Category: Side dishes

Potato Focaccia

One of the big loves of my life is reading. I can do without television quite easily but I could not manage if I couldn’t occupy myself with something to read. I have shelves groaning with books and magazines are stacked in piles… I have an  eReader so I can read when I can’t carry piles of books with me and when I can’t read, (because I’m driving, say) I listen to audio books. So maybe it’s not reading? Maybe it is that I don’t need the visual stimulus of pictures… I just need the words and my mind fills in the gaps.  So, maybe I should say one of the big loves of my life is writing.. that is, writing done by others.

It has to be good writing though, so that I stay interested. I will, honestly, read almost anything, from any genre, but as you’d imagine a big part of my reading involves food – cooking it, eating it, growing it, preparing it… telling stories about it.

I have shelf after shelf of cookery books. When I’m in the north, I love to sit in that chair, with a cup of green tea, steaming quietly beside me as I read recipes or books on food writing –  from Brillat-Savarin’s “The Physiology of Taste,  or transcendental gastronomy”  – he, who famously wrote, “tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” and described the first version of what became, in essence, the low-carb diet. Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) believed that white flour and sugar made you fat and prescribed protein rich meals. If you haven’t read him yet and you’re curious you can read it for free online, thanks to the University of Adelaide or on Project Gutenberg, or, you can do as I did, and buy a copy.

I love reading modern cookery writing too and I have shelves of that in the apartment… that’s a picture of the shelves when I had only half unpacked and there’s 132 books there. The shelves are full now. Those shelves are half way up the stairs and I sit there, leaning against the wall, reading whatever takes my fancy.  Probably my favourite book of all time, MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating, an anthology of all her works is on that bottom shelf  and I regularly take it out and start reading it again. There are  fascinating books that the Bear finds on his travels and brings back for me because he knows I will love them. He found Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking when he was travelling through the USA and I know I wouldn’t have stumbled on that easily but it is now one of my dearly loved books. He also brought home the wonderful Ruth Reichl’s  Comfort me with Apples and that started me on a search through Amazon for more books like that.  The whole point of it is, I love to read something that makes me think, that captures my imagination and makes me explore just what it was they felt, what they tasted and what it meant to them.

When I’m not reading books, I’m looking on line and reading blogs and searching out great writers there, too. I was reading the fabulous Gin and Crumpets and something she wrote made me stop and think….it made my mouth water. Potato Focaccia, or as she says, a fancy chip butty. Who doesn’t like a chip butty? Well, apart from Brillat-Savarin and his purely protein meals, but he’s long gone, so it doesn’t matter…

A soft and savoury focaccia with potato…. perfect. Imagine how that tastes…

Gin and Crumpets had used, so I surmised from the photographs, smaller potatoes than I had and she’d left the skins on. I had a bag of my favourite Rooster potatoes  (excellent all rounders, good as either chips or mash or roast) so I washed and peeled 250g of them and cooked them in gently simmering water. You need them still to have some body about them as they are going to be cooked again on top of the focaccia, so don’t boil them to death.

The next thing was to start on the focaccia so 350g of strong bread flour was mixed with one 7g sachet of fast action dried yeast, a teaspoon of caster sugar and two teaspoons of Maldon sea salt.

Four tablespoons of olive oil and roughly 150ml-200ml of lukewarm water need to be added to bring it together into a loose dough.

If you haven’t got a mixer with a dough hook, just use your hands.  Drop it onto a floured board and upend the bowl over it to stop it drying out. Let it rest for a few minutes.

Then knead it… you’ll feel it change into a beautifully bouncy, smooth and silky dough.

You need to roll it into a smooth oval

And then lie it on a silicone sheet, ontop of a baking sheet and brush yet more lovely olive oil over it.

Lay a loose piece of clingfilm over it and leave it to rise gently. That depends, of course, on how warm your room is but it shouldn’t take too long.

Start the oven pre-heating to 210°C or 410°F and check the potatoes.

They should be tender so drain them and leave them to cool and then have a quick wipe round while you are waiting…

A sprig of rosemary would be good to add, so strip the leaves off the harder stems and chop them lightly.

By now the potatoes are cool enough to slice without burning your fingers…

I drizzled the oil over the potato, in a bowl, so I got an even covering and each piece was glistening, then laid them on top of the puffy dough, sprinkling it all with the chopped rosemary and a sprinkle of salt…and into the oven it went.

Just under half an hour later and this emerged… golden and glistening, smelling deliciously sweet and savoury – you know just what I mean…

The focaccia bread was light and aerated and the potato on top? It was heavenly… it really was like the best chip butty ever. The taste? The taste was sublime. The potatoes were soft with that sweetness that comes from being cooked properly and then baked, the salt and the rosemary made it savoury, the focaccia was warm and delicious. People looked at it, sniffed it and then tore at it…all of them saying how wonderful it was.

This is what you need to make for parties – it’s warm and delicious and it will to help soak up the alcohol and keep people happy and cheerful….

…this is what you need to make it when there’s just the two of you and a bottle of wine to share as you curl up on the sofa….

… and you need to make it when there’s just you, needing something to sustain you through upset or cheer you through gloom or give you a much deserved treat on a cold Saturday night.

This is heaven.  Really, it is.

Purple Majesty

I think you could safely say that I am a fan of the spud.

I love baby salad potatoes boiled and with a lovely lump of salted butter melting slowly over them…or with a rich mayonnaise …or just steamed with salt and herbs.

I love floury potatoes baked slowly in the oven so they smell rich and delicious and cracking that hard outer skin reveals a steaming and fluffy middle.

