ready to roll out the pastry and put the dish together in the eveing. We had it warm with salad and new potatoes one day, but it was equally lovely cold for lunch the next day.

Here's the recipe I ended up with after my amendments:

Pastry:
200g pasta-type flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt
Ice cold water as required

Mix the flour and salt together. Add the olive oil, then gradually add cold water, mixing well between additions until the pastry comes together into a dough. Wrap in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for at least an hour.

Filling:
250g Spinach (stalks removed & roughly chopped)
200g cooked asparagus, chopped into 1-2cm lengths
60g hard cheese eg parmesan, manchego, or goats cheese - grated or finely chopped
1 egg - beaten
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Salt & pepper

When you are ready to assemble your torta grease a pie tin with a thin coating of olive oil. Roll out the pastry until its larger than the pie dish and lay it in the dish, allowing it to hang over the edges.
Mix together all the filling ingredients, place them on top of the pastry in the pie dish and spread into an even layer.
Fold the excess pastry over the top of the filling to cover it.
Bake in the oven at 200C for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Serve hot or cold. Its a great picnic dish.

Brazil!

A while a go I went through a short phase of trying out a few Latin American recipes which jogged my memory and made me recall the delicious Pao de Queijo which I had eaten with my friend Yu Chen at a Brazilian place at the grotty end of Oxford Street in London.
They are light and puffy cheesy breads, even delicious to me - a non-cheese eater. Even better there was a recipe for them in my Cuban recipe book. However, they call for tapioca flour. And where on earth can you buy that?!

Well, it turns out you can buy it in the health food shop of our little market town. Who'd have thought it? So, watch this space, because as soon as I have a couple of hours spare I will be getting my Brazilian groove on and having a try at Pao de Queijo.



Now all I need is some Havaianas, a beach, and a massive party!

brown is the new black

This week's theme is brown, which doesn't sound all that appetising I admit.

Over the May bank holiday weekend we went out for the morning to Kingham, where the Kingham Plough was holding a lovely mini-farmers' market. Homemade ice cream was one of the delights on offer, and as its the 2nd time I've seen it recently I had to try a scoop of brown bread ice cream.


(The first time I'd ever seen it was on a day trip to Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds a few weeks back. Awful name, lovely place.)





Anyway, back to the icecream. It tasted as if the brown bread crumbs had been mixed with demerera sugar and toasted. They still tasted a bit crunchy and crumble-like in the icecream which gave it a nice texture. Tasty.

Also procurred at the farmers market was some fresh brown trout. A very pretty fish with a speckled skin and tender sweet meat.



I've not eaten brown trout before, so since I've had little or no opportunity for cooking this madly busy week I'm counting brown trout as my recipe of the week. I'm sort of cheating and sort of not! I haven't ever cooked brown trout before, and I served it with toasted hazlenuts as suggested in a recipe book, so I think I can bend the rules a little and count this as a recipe: At least its something new! We ate it with aspargus since we're making the most of the super-short period that its in-season.
Our trout was from here.

Also, I couldn't sign off without mentioning the slices of cheesecake we bought at the same event. It was from a stall by the Windrush Valley Goat Dairy, and was light, creamy and not over-sweet. I've bought milk from the same farm before but never the cheesecake. It had a lovely hint of ginger biscuits in the base and was great with some berries on the side.

I have to acknowledge that this was a rather glutinous bank holiday weekend, but I did run over 9 miles on sunday so I think I can justify the food!

cooking up a storm

My Dad likes to say that if there's an easy way of doing something and a difficult way of doing it I'll always find the hard way. This sprung to mind today as I spent all afternoon in the kitchen.

On the May Day bank holiday monday Dan and I are having a little house warming party/birthday party for Dan. It will be lovely to have our friends, new and old, round to visit. Its going to be a busy few days though: I'm off to the ballet on the friday evening, then my parents are coming to visit for saturday and sunday. Its going to be a lovely social weekend, but there will be no time to cook anything for our party guests that weekend.

I really didn't want to buy frozen pizzas or other crappy processed food that would be easy but not particularly nice. So, today I've been getting organised, and cooking up a storm with freezeable food.

