Foraging again – apples, plums and more apples

Today is the last Bank Holiday of the year in England so we decided to make the most of it. A extra day added to our weekend – what bliss!

The weather is good so we decided to go looking for more fruit.. and what fruit we found. We live on the top of a hill and at the back of where we live is a lovely park. Parts of it are overgrown – so much so that the apple trees appear to be fruiting blackberries as well. The brambles reach up and entwine through the branches so that blackberries are dangling down from ten feet or so.

Apples  weighed down the branches of the trees, deep in the undergrowth. One bump against the trunk and the apples fell down, bumping against branches and disappearing into the tangled brambles and grasses onto the ground. It’s so overgrown that I couldn’t even see them after they landed.

Within minutes we had a bag full. We had to ignore all the huge, fat, shining blackberries because I just don’t have the time to deal with them today and there’s no point picking them if you can’t cook them the same day.

As we walked back round to our apartment, I saw something drop to the path in front of me. It was a fat, ripe plum. I must have walked by that tree a hundred times before and not noticed it was a plum tree. In my defence, it is in the shrubbery, lining the path. Maybe it’s just that everything is fruiting this summer. Trees at home that I know have not fruited in 20 years are now covered in apples.

Anyway, I didn’t need anymore encouragement than that – I handed my bag to the Bear and dived into the shrubbery to get to the plum tree. Before I knew it, there were a dozen juicy Victoria plums falling first into my hands and secondly into the forage bag.

We had to stop. I didn’t think there was going to be so much fruit but with quarter of an hour we had two bags full.

The plums were large and sweet – definitely part of a fruit garden at one point

The apples were various sizes and what I call “ear biter” apples – you know, the sweetly sharp ones that make you squeak with delight when you bite into them as they sort of tweak you behind your ears? I love apples like that.  We seemed to have brought home more than we thought. I also brought home several small spiders and a caterpillar or two. No wonder I was feeling itchy after crawling through those bushes.

And out on the balcony I had another apple tree, a Greensleeves which is also a sharp and crisp apple.

I was going to have do a lot of apple cooking.

This coming week I am going to make Apple Butter, an apple cake and Toffee Apple Crumble as we are having a guest for dinner one night. And there were plums to cook as well….so much fruit and so little time.

First will be the Apple Butter, something I have wanted to make for a long time. There’s no butter in it… just apples, spices and some sugar, cooked until the natural sugars in the apple caramelise and turn it a soft brown, leaving it soft and smooth, (which is why it is called butter) perfect to spread on bread. What a great way to use up the apple bounty. It preserves them, too,  making a delicious treat for later in the year. 

I’d better get a move on, then… just as well this a holiday!

Foraging to make Fruit Leather – Part 2

So, we returned from our foraging expedition with two bags of berries. There were still huge amounts left on the bushes but we had to stop. I needed to see if the fruit leather experiment would work, or, at least, work for me. If it does then I am going back to get more.

Once back in the kitchen I picked through the berries and removed any leaves and stray bits that had fallen into our bags and put them straight into a large, heavy bottomed pan on a gentle heat to start cooking down.

The theory behind making fruit leather is that you have to cook the fruit and puree it, adding just honey or sugar to sweeten it (if necessary) and lemon juice. What you end up with is the very essence of the fruit so it is important to keep everything simple. There’s no need to add too much sugar…I suppose, though, it is a matter of taste. Berries, especially wild berries, can be very sharp and do need something to sweeten them. Just don’t go masking the fruit with an overload of sugar.

A sprinkling of sugar helps the berries start to cook down – there’s  no need to add water as the juices soon come out. Just look at that glorious colour!

Once the fruit was cooked, I strained the fruit pulp to get the majority of the juice out

There was still a lot of juice in the pulp so I got my mouli food mill out and started milling the pulp. This will keep the seeds out and push through the pulp. Wild berries are very seedy so you must try and get the majority of them out. If you haven’t got a food mill then try pushing the pulp through a sieve.

You can see how many seeds there are as the pulp gets pushed through

And underneath the mill you can see the pure fruit pulp being squeezed out

Last year we had gone to a Pick Your Own Fruit farm and came home with punnets of strawberries. I had cooked some of them down and frozen, in bags, those we didn’t eat. This was an ideal time to use up the last of the bags of strawberries and add some extra fruit to our fruit leather. There would be seeds from the strawberries, I know, but at least I had removed the majority of the blackberry seeds.

I added the juice of a lemon

And some honey to taste

And pureed it all to a lovely smooth mix before letting it simmer, bubbling gently for 5 minutes.

I lined a couple of baking trays with clingfilm

And poured in a thin layer of the fruit puree. It spreads out over the cling film. You don’t need a really thick layer – maybe 3mm or thereabouts? Put in a bit at a time and tip the tin back and forth to get an even layer.