I love chips either  eaten from newspaper on the sea front or par-boiled and then baked with a light tossing of oil in the oven in my attempt to lighten the fat load.

I love mash, passed through the ricer and whipped with butter and cream. I can eat it by itself as an antidote to sadness, exhaustion or disappointment.

I love roast potatoes, crisped and crackling from the oven to eat with meat, glistening and delicious.

I love fried potatoes in any of a myriad of ways… frittatas, say or as  sauté potatoes.

I love potatoes in a soup.

Or even in bread.

I think it’s safe to say that if a potato can be used in a recipe, I want to  try it. And I probably have.

And then one day….

I saw these. Purple potatoes… and by golly, they were purple. Albert Bartlett’s Purple Majesty.

I had to try them because a) they were a potato and b) because they were pretty and purple. Also, I have to say, because Albert Bartlett’s Rooster potatoes are my favourite all rounders. They are marvellous for mashing, baking and frying so I was assuming that if they had another kind of potato they would be worth trying.

I didn’t use them the night I bought them and I thought I would try one of the recipes on the bag when I had a bit more time.

The next day was a day from hell, it really was. Work was piling up, I was tired and what was worse, the Bear was away so I got back to an empty apartment. I really couldn’t be bothered to do anything at all and in a sulky, bad tempered fashion I looked at what was in the kitchen…. which was a bag of potatoes.

Now, I am normally very strict on how I treat potatoes – if they are to be turned into mash then they must be gently boiled  and then passed through a potato ricer to get mounds of fluffy potato that butter or cream can be mixed through. If they are going to be baked in their jackets then they must be scrubbed, pricked, rubbed with oil and salt and baked slowly in the oven so you get a beautifully almost dry potato when you break it open.

I’d never cook a potato in its skin in the microwave – that makes it wet  and solid. It doesn’t smell right. And it certainly doesn’t taste right. So I’d never do that. Never.

Except that night I was tired and evil tempered and quite frankly, my dear, I didn’t give a damn. Besides, it was only me… and I desperately needed something quickly, so I washed a couple of the purple beauties, jabbed them with a knife and set them away in the microwave. I’d eat them and get to bed and maybe the next day would be better.

And then I got them out of the microwave and split them open. They weren’t wet.

They were, in fact, almost dry (you know what I mean) like a proper baked potato. They certainly smelled nice…

They were purple… definitely purple… and they tasted delicious. They have a lovely rich flavour.

I stuck a great big lump of butter in them and started to eat. I was wrong about microwaving potatoes.  I was so wrong that I put another one in the microwave and ate that after I finished the first bowl.

I really don’t know how they do it, or how these potatoes are different  but this is the fastest way to have lovely jacket potatoes. So I did it the next night too….and the next. I finished the bag.

Next time you need a rapid baked potato fix, this could be the answer.

Then, when I had bought another bag and the Bear was home so I needed to do something more than just hand him a bowl of potato (no matter how delicious, he would want something to go with it) he asked if we could have chips.

Now I won’t have a deep fat fryer because it scares me a bit – the danger of fire and all that. It would also smell and living in an apartment means that the smell of frying gets everywhere. Thing is, there’s something quite delicious about chips…

So what we do is cut them and then par-boil them for a few minutes till they are beginning to get tender.

(Look at the gorgeous colour of them.. I really do love that colour. Filled with antioxidants, apparently)

Drain them and shake them so the majority of the water is off them, although the heat will allow the moisture to evaporate.

If you use a silcone sheet it makes cleaning up so much faster…. just lay the chips on a piece, which is itself spread over a baking sheet and sprinkle the chips with oil and then put them straight into a preheated oven say, 200°C or 390°F, to cook and to crisp up.

They need a stir or a shake to make sure that they are evenly cooked…

But when they are done?

They were lovely! Again they had that fluffy and very definitely not water logged middle, the outside was crisped and they have a really potatoey taste. I know that sounds a bit silly, but, you know, some potatoes don’t taste of anything much. These had a depth of flavour that was almost rich.

The Bear, of course, looked at them oddly when I handed him his supper but he tried them… and ate them and asked if there were any more.

So, if you see a bag of purple potatoes, snap them up. Try them microwaved in their skins – you’ll be surprised. Try them as chips….you’ll love them. They are so tasty that we finished that bag by doing more chips and more microwaved potatoes…..I’m going to have to get another bag so I can go onto mash.

And then of course, another bag so I can start on the recipes….

Mushroom pâté

Here we are in January again. The excitement of Christmas and the New Year celebrations are over and we are all back to work. This time last year I was rather happy at finding a Le Creuset cast iron terrine dish at less than half price. The Bear, of course, was asking if I really needed a terrine dish and, if I had one,  would I use it enough to justify even the half price… well, the answer is yes.

I have made bread in it… I made a ham hock terrine, I’ve made numerous chicken liver parfaits in…and now I decided I needed to make a mushroom pâté in it.

I needed mushroom pâté because I had a wonderful loaf of No Knead Bread on the go (ready to be baked the following day) and I had the soft, sweetly savoury and delicious caramelised red onions that would be perfect with the bread and the pâté…. and I also had a large bag of chestnut and shitake mushrooms. 

There’s something so rich and tasty about both chestnut  and shitake mushrooms. They’re almost meaty in their texture and the flavour is deep and earthy.

Shitake always seem so substantial for a mushroom – you know how some mushrooms seem to disappear when you cook them, becoming small and almost translucent and frail? Shitake don’t. They are firm and lovely and the flavour  is perfect for making a pâté with.

I’d been out when I spotted the mushrooms, piles of them, looking gorgeous. I really had no plan at the time to make pâté but it all seemed to come together.

