Eleanor Eats

Sickness Soup (Spinach and Pea)

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:43:00 +0000

I've had a fascinating new experience over the last few days: I think I've had 'flu. For the first time. I've tried to view it as a learning opportunity, but honestly, these are lessons I could have happily lived with out.

So, I had a cold which incorporated aching and exhaustion, which probably makes it 'flu, though I didn't have a fever, so didn't bother with the Swine 'Flu helpline. Anyway, the other astonishing symptom was - take a seat - loss of appetite. I'm not kidding, I missed quite a few meals, and didn't even think of having a snack. But yesterday, when I was marginally better than on Friday night, I thought I ought to have something. We have fresh spinach from this week's box, so I made a very simple soup, supplementing the spinach with frozen peas. Obviously, being sick I didn't measure anything, so this will be as vague as me when I made it. If you're fully -functioning, you might like to add some herbs (basil or mint would both be good), but really it's pretty tasty as-is:

Fill the kettle and turn it on

Put a couple of teaspoons of Marigold Vegetable Bouillon in a saucepan

Chop a handful or so of fresh spinach into about 1-2cm strips

Pour the now boiling water from the kettle into the saucepan - probably about 750ml-ish?

Turn on the heat under the saucepan, add the chopped spinach and some frozen peas - say half-to-one mugs-worth

Cover and bring to the boil

Check a pea and a picee of spinach stalk to check they are softened, and turn off the heat if so

Puree in a blender

Ladle into a bowl, grate over some hard cheese if you feel up to it, and return to your nest on the sofa to eat

Caprese Salad Filo Bites

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:26:00 +0000

On Saturday night I gave a dinner party. We were five in the end, which makes for a comfortable table (eight around our kitchen table was a squash, I have to admit) and also expands the menu possibilities a little. This is both from the cost and ease-of-execution perspectives. The former needs no explanation, and by the latter I mean merely that I wouldn't want to do anything "tricky" for larger numbers. Cooking something on the hob at the last moment - say pan-fried fish or individual lamb noisettes - is fine for a few, but I'd find it intimidating to have to produce lots of perfectly-cooked individual portions with the recipients sitting by waiting - it'd be too much like a practical exam, and I've always sucked at those. As usual though, I opted for a menu done mainly in advance, other than a bit of last-minute assembly. Here it is, followed by an outline of my time-management:

Mini filo baskets with pesto, tomato and mozzarella

Polenta cubes with olive and chargrilled peppers

Cheese straws (always!)

Fillet of beef with red wine, anchovies, garlic and thyme (from How To Eat)

Pointed cabbage and green beans

Hasselback Jersey Royal potatoes (a.k.a. hackelback or hedgehogs)

Blackcurrant sorbet with peach coulis and hazelnut biscuits*

British cheese board

The canapes I made up from scratch, and the baskets were by far the best. An outline of the recipe is below, but basically they can be filled with anything that you might otherwise use as a crostini topping. Rough schedule:
Friday night: Make filo cups, cheese straws and polenta cubes. Toast hazelnuts. Cook the blackcurrant mix and refrigerate it overnight.
Saturday morning: Clean bathrooms (sigh). Shop for everything - food, wine, flowers, the lot. (After carrying which, my arms ached - I blame the wine.)
Post-shopping: Make blackcurrant puree, set to churn, place in freezer. Make hazelnut biscuits. Tidy lounge and half-heartedly hoover, arrange flowers (badly). Skin, core and chop tomatoes, dice mozzarella. Prepare potatoes and vegetables. Make peach coulis. At some point, eat for lunch exactly the same as you had for your last three meals, feeling thankful that it is finally all gone and glad the monotony will be broken soon.
6.00pm: Shower and dress. Wish you had a ~~slave/well-trained partner/Sarah at home~~ commis chef.
Last minute: Tidy kitchen and lay table. Prep ingredients for beef. Greet first guests, pour delicious sparkly wine and point one guest in the direction of laptops and router so he can sort out wireless before dinner. Set the other (who you have only just met) to construct filo baskets. Accept you won't be winning the World's Best Hostess award just yet. Get cheese out of the fridge and transfer sorbet from freezer to fridge. Finish prepping main course.
Second couple arrive: pour more drinks, serve nibbles, set main course to cook and enjoy your guests' company!

Caprese Salad Filo Bites (24 of them):

12 sheets filo pastry

100g unsalted butter, melted

Small tub fresh pesto

4 large, ripe tomatoes

1 ball buffalo mozzarella

Black pepper

First get a clean tea-towel and dampen it. This is to wrap the filo pastry sheets in whilst you are working, as, if it dries out, you're stuffed. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Lightly grease two twelve-hole mini muffin trays.

Take your first sheet of filo, placing the remaining inside damp tea-towel. Cut into six squares of about such a size as to line a mini-muffin hole with some overhang - about 2.5" - 3". With the pastry I had, this meant that I had about half an inch wastage along the edges of each sheet - unfortunate, but unavoidable. Brush one square lightly with melted butter and lay another on top at an angle (i.e. corners off-set). Brush this second square lightly with butter and place a 3rd one on it, off-set from both of the first two. Brush lightly with butter and then lift the little stack, which should hold together easily due to the butter, and place over a hole in the muffin tin. Ease it down into the mould, trying to get it as central as possible and with the folds of pastry fairly uniform around the entire circumference to ensure even cooking. Repeat with the remaining 3 squares from that filo sheet. Continue with the rest of the pastry sheets. Try to work as quickly as possible, while maintaining accuracy, so the pastry doesn't dry out and become brittle and/or likely to burn. When you have filled the first muffin tin, pop it in the oven. Check after 4 minutes, then at 1 minute intervals. Take them out when the top edges are golden and crisp and the bases are dried out (you won't get the base coloured before the tips are burned as they are so much thicker and heavier with butter).

Once cooked, leave them to cool for a few minutes in the tin, then when cool enough pop them out of the tray and on to a wire rack to get completely cold. Store in an airtight box if you are not using them straight away.

To assemble, first prep all the filling ingredients, have them all lined up and then construct immediately before they are going to be eaten, so there is no time for the pastry to get soggy. (As has been said before, nobody likes a soggy bottom!) So, the tomatoes: fill the kettle and turn on. Place the tomatoes, stalks removed, in a large, heatproof bowl. When the kettle boils, pour the water over the tomatoes and leave for five minutes. Empty out the water and pour over plenty of cold - the colder the better. When the tomatoes are cooled down somewhat, take a sharp knife and score the skin into quarters from pole to pole. You should be able to easily get hold of a corner and peel the skin off in four neat pieces. If not - good luck! Once peeled, chop the tomatoes open and discard the pulp along with the skin. Finely dice the flesh and set aside until assembly-time. Finely dice the mozzarella also. When just about ready to serve, layout the filo cases on the plate or whatever. Take one, drop in a blob of pesto to cover the bottom - about 1/3 of a teaspoon. Add a layer of tomato pieces, a few tiny cubes of cheese and a fine dusting of pepper. (You should have leftover filling, but better to be safe than sorry.) Serve quickly.

*I actually don't really recommend this recipe - it was a little bland, even with toasted hazelnuts, and the dough was a bit of a nightmare to deal with - it "bruised" like none I've used before (i.e. you couldn't touch it without leaving a mark).

