Category: Gluten Free

Sambal santan udang… probably the best prawn curry in the world

When I first met the Bear, I knew he was pretty special. I knew, in that deep down way, that he was someone I wanted to spend my life with. There was this sense of recognition. I know people always say you will KNOW when you meet the right person, but I suppose I never really believed them…. except, it’s true. I knew when I met him that he was the one for me. He was perfect.

Well…. almost perfect. He had some pretty fixed ideas about food……and that didn’t suit me. Broccoli? He’d get a stubborn look on his face and turn his head away. Shellfish? Nope. He wouldn’t eat that either.

Well, ask yourself, do you really think I was going to let him get away with that? I was determined that my life’s mission would be to make him truly omnivorous. I wanted him to know how wonderful fresh and tasty prawns were… what about the joy of eating oysters fresh off the boat? By refusing shellfish he was refusing so much.

I had a plan… and it was a plan that worked, too. He said he would refuse broccoli forever but when I made Broccoli that a Bear will eat  he not only ate it without complaint but actually asked for it at other times. The Broccoli and Stilton Pastryless Pie was a winner in his eyes and he liked having it in his lunchbox to take to work. When I made Baked Polenta Pie he loved it…..and all of those dishes had broccoli in them. How did I get round his stubborn refusal? I suppose you could say that I hid the broccoli. Whenever I served the dreaded vegetable it was covered in either a deliciously light creamy sauce, or baked into other delicious stuff. It got him to eat broccoli and while he still won’t eat plain, steamed broccoli, he will eat it without complaint and a certain enjoyment. Maybe that’s what you will have to do if you have equally stubborn food-faddists.

So, I had success on the broccoli front. What I needed to work on was shellfish. We started by making him eat one prawn – just one – whenever I ordered prawns. He admitted that he was missing out on stuff and if we ever ended up living somewhere where shellfish was freely available then it would be a waste if he didn’t try.  He wasn’t really enjoying it at first but he persevered. One prawn at a time. Then one day, he ‘phoned me from a trip abroad to say that he had eaten a prawn, voluntarily without me having to make him do it….. he was on the way to liking prawns!

He still wasn’t really convinced though… and then we moved here, to Malaysia. Here I can buy beautifully fresh king prawns for very little and so I started, in earnest, searching for the perfect prawn recipe that would make him love prawns. And you know what? I found it.

I’d bought a marvellous little recipe book by Betty Saw, a really well known Malaysian cook and writer, called ‘Malaysian’. It’s where I found that recipe for rendang that everyone likes. In it was this recipe for sambal santan udang, or prawn curry… it sounded delicious.

I bought 600g of king prawns (that’s 1lb 5½ ounces) and they needed to be cleaned and peeled.  That’s simple enough, just tear off the head and peel off the shell

… and then once that’s done, take a sharp knife and run it down the curved back of the prawn and pull out the black vein… you can see it there. That’s the intestinal tract and you don’t want that in there.

Then, put them in a bowl in the fridge and get on with the rest of the preparation. Of course, if you can’t get fresh prawns, use prepared frozen ones. And if this makes it too expensive for an everyday meal, save this for a special occasion. You’ll thank me for it later.

As with all Malaysian cooking, the next bit involves ingredients to be ground.

The recipe book said two onions, but as a couple of mine were really small, I used three of them.  Five chillies needed to be deseeded and sliced, four fat cloves of garlic had to be peeled along with four stems of lemongrass and one inch pieces of ginger and turmeric needed to be peeled. The turmeric is the bright orange piece in the middle there…. it looks like a piece of carrot.

 

When I first bought some, I thought it was just a differently coloured ginger… I mean, it’s not as if the label suggests anything else, is it? Anyway… if you can get some, I’d suggest you wear gloves when preparing it. Otherwise, your fingers, like mine, will turn a bright yellow and stay like that for days. If you can’t get fresh turmeric, you’ll have to use dried… maybe just under a teaspoonful will do it.

The other ingredient is belacan, which is dried shrimp or prawn paste. I know you can get this in the UK, so there’s no excuse for not getting some. I think the Malaysian belacan is a bit milder, so whereas I am using a half inch square piece, you may want to use a quarter of a teaspoon or so.

 

And then, as they say, have at it with a pestle and mortar. Or, if you want to, give it all a quick whizz with a blender, but don’t reduce it to a smooth paste… you need it to still have bits. (Remember, you can do this quickly and easily if you use the jars of ready prepared spices)

Now you are ready….