If you see mushrooms in the peak of perfection you really should buy them and think of what to do with them while you walk home with your bag of goodies. When I picked the mushrooms, I just put handfuls into bags – when I weighed them at home (yes, the shop did that but I wasn’t paying attention and the only reason I weighed them again was so I could tell you) there were roughly 25og of chestnut mushroom and half that of shitake and together they cost me £2.40.

I knew I had everything else I would need at home – 250g of butter and the remnants of a pot of cream, maybe 125ml or so.

All a pâté is (and what the literal meaning is) is a paste of something. You need the main ingredient and something to stick it all together. Butter and cream are the logical choices as they melt into whatever you are using then chill down, making a beautiful, spreadable paste.

Back in the kitchen, I chopped them roughly and started to sweat them down with a knob of butter and a pinch of salt.

Thyme added to mushrooms

I had some soft thyme growing in a pot on the windowsill so I tore off the baby fine shoots and added them. If you are using thyme that is growing outside then you must strip the leaves off – an outside hardened plant has very tough stems. When it is as soft and tender as this is, it isn’t a problem.

A couple of finely chopped garlic cloves added at the same time  will cook down well making an aromatic  layer of flavour. It won’t be overpowering because it will cook long and slowly so the pungency of the garlic softens beautifully.

I knew I had a box of dried wild mushrooms and I decided to add some of them to the mix. I put a handful into a pyrex jug and added boiling water to hydrate them. If you haven’t got any don’t worry… but the funny thing is, people always tend to have a box in the back of the larder. Maybe it is because we all think we will make risottos with them… then go and buy the fresh mushrooms anyway.

By now the fresh mushrooms were softening nicely. Keep them on a gentle heat and keep stirring them every so often.

You want them to be cooked and to have concentrated their flavour. If you are in the mood for it, you can add a splash or so of cognac just to add in yet another layer of flavour. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to, it’s just an option. This is such an easy thing to make that you just change and adapt until it pleases you.

The dried wild mushrooms will have plumped up beautifully by this stage so you can squeeze out the excess water and add them to the mix so they can cook through and absorb the buttery, mushroomy juices.

If you are planning on doing something else with mushrooms the rehydrating water could be used as a stock, but really, there’s not that much there and with dried mushrooms you have to be wary of any little bits of sand or grit that might have been in there. For once, much though I try and make sure there’s no waste in my kitchen, I didn’t see the benefit in saving the water.

An extra knob of butter won’t go amiss….

Look at how they all mix together – that’s not the clearest picture but I kept getting the lens steamed up, so that’s the picture that was taken.

Now then, it’s time to make the pâté.

Put the mushrooms into a processor or, if you are like me and find it just as fast to use a hand blender, put them into a jug with maybe 50g of butter. It’s the butter and cream that hold this together and when it has been chilled in the fridge you end up with a beautifully smooth pâté.

Don’t be afraid of the amount of butter because the amount of pâté you eat in a serving is not that much.

Start whizzing it smooth.

Keep going till you have whizzed all the mushrooms smooth and with each whizzing you have added more butter. Of course if you had bothered to get to the back of the cupboard where the food processor is, you could have done it all in one go….. I didn’t. So I had to keep whizzing in a jug and putting the smooth blend in a bowl.

Look at it…. rich and smooth….

Stir in the cream and make sure it is all blended properly.

You should check the taste of it to see if it is well seasoned – you might need to add in some salt. I put in a pinch or so and stirred it all round.

Then, all you have to do is spoon the thick and rich blend into the terrine dish.

A silicone scraper makes an excellent flexible smoother.

Look how beautifully smooth it is…..

And all you have to do now is to chill it.

The mushrooms were cooked in the pan and the butter and cream were blended in, now the butter needs to set again so the pâté becomes firm and you can slice it.

Put the terrine into the fridge and leave it to set and chill. I usually leave it overnight, unless, of course, I can’t wait.

The next day, I sliced some No Knead bread thinly and baked it for ten minutes in a moderate oven. Not enough to toast it but just enough to to dry it out. This was going to be my Melba toast that I would serve with the pâté and the rest of the caramelised onions that had been waiting patiently in a jar in the fridge.

This was going to be a lovely light meal….

And it was.

It was rich and smooth and made the perfect starter when some friends came round for supper.

It keeps well in the fridge and you can, if necessary, freeze it, if you wrap it tightly in cling film. That’s good news because, as ever, I had made far too much.

I cut it into portions, and wrapped it well. One word of advice though… do remember to label it!

So, two bags of mushrooms, a block of butter and some cream and you end up with possibly the best mushroom pâté you have ever tasted. What more do you need, except a glass of wine and company to share it with?

Caramelised onions and a wedding anniversary.

I’m very fond of November as a month… I love the dark nights because it means when I get in that I put the lights on and the place seems to glow making it seem like a warm cocoon; I make lovely, comforting food that soothes us both, no matter how stressful a day we have had at work; it’s getting close to Christmas so the excitement is building… but it’s not close enough to terrify me because I haven’t done the shopping. But the best thing of all is that in November we have our wedding anniversary.

We got married on Guy Fawkes night and the week leading up to and the week afterwards the night skies are filled with fireworks. It’s like a city wide celebration, just for us. In 1605 a law was passed, The Observance of 5th November Act, that called for a public, annual thanksgiving that the treasonous plot failed.

I have to wonder that anyone would think we would need a law to make us celebrate anything, as the Great British public will have a party at the drop of a hat, but there you go. Not wishing to be law breakers, we all join in and enjoy ourselves. It seemed to us to be a great day to get married, too.