Cocktails and Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:39:00 +0000

Remember that film? If you're lucky, not well. But the title seems apt to introduce the culinary contribution of Cocktail Party Physics. Go to the site and scroll way down and you'll find the "Physics Cocktails" in the left-hand sidebar, including the Black Hole (5 liquers, with the tagline "so called because after one of these, you have already passed the event horizon of inebriation") and the Quantum Theory (guaranteed to collapse your wave function). Well, it is Friday, after all.

The Quantum Theory:

3/4 oz Rum

1/2 oz Strega

1/4 oz Grand Marnier

2 oz Pineapple juice

Fill with Sweet and sour

Pour rum, strega and Grand Marnier into a collins glass. Add pineapple and fill with sweet and sour. Sip until all the day's super-positioned states disappear.

There are also lots of interesting posts to read. Enjoy both! But probably not at the same time - the posts deserve more focussed attention than you'll be capable of after drinking one of the cocktails...

Muesli - not too sweet!

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:24:00 +0000

I like muesli, but increasingly find that they are too sweet, even those without added sugar. So, I did the obvious thing and mixed my own!

I didn't find any guidance online for relative proportions of ingredients (admittedly I didn't look too hard, but how wrong could I go?), so I did a taste-test of the cereals to find which I liked most individually, and determined that, actually, they don't taste all that different (with the exception of oats). The bigger differentiator is the texture: wheat flakes are softest, rye flakes are hardest. Oats are far softer and flourier. So decision made: equal quantities of wheat, barley and rye flakes, a bit more of oats. This is also appealing as oats are significantly cheaper than the others. Win-win! On the subject of buying the cereals individually, I found them in Whole Foods.

After that, it is just a question of determining what extras one is going to add. Well, this is simple - just think about what you like! I am partial to lots of nuts and seeds and, as I've already implied, only a bit of added sweetness. I toasted the almonds and hazelnuts to intensify the nutty flavour and really bring out the crunch, but not the cashews as I thought that might be a bit much, and some slightly waxier pieces make for more varied mouthfuls. Note that toasted nuts go rancid faster than raw ones though, so if you aren't going to eat your muesli up within a few weeks - say, a month - then it is probably best to skip this step. I used flame raisins, which are big, plump and full of flavour. You can add anything you like though - if you like sweeter museli add more fruit and less nuts, and try different fruits, or different nuts or seeds. The shelves at Holland and Barratts should provide ample inspiration. Next time, I would probably go for slightly less additives to cereals (a bit too nutty), and cranberries are very tempting...

To almost fill a tall Kilner jar (825g total weight):

100g wheat flakes

100g rye flakes

100g barley flakes

200g rolled oats

75g almonds, roughly chopped

50g hazelnuts

50g cashew nuts, roughly chopped

100g flame raisins

25g pumpkin seeds

25g sunflower seeds

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Spread the hazelnuts and chopped almonds out on a baking sheet and toast for 10 minutes, until fragrant and slightly coloured. Set aside to cool completely. Once cold, measure all of the remaining ingredients in a large bowl, stir in the nuts and decant into an airtight jar or tub to keep it fresh.

Rye Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:29:00 +0000

So, the bread using the starter was a fail. I'm not even going to go into the humiliating details, just believe me that it was bad. We are now on take two with the starter. If this is also a dud, I'm going to abandon the friendship bread and go for straight sourdough. I'm a bit afraid to go down that route, as I have assumed that this is (even) harder to get going, as you don't give it a pile of yeast and lots of sugar to start with but rely on just yeasts in the air (or a tiny smidgen of packet yeast) and the flour as the food, but it's conceivable that I am wrong. Some might say likely, but if they do they won't get any bread. And since I am entertaining (and feeding) myself with rye bread made the usual (for me) way until the next starter experiment is ready, that would be a great shame for them. Because it is delicious. This was the best bread that I can recall making. It was packed with flavour and rose beautifully to give a crumb which was soft but tightly woven and perfect for sandwiches. We are going to make it again at the first Anglo-Asian Bakeathon tomorrow - I can't wait!

See how much it has risen in the oven? The above picture was immediately before it went in. And you can see too the "stretch marks" along the fissure where the long gluten chains are all lined up and give the bread it's structure. This is what kneading prepares them to do. The shape of the loaf (high on one side vs. the other - most obvious in the top picture) is yet another demonstration of the uneven temperature distribution in my oven. Le sigh.

Makes one 1lb loaf:

250g rye flour

250g white bread flour

7g sachet dried yeast

1.5 tsp salt

300ml warm water

2 tbsp olive oil (I used 1tbsp strongly flavoured extra virgin and 1tbsp very mild as I'm out of regular)

Mix the flours, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the water and oil. Mix with a round-bladed knife and then your hands to form a soft ball of dough. If the dough seems too sticky to knead, add a bit more flour; if it won't form a cohesive, soft ball add a little more water. Rub your hands with flour to remove all of the stuck on stickiness. Turn it out onto a floured work surface (ideally around hip height for maximum leverage) and knead until smooth and springy. Wash out your mixing bowl, oil lightly, put the ball of dough in and give it a couple of turns to get the surface lightly covered with oil too. Cover the bowl with cling film or a damp, clean tea towel and set aside until doubled in size (about an hour, depending on the temperature etc.).

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Punch down the dough (literally, punch it! SO fun!), turn out on to the work surface and knead again briefly. Press out to a rectangle three times the size of your 1lb (500g) loaf tin. Fold one end in and then the other (imagine folding an A4 letter to go in a business-size envelope) and then put in the tin seam-side down. Leave to prove for about 15 - 30 minutes, until it has risen to above the top of the tin. Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until it looks done on top and sounds hollow when you rap on the bottom with your knuckles. Sit on a wire rack, out of the tin, to cool before trying to slice it.

Red Salad: Radish, Beetroot and Kohlrabi

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:28:00 +0000

Total crunch fest! When I made this (weeks and weeks ago - I am not efficient about writing these up, which is a pity as when I eat them they are seasonal. Note to self: stop faffing), I had in mind something along the lines of the Carrot, Avocado and Cashew Salad, though here the contrasts are more about the flavours than textures. And it's so pretty! White, white and pink, and deep purpley-red. With little yellow flecks. What more could you want? Oh yes, as fork. Just don't try to eat it curled up in a chair, straight out of the pyrex casserole in which you mixed it, because you will drop it down your front. And on the pale green chair. And then on the floor when you stand up trying not to get more on the seat. Trust me. I know.

One very greedy (but so healthy!) portion, or perhaps more sensibly, two:

5 radishes

1/4 kohlrabi

1 small-medium beetroot

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Pinch of cumin seeds

1/2 tsp yellow mustard seeds

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Dry fry the spices in a small frying pan then tip out on to a plate or sheet of kitchen roll to cool. Top and tail the radishes and chop in to quarters. Peel the kohlrabi and slice into short, thin batons. Peel the beetroot (wear gloves if you don't like having vibrant magenta hands) and dice or julienne. Put all the vegetables and spices in a bowl, add the lemon juice and oil and mix thoroughly. Gobble. It might improve of steeping, but I wouldn't know.

Starter started!

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Shortly before heading off on my second holiday to Morocco, I saw this post at Asymptotia which introduced me to Amish Friendship Bread. The idea is one starts with a bread "starter" - a live yeast culture - which must be loved and nurtured and fed for a few days, after which you give some to a friend(s), make bread with some and retain the rest to replenish for future use. Being on the wrong side of the pond to even bother asking if I could have some of Clifford's starter, I Googled to find out how to make my own. It's not hard! Just flour, sugar, milk and a bit of yeast, all mixed together and left to ferment. If you want to make sourdough, the process is very similar except that you are not supposed to add any yeast (or a tiny pinch at most) but let the naturally occurring yeasts in the air colonize the mix. There are some cute articles on the science of bread-making (plus recipes) at The Science of Cooking for the uninitiated.