 

Start by frying the ground ingredients in three tablespoons of oil. This will take five minutes or so and you’ll smell everything coming together and the oil separates.

Pour in a can of coconut milk and stir everything round, bringing it to the boil.

 

Now, if you were to taste the creamy coconut and spice sauce you’d like it, but what it needs is something to lift it… and you get that from tamarind. Here, I buy tamarind paste that still has seeds in it and what I have to do is mix a dessertspoonful of the paste with four tablespoons of water and then strain it out. You might be able to get paste without seeds, so that makes it a bit easier.

The sharpness fromn the tamarind really brightens the taste of the sauce… it is still rich and delicious but it isn’t cloying.

Then… add the prawns….chuck in a pinch of salt….simmer for five minutes….and you’re done. The best prawn curry ever.

 

I served it over basmati rice that I’d added a handful of grated coconut to. I do that because I like it and because I can. Served over plain rice this would be just as delicious.

And that was it. Simple and quick. The finished curry is not mouth searingly hot, but well spiced. The flavour is rich and creamy but not cloying. In fact, it is delicious.

So delicious that Bear is now a convert to prawns. And he’d said it couldn’t be done…..all I have to work on now is spinach.

 

 

 

 

 

Beans, yellow tomatoes, sage and sausages

Right then, I said, as I was surrounded by a tumbling wall of tinned tomatoes and beans, we really need to get through some of that store cupboard.

When I go shopping I will often pick up tins of tomatoes or beans because you can always make a meal, very quickly, from them. You never know when people may suddenly arrive and need feeding, or when you really just can’t face going to the supermarket at the end of a long day at work. I like to plan ahead – after all, what if there is a crisis and we are trapped, at the top of our apartment building,  with only the contents of the kitchen?  I need to be sure we can eat , at least. What if the shops are suddenly and mysteriously emptied of everything? I’d better have stuff in that won’t go off. Be prepared is my motto. The thing is, I’d kept on doing it and we were now reaching a shelf overload situation in the larder.

I’d gone into the larder to get some stuff out for baking and realised that the wild and fanciful imagined crises had not happened, unexpected guests had not turned up without warning but with an empty belly and I had managed, after all, to shop on a pretty regular basis and provide meals for the two of us without using the stores of beans and tomatoes. I noticed all that because there seemed to be a wall of tomatoes and beans blocking my way to my baking tins.

The fact that it was a pretty substantial wall, many tins deep made me think that I really ought to do something with them. The thing about beans and tomatoes is that you can do so much… the butter beans, softly mashed, make a quick and lovely alternative to mashed potato, the tomatoes can be used in the rich and soothing Tomato Rice soup or to make a ragu base for the indulgent, quick and easy lasagne, or in the vegetarian squash and goat’s cheese lasagne. The cannellini beans can be transformed into the Bear’s very favourite, Italian derived Beans on toast. I have borlotti beans and haricot beans, I have plum tomatoes and yellow tomatoes…..they were all just waiting for me. They were all just waiting to fall on me, apparently.

I decided to delay the baking session and make something to eat instead from the cans that were now falling off the shelves because I had balanced them precariously, one on top of another, after every shopping trip and then tried to shove them to one side so I could get at my shortbread mold. Falling with a clatter and bouncing off my bare feet. So… beans and tomatoes…..

Yellow tomatoes….

I’d seen these and thought I would have to try them… and now, it seemed, I was going to do it. They would be a change from the richness of red plum tomatoes…. I had some fresh sage as well.

So, two tins of cannellini beans were also removed from the now collapsed wall of tins and I looked around to see what else I had. The baking could wait for a while. I was going to make something for supper.

I love sage – not only the smell of it and the depth of flavour it adds to a dish (perfect with pork or tomatoes) but I also love the beautiful softness of its leaves and the delicate colour. All of which will disappear in cooking, I know, but I do like to rub it between my fingers and appreciate its soft silkiness and the smell as it bruises….

I had plenty of fresh garlic, too.

The first step, as with so many dishes, is to soften a chopped onion in a little oil. Adding salt makes the onion soften gently and release its flavour as it turns translucent. If you don’t add salt you are more likely to end up with bronzed, fried onions.

The next step is to open your tins of beans and rinse off the gloopy liquid surrounding them – this will be a mixture of the water they were packed in and any stray bits of starchiness from the beans themselves.

Toss the beans in the soft and glistening onions and add some chopped sage.

And then… those tomatoes. I’d not seen tins of yellow tomatoes before and I’d been curious to find out what they tasted like. They were certainly yellow. A beautiful, vibrant, cheerful yellow.