We got married, in the late afternoon,  at Lumley Castle , near Durham, in the far north of England,one of  the most beautiful and romantic places in the world to have your wedding. There were fireworks going off outside as the speeches were taking place and the whole place had a magical and special air. The castle staff did everything to make our day perfect… and it was. We laughed as we exchanged our wedding vows – so much that the cermony stopped for a while as the giggles took hold of us all – and we carried on laughing for the rest of the evening.

Most of our wedding photographs show people, giggling helplessly. That set the tone for our marriage, I think.

Anyway, here we are, a few years on, still laughing and still celebrating. Last year I made us roast vegetables for our anniversary supper and we sat and watched the fireworks going off below us. This year we decided to take a day’s holiday from work and really celebrate.

The night before our anniversary we went to  Restaurant Sat Bains. This was our fourth visit to Nottingham’s only Michelin restaurant and, as it always has been, it was spectacular. Sat is one of the UK’s finest chefs and one of the most approachable and welcoming. One time we went we took the Bear’s sister, who had come from Australia  for her birthday and Sat invited her (and, therefore us, because we weren’t going to be left behind) into the kitchens.

 Sat really achieved  national fame in “The Great British Menu” that was screened on TV. Fourteen of the UK’s top chefs competed to win a place cooking a course in what would be the best menu Britain could produce. Sat’s starter of slow cooked duck egg, peas and ham scored a perfect 10 from each of the judges. It really is special and we have had it a couple of times before but this night we thought we would have the  ten course tasting menu. It’s not as daunting as it sounds.. the ten courses are delicious bite sized, or mini portions that make you glad you are there.  Explore the link if you want to see the kind of menus on offer… our menu started with scallops, then salmon that was so delicious I could have eaten plates of it, then duck, mutton, a barley and snail dish, then leeks before moving to the transition course and desserts. You need someone better than me to tell you how lovely it was. It’s not enough that I just make whimpering, moaning noises of delight and say it was lovely.

Life can’t be all Michelin restaurants, though, so for our anniversary proper, we decided to stay in and cook for ourselves. The Bear decided he wanted to have sausages in buns for supper because… well, because that’s what you have on Bonfire Night!

I made the buns from so No Knead Bread dough that was ready to be baked

and instead of baking the dough in a cast iron pot as I normally do, I heated a baking stone in the oven and just shaped the dough and then baked them on there. Without the cast iron pot which sears the outside, you get a softer bun, which was what I wanted.

That was going to be delicious… but, it was our anniversary, so I decided I needed something to make the sausages in buns special. Caramelised onions would be just the thing, I thought. Rich and tasty, soft and savoury onions, stuffed into the buns with hot sausages… what could be better or more appropriate for Bonfire Night?

All you need to make this is time (maybe an hour), onions, balsamic vinegar (a spoonful or so), some sugar and some salt and pepper.

I had five red onions. That was going to make a lot of caramelised onion, I know, but whatever I didn’t use was going to be put in a jar and kept in the fridge for later. It won’t keep forever but it will certainly keep for a couple of weeks at least, so you may as well make extra.

I love the look of red onions.

They are so vibrantly pink and beautiful.

Slice your onions finely and add them to a large frying pan with a good amount of olive oil, warmed on a gentle heat.

You are not wanting to fry them to a crisp, just to soften them as they cook slowly.

red onion cooking slowly

Adding a spoonful of salt keeps them soft and enhances the flavour.

As the onions start to soften, the colour gentles and blends slightly. What you need to do now is add some extra flavour and add to the caramelisation process. Balsamnic vinegar works brilliantly here, or, as I used, a balsamic vinegar glaze or crema. What they have done is reduce the vinegar down to a thick, sweet and sticky glaze that can be used in dressing, on roasts, in salads or in general cooking. It is, I suppose, what you would end up with if you slowly cooked straight balsamic vinegar, so don’t worry if that’s all you have.

The aim is to add another layer of flavour.

A tablespoonful or so needs to be stirred through while the onions carry on cooking slowly.

A dessertspoonful of golden granulated sugar needs to be stirred through to help the caramelisation

And then, after maybe another quarter of an hour you have a rich, sticky, soft and tasty tangled pile of onion……

All I had to do was slice open the buns

Add a fat and juicy sausage

… and then start adding the onion…..

It was delicious.

The night before, Michelin starred restaurant… that night, champagne, sausages and fireworks.

Pretty simple. Pretty delicious.

At the end of the night, we had had a lovely time and I still had enough caramelised onion to put into a jar and keep in the fridge. It’s perfect to serve with sausages, or pate, or cheese. Make some yourself and see how easy it is. It’s enough to make a simple supper special. We thought so, anyway.

Honey and thyme roasted parsnips and apple butter roast potatoes

When I made the delicious roast pork and crackling, I didn’t just eat the pork by itself (although I could have done…. could have done quite easily, actually), I did, in fact,  behave like a civilised person and served it with vegetables.  

I really like to make the most of what we have and I always believe that adding something as simple as a few fresh herbs or spices or other flavourings, moves the finished dish up from the level of plain boiled vegetables (and how uninspiring that sounds) to something really delicious and which, if necessary can be eaten alone and still make the diner feel happy. It’s a policy that has served me well, as the Bear has been known to present me with extra people for dinner at short notice.

That’s not a bad thing as I love cooking and I always have more than enough for extras….at home we set an extra place for the Unexpected Guest…just in case. If they do arrive then they won’t feel like they are causing a problem. If they don’t, well, at least we were ready for them.

