Ambrosia and Nectar

Comfort vegetables

2009-11-15T14:54:00.004Z

Comfort vegetables.
Eh? let me try that again.
Comfort. Vegetables.

It doesn't sound much more likely the second time around,does it? Your comfort foods tend to be sweet and fatty, or warm, rich, and the sort of thing your mother would make you when you were sick or celebrating something. A bad day at work rarely prompts the phrase "I'm feeling a bit low. Can you peel a carrot for me, love?". At best you might be able to stretch to a plate of mashed potatoes as a platter of comfort, but it can be hard to seek solace in just a plate of greens.

I returned to work at the start of October (hence this poor blog suffering lowest task on the totem pole status). I like my job as much as you can - and same can be said for the people I work with - but it was always going to be a challenge to become a Working Mother. In my first 6 weeks back, us family three have already been struck by mild colds, severe colds, teething, chest infections, feverish nights (and days), gastroenteritis, and the general disturbed sleep that comes from suddenly being left to the care of strangers all day (Baby A&N, not the adults on this one). Sometimes all three of us have been struck at once, which has led to some fairly improvised parenting ("If we drop him at day care after his nap, he'll be well rested enough to last a few hours there and we can go back to bed and get some sleep ourselves").

Eating, when you have the appetite, becomes more functional than fun (which might technically mean meals become 'ctional', but that's a tough batch of letters to pronounce). Hence comfort vegetables - defined as an attempt to bring a touch of much needed coddling to a dish that would otherwise just perpetuate the blah. A recipe in Moro East (which, if you haven't heard of it, is a fantastic seasonal cookbook perfect for the allotment/home food grower) for a beetroot, broad bean, and tarragon salad seemed the perfect antidote to our vegetable lethargy. As the newly branded Mother Who Plans Ahead, I added tarragon to our weekly shopping delivery and sat back, waiting for the beetroot to come in with our weekly veg box.

Except Mother Didn't Know Best, and for the only instance in weeks there was no beetroot waiting for us in our veg box (the world of weekly vegetable deliveries is a very cruel world). Luckily Father Dearest stepped in to stop the situation falling apart ("I need exciting vegetables! I have tarragon! There is no beetroot! THIS WASN'T IN MY WEEKLY FOOD PLAN!") and suggested twists to the original recipe: the salad became a warm dish, carrot stepped in for the beetroot, and a bit of sherry vinegar and cream became the sauce to hold it all together.

Mr A&N was stunningly pleased with the result. I at first mostly tasted defeat and disappointment in myself, though friends assure me this is a common flavor of parenthood so I best get used to it. To be fair to these vegetables, they really were rather special, with the vinegar, tarragon and cream not just giving the right tart, deep flavored, and rich balance to one another, but it all giving a bit of comforting, vegetable love to a week night spent detoxing in front of the television.

Creamy Broad Beans, Carrots and Tarragon
serves 4 as a side dish

2 shallots or 1 small onion, chopped very finely
2-3 Tbs olive oil
3 carrots, chopped into 1cm cubes
about 500g broad beans (use frozen - much easier than peeling! Do quickly boil and drain, though to take the edge off the freezing)
1 bunch (about 15g) fresh tarragon, roughly chopped
2-3 Tbs good quality sherry vinegar
about 125ml cream
salt and pepper to taste

Over a medium heat, warm the olive oil and add the onion. Cook until beginning to soften.
Add the carrots and cook for a few minutes until their hardness is taken away.
Add the broad beans and tarragon, and cook a further few minutes until both vegetables are nicely softened.
Add the vinegar (start with 2 Tbs since it can be strong tasting, and add more later if you think it needs it) and cook for a minute or so until it's mostly burnt off.
Add in the cream and stir until everything is well coated.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Daring Bakers: Macarons

2009-10-26T21:34:00.006Z

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.
Ah macarons. Like salted caramel, they seemed to take the food blog world by storm a short while ago. I resolutely/accidentally missed the boat on both, then felt behind the times enough to not want to make either since everyone else had been there, done that on my behalf. This month's Daring Bakers challenge gave me the chance to rectify this baking oversight and dig into a plate of dainty sweet sandwiches.

My macarons were destined for imperfection. Not failure - what is failure when you still have a highly edible finished product? They were simply not going to be the macarons that any Frenchman would be seen eating. More for me, then!

Our oven has a slight flaw in that all the numbers on the temperature dial have fallen off. Silly oven. I know where to set the dial for most cakes, cookies, muffins, and roast dinners, but anything falling outside the 160 - 200C range is danger territory. In order to achieve the tell-tale crusty 'foot' on these macarons (see every other Daring Baker page for what this looks like), this recipe has the temperature starting very low and increasing after the macarons have had a chance to rest outside the oven. Low, in this case, is defined as 100C. Or, on my oven, the Vast Unknown.

And so though I journeyed to The Land I've Never Yet Been To, and the macarons returned from that journey with me, they were not as they should be. They were soft, a bit moist, and with no feet (or limbs of any sort) on them. Oh well. They were also delicious, with the rose water buttercream and nutella buttercream I made for the standard macarons, and a mint buttercream to go with the chocolate version. They may have had trouble in baking, but not any trouble in eating.

Thanks goes to Ami from Baking Without Fear for setting the recipe and setting everyone's macarony imaginations going. Please have a look at her blog for the recipe we all used.

Vietnamese Lamb and Noodles

2009-10-03T19:15:00.003+01:00

I cooked a soup this past weekend (soup season has begun, so I've declared). Butternut squash, corn, butter beans, cream. Something of a chowder, with gentle bay and thyme to give it more flavor. It was supposed to be my blog post, but it was brutally ugly. Fairly tasty, but in need of a good food plastic surgeon to bring some beauty to that bowl.

The innocuous "What's for dinner tonight?" question on Monday was a loaded one. The weekend is for food blog time, week nights for survival. But I declared to Mr A&N that Monday night's dinner (lamb chops in the fridge) would have to be blog-worthy as I had nothing to post about this week.

"Leave it to me" Mr. A&N declared. "I'll put something together."

The 5pm phone call to tell me he was leaving work early began not with a hello but with a declaration I wouldn't have guessed had I been given 100 chances. "Vietnamese", Mr A&N stated. "It's more traditional with pork chops but I think it will work. I'm picking up a lime and some noodles, but I'll be home to help with Baby A&N's feeding and bedtime and then cook dinner."

He was of course as good as his word. Got home, set the marinade for the lamb going, pulled funny faces during Baby A&N's dinner and then played with him in the bath. Gave him his milk, bundled this very sleepy baby into bed, came downstairs and cooked me a wonderful meal. The noodles were treated to the marinade the lamb had been sitting in, and I stole irresistable mouthfuls from the wok as I set the camera up. The marinade had created very succulent chops thanks to the lime, with the slight sweetness to it melding seemlessly, and beautifully, with the chilli and soy flavors bringing up the rear. The Vietnamese know what they're doing with flavors, and so did Mr A&N when he put this together.

Mr A&N and I had a discussion in the car this past weekend, after seeing some friends. "Why do you always tell stories when I'm the butt of the joke? Why do you tell people about when I mean to say or do something nice but it comes out wrong and seems like an insult instead? Why don't you ever tell the good stuff, like how I make you dinner and help around the house and get up in the middle of the night to deal with Baby A&N?"

"Because those stories are funny. You like being funny. If there's one thing I know about you it's that."

"I like being funny," he admitted "but when it's me being funny, rather than me being insensitive. I'd like to be seen as the good guy sometimes."

"You're right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You are the good guy. You're the great guy. I promise to do better. I'm sorry."

"Okay." he said. "Thanks."

"I promise." I said. "I promise to do better. And I promise I'll only tell those stories when I'm guaranteed a really big laugh."

He accepted his victory with customary grace.

Vietnamese Lamb and Noodles
Serves 3 eating averagely, 2 greedily, 4 modestly

6-8 lamb good lamb chops
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small chilli (more if you like it hot), chopped
thumb of ginger, well chopped
1 stalk or 2tsp lemon grass paste
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
4 Tbsp soy sauce
2 limes, juiced
chinese egg noodles, enough for the number of people you're serving
2 stir fry veg nicely chopped - like carrot and broccoli, eggplant and zucchini, etc
1 Tbsp seasame oil
1 Tbsp olive or vegetable oil
handful of chopped coriander

Combine the marinade ingredients (the garlic, chilli, ginger, lemon grass, sugar, soy sauce, and lime), mixing until the sugar is dissolved.
Pour the marinade in a flat casserole dish that's just big enough to hold the lamb. Layer the lamb on top and let marinate for at least a half an hour (or over night, if you're very prepared), then turn the chops over and give that side of the chops as much time to marinate.
Turn the grill on to 180C / 375 F. When ready, lay the lamb out under the grill and cook for 4-8 minutes each side, depending on the thickness of the chops. (This will give you chops that stay nice and pink in the middle; if you don't like pink, add a couple of minutes more to the cook time). Make sure you keep the marinade left over.
Meanwhile, boil water for the egg noodles. When boiled, add noodles and cook according to manufacturers instructions.
Heat a wok on a high heat. Add the oil and give it a short while to heat up.
When the oil is hot, add the vegetables and stir fry for a couple of minutes.
When the vegetables are softening slightly (only slightly), pour in the remaining marinade.
After the garlic in the marinade is a bit softened, add the cooked noodles and give a minute or two worth of stirring.
Serve with the cooked lamb chops on top of the noodles, with a bit of chopped coriander for garnish.

Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Spanish Tortilla

2009-09-21T20:18:00.004+01:00

A few disclaimers:

This isn't a real Spanish tortilla. I repeat, this is NOT a REAL Spanish tortilla, normally an egg-potato-onion-salt concoction. I've gone off piste, but since it's my blog I'm stubbornly sticking to the name.
I made this a couple of weeks ago, before I went on holiday. I thought I set the blog post to release, but it didn't. So sorry for the lack of posting and lack of vacation announcement.
I ate this all, all by myself (though not in one sitting). Twas large, and I'm a pig, but the sign of a good dinner is that it didn't make me sick to eat all that.

Before going away for a couple of weeks, it seems a wise thing to clear out the kitchen of anything that won't last til you get back (or anything that will tempt creepy crawlies into your cupboards and make them flourish, as my family once did with an open box of Frosted Flakes and roughly 500 of the neighborhood's ants). Normally when I'm faced with a motley crew of vegetables, meats, and cheeses, I indulge myself in a guilty pleasure of a fried rice, using day-old take out rice and all of the above. With a bit of ketchup on the side, it's hangover food that you didn't have to be drunk the night before in order to enjoy.

An omlette, though, is an equally generous hold-all for food bits that need uniting. French omelettes, light and runny, and messily yet beautifully folded, don't seem to go well with chunky bits thrown into it too. An Italian fritata and a Spanish tortilla are similar in notion to each other, both being chunky wedges of egg wrapped around as many other things as you like. Both being thick, you have to find a way to cook both the bottom and top of the omlettes equally well, since if left to just simmer the will both burn on the bottom before cooking on the top. A fritata is finished off by being put under the grill, while a tortilla is flipped over so that the top becomes the bottom.

The trick of flipping a tortilla is one that seems to be passed down with the Spanish gene, and it's a very hard thing to pull off without the right combination of factors (including Spanish ancestry, it seems). I saw my first tortilla cooked by two Spanish friends working in tandem, and they both still had to hold their breaths when this 12 egg goliath was thrown onto a plate and then slid back into the pan. I worked on my own, with just hunger to carry me through the hair raising moment of El Flip. Working in my super-sticky frying pan, it was never going to turn out well. It fell to pieces like a house placed over the largest crack on the San Andreas fault, but I pushed it back together with the flat end of the spatula and continued cooking. There was no one to impress but me, and I already know most of my short comings.

I found the advice from Fine Cooking was excellent (and it's the top Google hit for the 'spanish tortilla' search, so it must be good), but sadly I went and did my own thing despite the advice. Part of the joy of a tortilla (or fritata) comes the day after, when you can eat it cold or a bit warm, slapped into a generously buttered baguette. Another day-old comfort food that might not rank high for beauty but is in other ways a beautiful thing.
Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Spanish Tortilla
serves 3-4 for dinner

4 small potatoes (about 200g)
1 medium onion about
3 inches of dried chorizo, sliced thinly and cut into quarters
1 pepper (red or green), cut into small cubes
1/4 C frozen peas
6 large eggs
1/4 C milk
several Tbs olive oil and a knob of butter

Peel and slice the potatoes, first in half and then into thin, evenly thick half moon shapes, then peel and dice the onion into small, uniformly-sized pieces.
Heat the oil and butter over a medium heat in a large, high-sided frying pan. Add enough oil so that the whole bottom is covered, plus a bit more.
Put the potatoes in when the oil is hot enough for them to begin sizzling. Cook for a few minutes until they're nicely softened, then add the onion.
Cook until the onion is softened, then add the chorizo, pepper and peas.
Cook for another few minutes until the pepper is softened and the chorizo has given off some of its oils. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Meanwhile, roughly beat the eggs together with the milk in a large bowl.
When the goods in the frying pan are all softened (but not cooked), spoon out with a slotted spoon (so that the oil stays in the pan) and add all the softened items to the eggs in the large bowl. Stir it all together roughly.
Make sure the frying pan still has enough oil to coat the bottom (if you feel it has too much to make you comfortable, spoon out a bit). Then, add the egg mixture to the pan and cook over a medium heat.
Continue cooking until the tortilla is only slightly runny and wobbly on the top, visible layer and you're sure it's all coming away from the sides easily. You'll now need to flip the tortilla, so you want to be sure it's solid enough to do so yet will still come away from the pan. (If you are fairly deft with your hands, you can do this on your own - otherwise, rope in a spare set to help you along.)
Find a plate larger than the frying pan, and hold it firmly over the top. Then, using one motion, turn the frying pan over so that the omlette comes away and lays on the plate.
Return the pan to the flame, and slide the tortilla back into the pan to cook for a further few minutes.
Serve however you like, with a slice of triumph on the side if you managed to do this all on your own.

Don't Pattypan-ic!

2009-08-26T21:34:00.006+01:00

I had an email from my friend/food guru Jill the other week, asking me about what I'd done with the pattypan squash in that week's veg delivery box. It was about 3 days after the box had been delivered, and sad to say I hadn't even clocked that vegetable yet. Carrots (check), beetroot (check), courgette (check), mystery yellowy squashy thing (hmm, check on it).

The squash is small and doesn't look like it would have much flesh within (which, it turns out, it doesn't). Jill had searched high and low for recipes and recommendations, and concluded that what seemed to be the done thing with the pattypan is to cut it open and fill it with something rather more delicious. So off Jill went with her chorizo and white beans, off I went with sausages and roman beans, and we both cooked our pattypans and relayed each other the results.

We independently discovered some of the same universal truths:

Sausages in any form are wonderful, and sauteeing them with other good things make them even better.
A pattypan squash doesn't taste of much, but it does give off an awful lot of water. Fairly tasteless water.
The pattypan is nice to look at, but remains a curiosity in how it's survived as food for so long given it's pretty short short comings.
Pattypan is a great word. The most fun I had in cooking and eating the squash was in trying to use the word in sentences ("Don't pattypan-ic, I know what I'm doing", "Well darn this pattypanning thing, it's just not cooking", etc). The makers of Sponge Bob Square Pants agree with me on this point.