My great plan to free up freezer space by making preserved fruit that didn’t need freezing wasn’t quite working out because I had puree left over.  Into pots it went and into the freezer. Some was poured over yoghurt that evening to have a a dessert after supper.

And then this is when I started to wonder how I was going to do the next bit….

Everything I had read suggested that the trays were then put into the oven on 50 degrees c (120 degrees F) and left for 6 hours. And yes, it was OK to use clingfilm and put it in the oven. That temperature is so low it won’t melt the clingfilm. What you are really doing, of course, is just drying it out, rather than cooking it. When this is manufactured on a large scale, dehydrators are used but an oven on the lowest temperature possible for a long time does the job just as well.

Thing is, it was 9pm and I was tired… did I start it off now and then set my alarm for 3am? Or did I try and stay awake till midnight and then turn the oven off when I got up for work?  What would happen if I left it in for longer?

I decided, in the end, to start it off before I went to bed and get up at three…. but then, of course, I ended up waking up every hour or so and going to check.  I thought I might as well so at least we would all have some kind of idea about cooking it.

For the first few hours it was definitely liquid and I thought I must have gone wrong somewhere but eventually

as the sun came up,  it became thicker and sticky… and at last it looked set.

It was darker and when I touched it it felt tacky but not sticky

I could peel it away from the cling film! It had worked!

Maybe it could have stayed in a bit longer as there was some puree still liquid underneath…

But really? I think it worked! It pulled up as a sheet just as I’d read it would do

I had two sheets of fruit leather

It was easy to cut into strips

And held up to the light it was the most beautiful colour

All I had to do now was put the strips into an airtight box and we had our supplies of fruit leather.

The big question, of course, is was it worth it?

Was it worth diving through the bushes, getting scratched and prickled to collect the fruit? Was it worth the constant getting up to check the progress of the leather? Would I do it again?

Yes, yes and yes.

I know that next time I will be more relaxed about the timing  – 50 degrees C is so low that leaving it in there for longer won’t harm it and next time when there’s puree left over I will simply make another tray of it.

The taste was fantastic – it really was the fruitiest fruity taste I’d ever had. The texture was smooth and chewy, but not horribly so… it soon dissolves. We have eaten it as a sweet treat  and also cut it into slices and stirred it through yoghurt.

Guess what? We’re going out blackberrying again.

Foraging to make Fruit Leather – Part 1

The Bear was finally home from his travels and we were  not at work.  It was also not raining or blowing a gale. For everything to come together like that,  is actually a very rare occurrence in our lives so we decided to make the most of it and go for a stroll and see how the blackberries were doing in the hedgerows. Goodness knows why the Bear and I went out to get more fruit because our freezer (and the freezer of everyone associated with our family) is already packed with fruit already. I suppose it’s just that  I just can’t bear to see waste. The brambles are absolutely laden with fruit and even the birds can’t get through that much.

This year has been fantastic for fruit – my apples and figs were fruiting heavily on the trees on the balcony and my mother’s fruit garden has produced more pounds of goosecurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries than we know what to do with.

We have had family and friends round to pick as much as they want and there are still pounds more to pick

It comes to something when even her young grandson is sent out to help get the redcurrants. He carefully showed me how best to get them off the stems using a fork to drag down the stalks, knocking the currants off as it goes and a bowl underneath to catch them.

The goosecurrants (two ancient bushes) are a cross between a blackcurrant and a gooseberry and they have been particularly prolific this year.

They make fantastic jam or jelly and my sister in law has made some spectacular jam that puts my mother’s to shame. Mind you, she is the one who did the Pheasant Breasting Masterclass  while my brother took the pictures,back in December, so you know from that that she has a real talent in the kitchen.

Even my mother’s  ancient apple tree that hasn’t borne fruit for the last 20 odd years has suddenly started producing. There are bags of cleaned fruit in the freezers just waiting to have something done with them. Enough jam has been made to go on toast and fill cakes until all of us are old and grey and we still have more bags than we can count. Cordials and ice creams are next on the list to make – all we are missing is the time to do them all.

But still, we thought, we might as well go and look at the blackberries. And besides, I had an idea for something. Something that wouldn’t take up any more freezer space. If we did get blackberries I would use them that evening.

We live on the top of a hill and to the side of where we are, is a lovely park. We can walk out along the private path and down into the park itself. It is a fantastic walk in every season of the year – in winter it really looks magical in the snow… in summer, people are out on the grass and now? Now the bushes are laden with fruit and people are walking round with bags.

The park is well maintained and the grass is mown and even the edges where the hedgerow plants are, are looked after. The gardeners  always leave the blackberry bushes to fruit.

Deep inside the bushes that line the edge of the park are old, abandoned apple trees that fruit heavily and the apples just fall to the ground.