The only problem that can arise is that the extra guest might turn out to be vegetarian or (as happened on one fraught evening, less than an hour before a meaty, buttery, cheesey, creamy extravaganza of a dinner was served) a vegan. If the meal is based around a meat dish then the side dishes and vegetables should be delicious enough that it is no hardship to make a meal just from them.

As a family we have always been strong on side dishes. We had a cousin of my father’s who would come to stay at Christmas or other family occasions and she would take great delight in counting the amount of separate dishes we had produced. That, of course, is because she lived through the war years when food was scarce and then later she lived alone. You never really make as much effort when you are cooking for one and a big selection of side dishes highlights the fact that first of all there’s plenty to eat and share and secondly,  it is a celebration.

I remember there was one famous occasion when Cousin Joan was almost beside herself  as she counted that there were over twenty separate dishes. OK, I admit several of them were potato dishes – roast potatoes, new potatoes boiled with mint, creamed potatoes and mini baked potatoes but even so, it was a triumph! My mother and aunt had excelled themselves. Everyone of us could choose something they particularly liked. Not one person felt left out and everyone felt full…..

So, as you see, I have a lot to live up to. This day, though, I wasn’t going for twenty or more vegetable and side dishes… just two. I was going to roast parsnips in honey and thyme and make roast potatoes with apple butter. Sweetly savoury vegetable dishes that would be perfect with the roast pork… or just by themselves!

The two can be cooked together, so read through this  because I will tell you about each, separately.

Honey and Thyme Roasted Parsnips

I had been shopping for vegetables and spotted some small parsnips labelled “Heritage variety parsnips”. They looked small and dainty and were, the greengrocer assured me, sweet and delicious. There was no other indication of what variety they were but it took it on trust and bought some.

I prefer my parsnips boiled then whizzed to a puree with some cream and horseradish but these were too small and dainty to do that to. Besides, the Bear adores roasted parsnips and as I was roasting pork anyway, it made life a lot easier to roast them alongside the joint.

They were topped and tailed, scrubbed and then rubbed in some garlic and oil. This is where using a tube of smooth garlic puree works well – it’s easy to get a smooth blend of oil and garlic so everything is coated consistently.

Parsnips with honey

Squeezing some honey over those baby roots will really work with the garlic and, when cooked, add a rich and tasty glaze.

Don’t go mad… just a drizzle over them will do.

Sprinkle some thyme over the parsnips as they cook – the stems will dry and the leaves fall off so don’t worry about trying to just get leaves, which is what everyone tells you to do. All you have to do then is pick out the by now hard and dried stems and the leaves stay behind. Cut the hardier stems from lower down on the thyme bush and just put them on top. (You will need the baby soft tender ends of the newest growth later) As they cook they will add another lovely layer of flavour.

The parsnips can go in the oven about half an hour, forty minutes before you take the meat out.  The temperature will be relatively low because of the meat so you won’t burn them.

 Then, when everything is ready  you can sprinkle some of the soft and tender baby thyme leaves over the parsnips.

They were delicious – parsnip is sweet and earthy by itself, the honey and thyme brightened that and the garlicky oil baste at the start brought everything together into a lovely sweet and savoury dish.

Apple Butter Roast Potatoes

I also had some baby potatoes and rather than just have them as steamed or boiled, I thought I might as well use the heat of the oven and roast them as well. Cost saving and efficient, as I’m sure you will agree.

Remember at the end of August we went foraging for apples in that abandoned orchard? I’d made lots of apple butter and used them in cakes and crumbles. I still had some left and they were really in need of being used up.

Pork and apple is a heavenly mix but rather than making an apple sauce, I thought I would roast them with the potatoes.

I didn’t peel them because I wasn’t going to peel the potatoes… I just cored and segmented them.

I cut the baby potatoes in half so they were roughly the size of the apple bits and sprinkled some thyme and oil over everything.

Using the same herb in the cooking process ties the dishes together well and makes them fit coherently. You don’t want them to taste overpoweringly of thyme – this just adds a hint, more of an echo really so they don’t clash with the parsnips.

Into the oven they go, alongside the parsnips so they can roast gently with the meat.

A spoonful or so of apple butter, towards the end of the cooking melts over the potatoes and adds a lovely appley, cinnamon, clove tasting glaze. Do this in the last ten minutes or so, after the potatoes have started to turn golden.

The apple has roasted to a soft, sweet mouthful and the potatoes have that delicious roasted taste, glazed over with the spiced apple butter.

Perfect to serve with roast meat.

Both of those dishes took just a few minutes to prepare and then they were left to do their thing in the oven. Much easier in my eyes than boiling or steaming. Much tastier too.

If a vegetarian had arrived that night – or even a vegan – they could have had , at least potatoes and parsnips and not felt too badly done by.

Cousin Joan would have approved though I am sure she would have wondered why I couldn’t have served at least another four or five dishes to accompany them……

Cheese and Sweetcorn Scones

When I made the delicious Roasted Garlic and Marrow Soup, I wanted something to go alongside the soup to make it a substantial lunch as I knew we weren’t going to be eating until late that night. What better, I thought than a savoury scone? One still warm from the oven? Maybe a good cheese scone would be just the thing.

Those of us who are British will know what I mean by a  scone – it’s what American’s call biscuits. What they call cookies, we call biscuits. Confusing, eh?

(A scone is an essential part of a British tea and  as Wikipedia points out ” According to one academic study, two-thirds of the British population pronounce it /?sk?n/, rhyming with “con” and “John”, with the preference rising to 99% in the Scottish population. The rest pronounce it /?sko?n/, rhyming with “cone” and “Joan”. British dictionaries usually show the “con” form as the preferred pronunciation, while recognizing that the “cone” form also exists”. I say “skon”  and as my husband will tell you, I am invariably right……..)

