Month: January 2011

Making Butter.. how to have luxury in a credit crunch kitchen

As I look out of the window I see greyness everywhere…the skies are grey, the pavements are grey and even the people look grey. It’s the Age of Austerity, say the Government and the financial whizz kids who got us all into this mess.

Time to tighten our belts… cut back…spend less. We have to suffer….

The papers are full of articles on the cost of living and how food bills are soaring, utilities bills are going through the roof and how the ordinary person must make sacrifices.

Well, I agree. I agree on the cutting back, anyway. If we cook at home with care we can all produce marvellous meals for much less than you would spend on a takeaway or a pizza, or even fish and chips.  I have made a habit of cooking carefully and spending very little and, truth be told, have often turned out meals that are better and tastier than many meals I have had in restaurants. Look through the Credit Crunch section and you’ll see recipes for Beef Cheeks (the most wonderfully tender beef casserole you will ever eat); delicious soups like Roast Garlic and Marrow or Puy Lentil and Pumpkin or the gorgeous Tomato Rice Soup – simple, inexpensive ingredients made into food that you are glad you are at home for. There’s recipes using polenta, that staple of Italian peasant cooking made into Baked Polenta Pie and rice…. risottos made with Black Pudding and Apple and Bacon – just scraps of things added to a basic ingredient and transformed into something you’d be proud to serve to guests.

I don’t really believe in too many sacrifices though. I always like to use butter in my cooking – I certainly won’t use margarine or some cheap, chemically concocted spread, where dubious oils are treated with this and that to make them go solid and spreadable. Butter is better. I don’t use too much and it doesn’t feature in every dish but when I need it, it’s there.

Butter is just milk shaken until it is solid. What could be simpler?

What could be better than calling in at the supermarket and spotting, in the marked down section, a large pot of cream that you know, with very little work indeed, can be made into lovely fresh butter? That appeals to my penny pinching ways and my love of luxury.

I’ve written before about making butter, way back at the start of this blog, when I did it by using marbles in a tupperware box. I still say this is a fun way to make butter and a most excellent way of entertaining children. I don’t suppose you could get them to do it all the time, but as a one-off? A Saturday afternoon’s entertainment? It’s a brilliant way to keep them occupied and then, of course, you can make them buttered toast for tea. 

This time, however, I had plenty to do and didn’t need to entertain myself unnecessarily, so I was going to do it the quick way. It’s probably the way you will end up doing it, too.

I had been shopping to get some ricotta as I was going to make ravioli and as I walked past the Dairy section, I spotted a large pot of double cream… the really thick double cream. It had been reduced  as it had reached the sell by date. This doesn’t mean that it was going off at all, just that the date they had set for it still to be in peak condition was today. Fresh cream, still perfect and at a reduced price?

Well, I had planned to be doing other cooking and I had plenty to do in the kitchen but this was a bargain, calling out to me. And it just shows how easy it is to do if I was going to do it in between making three different sorts of bread and pasta.

I put the cream into the mixer (you can do it with a hand mixer if you haven’t got a standing mixer… it doesn’t take long) and started to whip it.

It thickens quickly.

And you keep whipping.

All of a sudden it transforms from a white, whipped mound to a lumpy, granular and yellowy mass. This is not great if you were looking for a topping for a dessert… but it is just what you want to see if you are making butter.

Perfect.

Look at it. Granular and yellow. That’s the butterfat.

Now, if you were using a thinner cream than I was, you would see quite a bit of buttermilk separating out from the creamy globules. The cream I was using was almost solid it was so thick, so there was less liquid.

Pop the lot into a sieve and wash it inder a tap. I gave it a squish with a flexible spatula to get more of the buttermilk out.

You can save the buttermilk for baking, or adding to soups – yet another credit crunch saving.

The Bear came over to help at this point… not because it is difficult but because I needed him to take the picture for you to see.

I got the butter out of the sieve and squeezed it together. More buttermilk ran out.

That’s butter, that is!

The next thing to do was to add salt.

I’m a great fan of Maldon sea salt and a pinch or so of that, scattered over my hand squished butter and then squished some more meant I would have a beautifully salted butter.

I do happen to have some old wooden butter pats  which are ideal for flattening the butter and getting the last of the buttermilk out. It also adds to the fantasy playing in my head that I am the consummate housewife and cook….

If you don’t have any, don’t worry. I just like them, that’s all.