Our adventures with with pattypan are done for now, and I'm not sad to see it go. Mr A&N loved the filling (naturally, it contained sausages) but thought the squash was as pointless as a pair of high heels on a camel. I feel bad harboring ill will against my food and so didn't take as hard a stance on the pattypan as he did, but I'm not about to start a clandestine affair with it either. If you, too, get landed with a pattypan squash, just keep Douglas Adams in mind: don't pattypan-ic, it will be fine.

Sausage and Sage Stuffed Squash
makes enough for 2-3 people as a main, though you should have a side dish too

4 - 6 pattypan squashes, depending on size
olive oil to cook (a tablespoon or two)
1 onion, well chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 stalk celery, sliced thinly
handful of fresh sage, roughly chopped
400g / 1lb of sausages (cumberland, simple pork, or something similar)
1 tin of romanesco or white beans, drained
Parmesean cheese for topping (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 200C / 450 F
Cut off the tops of the pattypan squash so that you have about 1/4 of the squash as the lid, 3/4 as the bottom
Place the squash bottoms and top in the oven once it's heated, and cook for about 10 minutes
Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat, and add the olive oil. Once that's warm, add the onions, garlic and celery to sautee, and cook for a couple of minutes until the onions are softened (make sure you stir every so often).
Add in the sage and give it all a good stir.
Add in the sausages, keeping them whole for now. Cook until the sausages are mostly done, then cut them up into bite-sized pieces.
Throw in the tin of beans, give it all a good stir and let it cook for a further minute or two
Salt and pepper to taste.
Take the squashes out of the oven, and stuff them full off the sausage mix. Top with parmesean if you want to, and put the filled squashes back in the oven for a further 10 minutes or until a fork inserted into the flesh goes in and out easily.
Serve with some vegetables and something like a potato gratin or hash browns on the side.

Oven-Baked Skate

2009-08-12T22:00:00.005+01:00

A skate – either in the ocean or on a plate – is a strange creature to look at. It’s a bottom-dwelling, pre-historic seeming family of fish with a large pointed nose, eyes atop its head, and wings travelling from the tip of its nose down to its body, looking almost like a baby elephant that has been flattened and sent to live on the ocean floor. It’s those large wings which are of edible interest in the skate, covered in tender meat on both the top and the bottom of the fronds of cartilage that give the wings their structure.

I must have lived more sheltered a life than I realized, since skate is another food-stuff that I’d never come across until I was in my 20s (along with rhubarb and broad beans, gooseberries, and any kind of crumble). Like my other late-in-life food deprivations, I try to make up for lost time by eating skate whenever I find it. Mr A&N, more conversant in cooking skate wing than I am, has persuaded me that oven baking is the best way to cook it. The flesh is meaty, succulent and a bit sweet and always reminds me of crab. The oven baking keeps the tenderness sealed in along with its flavor. Oven baking is also an easy-as-anything way to cook the fish, as well as a healthy way of doing it. A strange looking creature, but an excellent dining companion.

Oven-Baked Skate
serves 2

2 skate wings (we prefer the biggest we can find, but then we're greedy)
juice 1 1/2 lemon (2 lemons if your lemon isn't that juicy)
1 Tbs capers, rinsed and roughly chopped
about 5 Tbs olive oil (bit more if your skate wings are on the large size and they're not being coated)
handful each of flat-leaf parsley and basil, well chopped
1 C dry white wine

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C/ 425 F
Rinse and pat dry the skate
Combine the lemon juice, capers, olive oil, herbs, white wine
Place the skate in an oven-proof dish large enough to hold the two wings without overlapping.
Cover the wings with the lemon juice mixture, making sure that the dish has enough liquid in it to cover the bottom completely with some of the mixture staying atop the skate.
Cover the dish with foil and bake for about 15 minutes, then turn the fish over
Cook for another 15 or so, until the fish is cooked through (the flesh will come away from the cartilage fingers easily and will be opaque).

Spicy Spanish Prawns with Chorizo

2009-08-04T20:12:00.003+01:00

I'm still reliving the night, 2 months ago, when Mr A&N and I went on a hot date to the local tapas place. No baby! No responsibilities! Fabulous food! It stands out not just for being a great evening but for being the one time my husband and I have been out alone in 8 months. Baby A&N is good enough with other people that he doesn't mind being baby-sat, but the babysitting chances are few and far between. Other friends have their own families to look after, and our parents live far enough away that when they visit, we spend the short time as an extended family rather than ducking out to grab an evening to ourselves. Boo hoo, poor us. We're a happy family, but sometimes you do long for those couple-only times, even if it's only to enjoy nice food without interruption.

Mr A&N is evidently re-living the night out as well, since he came home with a batch of king prawns and an itch to do them up Spanish-style. Prawns pil pil is a regular on tapas menus, a spicy and garlicy dish easy enough to re-create at home. The prawns we had at our tapas place, though, were just that bit better and that bit different from the other versions we've tried. The memory of me returning to the ceramic plate, another piece of bread in hand ("My last bit of bread, I promise - I won't ruin my dinner") chasing around the last drops of oil in the plate...it lingers.

We didn't know what went into the restaurant dish, so we had to riff on the idea of prawns pil pil. We wanted to make sure that even if we didn't recreate what we'd eaten, we'd at least create something we'd be happy eating, which we were. If you do make this, though, consider going through the trouble of shelling your prawns first. Sticky spicy oily fingers might not be everyone's ultimate dinner companion, but they do ensure that any bread you pick up to dip in the oil gets a good coating of flavor before it even reaches the bowl.

Spicy Spanish Prawns with Chorizo
serves 4 as a starter

5 Tbs olive oil
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb prawns (shell off if you have the time and paitence)
1 tsb spicy smoked paprika
1 small red chilli, chopped or 1/2 tsp already chopped chilli
1 Tbs butter and 1 Tbs olive oil
4-5 inches of dried cooking chorizo, cut into small bite sizes (I prefer to quarter the circles)
2 tsp cooking sherry
salt and pepper

Mix the 5 Tbs olive oil, garlic, prawns, paprika, and chilli in a bowl. Set aside for an hour or two to let the flavors marinate.
Heat the butter and 1 Tbs olive oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat until the oils are mixed and well warmed.
Add chorizo and stir around for a minute, until the chorizo just begins to cook and give off oil.
Add the prawns mixture and stir well, then leave it for a couple of minutes to let the prawns cook on one side.
Carefully turn the prawns over, and leave them to cook on this side for a couple of minutes, until they're good and pink.
Add the sherry and give it all a good stir, allowing it to cook for a further minute or so.
Remove from heat and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with some mighty good bread.

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Covered Marshmallow and Milan Cookies

2009-07-26T15:38:00.004+01:00

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at sweet tooth . She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of thefood network.
Each month, I seem to find less time for cooking things, and each month I hope the next will be better. Surely, since all of the Universe operates cyclically (what goes up must come down, history is doomed to repeat itself, all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again), I should just need to exercise a bit of patience and wait for that calmness. The month of July wasn't the month during which peace and free time freely reined, though. Mr A&N has started working a second job, and so evenings and weekends are being eaten away with his work and with me watching over Baby A&N. But maybe August will be better, yes?

Without oodles of time to myself, I very much appreciated that the Daring Bakers challenge for the month, as set out by Nicole at Sweet Tooth, had an estimated prep time of 30 minutes for each of the two cookies recipes (one for a chocolate covered marshmallow confection, the other for a milano style cookie). That was an appealingly short length of time that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I could pull off a bit of cookie prep while also ensuring there were no big baby bumps on the head or limbs in need of mending. I planned on tackling the milano cookies first since they seemed more straight forward, and would ramp up the effort level to marshmallow making as and when I was allowed.

Sadly, the predicted 10 minute prep time was 10 minutes plus about an hour. Baby A&N was placed in his walker and dragged into the kitchen with me to watch all the exciting goings on. But the child who showed barely a lip quiver at his injections, who didn't even flinch earlier on when he slammed his head into the side of his cot with a thud loud enough to be heard through closed doors, started crying like, well, a baby as soon as the hand blender turning on. Delicate sausage. And poor mother, who had to carry on with the mixing using only the power in her arms to get it done. It turns out her arms aren't as strong as they used to be (despite lifting a 25lb baby all day long).

The batter looked a bit curdled in a frangipane-esque fashion, but I kept the faith and created a couple of dozen uniform pastry fingers, looking perfect on their entry into the oven. To say they didn't keep their shape once they exited the oven, though, is to say that Delta Burke had a bit of trouble keeping hers during the progress of Designing Women. They expanded. They ballooned. They bled into one another and formed one Uber Milano from which individual forms were hard, nay, impossible to discern. Oh well. I'd just have to practice my best surgery skills and cut cookie shapes out of this vanilla-scented beheamoth.

I made half the cookies with the traditional orange-flavored chocolate spread, and the other half I spread with a bit of melted raspberry jam and dipped them in chocolate. Both sorts were lovely, but it was a shame to have to call half the batch a loss because of the oozy batter. Perhaps a higher oven temperature or a bit of baking powder in the mixture would have helped them keep their shape. I've decided to hold off on having a failure with the marshmallow cookies until I have more time for an afternoon of baking disaster. You can find the recipes for both cookies at Nicole's blog, and thanks goes to her for setting the task this month.

Chickpea Puree

2009-07-19T21:27:00.003+01:00

My mind is turning to mush. Figuratively - I've been away from work for 8 months and I can feel that I'm not as sharp at holding on to thoughts and ideas. I'm still doing bits of work while on maternity leave, but half the time is spent me trying to remember the brilliant idea I'd had the previous week/day/hour. It's a different sort of mental gymnastics, keeping lists of groceries and grocery lists of to-do things in your head, than it is gathering together strands of ideas and weaving them into a long-term intentions. I worry about this mushiness when I'm back at work in a couple of months time.

My mind is also literally turning to mush, what with Baby A&N barreling forward with his solids eating and me trying to come up with interesting variations of mush for him to eat. Some are actually pretty tasty even by adult palates: courgette, roasted red pepper and basil; sauteed onion and spinach with cauliflower gratin; garlic, lentil, courgette, carrot, and tomato. Sometimes the only format for them seems to be mush (beetroot, sauteed spinach, dollop of cream cheese) which is a bit of a shame since the only way Mr A&N or I can enjoy these flavors is to steal the sloppy seconds away from any unfinished meals.

There are some adult mushes that Mr A&N and I hold dear and which baby A&N won't be able to enjoy for a while. Our favorite is a chickpea puree from the Casa Moro cookbook. It starts with the heady smell of garlic, cumin and onions gently frying together, and results in a warm, warming, rich dish that stands in for the moistness of gravy when there isn't one. It's very easy to make, and makes a different starchy side dish to mashed potato. We normally have this with lamb, which is the Moro suggestion, but it would also work well with a well-flavored chicken or sausage meat course. In some ways this is more of a winter warmer, but when mush is on the mind this is a very comforting way of seeing the mush through.

Chickpea Puree, from Casa Moro
Serves 4 - 6

2 400g of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
4 Tbs olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 rounded tsp cumin seeds, roughly ground
30 threads (large pinch) saffron, infused in about 2 Tbs just-boiled water
2 Tbs roughly chopped flat-leave parsely (optional)
salt and pepper

Puree the chickpeas (using a blender/food processor) until they're smooth
Add water to them until they're the consistency of wet mashed potato
Heat the olive oil over a meadium-high heat using a medium-sized frying pan
Add the onions, garlic, and cumin and stir, cooking and stirring until things turn golden brown
Mix in the chickpeas along with the saffron infusion and stir, then lower the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes.
Add salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with parsely if you want to get fancy.

Roast Forerib of Beef

2009-07-12T19:08:00.005+01:00

Popularity isn't a cause that much worries me, mainly because 'popular' wasn't a label that came near being coupled with my name during the teenage years. At the time you're acutely aware that you're so low down on the totem pole you'd first have to dig your way up to the surface to get some face-time on that wooden mast, but unpopularity can be liberating once you wrap your mind around it. You don't have to worry about keeping up appearances, or about tweaking your personality or preferences in order to maintain some standard. At least from my observations as a teenager, the un-popular saved a small fortune in designer clothes and handbags, and trips to the salon and manicurist (and fake tanning, these days).

The same money-saving ethos holds for your unpopular cuts of meat. You're not going to be dipping in to your savings if you get a hankering for liver or want to tuck into a side of goat. Forerib of beef is a cut of meat that has fallen off the popularity wagon, but can still be a sumptuous bit of meat. I first fell in love with forerib at the Marquess Tavern which serves it up as part of a family-style Sunday lunch, succulent and slow cooked and dripping with rich flavors and juices. At our local butchers this weekend, with forerib hanging in the window and golden memories of long Sunday lunches playing in our minds, there was no alternative but to wrap that rib up and bring it back to its new home.

The forerib is a cheaper cut of meat because there's a bit more fiddling about to get beauty from it - athough beauty is very possible. You can either brown the meat off and then roast in the oven until nicely cooked (though still rare, please), or give it the slow-roasting treatment to really concentrate the flavors, as Johanna at The Passionate Cook did recently. We opted for the brown-and-roast method, adapting a recipe from Anthony Worrall Thompson that used paprika, mustard, and dried herbs to give the meat flavor and to create a glorious gravy which nearly became the star of the meal itself.

A topside or silverside of beef is a much more popular roast dinner: easy to whack into a pan and cook to preference, but also easy to over-do because of its lack of fat. Even though the forerib is less simple to carve and to pick the meat from, the efforts are rewarded by the flavor of the meat itself. Since it's not as popular as it once was you will probably need to go to a butcher to get some (and the better the butcher, the better the meat will be), but the double pleasure is that it costs less than other cuts of beef and will give a nice stock from boiling up the bone. If you ever needed an argument to show that being unpopular is a rewarding experience, this is it.

Roast forerib of beef, adapted from Anthony Worrall Thompson
Serves around 6

1.3kg/3lb piece forerib of beef, on the bone
handful of roasting vegetables, such as carrot, onion and leek; use 1 of each if mainly using to add flavor to the gravy, more than that if you are roasting the vegetables to eat
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried basil
2.5ml/½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garlic salt
2.5ml/½ tsp dry English mustard powder or wasabi powder
4 Tbsp olive oil (for frying the meat)
600ml/1 pint fresh beef stock
150ml/¼ pint red wine
3 Tbsp olive oil (for cooking the vegetables)

Heat the oven to 200C / 400F
Combine the dried herbs (Anthony warns that the recipe will only work with dried rather than fresh) cayenne, paprika, garlic salt and English mustard powder/wasabi.
Spread a thin layer of the Dijon mustard all over the fat side of the beef and stick the herb mixture into it. If you have time, wrap in cling-film and put to one side to allow the beef to marinate.
Chop up the vegetables and place in the roasting tray the meat will go into, along with the 3 Tbsp olive oil. Cook for 20 minutes until caramelised or lightly browned.
Once the vegetables are browned, increase the temperature to 220C/425F. In a frying pan, heat the 4 Tbsp olive oil and seal the meat on all sides (about 30 seconds per exposed side).
Place the beef into the roasting pan on top of the caramelised vegetables, but don't return to the oven just yet.
Into the frying pan containing the left over juices of the meet, add the red wine and heat to burn off the alcohol. Pour into the base of the roasting pan along with the ½ pint of beef stock.
Return the meat et al to the oven and roast 15 minutes.
After those 15 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 200C/400 F and roast for 12 minutes per 450g/1lb for medium-rare; or 10 minutes for very rare, almost 'blue' meat and 20 -25 mins for a well done beef. (please note: we followed these instructions and the meat needed another 20 minutes to come up to rare, so either we got our timings wrong or these suggestions are wrong)
Baste the roast regularly, about every 10-15 minutes.
Remove meat from the roasting dish and place on a large dish, letting it rest a good 15 minutes before carving.
Use the juices from the pan to make a succulent gravy.