When I walked to the local shops I saw that the greengrocer was selling corn on the cobs, locally grown.

I knew from experience that these were sweet and delicious so I bought a couple. I’d seen a recipe in Good Food for cheddar and sweetcorn scones  so I thought this was the ideal opportunity and recipe to try out. I got some really good Cheddar from the Farm Shop and came home, knowing that it wouldn’t take more than half an hour to get them made.

The first thing to do was to cut the sweetcorn kernels off the cob. The easiest way to do this is to stand the cob in a Pyrex jug or bowl and run the knife down so the kernels fall into the jug. If you don’t do this then the kernels scatter everywhere. I know this because I have done it. What that means is that you then waste time looking for the sweeping brush and clearing up the mess. Do it in a bowl or a jug, eh?

It’s quick and its easy.

The next thing is to cook the kernels quickly. I  put a knob of butter in the bowl and microwave them for a couple of minutes if I am serving the corn as a side dish, but as these were to go into scones I decided that a small amount of water would do just as well. Adding extra butter to the recipe would skew things. It will only take a couple of minutes and then you can drain them, ready for the next step.

Start by heating the oven to 220 degrees C/430 F.

Mix, in a large bowl, 350g self raising flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, ½ teaspoon sweet smoked paprika, 1 teaspoon of salt  and some thyme leaves.

The original recipe called for mustard powder too, but mustard is one of the Bear’s Big Hates so I tend to avoid it whenever possible.

50g of unsalted butter must then be rubbed through until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Grate 175g of good strong Cheddar cheese and add most of that to the flour mix.

Add all of the cooked and drained sweetcorn and mix it all well, so there’s an even distribution of ingredients.

Add the juice of half a lemon to 175ml of semi skimmed milk.

My mother always used to save soured milk for scones when we were little… which makes me wonder, did milk go off more quickly years ago? I hardly ever have soured milk nowadays. maybe it is that fridges are better?

So, with no soured milk available, lemon juice does the job.

You can see that the milk looks almost lumpy… the lemon has acted on the milk, souring it and that’s the way to get perfect scones.

Mix it all together.

The dough will be sticky, but don’t despair and DON’T faff about with it. You need minimal interference for scones, otherwise the gluten in the flour toughens then and you end up with hefty, solid lumps, when you were wanting light and delicious morsels.

Sprinkle some flour on the board and knead the dough briefly so it comes together.

Make into 10 or 12 little balls by roughly rolling them.

Flour a baking tray or a silicone sheet on a baking tray and put the scones on.

Brush them with some milk, then scatter them with the rest of the cheese, some paprika nd any remaining thyme leaves.

Into the oven for 10 to 15 minutes until they are risen, golden and sound ready… that is, when you tap the bottom, they should sound hollow.

And just look at them!

Of course, we had to try one with some butter to see how they were……..

Before I served them with soup for lunch.

A perfectly light and deliciously tasty scone makes a great accompaniment to soup and now that the weather is changing I’m going to be making a lot more. Whyever wouldn’t I when in half an hour I can have beauties like these emerging from the oven?

Meatfree Monday – Chargrilled peppers in oil

There’s a movement gaining increased acceptance across the globe – Meatless Monday – if you  give up meat for one day a week, it cuts consumption by 15%. It started in the USA as non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns Inc. in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for a Livable Future.

“According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization the meat industry generates nearly one fifth of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change. Geophysicists at the Bard Center and the University of Chicago estimate that curbing meat consumption by 20% (which could be achieved through Meatless Mondays) would lower greenhouse gas emissions as dramatically as every American switching to an ultra-efficient hybrid vehicle.

The United Nations also found that current meat production methods cause nearly half of all stream and river pollution. Meat also requires a great deal of fresh water to manufacture. The production of a pound of beef takes approximately 2,500 gallons of water, compared to a pound of soy, which requires only 220 gallons.  By switching to soy on Mondays each individual could save about 890 gallons of water a week.

As of 2006, forty calories of fossil fuel energy go into every calorie of U.S. feed lot beef (manufacture, transport and storage included). By comparison, a calorie of plant-based protein only requires 2.2 calories of fossil fuel. If the population of the United States went meatless every Monday for a year, 12 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved.“

Now, those figures are based on American calculations but the maths is probably as relevant, proportionally,  to those of us in the UK. As a committed carnivore, I could never give up meat all together, though I do know how delicious meat free meals are. I justify it to myself by eating as much of the animal as possible (I don’t hold back from innards, guts and glands)  and making the most of every morsel. I could (and often do) serve meatless meals. Perhaps the formality of sticking to a meatless meal on Mondays would concentrate my mind?

Even if I don’t want to save the planet (how very mean of me) or care about the the welfare of animals (how callous would that be?) then I should care about my health …

“On average Americans consume 8 ounces of meat per day, 45% more than the USDA recommends. Meat typically contains higher levels of saturated fat than plant based foods. Saturated fat intake has been linked to multiple preventable illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and various cancers.  By removing meat once a week, the average American reduces saturated fat intake by 15%, diminishing the risk of these diseases.

A ten year longitudinal study has also linked rates of personal meat consumption to age of death. The results of this research suggest that the deaths of 1.5 million Americans over a ten year period can be attributed to excessive consumption of red and processed meats.

Chronic preventable illnesses—including those associated with excessive saturated fat intake—cause 70% of all deaths in the United States. In 2007 alone Americans spent 1.7 trillion dollars on health care related to preventable illnesses”

Following on from that, here in the UK, Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney started Meatfree Monday , saying “In the future we are all going to have to change the way we eat. We believe that it is possible to do things like changing our diets with a sense of optimism, joy and the satisfaction that you are really helping to make a difference in the world.”.