If you look at them you can see they are finely ridged to help force the liquid out.

It helps make the shape of your butter. Again, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t got any, just shape your butter neatly.

And look what I ended up with…283g of best butter.

Surely that counts as being careful with cash? A credit crunch success?

The butter can be frozen if you wrap it carefully…. you can flavour it with whatever you fancy….

Or you can spread it on bread that you made and just enjoy it.

How simple was that?

That was made, while I did other things, in less than half an hour.

Now, as I said,  you can do it in a more relaxed fashion, getting young helpers to shake it about in a jar or a tupperware box, but you know what? This is just as satisfying and oh, so delicious.

Credit crunch money saving at its best.

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….

Ravioli with a soft egg

I love weekends….I love the fact that although I may still wake up at 6 am, I don’t have to start rushing about, getting ready for work.

I love the fact that the Bear goes to make my coffee because I always do it during the week… I love being able to relax in bed, with the pillows plumped up behind me, reading the news online and checking up with any gossip on Facebook. Even though I can happily spend a couple of hours doing all that and it feels like I have had a complete morning off, when I get up there’s still most of the day stretching ahead of me.

I’d been thinking of what other treats I could have that day….what I could cook that would make me happy.

Before the Bear and I got married, I’d bought a pasta machine and, in the first optimistic rush of enthusiasm, we decided to make ravioli. Perhaps we should have started with something easier than that if we’d never used a machine before, because what we turned out was an utter disaster. We hadn’t got the seasoning right, we hadn’t sealed the ravioli, we weren’t quite confident with the machine…oh it was a sad and soggy meal that we sat down to.

It quite put me off until I decided to start again and make something simple. Like tagliatelli or papardelle, simple strips of pasta. And you know what? It really was simple. It turned out really well and the two of us have had great times – one feeding the pasta and the other winding the handle. It is, actually, simple enough to do by yourself but we do like to work together.

It’s simple enough that when I was playing Cookery Lotto (where those of you who are reading the blog at the time choose a random cookery book and then a random page and I have to cook the recipe) and pappardelle was chosen as the random recipe, I decided to make it with the help of a nearly two year old and a ten year old and, you know what? It was fantastic… they loved making it and felt such a sense of achievement when they produced beautiful tagliatelli to take home to their brothers. Now, if I can get two little girls, (one of whom was very little indeed) to set to and produce pasta I think that shows how easy it can be.

I decided that this would be a day where I made pasta and when I asked the Bear what he fancied, he reminded me of something we had seen on a cooking programme on TV (and no, we can’t remember which one it was) where the ravioli filling was a mix of ricotta and herbs and an egg yolk. When you cut into the ravioli the egg yolk was still soft and delicious….

There were several plus points to having a go at this: firstly the ravioli were going to be large as they had to contain an egg yolk, which meant they would be easier to deal with; secondly, we had lots of wonderfully fresh eggs from the Farm Shop and thirdly, it pandered to my intense yearning to be messing about in the kitchen trying something new.

Making pasta is a cinch – all you need is decent ’00’ flour (and most supermarkets sell it nowadays), good oil (I had chosen Oleifera, a delicious cold-pressed rapeseed oil) and fresh eggs.

Weigh out 140g of flour and put it in a mixing bowl with a  lightly whisked egg, add three teaspoons of good oil (I was using my new organic rapeseed oil) and 15 ml of water.

You know how I was ill all over Christmas? I survived on bottles of cough and cold cure and they all came with a handy little measuring cup…. which, as it turns out, are perfect for keeping for baking adventures and measuring out, accurately, small amounts of liquids. Waste not, want not.

All you do then is mix it together. Obviously, if I was trying to recreate a true home made pasta in the style of an Italian housewife, I would have rolled up my sleeves and set to, mixing and kneading the dough. As I wanted all of the fun and less of the hard work, I let the mixer deal with it while I had a cup of coffee.

See how it comes together, looking golden from the egg yolk? When you feel it, it is almost hard and tough.

Dust a board with flour and start to knead it. You then need to let it rest and relax, so cover  it lightly in cling film and leave it to relax. It doesn’t take long, maybe ten minutes or so, but if you want to leave it for longer, you can.

While the pasta is relaxing, you may as well get on with the filling. If we are going to use an egg yolk then I needed something to nestle the yolk into and usually soft cheese, flavoured with herbs or even truffles is used. Strangely, my cupboards seem bare of truffles so I had to make do with a mixture of Parmesan cheese, ricotta and whatever else I could find in the fridge.