Today though, we were there for blackberries. Plenty of people had been there before us so we were going to have to head deeper into the bushes.

We went further into the wild tangle of brambles – so wild they had entwined themselves around apple trees and the blackberries hung down alongside ripening apples.

Luckily I brought along a straightened out wire coat hanger (with the hook left, of course) so I could pull down the best of the blackberry branches.

We got lots of great big, fat and juicy blackberries with only minor damage to ourselves – a few scratches here and there and a minor tumble into the stinging nettles… but, as I assured the Bear as he lay there yelping in agony, it would all be worth it.

The thing about blackberries is that you have to use them the day you pick them. They must carry mould spores on them because if you leave them for a few hours, once picked, they will go mouldy.

There was a reason for me wanting to get more fruit, though. I wanted to try something I had read about over the past few years. When we first met, for our first Christmas, the Bear bought me “Preserved” by Johnny Acton and Nick Sandler – fabulous book that details all kinds of methods and recipes for preserving food. I’d read it and made plans to work through it but, as always, life got in the way and I never got round to it.

The thing I was most intrigued by was fruit leather – where quantities of fruit were pureed and then dried, in a thin layer, making a dried fruit sheet that lasts  without having to freeze it. It’s called leather because that is what it looks like – it is soft and chewy in reality.

So… something that could use up extra fruit and wouldn’t take up space in my freezer? That had to be worth a go, right?

Meatfree Monday – Baguette baked with cheese, tomatoes and peppers

For me, there’s something so soothing about baking bread. I love getting out a big bag of flour, some yeast and some good salt and knowing you can turn it into something delicious. Those ingredients, by themselves, could never be a meal (unlike quite a lot of things we cook with) but together, in some almost alchemical way, become something nearly essential to our day to day life. We talk of “breaking bread together” to refer to eating together. Bread in the Bible is called “The Staff of Life”  and means it is a staple, or a necessary food. We talk of  “Our daily bread”  both in prayer and conversation. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t religious in any way, it’s just the Bible tends to be the oldest, most widely accessible book in the world and phrases and proverbs from there crop up in our everyday language without the majority of us even noticing, or realising where they come from.

The fact that these terms have entered our language and are used daily point to the importance of bread for the majority of people. “Bread” and “dough”  are even used as slang terms for money.

Anyway, I love the action of making bread. I love the smell of it baking and I especially love cutting into a still warm loaf. I think I could get away with murder in our house as long as the Bear can have his fresh loaf. His favourite is the No-Knead Bread but sometimes I make soft white bread because, really, there’s nothing like it for a fried egg sandwich which is one of our favourite weekend breakfasts.

This  wasn’t planned as a breakfast , however. I wanted to make us something nice for lunch. Something light and tasty but also something that would brighten what was a rather vile day. There were thick clouds everywhere and violent rain storms. The Met Office were issuing storm and flood warnings. A typical British Summer, eh?

I had a fancy for a sandwich but a kind of baked and stuffed sandwich. Sort of like a calzone pizza but with lovely white bread. I wanted a light and fresh toasted sandwich – certainly not a heavy meaty one…and it had to be suitable for Meatfree Monday.

But first of all I had to make the bread.

That’s as easy as anything, really.

250g of strong white bread flour with a teaspoon each of dried yeast and salt are stirred together so you have all the dry ingredients evenly dispersed

50g of butter can then be rubbed through, rubbing the butter lumps with your fingers so they make a fine, almost granular in appearance, mix.  (Yes, the Bear took that photograph as my hands were messy)

5 fluid ounces of warm water need to be poured in and mixed through. The warm water helps the yeast become active, so don’t have it too hot as this will kill the yeast and too cold means it won’t start to work its yeasty magic and make the bread rise.

The dough will come together quickly and then you need to knead it. Either do it by hand (and it’s not a tough job as this is only a small quantity of dough, just enough for two people) or if you have a mixing machine with a dough hook, stick it in there for 5 minutes. If you are doing it by hand, take ten minutes and think of it as a meditative exercise… I stretch the dough away from me and pull it back again and again. The texture of the dough changes from an uneven, lumpy mass into a smooth and almost silky ball of dough that bounces back when you poke it. It’s a marvellous way of calming down or settling your mind.

Once the dough looks right – and you will be able to tell the difference from when you started out – make it into the shape you want and leave it to rest, lying in either a greased loaf tin, covered with a damp tea towel to stop it drying out or, as I have done, lying on some lightly  oiled cling film and loosely wrapped. I wanted a baguette shape so I rolled it between my hands for a free form shape.

That needed to rise quietly by itself until it had doubled in size, which, in normal temperatures, takes about an hour or maybe an hour and a half. In the depths of winter it can take longer and you might have to find a warm place so the dough can rise.