It’s not just about saving the world.  It’s also about saving our purses. Cutting back on meat provides a good cost saving as well. It is a return to the way our families ate in years gone by. Nowadays we are (in the main) lucky enough to be able to buy meat, if we want to, every day. In previous centuries meat was seen as a luxury and what meat there was had to be eked out.  (One of my favourite books, Elisabeth Luard’s “European Peasant Cookery” would be a good thing to read if you were interested in finding out more. There’s a whole world of recipes just waiting to be explored.)

Anyway, on to what I am going to do. I will make that effort. I will make Monday my meat free day.

Now…. I said it would be meat free Monday. I said nothing about the Sunday….which wasn’t meat free. Not meat free by any means.

I was doing a barbecue and realised that the glowing embers of the charcoal would be perfect for chargrilling peppers.

I love chargrilled peppers – they are a wonderful addition to salads and for those of us who take packed lunches to work, they are truly gorgeous in sandwiches. I like to use red peppers best of all as they are sweeter but this time I had some green ones to add in.

Vegetarians.. look away! Yes they are sausages. Now, the success of the peppers does not rely on sausages being grilled next to them. It’s just, as you know, we only have a small balcony so I have to have a small bucket barbecue. I have to put on what I can, when I can.

Anyway, on they go and they are turned on the grill to get good and charred

Once that’s done and they are charred all round, pop the peppers (mind your fingers!) into a plastic bag so they can cool down.

As they cool, they steam and the skin loosens and is easy to peel off. Once they are cool, tip them out of the bag.

They will be juicy and dribble a lot so make sure you do this over a plate. It’s a messy job but oh-so-worth it.

Peel off the skin and scoop out the seeds – you will be left with just the glisteningly soft flesh of the peppers.

I cut them into slices so they are easier to deal with once they are in oil.

All you do then is get an air tight box and pour in some oil – I was using (because I had some left and I needed to finish the bottle) Rice Bran oil and olive oil

and I mixed it with some Lea and Perrins Tomato and Worcester Sauce.

Use whatever you like to flavour the oil slightly. The peppers have a lovely sweet and smokey flavour to them but adding just a hint of flavour to the oil really makes them special.

And then, all you do is add the sliced char grilled peppers.

And chill.

Actually, that could be an instruction to you as well as what you do with your box of peppers!  Because that’s all there is to it.

Into the fridge with the box and you have the perfect ingredient for salads or sandwiches.

Oh, and I use it in meat dishes too…… one of our favourites is Pork and Pepper Goulash 

I’m adding this bit in here because the lovely Lorraine added it to the Comment section after this was initially posted and unless you read through the comments you might not spot what she says. Lorraine lives in Canada and is married to Sonny, who is Italian…..

“As far as the grilled peppers, we grill a bushel of them every September when we get them cheap from the farmer’s market. My dear old mother-in-law (now l0l) got me into this a number of years ago as they are a staple in the Italian household. They appear on plates at every family meal. However, being only two of us, we grill the peppers and after cleaning them all, place them on paper towelling and then we place in small freezer bags and freeze for the winter. We take out a bag or two, place in a container and add olive oil, glove of garlic, dash of balsamic and if you like, some hot pepper flakes. Great on sandwiches and with grilled MEAT. Not a fan of the green ones – but the Yellow and Orange Bell Peppers are great – you must try.”

What a great idea that is. If you leave the peppers in oil for too long they soften too much. The way forward is, obviously, to do it Lorraine’s way and freeze any excess until you need them.

Today, though, is Meatfree Monday and I made sandwiches. Cream cheese and roasted pepper sandwiches…..

Delicious!

I’m on the way to saving the planet, my health and my cash…..pretty much of a result for the start of the week, eh?

Broccoli a Bear will eat

As you know, I wage a constant battle to get the Bear to eat what I want him to eat. All in the interest of health, you know, it’s not just me wanting to assert dominance over my poor, beleagured husband. It makes things easier as well, if you both eat the same things. I am having some success – he is now eating prawns and has started to eat broccoli.

Yes, I know, not everybody loves broccoli and for some the slightly bitter tang puts them off, but my reasoning is that if the Bear can eat raw broccoli with a dip as a crudite, or broccoli and stilton soup, or even the deliciously tasty Broccoli and Stilton Pastryless Pie then he can eat it as a vegetable.

And not complain.

Finally, it seems, I may have cracked it.

I’d made the salt and pepper pork tenderloin for supper and knew we needed something with it. He’d started with a crisp salad of leaves, red and yellow peppers and tomatoes so I reckoned that if he didn’t eat what was served with the pork, that wasn’t going to harm him.

Anyway, I love broccoli.

I had gone to our local farm shop and come back with two gloriously green and hard heads of broccoli. We have been on a high protein and low carb diet and butter (thank God) is allowed. I had a feeling that I could make something delicious – well, delicious for me – and if he was hungry enough then he would eat it.

So, I chopped the florets off and sliced the stalks into smaller chunks.

Broccoli stems take longer to cook than the florets so they need to go in a pan first with some butter and a sprinkle of salt. Put it on a medium heat so you don’t burn things.

Give them a couple of minutes to soften slightly before you add the florets.

Toss them round in the butter – you want them to soften and cook but not turn to mush.

It still looks green and delicious and it is holding its shape but now there’s a softness about it.

Sooooo… all well and good but I have to get the Bear to eat it.