And what was in the fridge were some spring onions.

I put a tub of ricotta into a bowl and grated a good chunk of parmesan into it. (As I didn’t have a recipe to work from I thought I’d make a bowl of filling and whatever wasn’t used I would make into a cheese savoury sandwich)

The amount of parmesan added was enough to make the ricotta and parmesan mix taste good to me…. you do what you fancy.

Then I added some of the finely chopped spring onion. Now it really did taste good.

Once I’d done the cheese mix and wiped down the benches, I looked at the pasta dough. Whereas before it had seemed tough and unyeilding, now it was soft and giving. Perfect.

The pasta machine needs to be clamped onto the bench before you can start whizzing the dough through.

I rolled out the dough lightly and set the machine to the widest setting and then started feeding through the dough.

With each go through, I reduced the setting, making each rolled piece thinner and thinner.

After the first couple of goes you’ll need to cut the dough in half because it becomes too long to handle.

Remember to dust it with flour to stop it sticking and by the time you reach the lowest setting, you will have beautifully thin and smooth pasta.

And that’s it… well that’s it for how you make the pasta. For the ravioli you will need squares of pasta because you are going to put the filling and the egg on them, so dust your board and cut… it doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfectly neat as you will be serving two to a plate and they look wonderfully handmade. If you were serving more, you’d need them to be smaller and neater, I think.

I cut eight squares of pasta for the two of us.

Remember you will need an equal number of pasta squares – one for the top and one for the bottom. One set of four was slightly larger than the other set because that was going to be the top layer and it would have to stretch over the cheeses and egg.

On the bottom, smaller piece put a spoonful of the ricotta, parmesan and spring onion mix and, using your finger, make a hollow in the cheese.

This is going to be the nest the egg yolk sits in.

It’s a lot easier to separate the egg yolk by cracking it onto your fingers and letting the white of the egg drain away. When you do it by tipping the egg from half shell to half shell there’s a greater danger of breaking the yolk. 

See how it sits snugly in its little cheesey nest?

And as quickly as anything the other squares were filled.

I realised that not only had I got some cheese left over but I also had plenty of pasta, so thought I would make us a simple cheese ravioli with the left overs. So much for a sandwich filling, eh?

The ravioli had to be covered now, so having whisked up some of the egg white, I pasted it round the edges of the bottom layer and covered the filling with the top square which, if you remember was cut slightly larger all round. The egg white will act as a glue and stick the two pieces of pasta together.

Carefully press down the edges of the pasta so they stick firmly. Make sure there are no air bubbles as that will burst the ravioli when they are in the pan.

You can see what gorgeously generously sized ravioli they are going to be.

I trimmed them neatly and they were ready for the pasta pot.

The water needs to be boiling and you’ll need a slotted spoon to get them in and out of the water.

And… and it worked!

Two, maybe three minutes in the pan and the ravioli floated on the top of the water. The first one didn’t burst and neither did any of the remaining ones.

I drained them on the slotted spoon and got ready to serve them….

I’d got some leaves to make a salad and made a tangy balsamic vinegar dressing which I sprinkled over the leaves and the ravioli.

Two soft egg ravioli and a little cheese filled ravioli…..

The soft egg ravioli looked like yellowy fried eggs.

But were the yolks soft?

They were.

It was delicious.

The pasta was soft and tender, the cheese filling was tasty and fresh and the yolk…. oh, that yolk was delicious, running out and covering everything like a golden tasty sauce….

That was, the Bear and I concluded, a ravioli triumph.

I’m going to do it again – it would make a marvellous starter for a meal with friends because you could get everything ready and then leave them in the fridge for a while and then cook them at the last minute. Imagine the surprise when you serve that to people because it does look as if it would have been more bother to make than it really was.

Simple, delicious and spectacular – can you really ask for anything more?

Baked lemon cheesecake with blueberries

When I was growing up, I remember the excitement when Marks and Spencer introduced the baked cheesecake into their ready made food section. This was the 70’s, you know, and British food was hardly at its finest.