A Summer Salad

2009-07-05T20:04:00.004+01:00

You'll excuse me for my brevity - it's summer. It's hot. The days are long and we're all reveling in it. Especially baby A&N, who wakes with the sunrise. At 4.30am. Full of the joys of life, which is nicer than being a misery guts, but by 9am we're all flagging and in need of a long perfumed bath (or perhaps that's just my tonic).

Dinners have needed to be cooling (no ovens, please), quick and easy (god we're tired), but without sacrificing taste. Cookbooks could be written and sold by the hundreds based on those criteria. But we're too tired to find the right cookbook, so after a bit of head scratching and repeated staring into the fridge for ingredients on hand, this is the result.

A flexible summer salad, adapted to whim/what's available. The key ingredients are an anchovy dressing, a grilled vegetable of some description (aubergine in this case, but just as easily courgette or pepper), and a bit of something from the bacon family (we used some lovely pancetta, from a specialist Italian organic farmer, having a pedigree better than I do. Probably wasted in this salad, but did I mention we're too tired to think creatively?). It was salty and wet, filling and fresh, meaty and crisp. It will make an appearance again, probably in a slightly different guise, probably later this week when we're too tired to think. Again.

A Summer Salad
Serves 2 as a main course with left over for 1 lunch

1 aubergine, cut into thin slices
(touch of olive oil for the aubergines and pan frying)
70g of pancetta or bacon
1 small gem lettuce or 2 handfuls of baby spinach
100g green peas
100g broad beans
handful of sundried tomatoes, rehydrated and roughly chopped (or just chopped if using ones in oil)
250g pasta
3 anchovies, very finely chopped
2 Tbsp sherry vinegar
5 Tbsp olive oil (or 4 Tbsp if using tomatoes in oil)
1 clove of garlic, very finely chopped

Lightly sprinkle the aubergine slices with olive oil, then grill at 180C for about 15 minutes or until tender. Set aside to cool slightly, then cut into bite-sized pieces.
Pan fry the pieces of pancetta or bacon until nicely crispy, then set aside to cool slightly.
Briefly boil the peas and broad beans until just tender, then quickly put in a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking a preserve the flavor. Drain.
Boil water for the pasta, and cook until desired consistency. Drain and cool down under some cold running water.
Chop the lettuce and place in a bowl, and add in the peas and beans as well as the chopped tomatoes. Add the aubergine and pancetta once cooled, as well as the pasta.
Make the dressing by stirring together the anchovy, vinegar, olive oil and garlic.
Pour the dressing over the salad bits and adjust for flavoring.

Daring Bakers: Bakewell Tart

2009-06-26T22:22:00.004+01:00

When I joined the Daring Bakers a year and a half ago, I was on the vanguard of a Daring Baker deluge. Because of being the 300th something member at the time, I was due to chose the month's recipe in around 2012. As numbers kept growing and newer members found out that due to the waiting list, their recipe-choosing turn was a legacy they would have to leave to their great-grandchildren, people began pairing up for recipe challenges.

Lucky for me, my good blog friend (and just friend all around) Jasmine had a more reasonable 2009 recipe challenge date, and invited me to share the month with her. We were both interested in doing something from another country and something that didn't just encourage people to take on a new skill but to look again at something they might never before have considered. I thought a recipe from my adopted country, Britain, might fall into that category.

British food still has a bad reputation (particularly in America and Australia...and probably other places too) that I think is due a lot to post-war rationing and deprivation but isn't really a deserved reputation any more. British food from the 1950s until the 1980s and 90s was rarely something worth seeking out, but modern British food has more than come into its own, drawing on traditions of using good quality fresh produce and a range of herbs and spices. I've become a British food convert and fight its corner whenever the fight is brought to me.

The Bakewell Tart, and English dessert from the 19th century, hasn't been changed much over the years since it hasn't needed to. You do have to like almond to stand a chance of liking the tart, but I've always appreciated the balance of sweet jam and spongey mild frangipane, crisp crust and soft topping, and how it can grow sweeter or milder depending on your tastes. A classic Bakewell Tart should have a cherry or strawberry filling, and though those are Mr A&N's favorite incarnations of the treat, I broke free a bit since Mr A&N wouldn't be able to share in the tart because of his diet restrictions. My jam element became a rhubarb, apple and ginger jam, another classic English dessert flavor that I thought might enjoy being introduced to its compatriot. Mr A&N called it a travesty against both the rhubarb and the tart, but since he doesn't have any say in this one, I shan't regard him.

Thanks for the recipe itself must go to Jasmine, who worked hard doing the testing and the tweaking, and only needed me to step in every so often and say 'yum'. I love the crust she's come up with and will use it whenever a shortcrust is needed, now. I also love how easy and adaptable the whole recipe is and it will now be a standard dessert for me to put on show. Thanks also to Ivonne and Lis for the massive undertaking and success of the Daring Bakers, and for all of you for joining in. I hope that you've (mostly) all enjoyed the tart as well, and at least used it as an opportunity to try out another classic British treat: to enjoy a slice of cake while having a nice sit down and a cup of tea.

Bakewell tart
Makes one 23cm (9” tart)
Prep time: less than 10 minutes (plus time for the individual elements)
Resting time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 30 minutes
Equipment needed: 23cm (9”) tart pan or pie tin (preferably with ridged edges), rolling pin

One quantity sweet shortcrust pastry (recipe follows)
Bench flour
250ml (1cup (8 US fl. oz)) jam or curd, warmed for spreadability
One quantity frangipane (recipe follows)
One handful blanched, flaked almonds

Assembling the tart
Place the chilled dough disc on a lightly floured surface. If it's overly cold, you will need to let it become acclimatised for about 15 minutes before you roll it out. Flour the rolling pin and roll the pastry to 5mm (1/4”) thickness, by rolling in one direction only (start from the centre and roll away from you), and turning the disc a quarter turn after each roll. When the pastry is to the desired size and thickness, transfer it to the tart pan, press in and trim the excess dough. Patch any holes, fissures or tears with trimmed bits. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Remove shell from freezer, spread as even a layer as you can of jam onto the pastry base. Top with frangipane, spreading to cover the entire surface of the tart. Smooth the top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Five minutes before the tart is done, the top will be poofy and brownish. Remove from oven and strew flaked almonds on top and return to the heat for the last five minutes of baking.

The finished tart will have a golden crust and the frangipane will be tanned, poofy and a bit spongy-looking. Remove from the oven and cool on the counter. Serve warm, with crème fraîche, whipped cream or custard sauce if you wish.

When you slice into the tart, the almond paste will be firm, but slightly squidgy and the crust should be crisp but not tough.

Jasmine’s notes:
• If you cannot have nuts, you can try substituting Victoria sponge for the frangipane. It's a pretty popular popular cake, so you shouldn't have any troubles finding one in one of your cookbooks or through a Google search. That said, our dear Natalie at Gluten a Go Go has sourced some recipes and linked to them in the related alt.db thread.
• You can use whichever jam you wish, but if you choose something with a lot of seeds, such as raspberry or blackberry, you should sieve them out.
• The jam quantity can be anywhere from 60ml (1/4 cup) to 250ml (1cup), depending upon how “damp” and strongly flavoured your preserves are. I made it with the lesser quantity of home made strawberry jam, while Annemarie made it with the greater quantity of cherry jam; we both had fabulous results. If in doubt, just split the difference and spread 150ml (2/3cup) on the crust.
Annemarie’s notes:
• The excess shortcrust can be rolled out and cut into cookie-shapes (heck, it’s pretty darned close to a shortbread dough).

Sweet shortcrust pastry

Prep time: 15-20 minutes
Resting time: 30 minutes (minimum)
Equipment needed: bowls, box grater, cling film

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough.

Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Jasmine’s notes:
• I make this using vanilla salt and vanilla sugar.
• If you wish, you can substitute the seeds of one vanilla bean, one teaspoon of vanilla paste or one teaspoon of vanilla extract for the almond extract

Frangipane

Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Equipment needed: bowls, hand mixer, rubber spatula

125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in colour and very fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. In the words of Douglas Adams: Don’t panic. Really. It’ll be fine. After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow colour.

Annemarie’s notes:
• Add another five minutes or more if you're grinding your own almonds or if you're mixing by hand (Heaven help you).

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Rosewater and Mint Fruit Salad

2009-06-23T20:47:00.003+01:00

This is a recipe adapted from my friend Jill a la Jill Dupliex (not the same Jill though the mistake is an easy one). Friend Jill is an excellent host and cook, and when she has you round for food you can be sure of dining on 3 (or more) wonderful courses of food. On a recent trip around hers, we ate strawberries in rosewater essence with a chocolate sorbet, and the memory of the dessert lingered.

The original recipe uses rosewater essence and sugar to create a sweetened syrup for the strawberries to bask in. The rosewater isn't directly tasted, but adds an 'Ooh, what is that?' flavor to the fruit which ratchets up their appeal. So so far so good with the strawberries and rosewater, it would seem. When making it myself, I decided to throw in a couple of more ingredients for a bit of further interest and to use some of the abundant fruit I had bought from the local market (when a bowl full of anything costs £1, it's not hard to wind up with more peaches/peppers/persimmons than modesty would allow).

In this, I used equal parts strawberries and peaches since both turn out a good syrup is allowed to sit in sugar for a while. The rosewater stayed put, and was joined by mint to add additional freshness and flavor. Really, you can play with the fruit and sweetness levels as you see fit, but sticking with a strawberry base and other fruits that are juicy is the best bet. With a bit of cream on top, it's a different way of enjoying strawberries and cream and a slightly sophisticated way of getting your summer fruit salad in. You won't work up a sweat from making this, but you should still enjoy it with a cool glass of Pimms or a dip in the swimming pool (even if it's just an imagined one).

Rosewater and Mint Fruit Salad
makes about 6 modest-sized servings

about 1lb strawberries, topped and cut in two (or quarters) if large
about 1lb peaches, diced into bite sized pieces
handful of fresh mint, chopped finely about
3 heaped Tbs confectioner's sugar (more if the strawberries are on the tart side)
2 Tbs rosewater essence

Combine the strawberries, peaches, mint, sugar and rosewater in a large bowl. Taste for tartness, adjusting as needed but keeping in mind the salad will be a bit sweeter after a while.
Stir well and allow to cool for a few hours so the flavors can come together.
Enjoy.

Liver and Sage Pate

2009-06-15T21:28:00.003+01:00

It was my birthday this past week (happy birthday to me). Even more momentous than turning the age Jesus was when he was killed was that Mr A&N and I went out with each other on a hot date. That's right - a friend gave me the greatest gift she could give me (along with a nice book) by offering to baby sit Baby A&N. We jumped at the chance, booked ourselves into the local tapas place, and pathologically checked our phones every 20 minutes just in case we missed any messages coming in as we slowly got tipsy on the wine.

The tapas, and the freedom, were wonderful, and my favorite dish of liver and onions in sherry (which was rich, sweet, and entirely too easy to eat too much of) reminded me of my love of liver. In a bid to re-create some of the magic of having dinner with my husband, I bought a batch of chicken livers from my local butchers. Buying them reminded Mr A&N, though, that he has a definite liver threshold, and he'd had enough liver-shaped liver for the week, thanks very much.

Luckily, cooking and sticking liver through a blender disguises the true nature of the meat for him and results in a rather good pate. The inspiration for the pate came from Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, the execution via Mr A&N and so the recipe has changed slightly to be both of theirs. Sadly, the magic of our evening out wore off within 24 hours since Baby A&N has now decided that he doesn't need to sleep on through the night anymore and he'd rather say hi to us at 3am. At least the pate is tasty.

Liver and Sage Pate

2 tbs butter
1 large onion, chopped
8 rashers streaky bacon, cut into pieces
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lb chicken liver, trimmed of sinew bits and cut into chunks
palmful of fresh sage (about 20 leaves), roughly chopped
glug of brandy (about 1/2 C)
1/2 a nutmeg, grated
75g oats (or breadcrumbs)

Melt the butter over a medium high heat in a large pan. Add the onion and bacon and sautee until mostly cooked, then add the garlic and cook until lightly brown.
Add liver and brown on all sides, then add the sage and give a good stir.
Add the brandy and nutmeg and cook over a medium heat until the liver is cooked through (about 5 minutes).
Throw in the oats and give a good stir so that everything is combined well, then turn off the heat.
Transfer the mixture to a blender and blend until smooth (we like to make ours slightly rustic so that it's not toothpaste smooth but a bit chunky).
Place the mixture in a pate dish or loaf dish. Cover in plastic wrap and place a weight on top (or even just a container with some water) so the mixure is pressed. Once it's cool enough, place in fridge and leave for a couple of hours before serving.

Lemon and Basil Sorbet

2009-06-03T21:43:00.006+01:00

Summer has arrived this week. Please don't check your calendars, just go by my word. Hayfever, sunscreen, over-warm public transportation. But also long days, pea shoots springing up in the garden, and hours spent sitting in parks with Baby A&N and the other local mummies and babies. It's intoxicating (or that may be the hayfever medication), and I'm beyond happy that I'm still on maternity leave rather than sitting in an office chair, projecting my disembodied spirit outside the window and sending it frollicking barefoot through greenery.

And now summer has gone. The past two days have been cold - heating intermittently on, hat on the baby, a few extra minutes standing in the shower to take up the warmth of the water. And grey grey grey. The summer fruits and flavors that have started to come out at the market don't seem to fit with the steely-skied gloom outside. But I am thankful for the embarrassment of sweet and juicy things that are suddenly on offer and which I am buying up by the bag-full and eating with closed eyes, hoping the skies will brighten by the time I'm finished.

I have trouble each year with deciding which is my favorite summer fruit - peaches! cherries! strawberries! watermelon! - and always risk filling myself to the point of sickness in the attempt to find the winner. Healthier than gourging yourself on chocolate, but still an act that can result in a something of a sweetness bellyache. An antidote, then, is a summery sweet thing that doesn't send you into hyperglycemic shock: a lemon sorbet.

Refreshing in both a cooling and tongue-invigorating way, I made this sorbet with a bit of basil thrown in for extra interest and a different dimension to the sweetness. A good twist to a classic, keep it in the freezer for those hot summer days. Or those days when summer disappears and you need a reminder of how the season ought to be enjoyed. C'mon back, summer. Whatever it was that we did to upset you, we're terribly, terribly sorry.