Instructions for making you own starter are below. Think of it as a pet: it has to be taken care of each day. Note the quantities given are the total you will need for the 10 day cycle. On the first day you only need 1/3 of it, so don't let shortage of ingredients stop you. I give US cup measures as this makes the formula simple: equal measures of flour, sugar and milk. Weighing it out obscures this symmetry - a cup of flour is not the same weight as a cup of sugar or milk. If you don't have proper cup measures, just use a measuring jug: 250ml of each.

Another important note is that metallic bowls and implements are best avoided as they can be reactive and kill off the yeast. Use plastic, glass or ceramic bowls and a wooden spoon.

When my batch reaches maturity I will post how I used it to make bread - assuming it is successful! And of course, at the same time I will be giving some away to my friends! In the interim, I'm making rye bread for the first time.

For a 10-day cycle (another cup each of flour, milk and sugar will be required on day 15 and every 5th day thereafter if you want to keep it going):

1 sachet dried yeast

1/4 cup warm (NOT hot*) water (60ml or 4tbsp)

3 cups flour (or 750ml)

3 cups sugar (or 750ml)

3 cups milk (or 750ml)

*if it burns you it'll burn the yeast too - remember, it's alive and you want it to stay that way!

Mix the yeast with the warm water and let stand until a bit frothy - about 10-15 minutes. Thoroughly mix the flour, sugar and milk to a smooth, thick cream then stir in the yeasty liquid. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to sit. This is day 1.
Day 2: stir starter
Day 3: stir starter
Day 4: stir starter
Day 5: add another cup each of flour, sugar and milk and stir until smooth
Day 6: stir starter
Day 7: stir starter
Day 8: stir starter
Day 9: stir starter
Day 10: Congratulations - your starter is ready! Remove 1 cup of starter to make bread, put 1 cup in a ziplock bag and give to a baker-friend. To the remainder add another cup each of flour, sugar and milk. You are now back to day 1.

Cauliflower and parsnip curry

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Another "what am I going to do with all this veg?" recipe. Yes, we are still struggling with it and Sarah was away again this weekend. So on Saturday evening I tried to make some space in the fridge and get ahead for the week by making a vegetable curry to take in as lunches. The cauliflower in this was from two boxes ago and the parsnips have been languishing for one week; heaven knows when the celery appeared. This certainly didn't make any in-roads into the latest selection.

It is a very basic curry, using ready ground spices, in which pretty much any left-over bits can be used up - squash, potatoes, broccoli, leafy greens... And don't worry if they look a bit sad already - any loss of colour is irrelevant once the turmeric and paprika are in!

Canned pulses or meat could be added if you feel the need for more protein. Skip the lentils if you don't happen to have any, they're just to provide some bulk to the sauce and you can compensate by using less water and living with less sauce. (Proper curry sauce is based on ghee-softened laboriously-chopped onions; this is the healthier, simpler alternative.) Fresh chilli can be replaced with a pinch of chilli flakes or some ground chilli powder, say half a teaspoon (or more to taste).

Before and after:

For a good four portions:

2 tbsp oil (olive, vegetable, sunflower, whatever)

2 smallish onions (or one big 'un)

2 parsnips (or one enormous bruiser)

2 sticks celery

1 head of cauliflower

1 green pepper

1 green chilli

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

3 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp ground paprika

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 can water (i.e. fill the tomato can with water to rinse and measure simultaneously)

1/2 American cup measure or about 125g red lentils

2 tbsp concentrated tomato puree

Salt and pepper

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Chop onion into small wedges and add to pan. Peel and dice parsnip, then chuck in with the onion on a medium heat. Finely (very finely, even) chop the celery and add to the pan. Finely chop or mince the chilli, removing the seeds unless you have a taste for the very spicy, and stir into the already softening vegetables. Stir in all of the ground spices at the same time. If it looks like the spices might burn on to the bottom of the pan, add some water now. Cut your cauliflower up into small florets and the pepper into bite-sized pieces and stir into the pan together with the canned tomatoes, lentils, water (reduced roughly accordingly if you already added some) and tomato puree. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until the lentils are done. Remove the lid if it is not thickening or add more water if it looks like drying out and sticking to the bottom. Before eating, taste and salt as required.

TAMALES!!

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:41:00 +0000

OMG! TAMALES!

Okay, deep breaths...

Phew. I think I have myself back under control now. But the excitement was very great. I went to Borough Market this morning, and there was a Mexican stall which, though it was sadly not selling tamales, did have the wherewithal to make them. Well, corn husks and masa, the filling will have to come from elsewhere.

I have had tamales precisely once. Well, on two days, but they were consecutive and so count in my mind as one occasion. I spent a few days in Los Angeles back in 2005, and went to the Hollywood Farmer's Market and had tamales for breakfast from a stall there. And they were SO GOOD! I have been missing them ever since. Sob. If anyone knows of a source in London, please, please tell me. More likely, if you are based in the UK, you are thinking "what's a tamale?" Basically, starting from the inside out, they are some sort of filling - usually meat-based I believe, encased in corn dough/paste all wrapped up in corn husks and steamed. To eat, you open up the husk wrapper, add sauce and eat. Preferably in the LA (or even Mexican!) sunshine, but I'm not going to get finickity about the weather if I've got a tamale.

So anyway, I have corn husks and masa, and now just have to find a recipe, get the rest of the ingredients and find a weekend to make them! I can hardly wait.

Dinner with Darwin and a diplodocus

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:53:00 +0000

Last night I went to the final in the series of "After Hours" events at the Natural History Museum which have been going on over the winter months. I wish I had known about them before, and will be looking out for any repeats of the idea - it was fun!

The museum central hall and the exhibition(s) are open late, a couple of bars are set up, food is available and live jazz encourages an end-of-the-week (or beginning-of-the weekend, depending on whether you're a glass half-full or half-empty type) atmosphere. The "Blue Bar" consists of round, white-linen bedecked, tealight-adorned tables in the central hall, with Darwin looking down from his throne on the grand staircase and the diplodocus' tail stretching out over the heads of the diners. Anyone not wanting food is channelled into the "Red Bar" which is sans tables, chairs or cocktails, serving just drinks and a few snacks (pint of sausage rolls, anyone?).

I arrived hungry and aching from the gym with an hour to go before my Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition entry time, so grabbed a table and ordered a Bramble cocktail (gin, lemon juice, sugar syrup and creme de mur - to ease the aching, you see) while I contemplated the menu and the setting. The NHM is one of my absolute favourite buildings - it awes me every time I look at it. It's a vast cavern, but so intricately detailed and the use of colour is wonderful - it is everywhere, from the blue terracotta to the gilded ceiling painting, but the effect is so subtle and it all harmonizes beautifully. On the inside and outside there are sculptures of animals and plants (extinct on the east side, living - at least when the museum was built - on the west) and the walls and pillars everywhere are carved. Seeing it lit by soft lights shining from the arches of the second level walkways and candles, with the musicians in an alcove with a reptilian skeleton bigger than the double bass in a glass case and a rock panel with perfect plant fossils in relief behind them, was quite special (small photo above taken with my camera phone, two below taken from the NHM website).