We’d had cheesecakes before of course, just not the baked ones. We’d had those  strange pre-frozen cheesecakes where the middle seemed to be made of some kind of whipped creamy nonsense and laden with luridly coloured strawberries….well, we’d had them when our mothers had got them for a dinner party and, if we were lucky, the following day there may have been a slice or two left over to be sneaked before (or even instead of, if Ma didn’t catch us) breakfast. Food like that was far too good to be specifically given to children. Maybe we’d had some at a friend’s birthday party where the mother was trying to outdo every other mother and you know, they were pretty fancy for the 70’s but they weren’t the be all and end all of desserts. They were OK.  Real cheesecakes? They weren’t available. Or at least if they were they never made their way to the North. Maybe it was something lucky young Londoners had.

I’d read in stories that Americans had cheesecake and they loved it but as far as I was concerned, as far as I knew, cheesecake… well it came out of a frozen packet and it was nice, but not brilliant.

Anyway… one day my friend F got a slice and let me taste it. I couldn’t believe the rich, dense filling. No lurid strawberries, just a lemony hint. I couldn’t believe how deep it was. A solid wedge.

I loved it. I loved the way it stuck, almost, to the roof of my mouth in its glorious clagginess… the way the flavour seemed to be so luxurious. Now I understood why people loved cheesecake.

Of course we still didn’t make it (there was no internet to look up recipes in those far off days) and sometimes we were lucky when we ordered cheesecake in a restaurant… and sometimes we weren’t. Sometimes we got real baked cheesecake and usually, I suppose, we got the defrosted thin one from the packet.

I don’t know when I first made a real baked cheesecake but it wasn’t so many years ago. I do know that I realised just how simple it was and how much I had been missing out on. This really was the stuff of that amazing childhood memory – that delicious, thick, sumptuous and dense filling. So very different to the thin whipped and set filling that appeared so often elsewhere.

I suppose it is because of that that I think of cheesecake as a special treat. It has to be a special treat, really, because if I made that just for the Bear and I we would end up eating it all and let’s face it, we are fat enough.

Anyway, the one I was going to make was for a special occasion – we had friends coming for dinner and we wanted to have a good time. There may have been an element of hoping (just like back in the 70’s) that it wouldn’t all get eaten and then I could maybe have some for breakfast……

I’d  used a recipe from Good Food before and it had turned out very well  and would be worth doing again. All I needed were some digestive biscuits; 100g of butter; 250g of mascarpone, (that’s one tub); 600g of soft cheese, (that would be two tubs of Philadelphia); 4 eggs, ( but you won’t need two of the whites. Save them for something else… or maybe have an egg white omelette the following day to make up for any indulgence. Maybe not, eh? Maybe make meringues instead!);  3 or 4 lemons and some caster sugar and some plain flour.

Once it was baked, a small pot  soured cream and some lemon curd and fruit were to go on top. Simple. But oh so delicious.

So, I needed my springform tin and to make sure there were no leaks I got out a preshaped baking paper liner.

I decided that Hobnobs would make a lovely crumbly, rich base… because I love them.

And as I needed 225g – which came to 16 Hobnobs in case you are interested (or can’t find the scales to weigh them) then that also meant, I thought, that  there would be a few Hobnobs left over to have with a cup of coffee. Always thinking, that’s me.

Making the base is the simplest thing ever – and with such crumbly biscuits it is so easy to give them a bash with the end of a rolling pin to crumble them.

100g of melted butter (heat it gently and carefully in the microwave) was poured in and stirred round until the butter was absorbed. Pour the buttery, crumby mix into the lined springform tin and press down.

Using a spoon round the edges means you get a good firm base and then put it in the fridge for the butter to set firm again and the base to chill.

Heat the oven to 160°C (fan assisted)/320°F.

Then start to get everything else ready. This is so easy.

Zest all of the the lemons, add the two whole eggs and the two egg yolks, the pot of  mascarpone, the two tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese and  the juice of two of the lemons to a mixing bowl.

And then add 175g of caster sugar and 4 tablespoons of plain flour

And start whizzing it together.

The colour changes  as it becomes smooth and delicious.

Now, take the chilled crumb base out of the fridge and spoon in the lucious filling.

If you give it a gentle side-to-side shake the mixture settles and the top smooths slightly… though this will also happen in the oven.

Put it carefully into the oven for thirty five to forty minutes and when you check it, give it a little shake…. it won’t (or it shouldn’t) slosh, it will just have a gentle wobble to it.

Turn the oven off and leave it to cool completely in there.

That was handy for me because I had to get things ready. There were floors to wash, a table to lay, cushions to be plumped, surfaces to polish…. and a mad rush to get me looking half way presentable before the guests came.