Lemon and Basil Sorbet
makes 1 and a bit liters / 4 1/2 cups

750ml water
500g caster sugar
300ml lemon juice (8 or so lemons)
zest 1 lemon
good handful of basil

Gently heat the water over a medium heat, adding the sugar and stirring until dissolved.
Simmer for a couple of minutes, then add the lemon juice and zest. Taste for tartness and add a bit more sugar/lemon juice if desired.
Cool completely.
Finely chop the basil then add to the cool mixture.
Add to an ice cream maker and churn for about 20-30 minutes or until smooth.

A Trip to Wales

2009-05-29T19:44:00.005+01:00

Mother-in-law A&N moved to Wales a few years back. The lure of endless fresh air, a vegetable garden the size of most London flats, and plenty of large hills up which to hike and jog during dangerously inclement weather proved too much for her. She and her husband now live in a beautiful valley with their 4 ducks and the cows and sheep in the next field over singing them off to sleep.

The biggest shame about Wales (and the biggest factor in preserving its beauty) is that it can be mighty difficult to get to. A 60 mile as-the-crow-flies stretch of road can take two stomach churning hours of dipping up and down hills and rocking to and fro around endless bends in the road, often stopping or reversing since the road isn't wide enough to hold two cars at once. We haven't visited them in two years since the thought of taking the 5 hour trip when pregnant made me immediately queasy. Mr A&N last week found himself with a few days off between his freelance projects, so we packed up the car and set off for a week's holiday at his mum's.

Being with baby doesn't make the traditional early morning hikes easy to negotiate, and Mr A&N was glad for the excuse to take it easy. We instead had gentle walks around ruined castles and several tours of the vegetable patch with Baby A&N taking delight in the ducks and the butterflies that stopped by the say hello. I came away from our castle trips with a build-your-own castle book that I'm trying my best not to rip into until Baby A&N is old enough to do it with me, even though I so desperately want to build a while medieval city on our dining table.

Our dining in Wales always takes place at home, with Mr A&N's mother picking things from the garden that are fresh and balancing them with meat or fish from her local farm shop. Ambling about in the same fields as your sheep and seeing them wandering in your church yards brings me closer to the reality of what I'm eating, so I appreciated the chance to buy some well reared meat from the source. Eating lamb these days does give me pangs, thinking that I'm tucking into some sheep's own Baby A&N. Thank goodness it's delicious enough to help me swallow down that guilt with a slight garlic aftertaste.

At the farm shop, the farmer explained (first in Welsh, then in English as I gave him polite but empty smiles) how he had some goat meat going cheap. He was given two goats, and while letting himself have a day to decide what to do with them (cheese? milk? sell them on? grow a herd?) they managed to eat through two water butts and some important wiring. And so goat was now being served up at the shop. Mr A&N's mother and I happily offered a home to the bargain meat, only scratching our heads on the way out over what to do with 2 racks of goat rib each. Eat them, is the short conclusion, but anything more than that and we're both stumped. Any suggestions, anyone?

Weaning

2009-05-21T21:14:00.003+01:00

I hope you'll forgive this break in the normal recipe posting schedule in lieu of me talking a bit about Baby A&N. If you're of a delicate, non-baby disposition, do look away now (and return next week, please).

Rather than thinking of what to make for Mr A&N and myself this past week, my efforts have been concentrated on Baby A&N since we have begun feeding him solid foods. Hooray! He's a fair sized boy, in the 80-something percentile for weight and 90-something percentile for height, and has been jealously eyeing anything that went into anyone's mouth for several weeks now. I didn't read any childcare books before Baby A&N was born since I didn't want to tie myself in knots about what I should or shouldn't do, but I felt that weaning did probably contain some shoulds and shouldn'ts and so I ought to look through a book or two before tackling solids.

But the books I looked through only confused me more, and didn't always help answer what I thought were basic questions (How much should I feed him? If he wants more solids, should I give it to him or should I guide him toward his milk? At what age should the solids replace the milk during particular feeds? How do I get him to enjoy food rather than just eat it?). So we've decided to invent our own weaning method. We're doing a bit of puree to sate his appetite and a bit of baby led weaning to help him start enjoying food (and we do our best not to panic if Baby A&N has a gagging moment while munching on his stick of cucumber/banana/broccoli). We're also trusting in Baby A&N's palate to guide us through his meals and aren't waiting to introduce strong flavors - anything goes and so far, so good. In one week, he's tackled:

Sweet potato
Butternut squash
Carrot
Broccoli
Cucumber
Mango
Banana
Apple
Potato
Beetroot
Pear

The only mildly unsuccessful taste so far has been the potato, but I'm sure he'll come around since I can't see him living a life without potato chips and french fries. And I'm sure I'll learn a bit more too - such as not feeding him beetroot just before heading out to meet people. "He looks like he slaughtered a cow with his face" commented Mr A&N on seeing the beetroot aftermath. True, but he wanted more - and in my book of weaning, that's a good thing.

Matina's Roasted Pork With Fennel Seeds and Lemon

2009-05-13T20:02:00.006+01:00

Food has been a troublesome matter in the A&N household for the past two weeks. Mr A&N has been put on an exclusion diet by his Doctor to try to isolate what food (if any) causes him stomach pains. He's been plagued by trouble for years, so any possible easing of that pain would be worth the hassle in the mean time. But in the mean time, it's a hassle. Among the foods that he can't eat are:

Wheat
Eggs
Dairy
Potato
Corn
Citrus foods
Beef
Ham
Alcohol
Garlic
Onions

I've fielded more than one lunch-time call from him, desperately roaming the supermarket aisles for something to eat that isn't brimming over with banned substances. He's ableto reintroduce one food at a time starting from next week, and he stays awake at night thrilling over what to bring back first (wheat would let him have bread and pasta again, but my we have guests next week so perhaps bring alcohol in first...garlic and onions, though, are a staple for most other flavors, so maybe they should come before anything else...).

Going out to dinner would be difficult veering toward impossible, but luckily Baby A&N is an automatic restaurant eliminator so we don't have much to worry about. Going around to friend's houses for food is equally challenging, and filled with many apologies as we turn their menus into a pile of dust or try to postpone our get-together. Our ever-accommodating Greek friend, Matina, saw the challenge head on and produced the planned roast pork main course for us normal mortals along with an improvised grilled sardine course for Mr A&N containing nothing but approved ingredients and a bit of Greek magic.

Mr A&N cooed and ahh'd over the sardines which were full of the tastes of sea and sunshine that you would hope (I tasted, I can verify). But really, the action was where the pork was. Matina used fennel seeds and lemon to flavor the meat and the crackling, and it worked incredibly well. It worked so well that it sent me into a reverie of the different times I've eaten wonderful foods containing fennel seeds, and how I ought to pay the fennel more respect by using it more often. The slow-cooking treatment rendered the pork very soft and moist, and a bit of gravy on the side helped complete the desire to drown yourself in the flavors. A perfect Sunday lunch. Shame Mr A&N couldn't join in for now, but I'll make sure he adds this to his list of Food Deprivations - To Be Rectified for when the diet is done.

Matina's Roasted Pork With Fennel Seeds and Lemon
Good for 1 1/2 - 2 kg of pork shoulder or leg joint, preferably with skin on to make crackling

3 tsp of fennel seeds
2 cloves of garlic
3 tsp of coarse sea salt
1 tsp of peppercorns
rind of one lemon
2 Tbs of olive oil
1 kg leg or shoulder of pork
1 pint of dry apple cider (about 250 - 300ml)
1 bramley (cooking) apple, cut into 8 or so slices
1 large onion, cut into 8 or so slices
Flour and water (for the gravy)

Turn the oven on to 200 C / 450 F
Score the pork skin to help it go crispy, and dry it well with paper towels. If you want to make extra crispy crackling, separate the skin from the meat before scoring, then score and blot dry with paper towels.
Mix fennel, cloves, sea salt, peppercorns, lemon, olive oil in a pestle and mortar until it is thick paste.
If you have removed the skin from the pork, spread half the paste over the top side of the pork meat, then place the skin on top as it originally was and spread the other half of the paste on. Tie loosely together with string. If you haven't separated the skin, rub the paste into the skin quite well.
Put the pork in the and oven tray and add the pint of cider, apple and onion
Cook at 200 / 400 for 1/2 an hour. Then reduce the cooking temperature to 140 / 280 and cook for another 4 hours. Check on occasion to make sure the juices in the pan haven't gone dry; top up with water or more cider if they have.
Rest the pork for 1/2 an hour.
Check the crackling for crispiness. If it looks like it could be crispier, bring the temperature of the oven back up to 200 / 400, and blast the skin for a further 5 minutes at a time until it's crispy enough. Remove from oven.
In the mean time, strain the juice for gravy. Heat the juices on the stove, adding in 1 Tbs of flour at a time until the gravy is of the thickness you like (it's easiest to stir and dissolve the flour in a glass with some water first, then add it to the gravy mix; this helps keep the flour from going lumpy).
Serve the pork in slices with gravy on top and some crackling on the side.

Mushroom and Cauliflower Soup

2009-05-06T20:58:00.004+01:00

I've been meaning to blog about this soup for a while, but I kept forgetting to take pictures in my eagerness to eat it. There's everything going for this soup: easy to make, relatively healthy, needing only a few inexpensive ingredients, and a meal in itself (if you want it to be). It's an improbable sounding combination, but it is also improbably delicious and has become a quick staple in our household.

The soup almost didn't exist except for me strong-arming Mr A&N into trying it out. He had had a sudden hankering for mushroom soup, and set out on a mushroom-fueled shopping trip. He came home with a rash of mushrooms and an itch to get started on the soup immediately. In stepped me, with unloved cauliflower in hand, begging him to add it to the mix since it had been sitting in our vegetable bin for a week and we couldn't think of anything to do with it. Although the man looked like I was asking him to shoot, cook, and serve his puppy to his mother, he dutifully obeyed and threw it into the soup pot.

The soup that emerged was a surprise to us both. There was the worry that the cauliflower would overwhelm the mushrooms and leave its pungent calling card behind with each mouthful. Instead, it helped lift the taste of the ordinary mushrooms and make it seem as if the soup was based around garlicky, rich, specialty mushrooms. The minimal stock and the cream created a heartiness, and the small bits of mushroom and cauliflower that remained after blending helped stopped the soup from being so velvety that it became cloying.

We've also tested the soup with guests who loved the depth of flavor and thought it rescued the ordinary mushroom soup from being too 'mushroomy'. We've just finished the last batch today, and have two more cauliflowers lined up, waiting for a box of mushrooms to come along and create sweet music with it.

Mushroom and Cauliflower Soup
makes 4 hearty bowls of soup

2-3 Tbs of olive oil or butter
700g / 1 1/2 lbs of button mushrooms
1 head of cauliflower
1 small handful of thyme
2 bay leaves
3 1/2 C / 825ml of vegetable or chicken stock or water if no stock is handy
1 C / 250ml of single cream (or milk if you're watching the fat content)

Clean and roughly chop the mushrooms and cauliflower
Simmer the olive oil or butter in a large soup pot over a medium heat, and add the mushrooms when the oil is hot
Gently cook the mushrooms with the thyme and bay leaves, stirring occasionally, until they have begun to soften and give off some liquid
Add the cauliflower and stir well
Cover and cook at a low heat for about 20 minutes
Uncover and add the stock or water, stirring and waiting until the liquid comes to the boil
Turn off the heat and blend together the ingredients using either a hand blender or a full blender. Remove bay leaves and thyme stalks before blending.
Add the cream or milk, and cook at a low heat for another couple of minutes
Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with nice crusty bread

Daring Bakers: Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

2009-04-27T14:41:00.000+01:00

Part of the fun of the Daring Bakers is that each month hundreds (thousands?) of people around the blogging globe are cooking up the same recipe in the same manner, and that one day a month the blogosphere is assaulted with impossible numbers of pictures of lasagnas, cinnamon buns, and yule logs - looking slightly different, but otherwise the same underneath. This month, though, we were tasked by Jenny from Jenny Bakes with being creative and inventing our own twist to a basic cheesecake recipe. So today, there will be hundreds (thousands?) of cheesecakes to look at and, like snowflakes, each will be different. Where has my Daring Baker security gone?

Cheesecake is known to be fabulous with fruits on it, but I didn't want to be predictable; why play it safe when you can go risky and fail? And fail is what I came close to doing. I made my cheesecake with a nutella swirl and hazelnuts on top. The swirl looked lovely, the hazelnuts were a crunchy top to complement the slightly-crunchy base, but the overall effect was to create a very, very sweet slice of cake with the nutella elbowing the cheesecake out of the pole position in the flavor race.

I was making my cheesecake to bring around to a friend's Greek Easter celebration. She also happens to be pregnant with twins and has had an incredible sweet tooth throughout the pregnancy, even if she's also been sick after nearly every meal/snack/sweet treat she's eaten. So though my oh-so-sweet cheesecake wasn't going to change to world of cheesecake eating as we know it, it went down very well with the woman eating for 3 sugar-hungry people.

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Abel and Cole

2009-04-22T20:42:00.004+01:00

Wednesday night is football night. Every week, Mr A&N drives across North London in order to play a different bunch of 20-40 something year olds in football, and to return home every 3rd week with an injury that has yet to be life-threatening. In my previous, pre-baby life, this meant Wednesday night was girl's night out. Now Wednesday night is either early bedtime night, or blog night - sometimes both in one evening, which shows you how I still like to walk a bit on the wild side.

My Wednesday night dinner routine has returned to what it was like when I was single, since I don't have anyone to share big meals with. It means that I'll do things like dine on a whole head of broccoli (on the theory I haven't had enough greens for the day) or have a large bowl of popcorn with a side of salad for balance. Curious habits that I wouldn't want to inflict on a loved one (though perhaps I should examine why I don't love myself enough not to eat in such a way). I know these eating habits ought to change, and this week they've been given the chance to do so because of some outside intervention.

I was contacted last week by Abel and Cole, my weekly vegetable box people, to see if I wanted to try a couple of other things of theirs for this blog. I've spoken more than once about the challenges (all positive, I promise) of working through a box of vegetables and making them an interesting center piece of the meal. I've also spoken of my love for their excellent pies and how they've been seeing us through the aftermath of having a baby, for which I'll always be both a little bit greatful and a little bit teary. Abel and Cole offered to send me another of their ready meals, an individual cottage pie, as well as a free range chicken, both of which I accepted.

The chicken (roasted with some thyme, lemon and garlic) had the succulence and flavor that you hope a free range chicken would, with skin that crisped up nicely but didn't leave you with a roasting pan full of fat or water. And if it matters to you (which it does to me), their chickens come with some rather lovely credentials, of being raised slowly indoors for the first month until they can bear the British weather, and being given a nice varied feed from week to week, a good portion of which uses local UK produce. It's chicken that you feel does the right thing both ethically and palatably, which is really the sort of meal I most enjoy eating.