I drank my Bramble (£7.50), which was rather heavy on the sugar and light on the lemon, and ordered the "Andalucian fish pie with an orange salad" (£9.50, as everything except the sharing platter was). When it arrived I was struck by two things: it was rather small, and there was no orange in the salad... Orange-coloured bits, yes, but I think the menu should have been more specific. A more accurate description would be cooked but cold cubes of carrot, squash and parsnip - just mentioning the words "root vegetables" would have been sensible, I think. The fish pie was adequate, but did I mention small? It was fine for me (just), but I won't be suggesting any of the boys come out for dinner there. I'd get a lot of complaints and demands to stop and pick up something else later on. A glass of Pouilly Fumé and some gazing around at everyone else sitting chatting and eating and drinking with an enormous dinosaur's tail inches above their heads (so incongruous!) took me through to exhibition viewing time.

On the website it said that to attend the After Hours event one had to buy a ticket to the exhibition, which I did though I had actually already been to see it. (I was very disappointed that Darwin finished last Sunday - a fact I discovered at 4pm that day and have been kicking myself for not looking into earlier ever since.) However, no one checked at any point other than entry to the actual exhibit that I had a ticket, so it seems one could quite easily go along and just chill out in the two bars and enjoy the music and not go to the exhibition , if desired. But I don't want to discourage anyone! The fact that I was quite happy to go again to see the wildlife photographs says it all really - all of the shots are absolutely incredible. So overall, a very pleasant evening in beautiful surroundings, with decent food and drink, provided you are not as hungry as the skeletons gazing at you look.

Easter Slow Food event at the Southbank Centre

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:14:00 +0000

Slow Food London organise various food and drink-themed events in London (details on the website, or see their Facebook page), and last weekend they held an event for Easter at the Southbank Centre. It was basically a farmer's market, with a few talks and demonstrations in a tent to one side.

There was cheese and charcuterie...

There were dips and salads and spices...

There was paella...

There was also a wine-tasting, featuring "rare wines". Unfortunately, I had nothing with which to take notes, so I couldn't write down exactly what we tried. There was certainly a Tannat, a red from Arbois, a Favorita (possibly Italy or Corsica?) and another white, beginning with R but other than that I can't remember (it was very acidic, and basically tasted of grapefruit, so I wasn't mad about it anyway).

I caught the end of a "Spring Cheeses" tasting session too, and there were other talks throughout the weekend. All of the vendors had samples out, and most of them were happy to chat about their produce, companies and food generally. A couple of the more interesting points were a long conversation I overheard between a honey-merchant from Norfolk and a customer about colony collapse disorder, in which entire hives of bees just seem to disappear and which continues to spread, a rose petal preserve and a stall selling hemp oil, which apparently contains high levels of omega-3, -6 and -9 fatty acids in exactly the proportions the body uses them. I was somewhat dubious about the scientific basis of this last claim (surely the required ratios depend on what process exactly the acids are being used for in the body?) but the oil did have a pleasant nutty flavour. Overall, it was a cute little market to wander through if you happened to be in the area, and provided a number of options for a stand-up lunch to the passing hoards, but I wouldn't recommend traveling any great distance especially for it.

Of boxes and books

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 07:48:00 +0000

You may have inferred from the previous couple of posts that I (with Sarah) am now getting a vegetable box delivery each week from Abel & Cole. We've started with the "deluxe organic" box for 4 people and will see how it goes. So far I have been intimidated by the quantity of red kale, and after yesterday's delivery we are in danger from the kohl rabi mountain (well, hillock): a further two arrived and we were as yet to finish the first ones from the earlier boxes. But enough negativity! We are actually loving it.

And the second box came with an exciting free gift: the Abel & Cole Cookbook! Written by Keith Abel, the founder of the company, it is arranged seasonally and is based around vegetables but includes meat dishes too. It's a good looking book, working along the general principle of a recipe on one page and a photograph on the facing page. There's a bit of waffle from Keith introducing each recipe and at the beginning each chapter, in a friendly, chatty tone that makes you think Keith would be a fun person to have in the kitchen whilst you were cooking. There are some great lines, especially in the intro, some of my favourites being:

If you think cooking is a chore, you must be doing it the wrong way...

and (on making cooking fun):

Sing out loud and embarrass the kids. Take off your clothes and throw on a pinny. Take off your clothes and don't throw on a pinny. (Mind the Aga...)

and (on the subject of warming plates):

..If all else fails, check where the cat hangs out - it's guaranteed to be warm.

Whilst I'm not about to follow Keith's suggestions in the second quote to the letter, I do agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. This brings me on to my only word of warning about this book - whilst the recipes look pretty straightforward to follow, and the ones I have tried so far have been successful, it is perhaps not a book for slightly nervous or inexperienced cooks. It is clear that a fairly cavalier attitude prevails in the Abel kitchen, and one is not expected to follow the instructions here to the letter. Whilst this is how I approach much of my cooking, and encourage others to too, if you are not comfortable relying on your own judgement of how long something needs to cook or whatever, you probably won't love this book. That said, if you get over the initial anxiety and give something a whirl, it might be a perfect aid to building your confidence!

Of course, one of the main points of this book is to provide suggestions for using the more unusual vegetables that appear in the boxes, and that is exactly what we have used it for. So far I have tried jerusalem artichokes for the first time (made into artichoke and almond rostis (page 195) - utterly delicious) and Sarah made the potato and kohlrabi gratin (page 142) in a desperate bid to use some of the latter up last night. The universal verdict on that was "tasty, but I'd rather have a straight potato gratin" - the kohlrabi retains its crunch, and neither of us found firm layers desirable, feeling the point really is the delicious soft fattiness of the cream soaked starch.

I also made a cauliflower-based curry, but it was so far removed from the one in the book that I won't pretend to be able to comment on that specifically, but can endorse the principle. And finally, Sarah also made the pan-fried chicken breasts with blood orange sauce, except with regular oranges, which was also reported as delicious, other than George's reservations about the use of flour in the sauce. Next up I think will be one of the purple sprouting broccoli recipes. Watch this space!

Kale, Kohlrabi and Chorizo Hot Salad

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:32:00 +0000

Our first veg box contained a big bag of red kale. I had it steamed a couple of times (alongside a piece of mackerel, and with the bacon, leek and mushroom tart) but there was still over half the bag left when the second box arrived on Friday last week. One of the great things about Abel & Cole is that you can check online to see what the contenders for the box each week are, and opt out of anything that you don't want, either permanently or just for one week. I thought that this meant one would get extra of some of the other things, so I deselected red cabbage for the second week's delievery, as we still had plenty of leafy stuff from the first. Unfortunately, I had misunderstood - you get an alternative. Which turned out to be another bag of kale. D'oh!

So now I have 1.5 bags of red kale, and I am the only person in the house over the Easter weekend. I also have two kohlrabi, as we didn't manage to eat the first of those either... Is anyone else thinking that perhaps getting the four person box was a bit ambitious? Or that we should get organised and actually take lunch into work each day, as we said that we would?

Irrespective of the wisdom of our choices, I still have a lot of vegetables to eat up. Luckily, a morning of gardening with attendant mollusc mass-murder (46 snails!) is fairly hunger-inducing, and so I made this light-but-filling salad for lunch, before heading out to the Slow Food event at the Southbank Centre. The kohlrabi adds a crunchy texture, but all the flavour really comes from the sausage and the kale.