Now, you may have read about the mushroom pate with caramelised red onions, and the squash and goat’s cheese lasagne and the singing. This cheesecake was the final part of the meal and I was going to put the topping on just before serving it.

And, as I am sure you will agree, if you are eating you will probably have been drinking….not to excess, you understand, but enough to laugh happily.

Enough to laugh happily and cover the top of the cool cheesecake with some lemon curd and then spoon the soured cream over the top and, still, laughing happily, make attractive patterns with a fork on it before realising that photographs should have been taken.

Oh well.

Imagine it instead… the top of a baked cheesecake, looking pale and beautiful has a few spoons of  good quality lemon curd spread over it. I used lemon curd I made but any good brand will do.

Then the soured cream was poured over the top of that… and then I got artistic.

Right, we are caught up with ourselves and the pictures now.

In the freezer I had some frozen blueberries so I grabbed a handful and dotted them over the top.

(Look, you can see the lovely lemon curd poking through the swirled sour cream!)

The blueberries defrost quickly when you put them on top of the cake and the beautiful juices run down through the tracks of the fork in the soured cream.

Oh… it was delicious.

The beautiful baked cheescake filling had the perfect mouth-sticking texture that dissolved into lovely creamy lemon-ness.

The soured cream and the blueberries were the ideal match to the rich smooth sweetness.

I say again, ohhhh it was delicious.

And the next morning, while I stood, waiting for the kettle to boil, looking out of the window at the early Sunday morning city below us, I might (just as I did back in the 1970’s)  have cut myself the tiniest sliver of cheesecake to eat as a pre-breakfast, post dinner party treat.

Except this was far better than any 70’s cheesecake. This was a perfect baked cheesecake.

Squash and goat’s cheese lasagne

Sometimes, when you plan things, they don’t turn out exactly as you envisaged.  Sometimes that’s a bad thing and sometimes it’s absolutely marvellous. Let me tell you about a marvellous thing.

We’d been planning to have J and R round for dinner because both of them got wonderful new jobs within a couple of days of each other and that deserved a celebration. Juggling the diaries so that everyone could make it took ages but eventually we settled on a Saturday night that would work for us all.

In the meantime, separate to all of this, the Bear had invited Anthony, founder and CEO of Kaggle, which is a platform for data prediction, to give a talk at the University and, as is the way of things, we got talking at work. You know how you know there are people you can get along with? Well, Anth was like that so, when we heard he was staying in Nottingham for the weekend to explore, we immediately invited him to come to dinner too. He’d fit in well round our table and we knew he would add to the general good humour and laughs that we were expecting.

As J is a vegetarian, I’d been thinking of things to make that would be suitable. I decided that a starter of mushroom pâté with  melba toast and caramelised red onions would start us off well but I also needed to find  something delicious for the main course. I wanted tasty yet relaxed… this was going to be a fun evening and we weren’t looking at being formal at all.

I’d spotted something that looked interesting (more than interesting, actually, positively delicious if truth be told)  on Rhi’s Foodie World… Squash, Roasted Garlic and Goat’s Cheese Lasagne. Now lasagne is one of our favourite things and here was a recipe that would be perfect for a vegetarian main course. Rhi said it was so lovely that she would cook it again and again, which is pretty much of a guarantee of deliciousness because every food blogger is always trying to cook something different all the time.

It ticked several boxes for me – delicious, vegetarian and it was something that could be made in advance, which is always a bonus. In our apartment, the upper floor (which is our kitchen, living room and dining area)  is open plan and stretches the entire width of the building. That’s a great space for entertaining  but it also means the kitchen area is on view to any guests. There’s no hiding the pots and pans by shutting doors and I like to have everything cleared away and as much ready (or hiding, cooking in the oven) as possible.

I could have a leisurely morning, preparing everything, then clean the kitchen and set the table, then put the lasagne in before they arrive. That would be perfect. What was even more perfect was that I had everything I needed… two lovely butternut squash, garlic, a roll of goat’s cheese, a couple of tins of plum tomatoes, and a box of lasagne sheets. This was surely a sign that I had to make the lasagne.

Now when I read Rhi’s description she peeled, then cubed her squash – I was in the mood for rattling along in the kitchen so I cut mine into wedges

I laid them in a roasting tin that I’d lined with a silicone sheet (oh, how I hate scouring tins. This way means I can roast things and the vegetable sugars from the carbohydrates don’t burn onto the bottom. I can just wipe the sheet clean. I do love to make my life as easy as possible)

I drizzled some chilli oil over the wedges and scattered through about 6 or 7 fat cloves of garlic, still in their skins. If you do this to garlic, you can squeeze the soft white middle out later.