How pretty they were! They tasted nice too – sharper and yet sweeter than a tin of red tomatoes. Almost a cleaner taste in a way – you know how red tomatoes have a rich deepness to them? These seemed lighter, but just as flavourful. I added them to the beans, sage and onion.

I’d been at the  Farm shop and they had been doing Italian style sausages – what this means is that they were sausages with some red wine and fennel added so I reckoned they would be perfect with my beans and tomatoes. While the beans and tomatoes cooked together, I started frying the sausages.

And look how gorgeous the beans and tomato was!

Those sausages fried beautifully, with the red wine helping make that deliciosuly sticky and brown, glistening skin.

The tomato and beans were a light and delicious mix and the perfect base to serve the sauasages on.

I fried some sage leaves separately – just quickly – until they were crisp.

It was the perfect mouthful – the softness of the beans, the sweet sharpness of the tomatoes and the meaty richness of the sausage….. Delicious. Quick, simple, inexpensive. What more could I want?

Well, I could want the larder to be tidy … but at least three tins had been removed. That’s a start, right?

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….

Lovely lamb shanks, tagine style and the Bear’s shopping expedition

I’m a lucky old thing, I know, and meeting the Bear was the best thing that has happened in my entire happy and lucky life. He’s funny and sweet, very clever and tolerant and (and this is a good bit indeed) very helpful about the house.

I had a lot to do and, while I normally do the shopping because I like to choose what I’m going to cook with, I was running out of time to get everything done. The Bear had some spare time and offered to help….

What could go wrong? I had all the meat and vegetables (so there was no problem with choosing the best examples) and all I needed were things for the house and a few food or drink items for the cupboards. It wouldn’t matter whether I picked them up or he did, they’d be the same….

So armed with a specific (very specific) shopping list the Bear set off and I got on with other stuff. We met later in the kitchen and I started to unpack the bags… cleaning stuff? Check. Dishwasher salt and rinse aid? Check. Kitchen rolls? Check. Butter, milk, cheese? Check. Tea and coffee? Check. Wine? Check, check and more check. (We were having friends round) Cordials? No check.

I had wanted a specific kind of cordial – Grape and Melon. They didn’t have any apparently (and there’s no point Googling or asking about other stockists because they have stopped making it now. Shame on you, Robinson’s!) and the Bear had remembered not to deviate from the list and get another flavour. All well and good. We did have other cordials anyway so it didn’t really matter.

I carried on emptying the bags…. and found, in the bottom of one of them, three cartons of prune juice!

Prune juice? Whatever had possessed him to buy prune juice? I don’t like prune juice and I don’t need prune juice. I certainly didn’t need three litres of it.

He started to explain. Quite frankly the reasoning behind it was flawed. They didn’t have the clear and delicate tasting cordial I wanted so when he saw “Buy 3 for the price of 2”  next to the prune juice he thought he would use his initiative and grab us a bargain….

The prune juice went into the larder and there it stayed as a reminder that sometimes initiative is a terrible thing.

I can’t bear waste though and eventually, months later, decided I would have to do something with it. I’d gone into the larder to get a new box of salt out and spotted the prune juice still loitering on the shelf. I was going to be cooking lamb shanks that day and it struck me that if I were to do lamb shanks in, say, a Moroccan tagine style then I might have used prunes in there. What if, I thought, I was to cook the shanks IN the prune juice, instead of adding them as whole fruit, replacing just a simple stock and so making a rich and tasty gravy?

I had two lamb shanks that I was going to cook slowly while we were off doing other things.  I would have used the slow cooker but the two of them were too big for the pot and I decided that I’d just use a casserole instead. As long as you make sure you have enough liquid in there and keep the temperature low then it is safe to leave for a while.

It’s also lovely to come back to a home that smells of deliciously cooking food……

I love lamb shanks for many reasons. Firstly because they don’t cost much at all and secondly,if you leave them to cook slowly and gently they will turn into the most deliciously melting pieces of meat, far tastier and more tender than most expensive cuts and thirdly because I don’t have to do much at all to make it a perfect warming and mouthwatering meal.

Five minutes preparation and then you can walk off and leave them to glug quietly away for as long as you like. A perfect way to cook something while you are out at work or off out shopping at the weekend.

First of all, brown the outsides of the shanks. All it takes is a few minutes in a frying pan with a drop of oil to crisp and brown the skin. Yes, they are going to be cooked for hours and will cook all the way through but if you brown the outside you get a better depth of flavour and they also LOOK better. It’s all very well being delicious… it’s nice to appeal to the eye as well, though.