First up, a trip to the farmers market and farm shop for ingredients.
Look how lovely the eggs I bought are:



I suppose its a little odd to feel pleased by pretty eggs, but I did enjoy a childhood-nostalgia lunch of dippy-egg.



Then I knuckled down to the catering.

First up; bread.
I was a bit stupid and forgot to to dust the baking paper with flour to stop the bread sticking. Consequently, the 1st batch will not be going to the party. Dan and I will have to eat it ourselves and pick off the paper as we go!

Then cheesecake.
Its somewhat horrifying the amount of cream and cheese in a cheesecake, but it always seems to go down well. Yummy. I have tried making cheesecake before but it didn't set. This time I had more success, so we have one Rhubarb and Ginger cheesecake, and one Mixed Berry cheesecase.



On to the quiches. A couple of roasted vegetable ones and one quiche-lorraine style onion, bacon and tomato quiche.

Ooof. The freezer's pretty full now.

I'll make a couple of tomato and mozzarella pizzas tomorrow, then that's enough for now.

It wasn't all hard work though. I had time for an icecream in the sunshine at the farmshop. Apple pie flavour no less.

Recreating that holiday feeling...

When we were in Italy last autumnn Dan and I treated ourselves to a wonderful meal on the last night of our holiday.



The restaurant was down on the shores of Lake Garda, tucked away under Malcesine Castle. It was still just warm enough to sit outside in the evening, but no longer high season, so it wasn't crowded.



We gorged ourselves on lovely wine and several beautiful courses of Italian food. The courgette-stuffed tortelloni with ham and pinenut sauce sticks in the memory, as does Dan's dessert of semifreddo with peach compote.



This week I decided to take the flavours of the pasta dish and make something a little bit similar (although not as delicate, silky or delicious!). My version was a much more rustic and hearty. A quick and easy pasta bake, though not a refined culinary masterpiece!

Here's the method.

Courgette and Goats Chees pasta bake with bacon and pinenuts

Enough pasta for 2 people
2 small courgettes
1 or 2 garlic cloves
A handful basil leaves
50g goats cheese
salt and pepper
4 rashers smoked bacon
15-20g pinenuts

Put the oven on to heat up to 180C
Put the pasta on to cook in salted water.
Meanwhile whizz up the courgettes with the basil leaves, garlic and soft goats cheese. Season it.
Check if the pasta is cooked, drain in if it is and rinse in cold water.
Mix with the courgette mix. Turn into an oven proof dish and place in oven to bake for 20 minutes. Check regularly so that it doesn't scorch. Cover it if its browning at at the edges.
After about 10 minutes dry fry the pinenuts in a hot pan.
Then fry or grill the bacon. Cut the rind off and chop it into bite-size pieces.
Take the pasta out of the oven. Scoop it onto plates or into bowls.
Scatter bacon and pinenuts over the top.
Serve.

Torta (sorta!)

I had (whisper it) a vegetarian over for lunch.

Dan doesn't understand the concept of vegetarianism. So I had to try and create a lunch where he wouldn't notice the lack of meat or fish.

He does have a weakness for courgettes, so when I came across a Torta Verde recipe I thought that might do the trick. This Torta Verde recipe was basically a rice, courgette and parsley pie, so I adapted it to make a courgette-y quiche.

Here's my adaption of the recipe:

Anwen's Courgette and Parsley Quiche

100g white flour
100g wholemeal flour
3 tablespoons olive oil
warm water (about 60-80ml)

450g courgettes
2 garlic cloves
1/2 onion
2 eggs
30g gruyere
Large handful of parsley

salt and pepper

Pastry:
Mix the two different kinds of flours together, add a pinch of salt. Make a well in the centre add the olive oil. Stir to mix. Slowly add the warm water, mixing with your hands to make a soft, but not sticky dough.
Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge to rest for 20 minutes.
Put the oven on to heat to 180C.
Make the filling: Chop up the courgette, garlic, onion. Put everything into a food processor, season, whizz. Add a handful of parsley. Whizz again.
Roll out the pastry , lightly oil quiche dish and line with pastry.
Blind bake for 15 minutes (10 with baking beans and then remove them for another 5 minutes).
Beat two eggs, add to the courgette mixture and mix. Grate the cheese and fold in.
Fill the pastry case with the courgette and egg mixture. Return to the oven for about 25-30 minutes, or until the courgette mixture is slightly puffed and set.
Remove from oven and allow to cool.