The cottage pie had me hoping for the best but fearing the worst. Cottage pie is a simple dish of ground beef, carrot, and onion, with some beef stock, tomato and spices to round off the flavor and give a bit of moisture to the mix. It's then topped with mash and baked so that it turns crispy. A simple dish, but one that people can cut corners on - the biggest crimes against a cottage pie are too much tomato (giving a sickly sweet, Chef Boyardee tang to it), mince that's so ground up and processed you begin to doubt that it even came from an animal, and a too-generous coating of mash to cut the overall cost but keep the tummy-filling potential high.

The Pegoty Hedge pie from Abel and Cole isn't afflicted with any of these problems. To my surprise, it was pretty near the sort of pie you would make for yourself; good mash-to-filling ratio, well seasoned but not too salty or peppery, and more meaty tasting than fake tomato tasting. I was especially reassured to see the first ingredient was beef (30%) and to find actual beef chunks in it. The only problem with it is that it's a single serving size, which isn't as accomodating to couples or families who want a night off from heavy cooking but not a night off from food that resembles food. However, it was perfect for this Wednesday night dinner of mine, and once again Abel and Cole leaves me feeling that little bit greatful that I've found them.

Jerusalem Artichokes in White Wine, Rosemary and Cream

2009-04-15T19:46:00.005+01:00

Mr A&N is not a huge fan of artichokes - he'd like you to know that from the start. The regular sort of artichoke has too many leaves and takes too much effort, in his opinion. He's much happier eating some nice marinated artichoke hearts, all the effort taken out and replaced with sharp vinegar and slick olive oil. Jerusalem artichokes are only artichoke by name, instead being a tuber vegetable akin to a potato. They still taste enough like an artichoke to put off Mr A&N, each bite presumably bringing back shuddering memories of having to work for his food when I last made him eat a proper artichoke.

I'm used to being the vegetable refusnik, so it always takes me by surprise when I'm willing to eat something that Mr A&N isn't. My memories of vegetables from childhood are of my mother opening a can of peas/carrots/anything, microwaving them on high for tens of minutes in all their watery canned liquid until they came out grey, limpid, and somehow tepid (despite them having been endured the Chernobal School of Cookery). Unsurprisingly, I disliked vegetables for years until I began cooking for myself and realized that I was missing out on a major food group that could also be made tasty. Mr A&N can be a good vegetable eater - his mother is almost self-sustaining with her vegetable plot and often brings us gifts of food - but he'll still dig his heels in on ocassion.

Abel and Cole, from whom we get our weekly vegetable delivery, also have recipes online and on seeing their suggestion of cooking jerusalem artichokes with white wine, rosemary, and cream, I knew Mr A&N would grudginly try it. He's not alone in feeling that those flavors can bring splendor to most foods, so giving that treatment to the artichokes meant he was almost looking forward to trying them. The result?

"The flavors are great which is no surprise. It's just a shame you can still taste the artichokes underneath."

Baby A&N starts weaning soon. I'm crossing my fingers he'll take after me rather than his father, otherwise feeding both men in my life may be a bit of an uphill journey.

Jerusalem Artichokes in White Wine, Rosemary and Cream, from Abel and Cole
serves 4

2 Tbs olive oil
450 g / 1 lb jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed well, thinly sliced into rounds
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
120 ml / 1/2 C + 1 Tbs white wine
60 ml / 4 Tbs double cream
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the jerusalem artichokes and garlic and fry for 2 minutes.
Add the rosemary and wine, and cook over a high heat until the wine is reduced by half.
Cover and simmer until the artichoke is just tender, between 1 and 5 minutes.
Remove the cover, add the cream, and reduce the sauce for a couple of minutes until thickened.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Japanese Style Slow-Cooked Fish

2009-04-08T10:09:00.006+01:00

"What did you get for dinner, then?" I asked Mr A&N when he returned from the food shopping.

"Salmon. Can you pop it in the fridge while I unload the car?"

The salmon didn't take much hunting around for, since it wasn't just salmon, but a credit-crunch-busting, half-price whole salmon, head et al. Popping it in the fridge wasn't possible since this beast was strapped to a heavy piece of cardboard and more than spanned the width of the fridge. Freezer bags and carving knife would have to come out before we could think of putting this salmon away, as did our Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall book on Fish to help us figure out the appropriate way to honor the beastie.

As Mr A&N did his best to carve away with a dull knife and pick bones out with my best tweezers (no wonder proper sushi chefs aren't allowed to touch a blade for their first 2 years of study), I flipped through and read out recipes. It might have been the Japanese frame of mind we were in, but we settled on the slow-cooked Japanese style salmon, which (Hugh assured us) could be prepared with whole mackerel, trout, sea bass, or scad as well. The fish is slowly cooked in a sweet-and-sour sauce, which then has the flexibility of being adjusted for taste at the end, so that you can get the right combination of sweet and sour to set your taste buds pinging in the right direction.

Although the clue was in the name (SLOW-cooked fish), I didn't let the cooking time sink into me until it was 7pm and I just started the fish on its 3 hour journey. Hugh told me 'not to be tempted to move the fish until the 3 hours are up' but hunger got the better of us at 8.30 and he wasn't there to slap our wrists for our disobedience. Even with the shortened cooking time, the flavors had worked their way into the fish and making it tender (though not so much so that it fell apart, as Mr A&N feared) and authentically Japanese in flavor. We tried to balance the sweet with sour for the sauce so that none of the individual flavors stood out, and once reduced it made the perfect topping for the rice and veg we served the fish with.

A surprisingly professional taste for relatively little effort and (if such things matter to you) a very healthy meal. I can only imagine what heights the meal would have been taken to if we had listened to Hugh and left it cooking for the full 3 hours.

Japanese slow-cooked fish, from The River Cottage Fish Book
poaching liquid can cover 6-8 mackerel, or equivalent amount of other fish. I recommend making the whole amount and using any left over sauce for pouring over other items in the same or a later meal.

2 large, hot, dried whole red chillies
1/2 fist-sized piece of fresh ginger, cut into very thin slices
3-4 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
75ml soy sauce
40ml / 2 1/2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
20g / 1 1/4 Tbs soft brown sugar
about 400ml apple juice
3-4 salmon fillets or 6-8 whole mackerel, or equivalent

Combine the chilli, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, and half the apple juice in a small pot. Simmer gently until the sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally.
Pack the fish into a heavy-bottomed sauce pan so there's not much room left in the pot, and pour the sauce mixture over the fish. The fish should be fully covered (though only just) so if it's not the case, add more apple juice and stir.
Bring to a very gentle simmer, then turn the heat down so it's only just bubbling but not boiling.
Cover and cook for 3 hours, adding more apple juice at times if the level gets low. Hugh says: "Don't let it boil and don't be tempted to move the fish until the 3 hours are up". It's his recipe so it's probably best to listen to him.
Remove the fish and keep warm, and reduce the sauce by 1/3 to 1/2. Taste and adjust the seasoning - it should be nicely spicy with a balance of sweet and sour flavors. So add a touch more apple juice if too salty, a touch more vinegar if too sweet, etc.

Daring Bakers: Lasagna of Emilia-Romagna

2009-03-29T10:43:00.004+01:00

"A lasagne is a whole meal in itself" Mr A&N commented while helping with this month's challenge. "The only problem with it is that it takes about three meal's worth of time to make."

In between a fussy Baby A&N and tired A&N parents, the lasagne took a while to make and gave us our latest night dinner in months - 9pm, our now-normal bedtime. The grandest element of this lasagne, as hosted by the triumverate of Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder, and Enza of Io Da Grande, was the spinach lasagne sheets. Made from scratch and involving a whole load of finely chopped spinach, the pasta turns you into the Incredible Hulk during the 10 minutes of kneading, as the green of the spinach seeps in to both the flour and egg mixture, and on to your hands.

The requirement was to roll the pasta out by hand, and frankly this was the most time consuming part, both to perform the task as well as to understand the instructions and get the hang of what you ought to be doing. I was covered in flour and pasta dough for what felt like several hours, and Mr A&N had to step in and make the meat sauce to prevent a midnight dining time rather than a 9pm one. The meat sauce was our own bog standard variety (onions, garlic, bit of celery and carrot, beef, tinned tomato and tomato pasta, and a dash of balsamic vinegar and worcestershire sauce for a bit of extra flavor) because, as Mr A&N likes to remind me, he's not one to follow the rules (except that he is, but I indulge him sometimes). It was a joint effort to assemble and bake it, and by the time it was in the oven we both felt we deserved that 40 minute slouch back on the sofa.

But all's well that ends in lasagne, and the finished product is a definite I'll-have-a-second-helping-even-if-it-means-a-later-bedtime wonder. Fresh pasta makes a huge difference to both texture and taste, giving a softer and richer final product. Not one you can make every weekend (unless the kids are behaving themselves and you're feeling particularly spry/hyped up on caffeine), but certainly worth the effort once it's done.

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

A Winter Hash Brown/Latke/Rosti

2009-03-16T08:01:00.007Z

Mother Nature in winter can be a harsh mistress, not least because of the abbreviated vegetable selection that she doth giveth. And giveth. The strawberry or the fresh pea season begins and ends before you have time to harvest them, but your root vegetables - I'm looking at you, turnips, swedes/rutabagas, parsnips, carrots and celeriac - mock you week after week, making you feel you're imagining the days growing lighter and the weather warmer since the winter vegetables show no sign of halting their assault.

It's about February time that we start growing tired of mash in all its forms (parsnip and potato, celeriac and potato, carrot and potato...you get the idea) and another batch of roast vegetables or a giant stew stops being able to satisfy. Looking through the blog world to find inspiration for what to do with a spare khol rabi and celeriac, I found this recipe for a rosti using both ingredients. Mr A&N was beyond skeptical, not being a big fan of the khol rabi to begin with, but his opinion was transformed with the first bite. They were nutty and comforting, and just a little bit naughty because of the pan frying. Perfect winter food.

Since then, we've been coming up with lots of variations on that theme, all using our unloved winter vegetables left over at the end of the week. We've found that potato versions (where potato is the primary vegetable) crisp up the best, and that a combination of oat and cornmeal, put through the blender until it is smooth, brings that slightly nutty flavor to the pancakes that we both found so comforting. A recipe with about as many variations as it has name, in fact. So call it a rosti, call it a latke, make do with thinking of it as a hash brown, it's a great method of bring a bit of life back to the winter vegetables.
Winter Hash Brown/Latke/Rosti
makes around 10-12 fritters

Basic proportions:

about 1 lb of grated vegetables (potato, celeriac, parsnip, swede/rutabaga, khol rabi)
1 large egg for binding it all together
1/2 C / 60g flour (you can get interesting with your flour, and add in some oats, cornmeal, etc to a blender and whizz it until it's flour consistency and add it to/have it take the place of the normal wheat flour)
salt and pepper
olive oil for frying

Grate your vegetables, either using a blender or the large grating section on your grater
If using potato, be sure to drain it of excess water by squeezing the grated potato out. Since the potato may go brown in the mean time, you can add a squirt of lemon juice to the gratings to prevent this (if the browness offends you).
Mix in the egg and flour, and a bit of salt and pepper, stirring it all well.
Heat some olive oil in a pan - if you want to be a bit naughty, add enough so you'll be shallow frying the pancakes. Otherwise, add just enough so the pancakes don't stick.
Shape the mixture into patties between your hands. Try to get them as flat as you can (though they can be flattened further in the pan).
Add the to the pan, not shifting them until they're cooked half way through (5 minutes or so, depending on how large or thick they are).
Turn over, adding a touch more oil to the pan if needed.
Serve warm, with dinner if you're in need to starch, or with breakfast if you're in need of a treat. Mixture can be kept in the fridge for 24 hours if you want to make some more for another meal.

A Rather Adult Apple Crumble

2009-03-07T15:36:00.005Z

One sign of the A&N life returning to a more familiar rhythm is that we had some friends around for food. Not only was it a treat for us, but a treat for Mark and Cath as well, as their baby boy was born 6 weeks after Baby A&N so life has been an adjustment for them too. There were a lot of firsts for all of us that day - first time we met baby Arthur, first menu we had to plan and cook around a baby's eat/sleep/play schedule, first time Arthur decided it was ok to smile at strangers. With all this newness, I felt justified in making a familiar dessert but with a slightly different - and adult - twist.

Introducing the apple crumble. The apple crumble is an improvement on the apple pie in one important way: it's easier to make. And while the apple pie crust is it's own delight of buttery goodness, the crumble topping, with the naughty addition of sugar, makes you feel as if you're eating your apple filling with warm cookies on top. Hardly a bad thing.

I used to make apple crumble much more often when we had two apple trees in the garden; the good tree (with the tasty apples) never gave much and it was a fight to wrestle away the one or two apples a season from the squrriels. The cooking apple tree belched out imperfect, rotten apple after rotten apple, but even with only 50% of those apples salvageable our friends (and ourselves) were kept in crumble until the winter. Though my crumble making abilities aren't as well honed as my brownie abilities (in which I can whip up a batch in less then 10 minutes, even at 11pm and *ahem* slightly worse for wear), I am mostly on auto-pilot when crumble time comes.

So to shake thinks up, I've introduced almonds, both in the form of the nut and of the liquor. The apples were gently sauteed in butter and ameretto before being baked, and whole almonds were whizzed up in the blender with the crumble topping, with a few more almond slivers thrown on top for good luck. You have to like almonds, then, to like this variation, but it was a rich and indulgent change on the norm, turning the cookie crumble topping into a nutty, adult treat. Enjoy with a bit of ice cream, and the knowledge that your kids will probably need a few years to come around to wanting second helpings. Again, hardly a bad thing.

Apple and Almond Crumble
I made mine in a 12x10 sized deep dish, but generally put it in a dish that gives you enough apples to have a good apple layer, and enough crumble to cover them all slightly generously

For the filling:

8 or so medium sized cooking (Bramley) apples (around 7 cups in volume)
1 1/2 Tbs flour
1/2 C / 100g sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 Tbsp / 40g butter
1/4 C / 60ml amaretto liquor

For the crumble topping

1C / 120g flour
2 Tbs / 30g almonds
3 Tbs / 30g jumbo oats
1/2 C / 100g sugar
1/2 C plus 1 Tbs / 125g butter, softened
Optional: a handful of almond slivers

Pre-heat the oven to 175 C / 375 F.
Peel and core the apples, and slice them into thick, half-moon shaped chunks.
Toss the apples together with the flour, half cup of sugar and cinnamon and set aside for a good hour.
Once the apples have produced some juices, heat a frying pan (big enough to hold all the apples) on medium heat. Melt the butter and add in the amaretto liquor, and cook for a minute or so until the alcohol begins to burn off and reduce.
Add in the apples and the juices, and stir for a couple of minutes - remove from heat before the apples have softened and set aside.
In a blender, whizz together the flour, almonds, sugar, oats, and butter until it resembles coarse meal.
Empty the apples into a deep baking dish and spread out evenly.
Sprinkle the crumble mixture on top so that all the apples are covered, and press down gently but firmly. Sprinkle a handful of almond slivers on the top if so desired.
Bake for 30 minutes or so, until the crumble feels firm to the touch and is golden brown.