One portion:

Large handful red kale (basically, enough to fill your bowl)

About 2 inches of skinny chorizo (i.e. not the monster, 2 inch diameter salami-kind)

Half a small red onion

1tsp olive oil

Pinch of paprika

Pinch of chilli flakes

3tbsp julienned kohlrabi

Splash (about 2tsp) red wine vinegar

Roughly chop the kale, discarding any woody stalks, and steam for 3 or 4 minutes. Meanwhile, chop the chorizo into 3mm thick half-moons and chuck in a hot, dry pan. Let the oil render out of the sausage, and then add the olive oil to the pan if you think it is necessary (if there is more than a tablespoons-worth of chorizo oil already, don't bother). Thinly slice the red onion and add to the pan. Stir in the spices then add the kohlrabi. Add the kale as soon as it has steamed. Give it all a quick toss together - the onion and kohlrabi only need to heat through, not really cook. Remove from the heat, quickly stir in the vinegar, season with salt and pepper and tip into a bowl. Gobble!

Bacon, Mushroom and Leek Tart

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:36:00 +0000

I feel like all of the cooking I have done in the past weeks has been has been reactive rather than proactive, by which I mean, of the "what can I make out of all the stuff in the fridge that is going to go bad if we don't eat it soon?" variety, as opposed to the menu-planned-shopping-list-made-accordingly approach. The primary cause of this was my flatmate's boyfriend's birthday party, from which they came home with pounds and pounds of leftover cheese, and more bacon than one can shake a stick at. We also have a vast array of vegetables (more on this later), and Sarah keeps going away for the weekend. So I have more food than ever, and a new year's resolution to keep. Fortunately, I also have friends who can be relied upon to never say no to food, especially homemade food. Last Sunday, I met with one of these friends to have a photography lesson, and so I offered to take lunch. This is what I made, and yes, I appreciate how silly it sounds to say that I made this for a photography lesson and then omitted to take any photographs of it. Instead, I'll give you a picture of London, under a blanket of cloud.

Makes one shallow 9 inch tart - double the filling if you want it deep-filled.

For the pastry:

6oz plain flour

3oz butter (or half butter, half shortening - I didn't have any)

Pinch of salt

About 3tbsp cold water

(Alternatively, if you are new to pastry making, see here for a more generous pastry recipe - so you don't have to roll it out so thinly - with very detailed instructions.)

For the filling:

6 rashers bacon

1 large or 2 small leeks

2 large portobello mushrooms

1 tbsp olive oil

2 eggs

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

60ml (4tbsp or 1/4 cup) milk

Black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°. To make the pastry, rub the fat into the flour until you get coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in the salt and add just enough cold water to form a dough - start with a couple of spoonfuls and only add more if you really need it to get the mixture to clump. Gently roll out on a floured surface until just large enough to fit your flan tin. Line the tin with the pastry, making sure there are no cracks or splits, line with greaseproof paper and weight down with baking beans, old pulses or similar. Bake blind for about 7 minutes, until the sides are sufficiently cooked to support themselves. Remove the beans and paper lining and continue cooking until the base is dried out too. Turn the oven down a tad, or cover the sides of the pastry case if the edges start to brown before the centre is done.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Cut any excess fat off the bacon and then chop into raggedy strips. Dry fry in a hot pan, making sure to evaporate off any liquid which seeps out. Then add the oil. Chop the mushrooms in half and then slice finely and add to the pan. Rinse out any mud then slice the leek into 3-5mm rounds and chuck them in the frying pan too. Cook over a medium heat for about 5 minutes, until all are cooked through. Whisk the eggs with the mustard and milk.

Once the pastry case has finished baking and the filling is cooked through, assemble the tart by simply spreading the bacon and vegetables mixture evenly over the base, pouring in the egg mix and grinding a little pepper over the top. Place it back in the oven and cook until the filling is set, which should take about 10 minutes. Eat hot, warm or cold, with salad and maybe some chutney on the side, view of the Thames optional.

A recap and some recommendations

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:01:00 +0000

So, clearly I haven't been doing enough playing in the kitchen recently! But this is set to change... First though, a recap of other (significant) things that have happened.

New house!
I moved house (again) in January. I knew as soon as I stepped into the kitchen that I wanted to live here: it is gorgeous, big enough to hold a table for six, overlooking a garden, has a larder containing (I kid you not) shelves of neatly hand-labelled kilner jars and .... drum-roll... a bright red KitchenAid mixer! Fortunately, the offer I had made on the rent for another, tiny, tiny one-bedroom flat was sneered at by the owner, and so I was off the hook and free to move in here. I also have a lovely new flatmate, the writer of the afore-mentioned labels and owner of the wonderful KitchenAid, who has chosen the same crockery and tableware as me, was listening to BBC Radio 4 the first time I came around and jazz the second time and thinks that coming back from holiday laden down with cake tins, cookie cutters, jars of spices and sundry other food-related items is perfectly normal - my kind of woman. The first week after I moved in we baked 6 items between us... Well, it was my birthday! And when we combined my store-cupboard with hers, we had enough sugar, of just about all different kinds, to open our own sweet shop, so the baking was obligatory.

Moroccan cook book
After moving in to my new place, I wanted the remainder of my belongings back - they had been residing with my grandmother since November. Thus, my parents came round for lunch one Sunday with their two current foster children and a car full of my things. Not all my things, note, as there were four people in the car, but that is a different issue... So: Sunday lunch? I wanted something that would sit in the oven so I could get on with my morning and not worry about what time people would arrive. And also not too heavy, as they had to drive home again after, and a stodge-induced torpor would not be conducive to road safety. But, on the other hand, I was feeding my father: there had to be meat. Lots of it. So I consulted my flatmate's cookery books (mine being absent until the guests arrived), one of which is The Moroccan Collection by Hilaire Walden. Unsurprisingly, there are a number of lamb recipes in here, and I made the lamb tagine with chickpeas and raisins (with a couple of changes - I left out the potatoes and, I think, reduced the quantity of shallots too) and served a pile of couscous with toasted almonds and pinenuts alongside. It was fabulous!

And then not long after moving in, I had a dinner party: eight people round the table for six - good times! I might post more about the full menu later, but here I shall just note that I went for another recipe from the same book: stuffed baked lamb. And again, it was a triumph! A boned leg of lamb is stuffed with a combination of couscous, spices, pinenuts and flaked almonds, onion, herbs and raisins. I roasted a pile of vegetables (squash, fennel, sweet potato, etc.) and steamed some green beans, and I think everyone went home more than sated. If you like aromatically spiced, balanced and surprisingly simple-to-make food, you might like to try this book out.

Morocco itself!
I went to Morocco! Skiing was cancelled, and I had vacation to use before the end of March, and so I went to Morocco, on an Atlas Adventure. The first five days were walking in the Atlas, through the most gorgeous landscapes I've ever seen, stopping each night in Berber villages which looked as though they were about to tumble down the mountainside. We were accompanied by 2 local guides, one cook, three muleteers and four donkeys. We'd walk with the guides until lunchtime, when we'd arrive in a shady, cool spot to find a ground-sheet laid out with cushions along either side ready for us. They'd be mint tea, and then a fabulous lunch all cooked from fresh with piles of beautifully chopped and presented salad, bread, some sort of carbohydrate (pasta, rice...) and a delicious sauce or stew of vegetables, pulses and spices. We'd finish with fresh fruit and more mint tea, then have a snooze or talk and play games or just commune with nature for about another hour, and then set off again to our evening accommodation. Where there would be more fresh food and tea and laughter. It was wonderful - if you get the chance: go!