Rhi had used sage but all I had growing on my windowsill was some thyme, so I scattered that over the top, with some Maldon salt to season it all.

And into the oven it went at 180°C/350°F for three quarters of an hour or so while I got on with other stuff.

I needed the squash and the garlic to roast down softly and the squash sweeten and deepen in flavour as it softens.

And the other stuff was making a rich and delicious tomato sauce to layer the lasagne with. I had some tubes of Gourmet Garden fresh chopped herbs (surely a life saver for us when our windowsill herb pots are dying off. A life savour, perhaps?)

I gently cooked a red onion (well, I still had some left from when I made caramelised red onions) and then added the tomatoes to cook down.

A good squeeze of the basil would make a truly gorgeous tomato sauce.

By now the squash had roasted to a delicious softness.

And just look how it had roasted. The colour of the squash had deepened and the smell was mouthwatering. The garlic was soft inside its papery skin and just ready to squeeze into the tomato sauce.

I squeezed all of the cloves into the sauce and stirred it round.

Roasting garlic takes away any harshness, leaving a sweet and aromatic garlic flavour.

(Now I know that picture makes the garlic look orangey  and incredibly bulbous but there’s a reason for that….and that is, if you ever try to squeeze an oiled and roasted clove of garlic, one handed, while trying to take a picture over a steaming pot of tomato sauce, your lens is likely to steam up, your fingers slip and the angle of the shot changes. That pile of garlic was well below the clove and had already got splashed by one of those molten lava-like bubbles. Take it from me, what emerged from the clove was soft and glisteningly white.)

Stir it all in anyway and let the roasted garlic infuse that sauce.

Now I had to scoop out that delicious squash….

It was so soft I could spoon it out from the skin.

I love that colour. So bright and cheerful. I’d paint the walls that colour if I could get away with it, but the Bear is more of a magnolia man.

And then? Then just spoon it into the tomato sauce and stir it round.

It thickens it and gives it a lovely texture. In a strange way, the squash seems to lighten it.

The next thing to do is to make the bechamel.

The proportions for a good bechamel are, first of all, equal amounts of fat and flour must be cooked together as a roux. I do it by tablespoons, rather than weight because that’s quicker.

A couple of tablespoons of each, stirred together, over a gentle heat until it becomes a beautiful golden paste as the flour cooks.

Then, a pint of milk and cream – I got my jug and put in half a pint of cream and topped it up with milk, stirring it round to mix it. It might look lumpy at first but it soon smooths out to make a silky sauce.

(I didn’t say I was doing a diet version, did I? This is a celebratory meal for friends, so I’m making the sauce taste even more rich and delicious) Once it has thickened to a rich and savoury white sauce, you can start to think about putting everything together.

And now the best bit – layering the lasagne.

Start by putting down a layer of lasagne sheets to cover the bottom of a large dish. There’s no need to soak them, generally, the moisture from the sauce will soften them as everything bakes.

Then put your first layer of the rich and soft tomato, squash and garlic sauce.

Bechamel next, poured gently over the tomatoey layer.

Then more lasagne sheets (and look how I have snapped them to fit!) and more tomato sauce spread over that.

I had a beautifully fresh and crumbly goat’s cheese log… about 100g or so. It needed to be sliced into deliciously, almost sticky, rounds.

And a thick layer was spread over the tomato sauce.

And so it went on with another layer of lasagne, more sauce and the last of the bechamel, finishing with a lovely grating of Grana Padano cheese to add a spikier, cheesier topping. I could have used parmesan, but the Grana Padano was at hand.  Doesn’t that look lovely? You just know that this is going to turn out beautifully.

And once I was at that stage, I could set the kitchen to rights and leave the lasagne, ready for cooking later.

All that remained was to set the table and put the lasagne in when the guests arrived.

Half an hour or so, maybe forty minutes, at 190°C/ 375°F produced the most glorious lasagne… beautifully layered, fragrant and savoury. Don’t worry if you need it to be delayed – just cover it so it doesn’t burn and turn the heat down. This is a very forgiving dish.

And served with green salad and plenty of red wine, it really was lovely.