While the lamb is browning, quickly chop some onion and garlic.

I had the remnants of some tagine paste that I could use to bring in a hint of Moroccan flavouring and some lovely Rose Harissa that would liven things up a bit. I wasn’t making an authentic tagine but I wanted a definite nod in the direction of Morocco. You can get tagine flavourings in most supermarkets now so choose whtever you fancy.

I put a spoonful of each into my casserole dish and stirred it through the chopped onion and garlic.

Carrots were roughly scraped clean and sliced and the browned lamb shanks were put in the pot on top of the vegetables.

I poured a pint of prune juice into a jug – just look at the colour of it! Now while this could never replace a light and fresh tasting cordial as a drink I could see this was going to make a deliciously thick and tasty gravy. With the harissa and tagine paste to spice it it, I had high hopes of this turning out to be a success.

Mixed with some stock granules to add a salty, savoury taste, it was poured over the meat and vegetables.

And then, because I love it and I knew it would be good, a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon powder were put in.

And that was it. The lid was put on and the casserole was put into a slow oven (165 degrees C/350 degrees F) and I went off to do what I needed to do. If I’d used the slow cooker I would have set it on Auto – which means it gets a high start then it turns down to a very low heat. The cast iron casserole would do just as well on a steady low temperature for hours.

After about three or four hours I came back and looked at the shanks…. they smelled delicious anyway.

Rich and dark from the prune juice, steaming and the meat was falling from the bone.

Chopped coriander would give just the right fresh herby taste

Couscous takes maybe three minutes to make – simply measure it out (the packet will tell you the proportions) and add boiling water so the grains fluff up.

You can add herbs and spices to flavour it if you are having plainer food but the gravy from the lamb would be flavourful enough, I thought.

The meat just fell apart…. the prune juice gravy was rich, savoury and spicy with a mellow sweetness. It all soaked into the couscous making each mouthful delicious. Who would have thought mis-judged initiative could produce such a lovely result? Inexpensive cuts of meat, unwanted cartons of juice and a few hours in an oven produced a meal that I would have been proud to serve to guests.

We enjoyed every mouthful.

So, while I can’t advocate the drinking of prune juice…. I can suggest you cook with it. You might just be as pleased as we were with it.

Cauliflower and apple soup

Now that autumn is here we are starting to see the arrival of our glorious winter vegetables. As the seasons change, our food does too – we no longer want cooling salads or light and fresh meals, we need something to fill us and warm us against the chill winds and the leaves fall and the skies turn a constant grey.

When I walked up to the local shops I saw beautiful white cauliflowers, grown in local fields, stacked in the greengrocer’s barrow outside his shop. How could I resist them?

There was a time, you know, when I did resist them. When they appeared in school dinners… overboiled, smelling slightly and looking rather grey. If your teacher forced you to eat them you’d get a mouthful of hot water and the grey and tasteless, soft but weirdly sort of granular vegetable mush would dissolve in your mouth and slide down your throat. I was a picky child and I could be very stubborn. There was many a school lunchtime when I would sit there, with my jaws clamped shut, refusing to eat, while my teachers tried to make me.

Now, obviously, this isn’t a picture of me at a school dinner table (even the Grim North isn’t cold enough to make me wear an anorak indoors) but this is pretty typical of my sideways, scowling look when faced with something I didn’t want to do. I could be very determined. Cauliflower? No. And I mean no. Make me? I don’t think so. I mean no. I meant no for years.

Years and years went by until I finally discovered, as with so many things, that it is not the food itself that is the problem, it’s just the way you cook it.  Cauli can be good….. I discovered the joys of Cauliflower Puree and realised that if you cooked it carefully and didn’t overload the poor vegetable with water, you would end up with a beautifully rich and almost earthy tasting, interestingly textured dish that really was gorgeous to eat.

Anyway, I’m over it now. I like cauliflower. I like it raw and I like it cooked and after I saw all of those crisp cauli’s I decided I’d like it, this week, in a soup.

I bought a couple of cauliflowers and then, because apples are in season as well, I got a couple of  Bramley apples and a Braeburn.

I had an idea.

I would make a rich cauliflower soup but I’d add a Bramley apple to cook with it and add a sharp sweetness to the soup and as an extra apple boost, I’d caramelise an eating apple with chillies to go on the top. Bramleys are cooking apples and are generally too sharp to eat raw but when cooked they almost dissolve into a delicious mushy smoothness. That’s perfect when you are adding them to something like this soup or you’re making a sauce.