And since I am returning in three weeks, I might see you there! But before then, I shall be trying to keep the holiday feeling alive by cooking with the argan oil I brought home with me, and trying to recreate Hallimore's creations (though I am sceptical whether it is possible to do so without a donkey nearby)...

Spiced Chickpeas with Chorizo and Broccoli - a New Year's Resolution

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:26:00 +0000

2009 has finally arrived, and frankly, I'm not sad to see the back of 2008! Now, after a party on New Year's Eve, and a refreshing and restorative walk in Richmond Park in the afternoon of New Year's Day, it is time to get down to some resolution making.

After stumbling across the Love Food - Hate Waste site a few days ago, where I was reminded that a third of all food bought in the UK is thrown away (I had heard this before) and that this is very bad for the environment as well as just plain wasteful and expensive, I realised that here was a resolution I could keep:

I resolve, in 2009, to waste less food

After my walk, I got home rather hungry and looked in an almost bare fridge. Some ancient broccoli and cauliflower which wouldn't have looked at all appetising just steamed, onions, garlic, chorizo, pesto and sundry other jars, mascarpone and parmesan and some yogurt and eggs I'm scared to look at the date on. No - I haven't cooked much in the last couple of months, hence the complete hiatus in posting here. Wanting something a bit more interesting and healthful than another bowl of pasta and pesto, I initiated a rummage through the store cupboard. Eureka - chickpeas! Filling but healthy, and can cope with a bit of spice, which I felt the need of after a walk in almost freezing temperatures. And so gradually, this dish was born. Instead of throwing the broccoli away, which I considered, it became the (almost) greenery in this. The first step in honouring my resolution!

I ate this on its own, but if you need to bulk it up, because you have a bigger appetite or more mouths to feed, you could add bulgur wheat or couscous, or even rice or quinoa, either in the mix or as a bed to serve it on. Some dark leafy vegetables, kale say, would probably work too (as with the earlier Chorizo with Sherry and Tomatoes).

For two smallish portions:

150g chorizo

1/2 large onion

2 garlic cloves

1 teaspoon paprika

Pinch chilli flakes or hot hot chilli powder (or more to taste)

1 tablespoon tomato puree

1 teaspoon vegetable bouillon granules

Small head of broccoli

1 can chickpeas, strained and rinsed

Hot water

Chop the chorizo into pieces a bit larger than a chickpea. Chop the onions. Place the chorizo in a dry deep frying pan over a medium heat. You should be able to render enough oil out of the sausage to coat the bottom of the pan and thus avoid the need to add any extra. Once you have a pan coated with bright orange oil, add the chopped onions and cook gently until translucent. Finely chop or mince the garlic cloves and add to the pan. Cut the broccoli into florets, and then chop these up roughly so they can be eaten in a bite with everything else. Add the spices, tomato puree, bouillon powder, broccoli and chickpeas to the pan with enough hot water to come a half centimeter or so up the sides. Stir thoroughly, bring to a simmer and put a lid on to steam the broccoli and heat the chickpeas. If your pan doesn't have a lid, add a bit more water and heat more vigorously. When the broccoli is al dente, taste and season as required, then serve in bowls and pat yourself on the back for not chucking the imperfect veg.

Leek, Potato and Blue Cheese Bake

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 07:59:00 +0000

Think vegetarian, anglicised Tartiflette. Or a cross between leek and potato soup and potato Dauphinoise. To be specific, one softens sliced potatoes in milk or cream, starts some leeks and mushrooms off in a frying pan, and then layers them both in an ovenproof dish with blue cheese and bakes the lot in a hot oven until golden on top. You could use whatever strong blue cheese you have - I made it with Danish Blue cheese, but Stilton would be just as good. It is substantial enough to eat as dinner in it's entirety (that's exactly what I did last night) or serve as a side dish for a change. I'd probably omit the mushroom if it was to be just an accompaniment, but only because I personally don't tend to eat mushrooms as a vegetable.

For one 1.5 litre/3 pint ovenproof serving dish-full:

750-800g peeled floury potatoes

50g (3 tablespoons plus a bit) butter

1 pint whole milk (or a mix of milk and cream is you want to make it even richer)

2 long trimmed leeks (3 if they are rather stubby)

2 large chestnut or portobello mushrooms

100g strong blue cheese (e.g. Danish Blue or mature Stilton)

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Slice the peeled potatoes about 5mm thick. Heat a tablespoon of the butter in a large, deep saucepan, add the potatoes, stir to coat in the butter, then add the milk or cream. Bring to the boil then turn down the heat and keep at a good simmer. Stir occasionally to make sure no potatoes are sticking to the bottom, but not too frequently or vigorously as you don't want to break up the potato slices. Meanwhile, slice the leeks into rounds of about 5mm and chop the mushrooms in half and then slice each half thinly. Heat the remaining butter in a large frying pan and add the leeks and mushrooms when it starts to bubble. Fry on a medium heat until the leek is softened, but not browning. Set aside. Grease the ovenproof dish with the remaining butter. Keep simmering the potatoes until they are almost soft in the middle (not quite cooked, but pretty close) then pour about half of them into the greased dish. Cover with the leek and mushroom mixture. Crumble half of the cheese over this, then add the remaining potatoes and sauce. Crumble over the rest of the cheese then bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, until bubbling and golden on top, and totally soft throughout. Leave until it stops bubbling before serving in bowls, preferably with a glass of red wine. Mmmmm....

Rose Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:34:00 +0000

My colleague (of fake baklava fame) has her birthday this week. To mark the occasion, I made cupcakes, of which she is a fan. I have had success with chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate icing previously (declared "the best cupcake I've ever eaten" by two colleagues independently), but wanted something a little different this time. And whilst discussing some beautiful rose buds I bought in Dubai (maybe more on this trip another time) to make tea, I was struck by the idea of rose cupcakes. The Lady H was equally intrigued by the possibilities, and so I set to work this weekend.

Untempered rose water can be a little too close to perfume, and food which smells like something your grandmother might wash in is never a winner, so I added a small quantity of ground almonds in place of some of the flour, and used just as much vanilla essence as one would for plain vanilla sponge. I wanted tall, proud domes - none of these flat, un-risen looking affairs where the icing is as deep as the underlying cake and still only just fills the paper case* - hence the rather large quantity of batter to make only just over a dozen cupcakes. I ended up with 14, though it could easily have stretched to 18 and still yielded very respectably-sized cakes. I iced them with buttercream, again delicately scented with rose water, and then finished them off with adorable little pink wafer roses (bought from the Jane Asher sugarcraft shop in South Kensington). Very cute, sweet and tender and light and exuding just a faint breath of exotic, floral scent.