I need to up the protein level as well so a great big spoonful of Philadelphia cream cheese goes in and melts over the broccoli.

It is now on a low heat, stir it round and let it cover everywhere.

A spoonful of double cream helps loosen things and makes a delicious sauce.

With salt and pepper added to bring everything together, the creamy, faintly coolly-cheese (you know how cream cheese has that sort of taste) sauce the broccoli feels slightly tamed.

Take the broccoli out and reduce the creamy sauce so it thickens, adding a knob of butter – this makes it taste even more rich and delicious. Just the thing to add to that steaming green goodness.

The bitterness has disappeared and you have a savoury, tasty pile of broccoli, just ready to serve to an unsuspecting Bear.

So I did. There was his pork just asking for something to sit along side it… there was that sauce just begging to be poured over everything. I served it up.

After all, he’d already had a lovely big crisp salad… if he didn’t like the broccoli it wouldn’t be so bad.

It was delicious. Utterly, absolutely, totally gorgeous. I had justified giving myself the larger portion because, after all, he doesn’t like broccoli.

“Did you like it?” I asked.

“Yes…. I just wish there was more broccoli…. ”

Drat. There was more and I had my greedy little eyes on that but in the interests of converting the Bear to a love of broccoli, I just had to do it. This was unprecedented in our lives together – my Bear actually asking for broccoli. He got the lot.

Now, once I have got him to eat it like this I can start to cut back on the cream and Philly – not too much, you understand – and it becomes even healthier.

Maybe I won’t though. Maybe it is just delicious as it is.

Oh, and you know what? He’s asked for, and eaten, broccoli cooked like this several times since. So maybe if you have children who find broccoli just too bitter, try it like this. You never know… one day you might hear the magical words “I just wish there was more broccoli”

Wild garlic buds

You know how some days you just long for something different to eat? Perhaps the weather is getting you down or the work you are doing seems rather tedious and your mind starts to wander….. you feel hungry (oh, how often I feel hungry. Goes with the territory of being a greedy old thing, I suppose) anyway, you feel hungry and you start to think of nice things to cook. A treat seems to be called for. Something to brighten up your evening…..

And then I thought of my wild garlic.

I’d cut away at the leaves the other week but I still had plenty of buds and as my mind was still unoccupied by pressing problems I started to think of how I could use the buds.

I’ve had them in a light tempura-style batter (but I didn’t want the fuss)

And in risotto (but I didn’t want to eat rice)

And I started to think about the shape of the buds….

Perhaps if I cosseted them in some butter, like tiny tender stems of asparagus…..

I could serve them with some lovely roast lamb. I had a lamb henry in the freezer…that would be quick. Forty-five minutes in a hot oven would get me a deliciously cooked piece of lamb and a few seconds in a pan and I could have the wild garlic ready.

Sometimes it’s worth letting your mind wander.

Besides the weather was awful

The rain was lashing down and if ever a day called for something tasty to cheer me, this was it.

Out in the rain I went and snipped away to get a good handful of slender stemmed garlic buds. I  got a few leaves as well as they would be lovely sauteed with a drop of cream as a base to balance the buds on. It doesn’t have to be like that of course… it’s just I had an abundance of sweetly mild leaves and some cream.

And I’m greedy. Have I mentioned that before?

So, a good handful of leaves

And some juicy buds … all I needed now was a knife, some butter and a pan or two.

Roughly chop the leaves while a knob of butter starts to sizzle in a pan

Then pop in the shredded leaves with a pinch of salt and let them saute gently.

A lovely dollop of thick Jersey cream makes a deliciously smooth and savoury sauce for the sofetened leaves.

Pop those tender buds and stems into more hot butter and quickly (very quickly) let them cook through.

And that was it.

My lamb was ready and all I did was serve those soft and buttery wilted garlic buds and stems over the lamb alongside a smooth and rich spoonful of creamy, shredded wild garlic leaves.

Remarkably delicious, though I say it myself.

Puys, peas please me

As the Spring advances, I seem to be getting more lively, almost as if I am speeding up.

I walk faster and I feel brighter and more alert. Must be the increased sunshine, I reckon.

The same goes for my cooking. I am moving away from slow cooked food and wanting faster results. I want to get in from work and make something quickly. Something brighter tasting and lively.

And who would have thought that lentils would fit the bill?

Not red lentils – these are lovely nutty, green and brown speckled  Puy lentils.

They cook really quickly, too.

Before you dismiss lentils as dark and stodgy, try them. They are packed full of protein and deliciously tasty and  make a perfect accompaniment for fish or meat. Sometimes potatoes just seem so… potatoey. Sometimes you want a change and lovely Puy lentils give you that.

They take the same time to cook as does roasting a piece of salmon in the oven… how about that as an easy supper option?

All you have to do is pour some Puy lentils into a pan, add some water and a stock cube (for added flavour) and start to boil gently.

The stock absorbs within a few minutes  – just try them and see if they are at the state of tenderness that you would prefer. They aren’t going to go mushy like red lentils, they keep their shape so don’t guage by looking, taste them. Maybe ten minutes or so should do it.

Then, just as you are ready to serve, add a handful or so of frozen peas.

Stir them round so they defrost.

And the surprise secret ingredient that changes this to a really lovely side dish that you will want to make again and again?

A spoonful of mint jelly. Stirred in, once everything is cooked, it  adds a lovely sweet brightness to the finished dish and really lifts it.

Don’t be put off by this – it doesn’t give it an over powering taste of mint, more of an elusive sweet sharpness that works wonderfully with fish and meat.

In actual fact, I am happy to eat this all by itself it’s so tasty.

Go on… you really should make them.