The Braeburn I got to go with it is an eating apple – sharp, crunchy, juicy and sweet. If you cook that it keeps it’s shape. If you can’t get a Braeburn, find something else that is like that.

So, to make soup, start like you always do with soup – peeling and chopping onions and then softening them in a knob of butter with a pinch of salt. The salt will keep the onions white and stop them from burning. You want them to be soft and almost translucent, so start them on a medium heat.

While they are gently cooking, cut up the cauliflowers, separating the florets. The hard stem, chopped into small pieces,  can go in first with the onions as this will cook faster than the lacy florets.

When a cauli is fresh, the florets are crisp and hard and a beautiful creamy white.

Add them to the pan with a couple of pints of water and some good stock cubes.

The next thing is to peel, core and segment the Bramleys. They will take less time to cook so you can do this while the florets soften.

Add the pieces of apple to the cauliflower and let everything cook, still on a medium heat.

It won’t take long, so while that’s glugging away, start on the Braeburn. This is going to be turned into a deliciously sweet, sharp and spicy apple dressing to be served with the soup…

Peel your sweet, juicy, sharp and crunchy eating apple. Core it and cut into pieces.

I cut into segments and then cut those bits in half.

Then, in a non-stick pan, heat a couple of tablespoons of butter and a couple of tablespoons of golden granulated sugar over a medium heat. As this melts and dissolves into an almost caramelised buttery deliciousness, add some chopped chilli.

My chilli harvest this year has been an utter disaster, so tubes of prepared chopped chillies, which can be kept in the fridge, have been a marvellous help.  An inch squeezed out – which would, I suppose, be about a teaspoonful – needs to be stirred into the sweetened butter.

Next, add the segmented bits of the Braeburn and stir it all round so the pieces are covered and let it cook gently. The apple will keep it’s shape even though it is cooked.

By now, the cauliflower will have cooked and when you poke at it with a knife, it is tender. If you were to just have this as the soup it would taste rather thin. The thing to do next is to add richness…

But richness can mean adding extra calories when you might be wanting to cut back. Why not save some calories but still get a rich and creamy taste?

This is where I add skimmed milk powder. If you were to start the cooking off with milk (skimmed or not) you would have to be very careful because there is every chance that the milk would catch and burn on the bottom of the pan. Starting the cooking off with water and stock means that the vegetables can cook with scorching but if you later then add milk to enrich it, you end up with too much liquid to the vegetables.

So, I use Marvel skimmed milk powder. No added fat (and no added liquid) but if you add a good scoop of it you get a lovely, creamy taste. 4 heaped tablespoons are the equivalent to a pint of milk.

Stir it round… yes, it will be lumpy but that doesn’t matter because you are going to blend it all into a smooth and creamy soup.

I use a stick blender because it is quick and easy.

Once it is smooth, add a good shaking of ground white pepper. I say white, because it does have a different taste to black pepper and it also looks better. You  are making a beautifully pale and creamy soup….check the seasoning and and add a pinch more salt if you need to. The big thing is checking that the soup tastes good to you.

By now the Braeburn has softened. It still has its shape but it has turned a lovely golden colour. If you happen to taste it, the sauce is not too hot from the chillies and not too sweet from the sugar. There’s just emough salt from the butter to make it almost savoury. It just tastes divine.

A scoop of natural, thick Greek yoghurt can go in the middle…. the sharpness of the yoghurt is perfect against the smoothness of the cauliflower…..

And on top of that… a spoonful of the chillied and caramelised apples.

That was, as the Bear will tell you, absolutely delicious.

Minimal calories for a most delicious fresh and tasty soup. You can cut back further on the calorie count by not doing the chillied and caramelised apples but there’s a limit you know. Why not enjoy yourself?

Now if they’d served this at school there would have been a race to the tables to sit down and scoff….

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……

Slow roast shoulder of pork with perfect crackling

The weather is getting worse and, while it is lovely to live in an apartment where three of the walls are windows, it does get gloomy when you are surrounded by rain spattered glass and grey clouds. When that happens, the only thing to do is put the lights on and make everything look cosy and then curl up, knowing that something meaty and tasty is in the oven….. just relaxing while the smell of roasting meat fills the room. It’s a smell that has always reassured me that things are happy and well in the family.

 A smell that was a constant in my childhood and it means home and happiness with loved ones. My wonderful brother and I are very similar in many ways. One of our favourite things is the crispy, fatty bits on a roast joint… all juicy and packed with flavour.