For 14-18 large cupcakes:

225g unsalted butter

225g caster sugar

1 tablespoon rose water

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

150g self raising flour

50g ground almonds

25g cornflour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder (leave out if you want almost flat cakes)

4 eggs

3-4 tablespoons cream or milk

For the icing:

75g unsalted butter

225g icing sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

1/2 teaspoon rose water

1-3 tablespoons cream or milk

Wafer roses, to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line muffin tin with paper cases.
Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly, until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla essence and rose water and beat in briefly. Weigh out the flour, almonds, cornflour and baking powder and sieve together into a spare bowl, blending them thoroughly. Add the eggs one at a time to the creamed butter and sugar, beating them in a cup first, and adding a couple of spoonfuls of the flour in between each. Gently fold in the remaining flour. Add enough milk or cream to reach a soft dropping consistency (a batter which just about holds its shape in the bowl and will plop off the spoon when given a single shake). Divide between the cases, leaving about 1cm empty space at the top for big cakes risen above the top of the cases. For more dainty, demure little numbers, only fill the cases two thirds of the way full. Note that I have only one muffin tray, and so some of the mixture has to sit around until the first dozen are out of the oven, but this doesn't appear to be a problem at all (contrary to what I was always taught was the case with sponge mixtures), so don't worry if you too have to cook them in batches. Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, until risen and golden and a skewer or cake tester comes out clean. Turn the tray around after about 15 minutes if your oven does not cook very evenly (like mine), but do not open the door until at least 12 minutes have passed, as you might cause them to collapse if you do so.

Allow them to cool completely, sitting on a wire rack, before icing. Once you are ready to do this, make the buttercream by creaming the icing sugar into the butter a couple of spoonfuls at a time (if you do more in one go, it will poof up and you will look like a snowman, never mind the state of the kitchen). Beat in the vanilla and rose essences, then enough milk or cream to make it easily spreadable, but definitely not runny - it must hold its shape. Spread over each cupcake and top with a wafer rose.

* Yes, Hummingbird Bakery, I am referring to you. I was very underwhelmed by their produce - sickly and sugar rush-inducing.

Thai-Style Chicken Curry

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:05:00 +0000

Authentic Thai curry recipes - those that don't rely on a ready-made curry paste - usually seem to have a list of ingredients as long as your arm. This is understandable, as a good Thai curry is a multi-layered, subtle complex of flavours, but it is not very convenient. Don't mistake me: I love to wander around town hunting out exciting ingredients. But there isn't always the time, or the energy. And besides this, many of the ingredients for a curry are fresh, and cannot be bought in small enough quantities to make just one or two portions at once, which is how I cook. I suppose I could start trying to stash them in the freezer, but past experience tells me that that is the ingredients-equivalent of Purgatory in my kitchen: if they are there, they're already dead, and will ultimately be making their way to their final destination - the bin. Consequently, I generally only make Thai curries using store-bought spice pastes. However, I was in a corner store on North End Road in Fulham last week, and after quizzing my fellow customers about what a breadfruit was and what one should do with it, I felt obliged to buy something. So I picked up a brace of fresh lemongrass stalks and some garlic to go with the 800g of ginger I had bought for £1 (bargain!) at the market in the street outside. Combining all of these with some coconut milk and a few other flavourings I think of as more-or-less South-east Asian, I came up with a very passable Thai-style curry. It might not be very authentic, but it is easy to make and delicious. Which is good enough for me.

For two portions:

3 tablespoons oil

1 fresh lemongrass stalk

2 inch ginger root

2 cloves garlic

1/4 medium onion

1/4 teaspoon dried chilli flakes (or more to taste)

1 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1 can coconut milk

1 teaspoon nam pla (Thai fish sauce)

1 small green pepper, chopped

Handful of small broccoli florets

Juice of 1/2 a lime

3 tablespoons -ish chopped fresh coriander

Very, very finely chop the lemongrass - you want it to be almost like sand. Repeat with the ginger and the garlic, chopping until the pieces are almost a paste, and then the onion. The idea is that it should blend almost unnoticeably with the coconut milk later. If you have one, by all means puree the lot in a food processor or blender with the oil.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the chopped or pureed lemongrass, ginger, garlic and onion, the chilli flakes, paprika and cumin. Fry very gently, being careful that it doesn't start to brown or burn. Chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and add them to pan. Give it all a good stir to get the chicken coated in the flavourings. Fry for about 5 mins, by which time the chicken should be almost cooked through. Add the coconut milk and nam pla. Let it simmer for another 5 minutes, then add the pepper and broccoli. Once the broccoli is cooked, squeeze in the lime juice, throw in the chopped coriander and check the seasoning. Add more nam pla if you think it needs more salt. Cook for the briefest minute to meld everything, then serve over noodles or rice, with some more coriander sprinkled over and a wedge of lime on each bowl if you are feeling fancy.

Rice Pudding (à la my Gran)

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:10:00 +0000

Today I am off work, feeling rather queer - mainly dizzy, but also sporadically nauseous. It is pouring with rain, as it seems to have been for days - on Sunday I woke up to a fantastic thunderstorm. I love thunderstorms - the more lightening the better - and every time there is one here I rather miss living in a house where one can appreciate the drumming on the roof whilst watching and listening from the warmth of the sofa. Though come to think of it, I have been known to go outside in the middle of the night to stand in the rain too. Anyway, it is very obvious that we are firmly on our way into the darker seasons and so, to make the best of an otherwise depressing fact of life in this country, I made a pudding which complements it. Rice pudding is exactly the sort of thing that you want to eat when it is bleak and miserable outside. It also requires the oven be on for several hours, so fits well with a housebound and cold day. The recipe I use is my Gran's - she would make it when I visited her and my grandfather without my siblings, who incomprehensibly didn't like it - and is made with milk only. It is therefore relatively austere, compared with alternatives I have seen in modern recipe books: if you like a very creamy rice pudding I suggest you replace some of the milk with cream and add a teaspoon of vanilla essence. I also put in only a little sugar, because we always ate it with golden syrup drizzled over the top to form the first initial of the eater. This last part is very important - it doesn't taste the same at all if you don't do the letters.

To serve four to six, depending on their love for rice pudding:

1 tablespoon butter

5 tablespoons (60g) pudding rice

1 pint of full fat milk (or a milk and cream mixture)

1 tablespoon caster sugar (or more to taste)

1 bay leaf

good grating fresh nutmeg

Golden syrup, or jam, to serve

Preheat the oven to 140°C. Grease an ovenproof dish - I use a round pyrex casserole with a diameter of about 8 inches. Put the rice, sugar, milk and remaining butter in the dish and give it a bit of a stir. When it has stopped swirling, put the bay leaf in the centre and then grate over the nutmeg to form a thin even layer. Carefully (you don't want to disurb the nutmeg topping) transfer to a low position in the oven and bake for 2 - 3 hours, until the pudding reaches your preferred point on the scale from runny rice-belumpen soup to solid, sliceable mass. Irrespective of this, the pudding should never boil so that the skin lifts up - check periodically and turn the oven down if it is happening -it should be a smooth, speckled brown.

Serve hot from the oven with golden syrup, in letters as described, or dollops of jam. Then go for a wind-blown walk to work it off.

Pathetic Anger Bread (1)

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:07:00 +0000

For all the Shakers out there, here is my take on what pathetic anger bread should be...

It is flat (except where it puffs up into hollow bubbles). It is dry and brittle (you don't have to push it far before it snaps). The flavours are strong and biting. It contains seeds, the better to get stuck in your teeth and cause irritation later. The dough is ripped up into irregular scraps rather than cut out into neat rounds, because we're all about promoting diversity of shapes, and pathetic anger bread is by definition liberal and sharp-edged. And it would go wonderfully with a topping of jellied eel I am sure (though we're all out of it right now, so I have not tested it myself).