Once it had grown into the size it should be – i.e. a baguette big enough for two – I pulled it apart and started putting the filling in.

Sun dried tomatoes went first.

Slices of lovely, tangy Tallegio cheese on top of that. I chose Tallegio because it melts well and tastes divine. You choose whatever you think is the nicest.

And remember those roasted red peppers I made?  I thought they would add an extra layer of flavour, so the last of them were laid on top.

Then it was simply a matter of making sure the oven was heated to 230 degrees C/45o degrees F and the edges of the dough pinched back together

A few slashes across the top to let it expand and then it went iinto the oven for half an hour or so.

You’ll be able to smell it when it’s ready – that gorgeous baking bread smell fills the apartment and the Bear starts to look around, sniffing, realising his lunch is nearly ready.

The bread has risen nicely and browned gently… some of the cheese has started to ooze out….

And cut into? It’s not doughy at all but a lovely, well risen soft white baguette with a hot and savoury tomatoey, cheesey and smokey peppered middle!

A success, if I say so myself.

The Bear thought so too and, really, that’s what counts for me.

Try it… put whatever filling you like in – the heat of the oven will heat the filling as it bakes the bread. It really is worth it… delicious baguette stuffed with your favourite things. Just what you need to brighten a wet and windy August day!

Beans and Egg on Toast – the Bear’s favourite homecoming meal.

The Bear travels a lot.

All over the world. And wherever he travels  he eats. He has a great time sampling different foods and styles of cooking but whenever he gets back from his travels he always asks for one thing in particular. I would and could cook him anything at all, no matter how involved or time consuming, because I am so pleased that he is home again….. and all he ever wants is his favourite.

I think it happens to us all when you have been away from home for too long. All you want is something that is inextricably tied to memories of home, something that can only be made at home… you’d never be able to get a restaurant to make it for you. They could try but they’d never get it right. Restaurants are fine… they are great in some cases but eating out every night? After a while you need something simple. Once when I had been travelling round the south of India for weeks, eating the most delicious food and learning to make dal, I was preparing to come home and all I could think about was my mother’s cooking.  In an internet cafe in Bangalore (this was only a few years ago but BlackBerry’s weren’t on the market yet) I emailed work and asked the lovely Lolly to phone my Mum and tell her I was on my way back and to please make fish pie for my homecoming! And when I eventually got back, there it was, delicious and perfect and exactly what I needed after so long away.

Homecoming food should be comfort food. It should make you feel surrounded with love. It shouldn’t be – it can’t be – challenging, it has to be familiar.

So that’s what he gets.

And what is it? It’s beans on toast with a fried egg. But, like the advert says, it’s not just ANY beans on toast with a fried egg… it’s the Bear’s Beans on toast with a fried egg!

There are specific ingredients, though, that make this special. It wouldn’t be the same if I used supermarket bread, no matter what premium range it came from. It wouldn’t be the same if I used any old beans and just plonked them on the toast. And it certainly wouldn’t be the same if I used ordinary eggs and just fried them any old way.

The bread has to be made by me and it has to be No-Knead Bread because that not only tastes good but it has the perfect texture. It doesn’t dissolve when you pour the beans over it. Go and follow that link for a step by step look at making it. I have to start it the day before I need it but that’s good, when I start the bread I know my Bear will be home soon.

Those eggs? They are the gorgeous free range eggs from our local farm shop. Free range makes such a difference and the quality of their eggs reflects this. They are large with golden yolks and taste simply delicious.

And the beans? Well, they just HAVE to be Heinz.

So far so good.

And now to start it. The thing about beans is that they can – even the best of them – be a bit watery. We don’t like that. We like them heated gently and slowly till they become rich and thick.

….. and with a knob of butter added to them to make them taste even better.

The bread has to be cut thick, but not too thick and toasted

…..before being spread with salted Normandy butter

…. and piled high with beans. See how thick they are? How tasty they are too…..

The eggs are cooked in oil with some chilli oil poured in (ohhhh… how good that makes the eggs taste. Just a bit of a bite to them!)

And then you put the eggs on top.

It really is delicious. The yolk spills out and mixes with the beans and the toast mops up all the delicious dribbles.

It still needs just one extra thing though for the ultimate, homecoming comfort food….Heinz tomato sauce……

And that’s why you can’t get that in a restaurant. 

There are so many specifics and the biggest of them all is that the cook has to make a tomato sauce heart over the top.

Perfect homecoming food that says welcome back and come on in, you’ve been missed.

Meatfree Monday – citrus, thyme and garlic potatoes, or dinner from scraps.

We didn’t have much in the apartment – I’d been getting to work early and getting back late and the thought of stopping to buy food was just too much. Crawl through rush-hour traffic and pull off the main road, then fight through shoppers and then try and get back to the main road? No thanks.