Easing Back Into Things with a Side of Chorizo Meatballs

2009-02-28T13:32:00.004Z

Well hello. I'm emerging from the post-baby world, ever so slowly, and though it's currently not filled with as much palate-delighting home-made treats as the pre-baby world was, it does have its own special glow. Baby A&N is a lovely little child (except, of course, when he decides not to be) and, predictably, has an incredible appetite. Though he didn't match my friend's son's feat of doubling his birth weight by month 2 of life, he wasn't far off with hitting 16lbs by week 10 rather than week 9. For someone who loves food as much as I do, this pleases me no end.

Sadly, breastfeeding turned out to be probably the most difficult thing I've tackled (this includes any of the Daring Baker challenges) and after 2 months of antibiotics, infections, and a baby who wasn't as deft with his follow-through as he was with his need to sate himself, I gave up breastfeeding. Quite bittersweet since it was something I never questioned not doing, but in the last 2 weeks it has produced a happier mother with even just eensiest bits of free time on her hands - which lets hme do delightful things like getting out of the house, taking the occasional bath, and starting to think up things to cook again.

In the mean time, Mr A&N and I have been getting by as best we could, particularly when it has come to dinner times. A roast chicken is an ever-giving thing, giving us a hot dinner one night, a hodge-podge the second, and a soup the third. Simple pasta sauces are done in a batch, packaged up in spare breast milk storage bags (!) for their convenient pouches, and defrosted and topped up with the meat or vegetable du jour as needed. One of the best additions to pasta sauce was a Spanish-style meatball, recipe below (though no pictures since it felt enough of a triumph to make them).

We have also bowed to time pressures and tried some ready-made foods, as much as we don't like the idea. Our supplier of dinner-time salvation has been Abel and Cole, the company we get our weekly vegetable box from and who has a good range of groceries and other foodstuffs you can order through their website - perfect food shopping for someone tied to the house most of the day feeding and tending to a baby (and themselves, every once in a while). We've become huge fans of their steak and ale pie, which is a pretty perfect example of what that pie should be like: all buttery and flaky pastry, rich gravy, and good chunks of meat that aren't skimped on. Mr A&N was less impressed by the lamb and apricot pie (not enough gravy or spicing by his assessment, and I agreed) and by the steak and kidney pie (why mess around with kidneys when you could just have more steak, is his attitude - one I'm not in agreement with). So their steak and ale pie is delivered to us every other week, a bit of an indulgence but still cheaper than a take out meal.

I hope to be getting to know my cookbooks more in the coming months and not just trying out more things from them but using them to get my creative cooking juices flowing again. The Moro East, River Cafe Green, and Borough Market cookbooks have done me well in the past and deserve a re-visit, while a Shaker Cooking book given as a Christmas present makes me want to re-discover early American cooking. Hopefully Baby A&N will go along with those plan, and maybe even pick up a food tip or two for later in life.

Chorizo Meatballs (a nicely spicy, slightly Spanishy twist to your normal spaghetti and meatballs)

1 lb / 500g pork mince
1 1/2 tsp smoked paprika powder (I used hot paprika since I like it spicy. Or, if you want it a bit hot but can't find the right paprika, add in a touch of chili powder or chopped chili)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
olive oil for sauteeing (about 1 1/2 Tbs depending on the size of your frying pan)

Combine the pork, paprika, and garlic in a bowl and mix well.
Roll the pork into small balls, somewhere between the size of a nickel and a quarter.
Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan, enough to coat all of the pan.
Cook the meatballs, gently turning after 3-5 minutes when the meatballs are looking cooked halfway through
Add the meatballs to your favorite tomato sauce. To bring a touch more spanish-ness to the meal, you might want to add another teaspoon or so of paprika to the tomato sauce as well.
Serve with spaghetti or your favorite pasta.

Baby Break

2008-12-18T20:01:00.003Z

Hello everyone-

As is inevitable (hopefully) after you've been pregnant, I'm now no longer pregnant but in charge of a baby. Baby A&N arrived on Tuesday 16 December after something of a marathon labor and delivery. The important this is we're all well and doing our best to cope with one another.

The other inevitable fact is I'll be taking a bit of a blog break until my concentration can go on something other than feeding/burping/changing/comforting a new baby (although he is very good, as is Mr A&N). I hope everyone has a very happy holiday season in store, and see you some time in the new year.

The A&N family.

Daring Bakers: Caramel Cake

2008-11-29T18:28:00.004Z

As a maternity-leave induced lady of leisure, I looked forward to this month's Daring Bakers challenge as one I could do during my luxurious free time. In between baths and coffee mornings, I saw myself baking cakes to have ready for my husband after a hard day's work. This turned out to be ambitious dreaming. Long baths have occurred, but necessitated by 3rd trimester nausea or just feelings of being enormous and wanting to find a venue in which I was weightless (and, undoubtedly, elegant and streamlined). Coffee mornings have been acheived, but at the cost of wiping me out from the effort of a) getting up b) taking an hour-long bath c) looking presentable and d) traveling on public transportation. Mr A&N has actually had his fair share of banana bread this month, mainly to use up those bananas I've felt too ill to eat and made while I've been sitting down at the table. The long and short of it is that this month's challenge was done at the last minute, over a couple of days, and is only now being enjoyed as I blog about it. Oh well - I'm sure next month, when the baby's here, it will all fall into place even more easily.

The caramel cake comes from Shuna Fish Lydon at Bay Area Bites, as chosen by the trio of Dolores at Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity, Alex at Blondie and Brownie, and Jenny at Foray into Food. The cake thrives on caramel syrup added into the cake, and caramelized butter in the icing. To me, the cake was more successful than the icing, which overwhelmed me with its sweetness. The cake smelled wonderfully fragrant and rich during the mixing, and it took tremendous will-power not to lick the raw batter from the spoons (will-power I actually didn't have in the end, since I licked...but only a little). I was rewarded for my near-saintliness when the spring-form pan I was baking the cake in didn't hold itself together tighlty and dripped a slow and delicious cascade of cake batter onto the pan at the bottom of the oven, waiting to be eaten 20 minutes before the rest of the cake was ready. I couldn't pick out the caramel flavor, but thought it was like a supped-up version of a vanilla cake, delicately sweet and still wonderful to smell.

Thanks to the hostesses (and Shuna) for the challenge, which promises to give me something to eat this week with my leisurely morning coffee before I head up to my hour-long baths.

Pumpkin Pancakes

2008-11-19T17:53:00.008Z

I am finally, officially on maternity leave and boy, does it feel good. The last few weeks of work were beyond hectic and tiring but I had more than enough work to see me through to the end, and some I'm still finishing up at home. I can take up to a year of leave (even if I don't get paid for much of it), and being an American-abroad who knows plenty of friends who only get 6 weeks/a couple of months off, I haven't lost sight of how lucky I am to have a few weeks to rest and relax before the baby arrives (I hope). T-minus a-bit-less-than-3-weeks, and the hospital bag is packed since baby really can come any time now.

To celebrate my first morning of not having to go to work (even if I still woke up at 6.45, as I normally do), I made myself a breakfast of something more than shredded wheat biscuits mashed up with banana. If we owned a waffle maker, I would have indulged in some waffle action; instead, I pancaked myself up. Not your average pancakes for me, though. This being a dreary autumnal day on which I was celebrating the ability to take afternoon naps (for a couple of weeks) and not to do my hair and make-up (which I'm told stops being a luxury after having a baby and becomes a source of shame), these pancakes were going to be tarted up a bit.

In what could have been a section of a self-help book called How to Pick Yourself Up When the Weather is Grim and You'll be Laying Around in Your Pajamas All Day, I found a recipe for Pumpkin Pancakes in a breakfast book a friend had given me ages ago. Pumpkin pie is part of the holy trinity of Thanksgiving to me, along with turkey and the Macy's parade, but I'm also keen on using pumpkin in other things when it's in season. Working pumpkin into a breakfast seemed like a glorious gift from the breakfast fairies as well as a way to warm up my pumpkin tastebuds for Thanksgiving next week.

The pancakes stayed a bit soft even after they were fully cooked, pushing the pancake slightly in the direction of actual pumpkin pie. I would have preferred them to be more cake-like, since it's the texture of pancakes that is a much a feature of their glory as the taste is. I had been eager with my pumpkin, though, which did throw off the texture so I can't blame the recipe (yet) for the squishiness. Also for the next time around, I will play with the sugar and spice content a bit more since I'm happy to stand my pumpkin up against stronger allspice and nutmeg flavors to have the pancakes be firmly on the sweet rather than the savory end of the spectrum. I served the pancakes with a bit of crumbly sugar topping and maple syrup, which to me was the only way to properly embrace these creatures.

I'll certainly be trying the recipe again with the tweaks I mentioned, though the recipe below is reproduced from the original for those purists out there.

Pumpkin Pancakes, from The Big Book of Breakfasts
makes around 16 decent-sized pancakes

1 C flour
1/4 C cornmeal
2 Tbs sugar
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 C milk
3/4 c canned pumpkin
3 large eggs, separated
3 Tbs melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, allspice and salt in a large bowl.
In another bowl, whisk together milk, pumpkin, egg yolks, melted butter and vanilla.
Add the wet mixture to the dry and whisk until smooth.
Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, and then fold them into the batter.
Pre-heat your normal pancake-making pan over a medium high heat and melt some butter or vegetable oil in it.
Pour desired pancake-sized batter amount into the pan, and turn once small bubbles appear along the surface of the pancake. Cook for half the amount of time again.

Daring Bakers: Pizza Dough

2008-10-28T19:28:00.003Z

Ah pizza. It's hard to find someone who doesn't enjoy the stuff - a bit of nice dough, rich and fragrant tomatoes, melty tasty cheese...to not like one ingredient is difficult, to not like all three when they're combined is nearly criminal. Even though the A&N household had a recent forray into pizza-making, we went down that road again for a good cause: this month's Daring Baker's challenge, set by Rosa of Rosa's Yummy-Yums.

The dough recipe was one from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, a tome that is loved by those in-the-know for the fantastic bread you can get from it. Peter's pizza dough called for you to make the dough mixture and then retard it in the fridge for at least 24 hours to help give the dough a more rounded, ferment-y flavor while keeping its crispness when rolled out and baked.

Following the recipe, I found the dough got quite wet before I had even added all the suggested water. I like baking bread, but don't feel I've quite cracked it yet, and often become concerned that my dough is too wet and end up adding more flour. I've tried to resist that dislike of having wet dough stuck to my fingers, stuck on the countertop, and riding up to my elbows, and just knead the love and suppleness into the mixture. Although my instinct told me this pizza dough was too wet, I carried on with it, kneading it and putting it into the fridge as directed.

The too-wet dough stayed too wet, and the 24 hours of resting it did in the fridge transformed the 6 unique dough balls into 6 suggestions of separateness. However, dough is resilient and it still baked up well and, once topped with the sauce, cheese, and extra goodies of everyone's choice, it was adored (as evidenced by the picture of the lone leftover slice, cheeseless and languishing on its plate the day after our dinner party ended). I'd be interested in trying the recipe again with better moisture balance, since I still prefer my normal pizza dough method but know that Peter Reinhart normally gives good results and he's a master I should pay attention to.

Pears Poached in Whiskey

2008-10-26T21:11:00.006Z

The question I'm most asked by friends now (in a concerned manner) when we're out for a dinner is: do I miss not drinking in my pregnancy? Have I been having anything alcoholic to drink at all? The truth is, I've never been a big drinker and my desire for beer or wine has dropped down to almost nothing these days. So my taste for a tipple has nearly evaporated.

Except for whiskey. Whiskey was one of the first drinks I'd ever tasted; my father would have a tumbler each night and my kind offer to fetch the drink from the kitchen for him was so I could steal a few sips from the top. I confessed this to my mother recently and she refused to accept that a 10 year old would enjoy the taste. Oh but I had, and oh but I do.

To work a bit of whiskey into my diet but in a safe, alcohol-burned-off format, I poached pears in a pot of whiskey along with cinnamon and honey to round off the flavor. The color of the pear was less glorious and deeply jeweled than if I'd poached them in red wine, but it was the taste that I was after. The pears took on a gentle flavor of the poaching liquid, and the liquid itself created a wonderful syrup that when coupled with cream tasted so very good (yet so bad). Before reducing the syrup down, Mr A&N poured a glass of the liquid for me, mixed with a touch of cream, for my own style of white russian. I drank and I supped. The baby seemed content; perhaps my child was developing his own whiskey-palate.

Pears Poached in Whiskey
serves 6

6 pears, peeled
About 6 C of water
150ml whiskey
1 1/2 sticks cinnamon
3-4 Tbs honey
2 extra Tbs honey or sugar
Cream to pour over the top

(This does produce a lot of liquid. The liquid can be scaled down if you have a smaller pot to stand the pears in or if you want to poach the pears in batches)

If you are able to stand the pears up in the pot they'll be cooking in, first lop off a bit of their bottom so they can stand up. If the pears need laying down in order to fit, then the bottoms don't need lopping.
Combine the water, whiskey, cinnamon and honey in a large pot and bring to a boil.
Add the pears and simmer gently for about 20 minutes or until the pears are soft enough for a fork to go into them easily.
Remove the pears and set aside to cool slightly.
If using the large amount of liquid, spoon out about 3 ladle-fulls of the liquid into a smaller pot, add another 2 Tbs of honey/sugar and set to a vigorous boil. Keep boiling until the liquid is reduced and it turns syrup-y (15-20 minutes).
Serve with the syrup and a touch of cream poured over the pears.

Pasta with Roast Cherry Tomatoes and Fennel

2008-10-19T18:36:00.005+01:00

Sometimes you find life acting upon you more than you acting upon it. Work has been like that for me lately, with me coming home barely in time for a late dinner or in time (just) for a soothing cup of tea before bed time. There are only 4 more weeks until I start maternity leave so work won't continue like this for much longer, though a different kind of madness will hit after that.

Even without much time, you still have to eat, and I'd always rather my meal was home-made and leaving me wanting more even if given the time constraints it seems the stuff that dreams are made on. Roasting does amazing things to cherry tomatoes; if left at that, they'll make a bruschetta topping that any devotee of the red-white-and-green tricolor flag would be proud of. Using the roast tomatoes as a base to a pasta sauce transfers that magic to the main course.

In this case, I roasted the tomatoes along with thyme and sliced fennel, which is also intensified and sweetened by the roasting. When all the roasting pieces and juices are tossed together at the end it creates an improbably rich and meaty sauce (despite the absence of animal products) which defines the word umami with each mouthful. Not quite the same as a half day of work and a long soak in a bubble bath, but as easy dinners go, it comes close.