Not everyone likes this of course….The Bear has many good points and I am always glad I married him, but one of his finest points is that he doesn’t like crackling or the fat on a roast. That, of course, is good for me as it means that I don’t have to share. My brother used the same criteria when he got married – my sister in law is absolutely fabulous and we all love her dearly (he made a brilliant choice, marrying her) but again, she hates that sort of thing. Perfect. There’s nothing finer in our eyes that a gorgeous piece of crackling and the two of us have been known to stand in the kitchen at home dividing up the crisp and tasty skin….

Anyway, while I was shopping I’d spotted this marvellous piece of pork. Outdoor reared and free range meant that it was guaranteed to be tasty. The rain was bouncing off the pavements outside and I just knew that roast pork would be the perfect  antidote to the gloomy rain blues.

Pork shoulder is a great cut because it isn’t expensive but, as with most things, treated with care and respect you can produce the most delicious meals. Time is what shoulder needs, time and heat and salt. That’s all.

This was a lovely piece of pork shoulder with a good layer of skin around it, which is just what you need to get perfect crackling.

Pork shoulder needs slow cooking and it will turn into the softest, tenderest piece of meat ever. The rind will crisp up (if you slice at it) into delicious strips of hard, crunchy and tasty crackling.

But the rind is tough and to get through it you need a very sharp knife. Butchers will slice the rind for you and, in fact, most joints come with the skin cut already but I like to get a lot of narrowly spaced slashes so I start by sharpening my favourite filleting knife.

I’ve never yet managed to use a sharpening steel so I use the Chantry knife sharpener which is one of my better kitchen equipment buys. All you have to do is run the knife through the middle a few times and the blade is perfectly sharp, which is something I have never achieved using a steel.

While you are doing all of this, get the oven preheated to 230 degrees C/450 degrees F

There were some slashes in the rind already but I sliced between them, so each strip of rind was about 1 cm wide, if that. Be careful, if you are slashing not to slice into the meat itself – just cut the rind and the fat below.

The next thing is to get some kitchen roll and dry off the rind before rubbing it over with a smear of oil and then some salt.

What you have done is wiped off the water and added some oil to help start the crisping process and salt to drive out extra moisture and add flavour.

I like to use Maldon sea salt as the crystals are large and easy to pack into the slices of rind. Maldon has a great taste as well. When the pork comes out of the oven the rind will have crisped and almost bubbled up with flecks of salt crystals embedded into it to make the crackling taste divine.

By now the oven will be bouncingly hot so get the pork into a roasting tray and put it into the oven for twenty to thirty minutes.

This is a very hot oven and what it does is sear the rind and start making the crackling. If the oven isn’t hot then the rind won’t ever get crispy.

After the first burst of heat you will see, when you peek inside, that the slices are separating and the rind is starting to cook. You just know, when it looks like this after half an hour that it will have the perfect crackling when it is finished!

You can turn the oven down now to a moderate 170 degrees C/340 degrees F and just leave the joint to cook slowly for a two and a half hours……

There now.

Golden, bubbled and crisp. Studded with salt crystals promising that every mouthful will be deliciosuly savoury.

When you get it out of the oven if you rap on the top of the crackling it makes a hollow sound.

The meat is dark and caramelised from the fat dripping over it as it roasts.

The fat layer has almost disappeared in the long slow cook, making the meat juicy and the crackling crisp.

The crackling strips snap easily into bite sized bits…. perfect for nibbling at while you slice the pork……

A wet grey afternoon can be ignored because you are inside, in the warmth with a marvellous meal, just ready to share with your loved ones.

That is Heaven… that is my guilty pleasure and that is one more reason to appreciate the Bear not liking everything I adore!

Angela’s Apples … another T.O.B Cook

Everybody, welcome Angela, the newest T.O.B. Cook. Angela is my dear friend from the North.

We were both Northern girls and adored our birthplace… but I married and moved to the Midlands to be with the Bear and she married and then moved away even further. She’s ended up in Georgia, USA.

Angela’s the one I think of when I try and do gluten-free food as she is coeliac (or celiac as they spell it in the USA) We keep in touch, most days, through email and Facebook and she follows what happens on here. She’d read the posts on Apple Butter and Apple Butter Cake and, after a jaunt out with her neighbours where she picked apples, decided to see what she could do….this is what she wrote to me this morning:

“I needed to make some bread so, I thought, as I was putting the oven on, I might as well make the apple cake. And as I was chopping apples, I thought, I might as well make the apple butter. OK, I’m not a novice in the kitchen, but I’m not an accomplished chef either…. maybe it was all a bit over-enthusiastic…

Oh, I started off by sterilising the jars and the lids – in the dishwasher!!! Only the Americans could come up with such an easy way? That gave me a couple of hours to get everything done….