I knew there were a few potatoes left and I could do something with them….

I had some polenta pie left so that would go with them.

I needed to liven them up a bit so as I drove back I worked through what else we had in the apartment… or what else we had growing outside the apartment.

There was a lovely, healthy bush of thyme, just outside the french doors. I could use that…..

And in the freezer there was a bag of quartered lemons and limes. Whenever I have lemons and limes left over, rather than letting them dry out and go to waste, I quarter them and freeze them. That way I have a marvellous ice cube for a G&T or other drink. But if I used them for the potatoes… well… they would go perfectly with thyme.

So I had a plan.

The potatoes were washed and  cubed and the oven put on at 180 degrees C/160 degrees C, fan assisted/350 degrees F.

I put the cubed potato in a bowl with some water and salt – minimal water – and microwaved them for 5 minutes. You could parboil them but this was faster and I was tired, hungry and didn’t want to wash any pans.

In a lined baking tray, I mixed crushed garlic with oil and salt

and grabbed a handful of thyme and lemon and lime pieces.

The potato cubes were thrown into the baking tin with the thyme and the frozen lemon and lime and everything was tossed in the garlicky oil.

Into the oven for twenty to thirty minutes while I went to get changed out of my work clothes and into something more comfortable.

The thyme leaves fall off the stem so all you have to do is pick out the stems and Bob’s your uncle.

The potatoes had that lovely, almost sweet, savoury taste, crunchy on the edges and deliciously soft in the middle. The lemon and lime had cooked slowly from frozen solid to soft, almost caramenlised roastedness, which gave everything a lovely sharpness and the garlic and thyme worked wonderfully. With a few salad leaves from the box on the balcony and a couple of tiny tomatoes and the remnants of the polenta pie, I had a marvellous meal in less than 40 minutes.

Now, look at that photograph more carefully…. guess who didn’t spot that lime quarter nestling amongst her potatoes?

What have I learned from this?

That a delicious meal can be made from scraps, that freezing lemons and limes are not just for gin…. and that wearing your glasses when dishing up is a good idea.

Moroccan meatballs with egg

I was on a roll with making food from my 400 and Under collection of recipes. I always look out for recipes that provide less than 400 calories per serving because that means we have some leeway with having a glass of wine, say, while still keeping our calories down and, therefore, still (theoretically at least) sticking to a diet. The thought of Moroccan spiced meatballs with egg in a delicious tomatoey sauce seemed too good to be true – a rich and delicious supper that would only add up to (according to Good Food Magazine, where I found the recipe) a mere 377 calories per serving.

It’s diet food! And it would be delicious. Who wants to live on cottage cheese and celery when you can have a gorgeous steaming bowl of meatballs? Meatballs in a tomato and chickpea spiced sauce with a lovely egg cooked in there…….I had everything I needed so I started by chopping a small sweet white onion and a small red onion. That’s because the recipe said one onion… and these were more midget sized onions.

They went into the frying pan to soften while I started on the meatballs themselves. I did have one problem – I had no ground cinnamon and I needed that for a real Moroccan hit. I love the smell of cinnamon (and having made this recipe once, the next time I will add more cinnamon) I did have, however, cinnamon sticks and a large pestle and mortar…

Quite therapeutic to bash and grind the cinnamon into a soft and fragrant powder. But possibly easier to buy it ground…..? I did manage to get some ground cinnamon but there were lots of bits of the stick left. Anyway, I did, in the end, after lots of pounding, finish up with half a teaspoon or thereabouts which I added to 250g of lamb mince.

(Having made the dish I have to say that I would, when I do it again, add more than half a teaspoon of cinnamon because I so love that rich and exotic taste and smell. If you aren’t as keen on Middle eastern flavours then just stick to the recipe)

I added 50g of fresh breadcrumbs (I made them by whizzing up a breadbun I had)

and added an egg, salt and pepper.

By now the onions were beautifully soft and once they cooled slightly, I stirred them in, mixed them round and started to make meatballs. The Bear was called into action… my poor Canon camera gets so much abuse with my sticky fingers but I really couldn’t subject it to meatball mix.

They had to be cooked in the fat left in the frying pan, turning them gently until they were browned

That only takes about 8 minutes – don’t worry, remember they do go back into the pan when you have made the tomato sauce. Take them out and put them to one side.

The recipe said use a courgette, thickly sliced but I only had baby courgettes, so I reckoned three of them would be the equivalent of a normal courgette… so they got sliced and gently fried for a minute or so

Before adding in a couple of cans of chopped plum tomatoes

… a teaspoon of Ras-el Hanout – a Moroccan spice blend that you can buy in most large supermarkets nowadays. You can make it yourself if you can’t find it – click on that link and it takes to a description and a recipe.