Pasta with Roast Cherry Tomatoes and Fennel
Serves 2 generously or 4 as an appetizer

1 fennel
3 cloves garlic
500g / 1lb of cherry tomatoes
handful fresh thyme (or around tsp of good dried thyme)
olive oil
250g (1/2 package) of dried pasta
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 Tbs cream
parmesean cheese for topping

Slice the fennel into thin-ish slices (about 1 inch long by 1/4 inch thick) and chop the garlic.
Toss the fennel together in a roasting pan with the sliced garlic, the cherry tomatoes and the thyme. Drizzle generously with olive oil (probably about 3 tablespoons worth) and toss together well.
Roast at 170C / 375F for about 30 minutes or until the tomatoes begin to deflate a bit and there are juices thickening in the bottom of the pan. Shake the pan once during roasting to distribute the flavors.
Meanwhile, boil some water to prepare the pasta.
When the pasta is done, toss together with all the items in the roasting pan (minus any twigs left over from the thyme). Stir in a bit of cream so that everything is gently touched with cream but not swimming in it.
Serve with parmesean grated on to - or not.

Marinated Lamb

2008-10-06T20:12:00.005+01:00

The financial crisis has been making itself felt in headlines and households around the world, and its presence is beginning to seep into my kitchen. I'm becoming conscious that each grocery bill seems to crawl its way upward even though I'm not buying anything extra. I think about how I'm Eating For Two now and will soon have Another Mouth To Feed, neither of which feels like good timing (but when are life's timings perfect?).

We were due to have some friends around last weekend for a Sunday lunch, which set Mr A&N and me to planning our menu and thinking with our extravagant hats on rather than our financial crisis ones. Though we've been fairly good at reducing the amount of meat we eat during a normal week, having guests and hosting a Sunday lunch practically obliges meat to be on the menu (unless, of course, you're hosting vegetarians). It was a commitment, a bit of a splurge, but leg of lamb went on to the menu, one large enough to feed 5 adults, 2 of whom were 30+ weeks pregnant. Big things would be expected from this lamb.

This being lamb, it seemed that marrying lamb with Middle Eastern flavors would be clever move, and out came the trusty Moro cookbook, a repository of never-fail recipes with a Middle Eastern/Spanish vibe. A simple marinade would do, to bring out the flavors of the lamb without distracting from the main show. The marinade Moro suggests can be used with just about any cut of lamb, and takes its flavor from lemon, thyme, red wine vinegar and paprika. The lamb is slow cooked and topped up with water to keep the meat moist and create a nice sauce in the pan.

And then the financial crisis hit, but in a different way from expected. Of the 3 friends coming around, 2 were lawyers and both were called into the office all weekend to work on emergency financial bail-out packages. The lamb was marinating but there were no guests to eat it, and however indulgent I am with my food, sharing a 6lb leg of lamb between two people seemed an indulgence too far.

We instead called up our good friends down the road on the chance they were free that night, and offered to cook and ferry the food round to theirs if they'd be willing to help us eat it all. They didn't say no (would you?), though Mr A&N did leave a warning in my ears: the lamb would make its way down the road, but there wouldn't be much of it making its way back down. This was because we were heading to see Mr A&N's best friend, known for having an appetite that could rival Homer Simpson (though fortunately for him without Homer's looks or girth). His one-year-old son takes after his father, and for a typical breakfast eats two whole wheat cereal biscuits, two pieces of toast, and one banana, followed an hour and a half later by a banana and yogurt top-up, followed an hour and a half after that by a full lunch. And to think I get twitchy about our grocery bills.

The slow-cooking and marinating gave us juicy and salty meat and a nicely intense gravy from the left-overs of the marinade. I watched as slice after slice of the lamb disappeared - pleased that it was going down well, but wondering when the two men would put the brakes on the eating and let the poor lamb be. It took about 45 minutes of concerted effort, but in the end all that was left was the bone. Not only did Mr A&N's friend make short work of this 6lb lamb leg, but Mr A&N joined him in the meat-based debauchery. With many more meals like this we'll be feeling the financial pinch pinching very tightly, but at least we'll go broke with a contended belly and a full smile on our greasy lips.

Lamb Marinade, from Casa Moro
serves 6-8 (...supposedly)

2.5kg / 6 lb leg or shoulder of lamb (can also use other cuts of lamb)
4 garlic cloves
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 Tbs red wine vinegar
4 Tbs fresh thyme leaves
1/2 medium red onion, well grated
2 tsps sweet paprika
1 Tbs olive oil

Lightly score the lamb to help the marinade seep into it.
Mix all the marinade ingredients together (except for the olive oil). Season with salt and pepper (about 2 tsps of salt per kilo) and rub into the lamb.
Add the olive oil on top and leave to marinate for a minimum of 2 hours, or ideally in the fridge overnight, turning occasionally to coat the meat well.
Pre-heat the oven to 160 C / 325 F.
Cook the lamb in a large roasting tray, adding in a small glass of water (about 125ml) after the first half hour of cooking and another glass of water after each subsequent hour. Baste the lamb every 45 minutes or so.
After around 3 hours, test the lamb for tenderness by inserting a skewer deep into the meat. If it feels soft and has a good amount of 'give', it is done.
Leave to rest for 15 minutes before carving.

Daring Bakers: Lavash Bread

2008-09-27T16:17:00.004+01:00

Saturdays, I'm reliably informed, are meant for fun. That's what Mr A&N keeps telling me today, as we pass each other in the hall between rounds of dusting furniture, vacuuming carpets, washing floors, and generally trying to chase away the dust left by the builders currently making our somewhat peaceful and mostly orderly lives go topsy turvey. The builders are back on Monday but since I asserted I couldn't live in the post-apocalyptic dust bowl we currently call home, we've spent a fair portion of the day doing cleaning which we know will all come undone with the first footfall of a builder as he enters the house.

Between the dusting and cleaning and the "Where's the fun?" queries today, I've also tackled this month's Daring Bakers task of making lavash bread. Lavash is a middle eastern bread and (at least according to wikipedia) can be used as a sandwich/kebab wrap when rolled out very thin and served fresh, or served as crisp crackers when cooked longer and left a bit thicker. The DB task was to treat the bread as crackers, as well as to make a dip or spread on the side to eat with the crackers. The only other requirement was to make it vegan, and the option was there to make the crackers gluten-free as well.

I embraced the gluten version, though found the dough wasn't as elastic-y as other bread doughs tend to be. Reports on the Daring Bakers message board were that people wound up kneading the dough for 20 minutes or more (rather than the recommended 10 minutes), and I did the same. Though it did turn silky in the end, it tended to stay in a ball rather than stretch far. I had used less water than was suggested since the dough seemed wet enough without it all added, and perhaps this lack of water gave it the texture I worked with - a bit like a big ball of bubble gum, chewed and left to sit on the counter for a few hours before you go back to chew it again.

I topped the crackers with ras el hanout (a Moroccan spice mix), sesame seeds, and smoked sea salt. The crackers smelled wonderful cooking, and both crisped and browned perfectly, and I appreciated that we were given a recipe that could reasonably be started and finished in a couple of hours. For my dip, I made more beetroot hummus since that's now a high-demand foodstuff in the A&N household.

After he was finished hanging up our second load of laundry for the day (the dusty clothes, towels, and cleaning cloths that fell victim to the building works), Mr A&N came in to try the lavash with hummus. "That's good" he affirmed. "I think the fun can begin now."

Thanks goes to Natalie from Gluten A Go Go and Shel from Musings from the Fishbowl for setting the challenge. The recipe for the Lavash can be found at either of their sites.

Jasmine Saves Our Beetroot

2008-09-22T21:09:00.004+01:00

My weekly vegetable box delivery continues to be a race between best intentions and slowly rotting organic produce. Eat the most perishables first (courgettes, tomatoes, mushrooms, leafy green things), leave the heartier goods to fend for themselves/win my affections (carrots, cabbage, potatoes). As the week draws to an end, I often make soup. This week's possible soup is a lettuce soup since we can't seem to get to the leafy green stuff quickly enough. The possibility of this lettuce soup has made Mr A&N suddenly 'remember' that he agreed to be out tomorrow night. To play poker, it turns out, and generally be more masculine than sitting at home eating lettuce soup.

The real problem vegetable in our weekly delivery has been beetroot. We've had such a regular supply of it that it's threatened to become this summer's cabbage - so abundant and with so few ideas of what to do with it that I've nearly banned it from our box for a week/a month/indefinitely. I've held off banning it, always sensing that beetroot could do grander things than we were letting it do (and, er, I'd forget about updating my preference list). Luckily I've discovered that grander thing.

In stepped the wonderful Jasmine from Confessions of a Cardamom Addict to save our beetroot. The answer, it seemed, was beetroot hummus. Roast the beetroot, put it through the blender with a bit of oil and as much horseradish as you like, throw in a bit of garlic and lime juice (if you have on hand) and revel in its beauty and flavor. It really is that simple and that wonderful, and has been on the weekly menu since I've been enlightened. The roasting turns the beetroot incredibly sweet, and putting it through the blender intensified the sweetness by taking away the complication of having to chew it and fight your way toward this flavor. And gosh isn't it look pretty.

Beetroot Hummus (an approximate recipe)

As many fresh beetroot as you need to get rid of
Olive oil
clove of garlic
Horseradish

Pre-heat the oven to 400 F / 200 C
Clean the beetroot but keep the skin on. Rub each beet lightly with olive oil.
Place the beetroot in an oven-proof tray. Cover with foil, and roast for about 40 minutes or until a fork stuck into the beetroot goes through it.
Allow the beetroot to cool down enough for you to handle it, then peel them.
Roughly chop them up, and put into a blender. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and the clove of garlic and whizz up.
Taste for flavor. Add more olive oil if it needs a 'richer' taste. Otherwise, add the horseradish until the balance of flavors is right (about 1 Tbs per 3 beetroot tastes right to me).

Pizza

2008-09-08T18:28:00.005+01:00

This summer has been busy and tiring - not just for me, but for friends, family, and plenty of other bloggers who seem to be taking blog breaks for short spells. Case in point was meeting up with Mr A&N's brother and wife to celebrate my birthday...two and a half months after the date. The catch-up was multi-pronged (celebrate my birthday, celebrate brother-in-laws birthday, see how both pregnant ladies - due within 6 days of each other - were on the bump front). Lucky me, I was also given in two spanking new pizza stones that promised to transform my at-home pizza eating.

The stones were given in memory of a trip the four of us took to Italy 3 years ago. The house we rented had an outdoor pizza oven, and the memory of the food that came out of it can still turn all of us misty-eyed. I had heard that the best way to mimic the brick-built pizza oven experience in the kitchen was to get a pizza stone or to pick up a large ceramic tile from a tile shop and pop that in the oven when it was pizza time. I never got around to food shopping at my local tile store, so the pizza stones were a gift received with genuine thanks.

I've tried out two pizza dough recipes since getting the stones, one that I've had for ages (and am not sure from where I got it) and one from Giada de Laurentis I found on Epicurious. I tried the Giada recipe first, and though the dough looked good and crisped up nicely, both Mr A&N and I found it very ordinary. Ordinary in the way that cheap frozen pizza can be ordinary, so perhaps not even deserving the praise of 'ordinary'. It was a bit tough and tasteless in a cardboardy way, and once we ate all the toppings we left the crusts uneaten, without being tempted to finish them off and push ourselves past our fullness limit (as a good pizza crust ought to do).

Having my friend Alex and her family around for lunch this last weekend, I decided to turn it into a pizza event and to go back to my normal pizza dough recipe. I wanted to engage 3 1/2 year old Freddie with the food making and give him as much involvement as he wanted so he could have fun when it came to eating thigns. He wasn't keen in getting his hands dirty by shaping and rolling out the dough (his mother, on the other hand, loved it and vowed to make pizza herself some day soon), but he fastidiously decorated his pizza with the toppings of his choice (which bravely included capers as well as his beloved black olives).

These pizzas turned out wonderfully well, with a crust that both crisped and puffed up slightly, and made you want to leave nothing left on your plate. Freddie ran into the kitchen after his first bite to tell me he thought it was delicious and he was very happy. Although his number of bites didn't go much higher than 10, he did eat all his toppings and saved just enough room for his cupcake afterwards. Parents and adults all managed to gorge themselves on both the pizzas and the cupcakes, but didn't then have the same energy as Freddie to run around the garden chasing a football after the eating was done. We instead flopped out on the sofas, which is a much more grown-up thing to do.

Pizza dough
makes about 6 crusts

1 packet fast action yeast
1 Tbs sugar
3 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs salt
2 C warm water
6 C bread flour (you can swap in 1/2 C of wholemeal flour for one of the half cups if you wanted to make it a bit healthier)

Combine the yeast, sugar, olive oil, salt and warm water. Stir well.
Add in about half the flour, stirring well.
Add in the rest of the flour, stirring for as long as you can and mixing with your hands if stirring becomes impossible. The mixture should be slightly wet but not overly so - you may need to add more flour to balance it.
Knead for a few minutes.
Turn the dough into another bowl which is lightly oiled (with olive oil). Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and let rise until double in height (about 1 1/2 hours).
When nicely risen, turn out of the bowl and knead very lightly on a well floured surface before dividing the dough into balls and shaping them into pizzas.
Cook on pizza stones or ceramic tiles - pre heat the oven to as high as it will go with the stones/tiles warming up inside. Slip the crusts with their topping onto the heated stones and cook until cheese is melted and crust is golden (time depends on how hot the oven is).

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Eclairs

2008-08-28T20:26:00.004+01:00

"Choux pastry? Pierre Herme?" my friend Jill commented. "How very daring."

And oh how right she was. I had told Jill of my upcoming eclair making, and she knows her way around her double boilers and cheese cloths enough to know that this would present a challenge. A Daring Baker challenge, in fact.

Making choux pastry is one of those fearful cooking acts, like rising a souffle or setting a custard, that can scare cooks to their jellied marrow. For me, though, the first challenge the pastry presented was in mixing it with my grandmother-inherited hand mixer. As it thickened up after each egg, I too slowly thought "I wonder if this will be too much for the old dear Kenwood". Up twirled the dense mixture as I tried valiantly (vainly) to switch the speed to high, and out poured the smoke and the bad, bad smell of a electric kitchen appliance dying. At least it went doing what it loved best (a moment's pause everyone, moment's pause).

The eclairs looked wonderful when I pulled them out of the oven...and then slightly less wonderful a minute or so later. Most, sadly, needed a wee bit longer in the oven and deflated into pathetic flattened fingers. Shoe pastry rather than choux pastry, though it did give me the excuse to 'test' a few in their natural state. Without the chocolate sauce or custard to round them out, I found them very, very eggy - able to stand having one or even 2 eggs left out of the recipe, I thought.

We were given the option to alter one of the two chocolate elements in the recipe, and so rather than having chocolate filling I thought I'd make good use of our bumper crop of raspberries (the rainy and grey British summer does have some uses) and turn out a raspberry pastry cream instead. I simply swapped out the melted chocolate for a small bowl full of raspberries, boiled with some water and sugar until they were just sweet and syrupy enough, and added this into the pastry cream mixture to turn it a lovely pink and leave Mr A&N in a state of pastry cream ecstasy.

Overall, the recipe was as simple as it could be given the art we were producing, and certainly less of an all-day marathon than other recent challenges, which was appreciated. The end result was wonderful, even if it did leave huge amounts of chocolate sauce in the fridge, which I'm still bravely eating on top of anything that might cope with it (gnocchi with chocolate sauce has been over-ruled this lunch time, though bananas with chocolate sauce stays on the menu). Thanks to Meeta and Tony for setting the challenge and letting us indulge our inner French pastry chefs. Pierre Herme, you shall be getting the bill for my new hand mixer.