Interestingly, last time I made pastry using olive oil instead of butter I didn't think it was a good method, but it went well in this context.

We also had tomato soup, sourdough toast, olives, and a selection of yummy cheeses from the farmers market. Then a good old hearty country walk in the spring sunshine, with a picnic of scones and jam halfway.

What a lovely, chilled out sunday.

Dan didn't moan about the lack of animal protein.

Not once.

Which means that I won this one.

Rhubarb and custard

Well actually, that's not true. It was rhubarb and cheese, but somehow that doesn't have the same ring to it!

I spotted the 1st rhubarb of the season in the farm shop this weekend. It was a bright, deep pink and looked utterly gorgeous. I bought a handful on impulse without any idea what I was going to do with it.



When I got home I stewed it with a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and it came out an almost purple colour. I still wasn't sure what to do with it, until I realised I had a whole bottle of full-fat goats milk in the fridge and no plans for it (the slight tang of the goats curd rhubarb cheesecake that we had for pudding at The Plough in Kingham worked really nicely). I was then reminded that rhubarb and ginger is a sublime combination as I flicked past a rhubarb and ginger sponge recipe in one of my books.



So, a packet of ginger biscuits were procured from the village shop. 100g worth were bashed until they were crumbs (very theraputic - I recommend it!), mixed with melted butter (20g) and pressed into ramekins before being shoved into the fridge.

Then I made goats cheese (see here) and mixed it with 25g of icing sugar. That was piled on top of the biscuit base and smoothed out. I spooned a layer of stewed rhubarb over the top and shoved it all back in the fridge overnight. Et voila; an approximation of rhubarb cheesecake.

Well, mini rhubarb cheesecake pots at any rate.



And the taste test? Well, it wasn't lobster! But it was a pretty tasty pudd and very moreish. Yummy. A good alternative to crumble in rhubarb season.



To recap:
Mini Rhubarb and GoatsCheesecake pots
Serves 4

100g Ginger biscuits
20g butter

Approx 200g rhubarb
1 Dessertspoon caster sugar
175g Soft goats cheese or cream cheese
25g icing sugar

Slice rhubarb into chunks and put into a heavy pan with the caster sugar and a splash of water. Stew over a gentle heat until the rhubarb disintegrates (about 1/2 hour). Put aside to cool.
Put the biscuits inside a sandwich bag and bash with a rolling pin until they break up. You could process them in a food processor, but don't over whizz it as a bit of texture is good.
Melt the butter and mix with the biscuit crumbs. Divide between 4 smallish ramekins and press down. Refridgerate for at least an hour.
Mix the cheese and icing sugar. Spoon it on top of the biscuit base and spread it gently out.
Drain the rhubarb of any excess water then spoon the rhubarb mix on top of the cheese.
Refridgerate overnight.

Gobble.

Christmas catchup

Apologies for the rather long Christmas break between posts. I won't bore you with a super long post but here's a brief run down of my new recipes over the Christmas period:

1. Christmas cake!



I was really pleased with this. I made it from Nigel Slater's fruit cake recipe and it turned out with just the right amount of citrus and fruit. Lovely.

I'd made fruit cakes before but never one that was such a high proportion of fruit to flour. The recipe was quite free and easy with the fruits you should use which made it easy to tailor to your own tastes. I used my new favourite dried fruit - figs! I had dried figs for the first time this past spring when we went to Croatia. They were served with coffee and schnapps absolutely everywhere and I liked the sticky grainy texture of them. We bought a bag from the market - you can just about see them for sale in the picture, bagged up with bay leaves.



They appeared in Sainsburys just in time for my Christmas cake. Marvellous!

I also made the marzipan (a bit fiddly to get onto the cake) and the royal icing (took longer to set than I'd anticipated). I felt I had make both in order to keep in the spirit of the recipe challenge; shop bought would have seemed like cheating.





2. Mulled white wine

I think the recipe for this needs a little tweaking as it tasted more like mulled cider, and I would definitely have preferred a winey-er taste. I think next time I'll put a lot less apple juice and less sugar too (the quantity here is half the recipe quantity and it was still a bit sweet for my tastes). Don't get me wrong, the flavours were nice and it was a lovely warming drink, but it seemed a shame not to taste the wine much. Didn't stop us drinking it all of course!