(A more conventional description would be "black pepper and caraway biscuits". Use to dip in houmous or a mild dip, or top with creamy butter or a mild cheese such as Wensleydale. Or both.)

For two small baking sheets-worth (number depends on how big your final ripped up pieces are, obviously):

100g plain flour

50g cornmeal (makes them drier and grittier, but just use more plain flour if you have none)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

25g cold butter

60ml hot milk

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Mix flours and salt together. Crush the black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar until coarsely ground (go on, bash them like you mean it - this is anger bread, after all!), then measure out 1 teaspoon into the flour mix. Give the caraway seeds a quick bash and then add them too to the dry mixture. Add the butter and rub in. Heat the milk until steaming then stir into the rest. Roll out on a floured surface, almost as thin as a coin. Rip into rough but reasonably even pieces, thinking 2-3 bites for each, taking pleasure in throwing off the shackles of conformity and uniformity. Place on lined baking trays and bake in the oven for about 5 minutes until turning brown (some of them will have puffed up a bit in places). Obviously, the timing depends on how big the biscuits you have created are. Transfer to a wire rack to cool as soon as they come out of the oven.

Then, go ahead - feed the trolls!

Date and Walnut Loaf

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:22:00 +0000

As I was making the scones on Sunday, I remembered that I had been intending for some time to make a date and walnut loaf. I dug up the recipe obtained from my mother many, many moons ago and, forgetting the fact that I didn't have any eggs, which was why I was making scones rather than something else in the first place, decided to give it a whirl.

The lack of eggs however, was not the first problem I encountered - that was one of method. The "recipe" I had jotted down on the telephone several years ago consisted of the first 5 ingredients followed by the word "cool", then 3 more ingredients (including a beaten egg) followed by "mix up" and then "Put in greased loaf tin, gas mark 3, 1 1/4 to 1/1/2 hours". This is a little sparser than your average list of instructions, you have to agree. Extrapolating from this point, I assumed that some heating together must precede the cooling, that the method should be that below and choose which size loaf tin based on the volume of the final mixture.

The egg problem I didn't spot until I got to the stage where I was supposed to add it, at which point I wasn't prepared to go out and buy some. So, reasoning that the egg was probably a joint raising agent and moisture provider, I added another half teaspoon of bicarb and enough milk to get a near-dropping consistency. And since the loaf came out just fine, I give my version below. To make the original, use only one teaspoon of bicarb, no milk and one beaten egg.

I think this is relatively healthy for baked goods: it contains quite a small quantity of butter, and most of the sweetness is provided by the dates, which are also high in fibre.

For a 2lb loaf tin:

2oz butter

8oz dates, roughly chopped

2oz sugar (caster or soft brown for a darker crumb)

1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

1/4 pint boiling water

2oz walnuts, roughly chopped

8oz self-raising flour

3 tablespoons-ish milk

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Grease a 2lb loaf tin. PLace the butter, chopped dates, sugar and water in a saucepan with 1 teaspoon of the bicarb. Heat until the butter has melted - the mixture will begin to foam due to the bicarb. Leave to cool until lukewarm then stir in the flour, remaining 1/2 teaspoon of bicarb and chopped walnuts. Stir in the milk to obtain a thick dropping consistency. Scrape into the loaf tin, smooth the surface and bake for about 50 minutes. Test with a skewer or sharp knife to make sure the centre is not still gooey. Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack, then slice thinly and spread with butter to eat (thereby ruining the healthfulness advertised above, admittedly).

Scones

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:48:00 +0000

Scones are what I make when I want to bake but don't have any eggs. They have the further appealing attributes of being very quick to make, and best eaten warm from the oven. It occurs to me that scones would be a good thing to make with children: easy, always reliable, fun to stamp out and out of the oven so quickly that their interest won't wane first.

The recipe below is for plain scones - just add a handful of your dried fruit of choice and reduce the sugar by half or leave out completely for fruit scones. Whichever you make, they are best eaten still warm with a layer of jam and a layer of whipped (or clotted) cream. Bliss!

Makes about 8 smallish scones:

8oz self raising flour

good pinch of salt

2oz butter (straight from the fridge)

2 tablespoons caster sugar

1/4 pint of milk

Preheat the oven to 200°C and grease and flour a baking sheet. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl, sieving first if you have a strong perfectionist streak. Cube the butter and then rub in with your fingers until you have a fine sand. Stir in the sugar and fruit if desired. Add 2/3 or so of the milk and mix in with a knife or metal spoon. You are aiming for a soft, springy, but not sticky, dough, so add more of the milk if necessary. Conversely, if you are a bit heavy handed with the milk, just throw in a spoonful or two of extra self-raising flour to compensate. Roll out on a flat surface to about 2cm thick and cut into rounds with a straight or fluted cookie cutter (though I did have a housemate at university who just cut squares with a knife). Place on the baking sheet and brush the tops with a little milk. Bake in the preheated oven for 8-10 mins, until risen and golden on top. Split, smear thickly with jam and cream and eat, with a cup of tea alongside, as soon as they are cool enough to handle.

Quinoa Salad with Roast Peppers, Feta and Pinenuts

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:27:00 +0000

This travels to work very well in a Tupperware for a filling lunch on its own, or could be served alongside a lamb chop or other meaty chunk as supper, though I'd omit the feta if doing the latter. Quinoa is high in protein and fibre, containing a complete set of amino acids, making it a very good choice for vegetarians and vegans. It is also gluten free. But its main attraction is its nutty flavour and the interesting texture: on cooking, the germ separates from the seed and so there is a mix of crunchy and soft components. I used red quinoa as that is what I had in the cupboard, but as far as I know the white version is interchangeable from all but an aesthetic perspective. The measurements below are very rough, a guestimate at best as I made it up as I went along.

For a couple of large portions:

180g red quinoa

cold water

1/2 small onion, or 5-6 spring onions (probably better, but I didn't have any)

1 red and 1 yellow pepper

1 small can sweetcorn

4 tablespoons pinenuts

100g feta cheese

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons wine vinegar

Preheat the oven to 200°C ready to roast the peppers. Put the quinoa in a saucepan and cover with twice its depth of cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer until cooked, about 15 minutes (or follow packet instructions if different). When done it will be soft but the seed will still be slightly firm. Drain any remaining water and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, roast the peppers. Place whole on a baking sheet in the preheated oven. Cook until the skin is blistering and blackening, turning once or twice - this will take about 10 minutes. As soon as they are out of the oven (they should be on the point of collapsing), put in a bowl and seal with clingfilm, or pop them in a sandwich bag and seal. Let them steam until cool, at which point take them out and remove the stem and internal waste and peel, retaining as much of the juice that runs off as possible. The skin should pull off easily. Slice thinly lengthways and set aside until the quinoa is cool.

Finely chop the onion. Drain and rinse the sweetcorn thoroughly, and drain again. Dry fry the pinenuts until golden, shaking regularly to stop any sticking and burning. Assemble the salad by mixing the chopped peppers, sweetcorn, chopped onion and toasted pinenuts. Whisk the vinegar and oil together, chucking in and pepper juices too, then stir into the salad. Crumble over the feta, and enjoy, possibly with a tomato alongside.

First Anniversary!

noreply@blogger.com (Eleanor) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:02:00 +0000

Well, a week ago, but I didn't notice then... And now I feel that I ought to post something "special" to mark the occasion, but cannot think of anything. Hmmm....

For the record, the sitemeter is at 331.