So I mixed the gluten-free bread mix, put it in the laundry room to rise. That gave me 45 minutes….

I chopped all the apples, putting 4 ½ lbs in a pan with apple cider vinegar, which then got left whilst I…

… made the cake mix. I used “Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Baking Flour” to which I added Xanthan Gum. I had no yoghurt so used low fat sour cream. I, for some reason, bought brown sugar instead of caster sugar.

I, for some reason, bought canola oil and can’t find out why.

(I’d already been shopping on Thursday, but then went back up again on Friday! But – I did see a good yard sale……)

Vanilla pods were replaced by ‘fake’  vanilla and I had no bicarb!!! Instead of “3 smallish apples and a box of stewed apple” I used 3 large apples – too many apples to be honest!

45 minutes was up, so the bread and the cake went in the oven.

Apples by this time had been left for over an hour… but were nicely mushy. I don’t have a Mouli and, to be honest, I do as little transferring and dirtying of dishes as possible.

(Hey, I’d already used two bowls for the bread, two bowls for the cake, chopping boards, pans, cake tins, bread tins…. the kitchen looked like a massacre… and by this point last night’s empty wine glass kept catching my eye….)

So, I used ‘Billy Blender’… I have to say I thought it would be really sharp – apples plus cider vinegar, but it tasted good – so no sugar was added.

It was 6.30, what about tea? So on top of all that I started making a salmon and prawn risotto.

Stir the apples, stir the risotto. Wine was required for the risotto……

Bread was taking an age, so turned the oven down for the bread and the cake. I think they were both in for an hour, maybe the cake was in for a bit longer.

Risotto was nice, if a little too much wine had been added!!!

Bread was normal – takes longer than it says on the packet, but gets there in the end.

Cake was absolutely gorgeous. Very moist – quite heavy. As I don’t eat cake or biscuits very often it was absolute bliss. I had been cooking since 4.30. By now it was 8 – 8.30 pm.

The spoon was leaving a trail. So…. jar filling….

What the hell happened?!?!?

3 jars? 3 jars is all I got.

Four bloody hours of cooking and I got 3 measly 8 oz jars!!!

I’d bought 12 Mason jars! Cost me 10 bucks!

4½ lb of apples and I got 3 measly jars. What went wrong?

I used 4½ lb  and I got 3  jars.  Lorraine got 10 jars – dunno what 14 cups translates as? You used 3lbs – how many jars did you get?

Maybe I cooked it for too long? Maybe I didn’t cook it for long enough – it’s more like jam/spread than ‘butter’.

It tastes OK – very, very rich taste though. But with vinegar – no need for sugar, which is good?

I won’t be making apple butter again, but will, most definitely, make the cake! And bread. And risotto…..”

I read all of this when I got to work in the morning and yes, I laughed.

Not in a mean way, you understand, but as I often laugh when I read her emails. I could just picture her glaring at the pans and staring at the wine bottle. I laughed at the thought of her looking at the canola oil and wondering why she bought it. I could just imagine her outrage at only ending up with 3 jars… “THREE measly jars”.

I suppose I should have told her than when I did my second batch of Apple Butter I did, in fact, use at least ten or twelve pounds of apples….

Still, she has cake that she can eat while she plans going out to get more apples!

Let her eat cake, I say…..

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Sometimes we all need a little treat.

I don’t tend to buy crisps, crackers or olives  to nibble at with a glass of wine unless we have guests. I don’t know why… maybe I think we don’t deserve it or maybe it is that we are fat enough and having extras isn’t a necessity. Perhaps I think it is a needless extravagance?

But you know what? We do deserve to have something every now and again. After all, the person I like best in the world would be sharing them with me and I’m happy enough to put stuff out for people I don’t love half as much.

So, what follows is the ideal compromise. It’s healthy, it’s tasty and it doesn’t cost very much at all.

I’d bought a small pumpkin to make some Puy Lentil and Pumpkin Soup and I’d had to scoop out all of those plump seeds. What better than to use something that others might just throw out?

They are all embedded in the fibrous middle but they are easy enough to remove if you gouge at it all with a spoon.

If you put them in a colander and run water over them it’s quite easy to pull the orange fibres off, leaving just the seeds behind. They will feel very slippery so give them a good rub in fresh water.