Here's the recipe:

Apple & spice white wine

1 * 750ml bottle white wine (I used Riesling)
400ml apple juice
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
50g demerera sugar
a few strips of orange rind

Put all the ingredients in a pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Heat gently for about 10 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse, but don't allow the mixture to boil or you will lose all the alcohol content.
Serve.
Easy peasy.

3. Pickled pears

I made these a couple of weeks ago after catching a bit of the Hairy Bikers Christmas cookery special. They need about 10 days pickling time before you can eat the pears, so we had our first taste of them shortly after Christmas with cold meats, oatcakes and cheese.

Yes, you read correctly - I did eat cheese. I bought some Manchego cheese to have when we had my younger sister and my Dad up for lunch, and I discovered I actually liked it. In very small quantities.

Anyway, I digress - the pears were tasty, although my sister thought it was distinctly wierd that I would pickle pears.
She may have a point.

4. To go with the Manchego cheese - hazlenut and black pepper cookies.

I came across the recipe for these on a blog called Chocolate and Zuccini. Its written by a French lady (in English although there is a French version). They sounded interesting and she mentions that they go well with figs. Since I had a few figs left over from the Christmas cake it seemed the ideal time to make these biscuits.

They turned out to be a semi-sweet biscuit, and did go well with the dried fruit. The black pepper added a pleasant zing but I think I would use cinnamon instead in future, just because I prefer the warmth of cinnamon.

5. Brussel sprouts

I know these are a love-them or hate-them vegetable, but I definitely fall into the love-them category. Which is just as well as we've had them in our vegetable box quite a lot recently.



A colleague at work suggested baking them in the oven in a parmesan cream sauce. I liked the general idea, but thought all that cream and cheese would probably disagree with my stomach. Instead I found a recipe that suggested baking the sprouts in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was a good way to do them. I would imagine that a scattering of grated parmesan and a sprinkle of pinenuts would be a tasty addition.

Here's the method:

Balsamic Brussels

Mix 1 dessertspoon of olive oil with 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Peel and quater your sprouts then toss them in the oil mixture until well coated.
arrange in a single layer on a baking tray or roastig tin and cook for about 20 mins at 180-190C.

Souffles

I thought souffles were meant to be tricky beasts, but this recipe was super-simple. Naff photo - sorry about that! Once again, I was hungry, so it was just a quick snap before I gobbled my dinner!



I love the fact that it seems so impressive, but was actually easy to make. I had extra high levels of smugness for this dinner as they were goats cheese souffles made using my very own home-made goats cheese. Oh my goodness, even I hate me when I read that sentence back!

We had them with smoked haddock and leeks, but that could be changed depending on the season - I think they would be lovely with tomatoes in the spring, or with prawns, white fish and peas for a lighter fish pie.

But seriously, SO EASY!

Goats' Cheese Souffles
Enough for 6 small souffles or 4 larger ones

150g soft goats cheese
1 teaspoon cornflour
3 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and black pepper
Freshly grated parmesan (optional)

Butter 6 oven proof ramekins. Set oven to preheat to 200C.
Mix the goats cheese and cornflour together thoroughly with a wooden spoon (don't know why it has to be wooden, but figured I should obey the commands!).
Separate 2 of the eggs and mix the yolks into the cheese mixture until it is smooth and well amalgamted. Put the whites into a large bowl and set aside for now. Add the oregano to the cheese mixture, as well as the salt and pepper and stir in.
Separate the 3rd egg and put the white in the bowl with the other 2 egg whites. (You won't be usig this yolk, so you could just use it in some other recipe or have an extra egg yolk in your scrambled eggs the next day.) Add 1/2 teaspoon salt to the egg whites and then whisk them with an electric whisk until they form soft peaks. Fold them carefully into the cheese mixture with a metal spoon. Don't be too heavy handed or over mix or you will knock all the air out of the egg and the souffles won't rise properly.
Spoon the mixture into ramekins, sprinkle the tops with parmesan chees if you want (I didn't for mine but did for Dan's, both were tasty). Place the ramekins on a baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes until well-risen and slightly browned.
Serve immediately. They start to sink quite quickly once they come out of the oven, so you need to dish them up and get them on the table reasonably fast for the full impact of perfectly risen souffles.