The squash really lightened the lasagne in a strange way and there was certainly no feeling of lacking anything by not using meat. It was savoury and delicious. As for the guests? We all laughed as we ate and drank. Everyone cleared their plates… it was a success.

Remember how I said that somethings don’t turn out as you planned? That happened this  night. I certainly didn’t plan that we’d be singing at the table, between mouthfuls.

A is Australian and somehow the conversation veered round to Rolf Harris (the world’s greatest living Australian) …. who, Anth said, he wasn’t really aware of.

Not aware of Rolf? He’s a hero to us all and has been part of all of our growing up and adult years, so we all chipped in with great enthusiasm to tell him about the painting, the pets and the singing. And then, as these things happen, nothing else would do until we had propped up a laptop, brought up Youtube .

Poor A. He sat there in stunned amazement as we all sang, word perfect and in tune to “Two Little Boys” I defy anyone not to have a tear in their eye when Rolf sings that. Although maybe that could have been the wine we drank……..

So, thank you, Rhi. A fantastic recipe that was exceptionally delicious and helped turn an evening into a fantastic occasion.

Singing, eh? Who would have thought a lasagne would have made you sing? But it does… Australian guests or not, this was so lovely you will want to burst into song.

A cheeky little number….. Beef Cheeks.

Whenever I go home to the North I always call in at my favourite butcher’s, George Bolam at Sedgefield. It’s from here that I have got the more unusual cuts, like plate of beef or lamb henry, where I get the best belly pork, either in strips or rolled, to make the perfect joint with crackling. I get my favourite beef skirt from there, too – the tastiest and tenderest (if cooked quickly) steak imaginable. He makes his own haggis and black pudding and has the widest variety of sausages imaginable.  He has a bakery there too, a deli, a fish counter and an amazing selection of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Everything I get from George’s is absolutely fresh, generally local and incredibly good value and that is, I suppose, why all of us should support our local butchers rather than just buy meat from supermarkets.

On my last trip home, I called in to stock up on meat to bring back to the city and saw, for the first time on his shelves, cheeks of beef.

These are, as you would imagine, the cheeks of the cows. The price was incredible – 717g of meat for £3.14? I had to buy it and try it.

So, that was frozen and put into the freezer until I had time to think of what to do with it and the time to cook it.

And then I got ill. I could barely move and any cooking that needed me to be alert and available to do things was out of the question. To be fair, I didn’t want to eat either so for days I lived on hot drinks and an occasional slice of toast.

Then one day I realised I had to have more than that – the Bear needed feeding, for one thing. And then I remembered the beef cheeks in the freezer.

Now, a cheek of a cow would get a lot of exercise, I would have thought. All that chewing of the cud must give those cheek muscles a good work out. Cows seem to chew none stop. So a well muscled piece of meat would need long and slow cooking. And the best thing about long and slow cooking is that it requires minimal preparation, even less attention and the opportunity for a nap while it cooks.

The end result is always something succulent and tasty, perfect for anybody…. even an invalid.

That settled it. I summoned up the strength to go to the kitchen and took out the cheeks to defrost. I would cook them the next day.

The next morning, I unwrapped them and looked at them properly. They were much larger than I thought they were going to be.

What a size they were….I have normal human sized hands, you know, it’s not as if I am a miniature person. Each cheek was bigger than my outstretched hand.

That was going to feed four, at least.

As with so many delicious things, the simplest way is often the best way and with slow cooked food that seems to be particularly true.

I dusted them with flour…..

… and then browned them quickly in a splash of oil, in the bottom of a hot casserole.

I poured in some stock, made from granules and hot water and then thought I could perhaps boost the flavour even more……As we seemed to be stockpiling port, I decided to add a good amount of it to make the gravy even more delicious. I don’t know when we were going to get around to drink it all, so it seems a good choice to use it in cooking now and again.

Don’t worry if you haven’t got port, or don’t want to use it. Use all stock instead, or maybe add in some wine, or sherry… it’s your choice. You do need to add something to make the gravy with, so add enough liquid of whatever you fancy to just cover the meat.

I chopped in some carrots and parsnips and put the covered casserole into the oven at 160° C/320 °F for three hours.

The smell was amazing.

As the oven was on anyway, I scrubbed some potatoes, jabbed them with a knife so they wouldn’t burst, rubbed them with oil to make the skin crispy and put them in the oven to bake alongside the cheeks, then I went back to bed.