Once they are clean, spread them, out on a board and leave them to dry off.

This time I wanted plain and simple butter and salt roasted pumpkin seeds (I often make them and flavour them with things like chilli powder or spices ) but there’s something rather delicious about the plainness of the roasted seeds… plain, certainly but tasting deliciously of butter and salt!

Get a flat baking tray and put a knob of butter and some salt on it (I always use a silicone sheet because it is so easy to clean and doesn’t tear if you scrape at it. If you haven’t got any, it doesn’t matter – use tin foil or be prepared to clean the baking tray)

Put the tray in a pre heated oven at 200 degrees C/390 degrees F and get the butter melted and hot.

Toss the pumpkin seeds in the melted and salted butter and put them back in the oven for ten minutes or so.

After ten minutes, give them a shake… they should be browning nicely.

Put them back in if they need a few minutes more – this will depend on how much moisture was left in the seeds.

Once they have cooled… put them in a bowl and share with your best friend.

A glass or two of wine makes this the perfect pre-dinner snack – healthy, tasty and all it took was a knob of butter, ten minutes and some otherwise thrown away seeds!

Meatfree Monday – Puy Lentil and Pumpkin Soup

At this time of year, the shops start to fill with pumpkins. Halloween is not far off and millions of pumpkins will be bought to make into Jack O’Lanterns.

You can’t just buy a pumpkin and carve it… you have to DO something with it. Last year I made Pumpkin Soup, flavoured with smoked sweet paprika and drizzled with Chilli Oil . 

I separated the seeds from the fibrous middle and roasted them with jerk seasoning to make a tasty roasted pumpkin seed snack

This time, though, I wanted to make a soup that would be a meal in itself.

I had a small pumpkin that would be ideal for soup. I also had a craving for something with a bit of spice because I had a cold that was dragging on. I needed a burst of heat in that soup to burn through the fogginess that an autumn cold makes you feel.

I remembered a soup I had seen in the Australian Gourmet Traveller for Green Lentil Soup with Pumpkin and Harissa that would be perfect. My little sister lives in Australia and sends me (if I’m not there to buy a copy) the Gourmet Traveller Annual Cookbook as my Christmas present… the fact it costs way more in postage to send than it costs to buy is neither here nor there – it truly is the magazine I most look forward to getting.

It looked a fabulous recipe. I knew that adding my favourite Puy lentils would add heft to the soup and jazzing it up with Moroccan spices would enliven the whole bowlful.

I chopped two sweet white onions, then put them in a pan to soften with a teaspoon of Maldon Sea Salt.

While they were cooking I halved the small pumpkin I had and scooped out the seeds.

Don’t throw the seeds away, because you can roast them later for a lovely, healthy snack.

I roughly measured half a mug of Puy lentils – now, this is one of my Starbucks City Mugs that roughly hold 20 fl.oz, so the equivalent measurement will be 10 fl oz if you use a Pyrex jug… or, about a full normal coffee mug size. Me? I like coffee so I have a very big mug!

Once the onion has softened and looks translucent, add the lentils and then pour in a mug and a half of water (that’s roughly a pint and a half) and let the onion and lentil mix slowly cook.

Add in a vegetable stock cube for flavour.

While that is gently cooking, start preparing the pumpkin.

The rind of the pumpkin in very hard and I have found that the best way to peel it is to cut the pumpkin into segments and then slice off the rind.

By the time you have it all segmented, the lentils will have started to soften and the colour will have leached out into the water and stock.

Now add in the segmented pumpkin

And then add a tin of chopped plum tomatoes.

Stir it all round and let it simmer gently.

I wanted a bit of heat in the soup and a Moroccan feel so Rose Harissa paste was the obvious choice. You can buy Harissa paste in most supermarkets now – this one has rose petals in it and a deep and complex flavour. It is essentially a chilli paste so add it according to your preference. A teaspoon full will not make it too hot – if you want more heat (and I do) add another.

Stir it in so it blends with the lentils, pumpkin and tomatoes.

I also have some Belazu Pickled Lemons which will add a marvellously sharp-sour element to the rich and earthy soup.

A quick scoop out of the middle of the lemon and the rind is ready for slicing then adding to the soup. I used two small lemons.

And then stir it all round… the pumpkin should have softened, the lentils will be tender and the flavours will have come together to make a deep, rich, spicy soup with sharp overtones

Serve it in a bowl with a spoonful of natural thick yoghurt and a sprinkling of coriander.

And there it was. Steaming perfection in a bowl.

Meatfree and delicious.