PS I'm realising that the recipes that I've been most excited by as I've progressed through the weeks have definitely been the ones which I think are going to cause problems and then are easy. They must appeal to my lazy side - maximum impact with minimum effort.

Food foibles

There are certain tastes you are expected to grow into as you get older. Dark chocolate, for example, or olives. A full-bodied glass of red, strong dark coffee. All of these I adore. They are grown-up tastes. To be lingered over and savoured, but too intense to tempt one into over-indulgence.



Smelly cheese, so ripe it oozes definitely makes it onto the list, but this is a taste I just can't seem to acquire. When I mentioned this is a previous post, Carisa was has horrified and it got me thinking - Isn't it interesting how, even as adults, we still all have certain food foibles?

I'm well aware of the ridiculousness of eating raw fish with enthusiasm but being unable to force myself to eat a mushroom.


I've eaten a whole bowl of snails (actually rather nice - a bit like mussels), but I'd rather go hungry than eat anything with mayonnaise on it.



My complete failure to see the point of condiments remains a source of puzzlement to Dan, and makes buying a sandwich tricky. (Next time you buy one see if you can find one without mayonnaise, mustard, salad dressing, or cheese - see, its not easy!)
Apparently I've been this way since childhood. My mother still shudders at the shame of me declaring at a friend's house that I wouldn't eat food with 'guck' on it. I was 5 years old.

As a child I had an allergy to beef and dairy products and I still tend to avoid both. I don't understand the lust a good steak inspires in people - give me fish or seafood any day - and all I see when I look at a latte is a tummy-ache.
I love fresh, flavoursome fruit and vegetables, interesting herbs and spices, and the satisfaction of a plate popping with different colours and tastes. A little good-quality meat (I'm a terrible snob about meat) and as much fish as I can decently manage.

Whilst this all sounds horrifyingly healthy, I do have to confess to having a terribly sweet tooth. My current object of obssession are the Hummingbird Bakery's muesli bars. Sound's healthy doesn't it? They're not. I'm pretty sure there's condensed milk, butter and sugar in there; so sweet it almost makes your teeth ache, but soooo goooooood! The irony of eating super-healthy, low cal, low fat, blah, blah, blah all day, only to scupper the whole thing with one innocent-looking sweet treat is not lost upon me.

But I'm sure cake should count as a legitimate food group.

Cheeeeese!

Idly browsing the internet trying to figure out how to make semifreddo (see Italy post) I found out that its meant to be really easy to make soft cheese.
At this point, I should point out that I'm amphatically NOT a fan of cheese in general. In fact, the only cheese I like is the kind that doesn't taste like cheese - mozzarella is good but so far no other kind has taken my fancy. However, I wanted to have spinach and ricotta cannelloni for dinner, and that definitely needs cheese, so I decided to try making it...

Soft Goats Cheese

Take 2 pints of milk, heat it to 185F, stir in a sprinkle of salt and the juice of a lemon until the milk curdles. Strain through cheesecloth, then once most of the liquid is gone wrap the cheesecloth up round the cheese (don't squeeze it!), and hang it in a cool place (I put it in the fridge) to continue to drain for 4-6 hours. Unwrap the cloth, and hey presto!, you have cream cheese.

When I mixed in the lemon I was really convinced it wasn't working. In my ignorance I was expecting proper lumps to form at that point rather than the little flecks which actually are the sign of curdling. Still, I went with it and set about straining.
Realistically, unless you have a particular penchant for 1970s fashions, I doubt many people have cheesecloth in their house. I just doubled over the muslin I'd bought for straining my damson jelly and used that, which seemed to work fine. Amazingly, as soon as I started pouring the liquid into my muslin-lined colander I could see the cheese beginning to collect, which was heartening. After a few hours draining in the fridge all those little flecks ended up creating 175g of soft cheese - I found the ease of the whole thing quite exciting, which may mean that I really need to get a life, but who knew it would be so simple to do?!

What was even better was that I actually liked it. OK, so I probably won't be eating it by the plateful, but a little here and there will definitely be acceptable.
By-the-way, I used goats milk, but I assume cows milk would work equally well.