… and two teaspoons of honey

Once the tomatoey mix was soft, a tin of chickpeas was added and the stirred round

and then the meatballs put in

After that, the recipe said to make four hollows in the suace and crack eggs into them… I couldn’t really manage – maybe my sauce wasn’t thick enough? – anyway, I broke the eggs in and pulled the sauce away from underneath so the raw egg dropped down into the sauce.

The pan was covered for 5 minutes or so and left on a low heat to set the eggs……

And it was delicious! The cinnamony richness of the meatballs was perfect with the spicy tomato, chickpea and Ras-El Hanout spices and the beautiful egg was the perfect addition in terms of difference in texture and taste.

This is definitely something we shall be cooking again… and it was on our diet! Less than 400 calories per serving….if you stick to one serving that is….oh, it is delicious!

As Good Food doesn’t have a link to the recipe – here it is

Ingredients:

1 onion finely chopped; 3 tbsp of olive oil; 50g fresh breadcrumbs;  250g of lean lamb mince;  1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon; 5 eggs; 2 garlic cloves, sliced; 1 courgette thickli sliced; 2x400g chopped plum tomatoes; 2 tsp. of honey; 1 tsp ras-El Hanout spice blend; 400g chickpeas, rinsed and drained.

Fry the onion in 1 tbsp oil until soft, leave to cool. Mix with the breadcrumbs, mince, cinnamon, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp salt and lots of pepper then shape into about 24 meatballs. Fry in the remaining oil in the pan for about 8 minutes until bgrowned. Lift out and set aside.

Add garlic to the oil in the pan and fry till softened. Add courgettes, fry gently for about a minutes then add tomatoes, honey, Ras-El Hanout, seasoning and a couple of tbsp of water. Stir and cook until pulpy

Stir in the chickpeas and the meatballs. Make 4 hollows in the sauce and break in the remaining eggs. Cover and cook for 5 or so minutes over a low heat till the eggs are set.

Serves 4 Preparation 40 minutes, cooking 30 minutes

Per serving – 377 calories, protein 26g, carbs 20g, fat 22g, saturated fat 7g, fibre 3g, sugar 8g, salt 0.94g

Sabrina cracks an egg scandal!

One of the joys of blogging (both writing and reading) is that you get to know so many people and learn so much about food and recipes; triumphs and disasters and the passions that drive people to cook. Blogging provides us with a way to communicate with each other. We can share in what we cook and eat and also what we think.

One of the things I am most passionate about is the use of good ingredients. I buy and use my vegetables as I need them, to make sure they are fresh and local whenever possible; if I eat meat then it has to be from an animal that has been treated well; if I use eggs then they have to be free range. I would never knowingly use battery farmed eggs – I have seen what a battery farm does to hens and it is cruel and disgusting. I love getting my eggs from our local farm and I can always see and taste the difference – the yolks are large and golden and the whites are clear. Whatever I make from them reflects the quality of the eggs.

 The eggs may be different sizes

Some of them are real whoppers… but they are always fresh and they are always free range.

Now, because I cook so much, I rarely buy anything that is ready made. When I do, it is from premium ranges and I expect, from a premium range, that they will be using premium products. I do not expect to find that battery hen eggs have been used in there. I normally make my own mayonnaise but when I don’t I use Hellman’s – delicious and smooth Hellman’s… made with free range eggs.

So it can be done and it can be done on a very large scale… goodness knows how many millions of gallons of mayonnaise are made by Hellman’s but they manage it. A mainstream product using free range eggs. Well done, Hellman’s.

It was, therefore, a huge surprise to read my friend Sabrina’s blog  (she of the famous and delicious Sabrina’s Chicken) and see that she has discovered that Gü, makers of so-called premium chocolate puddings, were using battery hen eggs in up to 90% of their puddings. These are puddings that promote themselves as top end luxury products. You expect the best – you certainly pay the best prices for them. You do not expect to find they are using cheap eggs from hens crammed in cages, producing eggs till they die, still in their cage. Why don’t they make this clear? This lack of transparency makes me look at them in a new light. No longer a high quality company with high quality products… but a disappointing sham.

Please follow this link to Sabrina’s Passions and read about her battle to get Gü to admit they are using battery eggs. I suppose the fact they are owned by a major battery egg producer might have something to do with it……

And just remember – just because something promotes itself as a premium product doesn’t mean they are following through with premium ingredients.

This is all about choice – if you don’t mind where your ingredients come from then don’t look any further. I choose to look and explore for the best option and it is disingenuous of  Gü to try and hide the facts.

The moral of this? Always read the ingredient list if you buy something ready made… or better still? Make it yourself!