When I next roused myself, I went upstairs to a beautifully warm kitchen, filled with wonderfully rich and aromatic smells and opened the oven.

The potatoes were perfect and the beef cheeks looked good. More than good, actually.

I got a spoon to stir the vegetables and gravy round and moved a cheek… the spoon went through it.

Remember how big those cheeks were? Well they were still in one piece, it’s not as if it was all in bits and easy to scoop up. People say, when they are talking about tender meat, that you can cut it with a spoon but this was the first time ever that I really could do that.

The spoon sank through the silky soft meat and there, on the bowl of the spoon, was the most delicious looking piece of meat.

And the taste? It was beyond delicious. It was rich and soft, succulent and tasty.

Probably the best beef stew I had ever eaten. In fact, calling it a beef stew seems to be a bit of an insult.

The vegetables had kept their shape in the long, low and slow cooking and were perfectly tender. The funny thing is, I’m not that fond of cooked carrots, especially cooked carrots in what is, to all intents and purposes, a simple stew but these were gorgeous. They still tasted carroty but they also had a deep rich layer of taste from the gravy.  I loved them.

But it was the meat that was the star of the show and now, thinking back as I write this, I long for beef cheeks again. So much so that I’ve just ‘phoned my mother and asked her to go and get me some more and freeze them ready for me to collect on my next trip.

Those two cheeks made enough to feed four or five healthy appetites….and for those weakened by the dreadful colds and flu, well that boosted my appetite and for the first time in days I enjoyed my food.

Simple, so very simple and it cost so little.

If you see beef cheeks, buy them immediately. If you don’t see them, start picketing the butcher to get some for you. You won’t regret it… although you may regret the fact you spend days yearning for beef cheeks when there are none available.

Mushroom pâté

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thyme added to mushrooms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now then, it’s time to make the pâté.

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

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

Start whizzing it smooth.

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

Look at it…. rich and smooth….

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

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

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

A silicone scraper makes an excellent flexible smoother.

Look how beautifully smooth it is…..

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

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

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

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

This was going to be a lovely light meal….

And it was.

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

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

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

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

A New Year, a new start

Happy, if belated, New Year to you all.

I have been missing for some time now, but I do have some valid excuses.

First of all, as some of you know, I work full time in a university and before Christmas we were extremely busy. I really was working flat out.  I did cook (and what a lot I have to tell you about later) but preparing and photographing, then eating and clearing up took more time than I anticipated and I didn’t get round to actually writing about it.

Then I got bronchitis and two weeks of my life disappeared in a coughing, spluttering haze. A month later and I am still coughing.

Not only that….but there was snow. Lots of snow.

There were days where the only light seemed to be that reflected from the snow. I’d get up and look out of my bedroom window and see that the snow hadn’t melted at all.  Temperatures were regularly -9 or -10° C  overnight and first thing in the morning.

The lake outside my window at work was frozen.

The poor swans would walk across the ice to the only bit that wasn’t frozen solid.

They’d even walk up to the Students’ Union shop in the hope people would feed them.

Anyway, dosed up with antibiotics and Day Nurse,  The Bear and I  headed home to the North for Christmas where I was sure that I’d have time to write up everything.

The thing was, the snow had fallen more heavily in the North and it had been colder. Eight and ten inches of snow had fallen on some nights. I’d heard that the weight of the snow had started to tear down the guttering…..

That was the sight that greeted me at the top of the stairs. Guttering hanging down.

The weight of the snow as it slipped on the roof, without melting, ripped the gutters off and they had either fallen to the ground or dangled, hopelessly across the windows.

Icicles were nearly the length of the windows.

In the kitchen, the pipe from the sink and dishwasher had frozen so we (actually, the Bear did it)  had to wash up in the bathroom handbasin.

The guttering coming down had torn down the telephone lines so the internet connection was lost…. it was all going downhill rapidly.

The bright spot was, of course, seeing my family again and, best of all, my brother and his wonderful wife making Christmas Dinner for us all.

We had a great day….

And there was even a gluten free Christmas pudding for my brother, that was so delicious we decided we never again wanted any other sort of Christmas pudding.  My sister in law is now the acclaimed Pudding Queen of the family.

So. There are my excuses – work, illness, snow, lack of internet and lack of time.

What am I going to do about it? Well, I shall start by getting on with the writing up of the best of the recipes I made over the past month or so and hope that you start to read them again.

Happy New Year!