Meatfree Monday – Baked Butternut Squash Gnocchi

The weather had changed. It was blustery and rainy (and can you believe that this morning the weather forecast included the possibility of hail? Hail?? In August?) I wanted something that would make us feel happy. We needed comfort food… but not too comforting. It was still warm so I needed something that didn’t generate too much heat. Something that I could have with salad. I wanted to have it on Meat free Monday so it needed to be vegetarian. And then, I thought of something I had first made a couple of years ago.
Baked butternut squash gnocchi… it was a comfort food, so that was good… it is great served with salad, so that, too, is good and best of all, it is only 280 calories per serving. And no meat… so perfect for Meat free Monday.
I could have delicious comfort food and still stay on a diet!

When I see recipes that provide, per serving, less than 400 calories, I save them in a folder called 400 and Under so that I can make a delicious supper that leaves room for manoeuvre with side dishes or even a glass of wine.
This recipe first featured in “delicious.” in September 2008, by the equally delicious Jean-Christophe Novelli. Just as well that I copied it out and saved it because I can’t find it online now. Anyway, doing it like that means I can print it out and take it with me when I shop for the ingredients and then work with it at the kitchen bench.
Also, it means I can then insert it, in its entirety, at the end of this post, something that some of you have been asking for.
Anyway, I did this on my return home from work… supper was delayed slightly as I had to roast the squash first, but not by much. This can be done easily as a weekday meal but if you were feeling efficient, the best way would be to roast the squash the day before while you were cooking something else.
No worries though… it was no problem to peel and dice a butternut squash
I put it onto a silicone sheet and drizzled it with oil, garlic puree and sprigs of thyme. Jean-Christophe says to take the leaves off the sprigs of thyme but that is so fiddly because the stems are soft… if you pull off as many as possible, that’s good and any that are left on the sprigs… well, don’t worry about it. Once everything roasts in the oven, the leaves fall off and the stems are hard and bare – you just remove them from the dish at the end! (See, Jean-Christophe is a chef and he does it properly. Me? I am someone who cooks when she gets in, tired from work. I find shortcuts. I have to.)
The covered roasting pan went into the oven at 180 degrees C/160 degrees if it is a fan assisted oven… and for those of you who use Fahrenheit, that is 356 degrees. 45 minutes was enough to soften the gorgeous squash.
I picked off the stems of thyme and then whizzed the squash to a smooth puree.
While the squash was roasting, I grated 40 g or thereabouts of Parmesan cheese
And added it to 9og of polenta (that’s grits to those of you in America!) , stirring it round to make an even mix before I added the (still hot) butternut squash puree and 65g of  butter.
The heat started to melt the butter…you could tell this was going to be delicious.
In another bowl I mixed three lovely eggs with 125ml of double cream and then added that to the polenta/squash mix.
I lined a baking tin with a silicone sheet and poured in the mix….
Back into the oven, covered with tin foil to stop it burning,  for thirty minutes
When it emerged, all golden and flecked with thyme leaves. It feels firmish, if you press it… firmish but not solid. This is the joy of this gnocchi…it uses no flour so it is suitable for those on who are coeliac or who are on gluten free diets (I shall make this for my dear friend Angela if she ever returns from America)  and it has no potato in in it so it is light and fresh.
Let it cool enough so you can handle it – while you are waiting, cut slices of Tallegio cheese (and if you can’t find this, get some other cheese that would melt well)
I didn’t bother with a cookie cutter, as suggested, I just cut the gnocchi into squares and laid slices of Tallegio on top.
And then put it under the grill to melt the cheese…
Then serve with a light green salad…
Perfect.
The texture of the gnocchi is light and delicious – you can tell it is polenta rather than potato or flour. The taste of the cheeses blended together is rich and satisfying and even better, you can eat it cold. Perfect to put in a packed lunch and take it to work. Immensely satisfying and just right for a blustery day…
And now – here’s the recipe, exactly as it was in delicious.
Baked Butternut Squash Gnocchi
Serves 4 as a main course, 8 as a starter
280 calories, 21.3g fat, 8.1g protein, 14.4 carbs, 3g sugar, 0.4g salt
INGREDIENTS
500g – about half of a large butternut squash – peeled, deseeded and cubed
3 garlic cloves
2 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked off
95g  semolina or polenta
40g grated Parmesan or Gran padano
65g butter, softened
3 medium free range eggs
125ml double cream
Tallegio or other melting cheese to serve.
Preheat oven to 180C/fan 160C. Place squash, garlic and thyme in a roasting tin, cover with foil and roast for 45 minutes. Leave the oven on.
Transfer to a food processor and whizz until smooth. Spoon into a bowl and add semolina/polenta, Parmesan and butter. Whisk eggs and cream together and add to the mix. Season.
Spread in an 18cmx24cm roasting tin, lined with baking parchment or silicone sheet and cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes.
Cool slightly in the tin then cut into rounds using a cookie cutter – or squares if you don’t have a cutter. Preheat the grill to high, while you put the gnocchi on the grill, covered with slices of Taleggio. When melted, serve with a green salad.

Jean-Christophe Novelli, French Horn. Published in “delicious. magazine” September 2008

Try it… it’s another Meat free Monday success!
(Oh, and in case you are wondering why I haven’t got spaces between paragraphs and decent formatting – well, so am I!
WordPress seems to be refusing to do what I want and no matter how many times I change everything – it just goes back to cramming everything together. If anyone has any idea on how to fix it, let me know!)

Meatfree Monday – Monkfish in a cream, vermouth and pea sauce.

The weather has been really good this year. Proper weather, if you know what I mean. In the winter it was cold and snowy (OK so I was moaning about the interminable snow when it stretched on, week after week, but looking back? Well… it was fun at times, wasn’t it?) and now we are into the summer and we have had sun!

This is England, you know. We do damp and cool very well indeed. Having sun when we are supposed to get it it is break from tradition.

Of course, I can moan about the sun being too hot (because it’s no real fun when I am at work behind glass, steaming gently like an heirloom tomato in a greenhouse… all red,shiny and strangely misshapen) but generally I am happy. Everything I am growing on the balcony is benefitting from the gorgeous weather and it is lovely to come out from work into sunshine.

It makes you want to have light and fresh foods. Not just salad, of course, though that’s good and refreshing, but tasty and light suppers that still feel rather special.

I had a fancy for fish and called in at the fishmongers on the way home from work. There, on ice, were monkfish cheeks at £4.99 a kilo. Monkfish!   For those of you who don’t recognise the name “monkfish”, it is apparently known as goosefish on the eastern coast of North America.

I adore monkfish! The tails are very expensive, but the cheeks are the cheapest part of the fish. Monkfish are possibly the ugliest fish in the oceans, with an enormous head – but it is their tails that are the prized part. In days gone by, unscrupulous people would use monkfish tails instead of lobster as they taste very similar – sweet and meaty- and were very cheap. Now, with the amount of overfishing that goes on monkfish are becoming as expensive, often costing as much, if not more, than lobster, at times.

But the head… that great big, goggly eyed, enormous mouthed and whiskered head, well, that would often be just chopped off and thrown out. Nowadays though, more care is taken and the cheeks are cut off. They taste the same – sweet and delicious – but they are, of course, by necessity, just small pieces of fish. Which is why they are sold for so much less… and why they are an ideal quick and easy and very cost concious option for supper!

I bought six cheeks for £2

It’s such pretty, pinky white  flesh when you have stripped off the tough grey outer skin, but be aware there’s an almost translucent grey membranous layer that needs to be removed as well. You will spot it and it is easy to get off but be warned, it is still very tough.

I decided that if I were to do the cheeks in an aromatic sauce and serve them with rice it would make a really lovely supper…. but I needed to see what I had in the apartment that I could use.

I found some sweet onions and the remains of a pot of cream in the fridge. There were some frozen garden peas in the freezer that I thought would add a nice sweet touch and a lovely almost popping surprise in terms of the overall texture. I knew I had some vermouth that would lighten it and give a fresh taste so that could go in too.

I started by chopping the sweet white onion and started it off in a saute pan.

Adding salt to the onion makes it sweat more, keeping it white, rather than browning. I wanted this to look appetisingly pale.

A good splash of vermouth once the onions were softened helps make the start of a flavourful sauce. I always use Noilly Prat because that is the vermouth I have always used, but any good dry vermouth will do.  Just remember that it is the dry vermouth and don’t go throwing in the sweet red!

While that was gently bubbling away, I started some basmati rice – using one mug of rice with one and a half mugs of water (if it is real basmati it needs less water than other long grain rice) and let that boil softly until the water was mostly absorbed. Once the rice was nearly perfect and the water, in the main, absorbed, I take it off the heat and put a clean tea towel over the top of the pan and put a lid on top of that.

That is the most marvellous way to make sure that the rice is perfectly cooked and fluffy – the tea towel absorbs all the excess steam and moisture.

Once the alcohol had lost its almost raw smell and the aromatics of the vermouth remained, I added what was left of the cream to softem the sauce

A few handfuls of frozen garden peas were added so they could defrost in the sauce (frozen peas really are the only way anyone can have sweet peas if they haven’t got them growing outside their kitchen door!)

And then the cheeks, sliced into bite size bits…

A few minutes is all they need.

Just watch as the soft pink turns to a pure white coloured flesh.

And that, served on top of basmati rice is a truly delicious supper.

It was quick – under 25 minutes. It was cheap – maybe £3 or so in total and it made the two of us feel as if we had had a luxurious meal. Pretty good, eh?

The Bear loved it and that is what counts, isn’t it?