Beetroot Salad with Pistachio Sauce

2008-08-25T19:18:00.006+01:00

Beet (beetroot in the UK) is a hard vegetable for me to work up much of a passion about. It does have some exciting qualities, granted - just touching a peeled beet can dye your hands or clothes a deep pink, as it may well also dye other bodily things - but beets (particularly in their pickled form) have always struck me as a functional foodstuffs, something that would exist in pickled form, stuck in the cupboard next to tins of potatoes and corned beef hash after the armageddon has wiped out all other edible things and mankind has picked all other tasty treats bare. Perhaps that point of view is why I still have a giant jar of pickled beets from my mother-in-law which has been sitting in the back of my cupboard for 2 years now.

Beets come thick and fast in our veg box delivery, and I have become an expert at grating raw beet to include into salads (it's particularly nice with grated carrot or, as my mother-in-law recently enthused to me, with grated apple, lime juice, and ginger). But other than grating it, serving it up as borscht, or turning it into apocalypse-defying pickled beets, I find it hard to see my way to finding new uses for all those beets that keep being delivered to me.

Mr A&N - and our Moro East cookbook - came up with an answer to the beet problem with a recipe for a beetroot salad with pistachio sauce that took the shortest time to put together. It was the pistachio sauce that helped bring the dish alive, pinging in mint and parsley between the citrusy lemon and orange blossom water. There are another 4 or 5 beet-based recipes in Moro East, and I don't doubt there might be need to find more inspiration in the future. The (un-grated, un-borschted, un-pickeld) beet lives to fight another day.

Beetroot Salad with Pistachio Sauce, from Moro East
serves 4

500g young beetroot, peeled and thinly sliced

small handful of flat-leaf parsley
2 tsp lemon juice
2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

For the pistachio sauce:

100g shelled, unsalted pistachios
2 Tbs finely chopped fresh-leaf parsley
1 small palm-full finely chopped fresh mint
1 dessertspoon lemon juice
1/2 tsp sugar
7 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
4 Tbs water
1/2 tsp orange blossom water

Make the pistachio sauce first: finely chop the pistachios either by hand or in a food processor. Mix all the other ingredients together, and season with salt and pepper.
Toss together the beetroot and parsley leaves, then dress with the lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Spread the beetroot out on a platter, then spoon the pistachio sauce on top.
Serve immediately.

Vegan Cupcakes Might, Actually, Take Over My World

2008-08-17T20:21:00.004+01:00

I was introduced to a lovely little book a couple of years back, filled with glorious frilly wishes and dreams made into cupcake form. Piled high with iced mounds of perfection, every one of the cupcakes in this book - literally every single one - made me urgently want to bring the book closer and lick the page. As well as being marvels to look at, these cupcakes were vegan. Dairy free, egg free, yet fluffy and creamy looking. Filled cupcakes, looking like your perfect Dunkin Donuts naughty little treat, had their mousse filling made mousse-y by tofu. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World promised to be either a revelation or an absolute blasphemy.

It took me a year and a half to get the book (I'm either a rash or a long-delayed decision maker), and everything in there was still a temptation. The first recipe to attempt was dictated as much by what was on hand in the house as by what most tempted me. I also thought that chocolate cupcakes might hide more sins than vanilla ones - if these vegan versions didn't turn out to be so stunning, I thought the chocolate flavor would at least give them a fighting chance of being eaten.
Mint chocolate cupcakes, then. A chocolate cake base, a mint frosting, some chocolate ganache on top and an extra extra chocolate candy stuck on top if you were so inclined. The cake recipe was a surprise. No eggs or butter, clearly, but only a bit of oil to represent the fat spectrum. A cup of soy milk and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar were mixed together and allowed to curdle a bit before throwing in your more traditional ingredients. And that was mostly it, both for controversy and head-scratching replacement ingredients. I was very skeptical as to what kind of cake these would make, and I presumed something dense and dry would be pulled out of the oven.

The cakes these made, though, were wonderful. Top them with whatever you like or just eat them on their own (I did both after whipping up another batch a couple of days after polishing off the first dozen), they are incredibly moist, fluffy, proper-cupcake cupcakes and stayed fresh for several days in their air-tight container. Almost the best part of making them, for me, was being able to have lade-fulls of uncooked batter without the worry of raw eggs spoiling my fun. It felt naughty and indulgent and it was a very good thing. There will be more (many, many more) cupcakes from this book in my future, and with options like Mucho Margarita, Tiramisu, and Apple Cider cupcakes to chose from, it will be a great deal of fun weaving my way through the recipes.

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.
Makes about 1 dozen cupcake (extra-large cupcakes come in at about 6, average-small sized cupcakes will number about 15)

Basic Chocolate Cupcake recipe:

1 C soy milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3/4 C granulated sugar
1/3 c canola / vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond or more vanilla extract
1 C all-purpose flour
1/3 C cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Mint Icing:

1/4 C non-hydrogenated shortening
3 C confectioner's sugar (sifted if needed)
1/4 C plus 1 Tbs soy cream or soy milk
1 1/2 tsp mint extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extra
small drop green food coloring

Chocolate Ganache:

3 Tbs soy cream or soy milk
1/3 C semi-sweet chocolate (chips or a bar)

To make the cupcakes:

Preheat the oven to 350 F / 170 C
Whisk together the soy milk and the cider vinegar in a large bowl, then set aside for them to react and curdle for a few minutes.
Meanwhile sift together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt)
Stir in the sugar, oil, and vanilla (and almond) extracts to the milk mixture.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in two batches, mixing well each time so most of the lumps (or, ideally, all the lumps) are gone.
Pour the mixture into lined muffin tins and cook for 18-20 minutes.
Eat any remaining batter and be a very happy cook.
When cooked, remove the muffins from the tin and set on a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before putting any icing on it.

For the icing and ganache:

Cream the icing for a few seconds until it's softened (the authors recommend doing this with a fork since it gives better results).
Add 1 C of the sugar and a small splash (about 1 Tbs) of the cream/milk to the shortening, and mix well.
Alternate adding sugar and cream/milk to the mixture, mixing well after each addition. Keep this up until all the ingredients are mixed and the icing is creamy.
Add the mint and vanilla extracts as well as the food coloring, and mix well.
Pour the icing into a piping bag and select a star tip (like a num 21).
Meanwhile, make the ganache: heat the soy cream/milk in a small saucepan over a medium heat until it's just about to simmer. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stirring until the chocolate is entirely melted and things are mixed well.
Make sure the cupcakes are cooled completely before piping. When ready, pipe the icing in a spiral from outside in, not going all the way to the edges so that a bit of cupcake is visible around the edges.
Keep letting the ganache cool (about 10 minutes - you don't want it to melt the icing), stirring it every couple of minutes to keep it smooth.
When cool, use a spoon to dollop a bit of ganache into the middle of the icing. It shouldn't entirely cover the icing, but drip down a bit on the sides.
if desired, decorate with a small candy in the middle, such as an M&M, smartie, extra decorative rose of mint icing, spearmint gumdrop, etc.
Refrigerate for 15-30 minutes to let the ganache set.

Salsola

2008-08-10T21:15:00.005+01:00

I'm a sucker for a few things, but at least I'm predictable in my sucker-dom. I'm a sucker for fat babies, particularly if they're dressed as animals. I'm a sucker for touching stories involving animals and humans. And with food, I'm a sucker for anything that sounds 'interesting'. Not necessarily 'good', mostly just 'interesting'. So when shopping for seeds for my vegetable garden I found a salad crop that fell into that category, there wasn't much doubt I'd be buying and planting those seeds.

Salsola soda, as the Real Seed website told me, could either be boiled or eaten raw as part of a salad. It would be slightly crunchy and salty (hence that the name began with 'sal' for salt) and is still used a fair deal in Italy an Japan. I had never heard of it before, and a bit of research showed that salsola is part of a larger family of plants responsible for the (officially noxious) American tumbleweed as well as an important source of soda ash used to make beautiful, clear, glass (including the gamed Venetian Murano glass). I imagined it as a bit like marsh samphire but for the garden.

As it grew, the plant looked like large, thick grass, and Mr A&N was eager to weed it more than once (well, I use the terms 'eager' and 'weeding' in the same sentence quite loosely - those few times I sent him out, protesting, to weed the vegetable bed, Mr A&N would hover over the salsola and ask me repeatedly whether or not he was allowed to dig it up. In his eyes, it was also easier to dig up the rest of the vegetable bed too, which would help preventing us from worrying about weeds taking it over.). It can be eaten whole when cut early. If it's not, the central stalk grows thick and fibrous and can't easily be eaten; the more delicate fronds have to be pruned off this main stem.

The first attempt to have a salsola salad didn't go quite as planned. I went to pick the plant, using the kitchen scissors to cut my way through the thicker stalks, and brought back half the crop in a bowl along with fresh garden peas and a handful of chives. It was to be a light salad, alongside the main course of the bacon-and-mushroom pasta we were making. It was only as I was about to dress the salad that Mr A&N thought to ask whether or not I had washed the kitchen scissors since he had used them to cut the bacon up. Ah....yes. Which is why the scissors were sitting in the sink rather than in the drain board. So the first taste of salsola was as a boiled vegetable (along with the peas, chives, and lettuce leaves which had also been possibly tainted by raw meat) with lemon and salt. Hard to pick out the taste, though, of the gently salty leaf.

The second attempt was more successful and less likely to give us food poisoning. The salsola again went into a cold salad, this time with beetroot and chickpeas in a lemon-and-mustard dressing. Eating it in its full raw glory, I found it was slightly less than what I'd been hoping it to be. It was mildly crunchy but not as satisfyingly, poppingly crunchy as samphire would be. And the salt taste itself was very, very subtle; probably if you didn't know it was supposed to have any relationship to saltiness, you wouldn't have picked up on it.

I'd like to find a Japanese or Italian recipe with salsola to see how they use it and bring out its flavors. I still have seeds left and will plant more when the space becomes available - any garden-growable and edible food stuff will be eaten in our house (I lie - don't tell her, but I won't eat the radishes my mother-in-law planted for me). I've haven't yet learned not to chase the interesting rather than the tried-and-tested food thing, but I like to think it helps to keep life from falling into a rut.

Slow Cooked Belly of Pork and Baked Beans

2008-08-06T18:02:00.005+01:00

The slow cooker. It's a kitchen gadget that promises great things. Miraculous things. You become wooed by the tales of throwing in a handful of foodstuffs on your way out to work in the morning and arriving home in the evenings to fragrant wafts from the kitchen and a warm meal ready to dish up. My few experiments with the slow cooker took the shine off that promise.

Our first couple of slow cooked dinners were convenient but lacked something on the taste-front. They were watery, and lacked the rich flavour that a slow-cooked stew normally would. An obvious problem was the amount of liquids we had put in - since it's an enclosed system the water helps steam and cook everything but also doesn't escape, so natural water given off by the food coupled with any liquid added could lead to a rather watery dish.

But I'm not one to give in easily. Work has been busy, leaving me tired when I get home, and the little bubbins growing inside me gets a bit demanding for food too early in the evening for me to think of luxuriating over the chopping board and stove each night. But always on the lookout for slow-cook ideas, I found a recipe for slow-cooked baked beans at The Cottage Smallholder and I determined to give it another go. Real, slow-cooked baked beans are a wonderful thing and aren't a thing like the supposed beans-in-a-can you find anywhere in America. Though this recipe didn't use a slow-cooker to do the deed, there wasn't a great deal of liquid in the recipe and it seemed like a promising start.

To my thinking, an obvious companion to the beans would be pork, and slow-cooked pork belly was another slow-cooking winner. There was the risk of the belly pork, with its tremendous amount of fat, simply feeding its tender fatty juices to the beans over a period of 10 hours, leaving me with a delicious last meal before Mr A&N and I died of spontaneous clogged arteries. I took care to cut away the skin from the pork (it would also let me make crackling later on) as well as most of the visible fat beneath the skin in order to give us half a chance of living through the meal.

Preparation was, of course, nice and easy. Beans soaked over night, everything thrown in the pot in the morning (though I didn't follow the suggested recipe exactly, partly due to lack of ingredients). I doubled the amount of sauce for the beans so that I could coat the pork in that flavoring as well. On went the slow cooker for 10 hours, and off I went to work.

This time, I'm delighted to say, the slow cooker lived up to its potential. The pork hadn't melted into itself or the beans, but was both tender and with enough fat on it that you could trim it off and look forward to living another day. The beans were enough to make any practical New Englander swell (just a polite amount) with pride, with nicely thickened sauce and all its flavours coming together in a perfectly sweet and savory blend. Luckily, there were also plenty of leftovers so we could pat ourselves on the backs for our good work for a few days to come. The slow-cooker lives to cook another day.

Slow Cooked Belly of Pork and Baked Beans, inspired by The Cottage Smallholder
serves 4

500 g Roman (aka borlotti, cranberry, or even pinto) beans
1 large onion
8 cloves
3 Tbsp ketchup
3 Tbsp tomato paste
2 Tbsp sweet chili sauce (or if you'd rather not, just more ketchup)
2 Tbsp barbecue sauce
4 Tbsp maple syrup or molasses
4 Tbsp muscovado sugar
2 Tbsp dijon mustard
300-500 ml vegetable stock (approx - enough to cover)
1 kg pork belly
handful of fresh thyme

Soak the beans overnight in water.
In the morning, boil the beans in fresh water for 10 minutes and then drain.
Peel and quarter the onion, and stick 2 cloves into each of the quarters. Set aside.
Combine the ketchup, tomato paste, chili sauce, barbecue sauce, maple syrup, muscovado sugar, and mustard.
Place the cooked beans in the slow cooker pot, and add half the ketchup sauce to it. Stir and assess - add a bit more if the beans are't quite coated.
Pour in about half the vegetable stock and give a stir. The stock should cover the beans and with a little bit more to spare, so add enough stock to reach this point.
Prepare the pork - cut off the skin and set aside for making crackling later. Cut away most of the visible fat that was under the skin.
Place the onions, clove side down, on top of the beans.
Place the thyme on top of the onions.
Lay the pork with former-skin-side up on top of the onions and thyme. Cover the pork, top and bottom, with any of the left over ketchup mixture.
Cover and set the slow cooker on for a minimum of 6 hours. (I cooked my for nearly 11 and it was still fine).
About 45 minutes before you'll be eating, prepare the crackling by turning the oven on to 220 C / 450 F and scoring the skin. Lay the skin on top of something that will let the fat drip off a bit. Cook for about 30-40 minutes.
Test the beans and pork for salt and pepper, and add as desired.
Serve the beans and pork warm, with some crackling on the side.

Two Kinds of Sorbet

2008-08-03T21:27:00.003+01:00

Our trip to France last month was filled with daily doses of dessert (naturally - we were on holiday). At least half the time we went to the effort of having a healthy dessert, and so would have sorbet. The other half of the time...we at like we were on holiday. But back to the sorbet: having it so easily available in so many flavors re-awakened the belief that fruit sorbet is one of the more miraculous sweet things one could hope to eat. Filled with fresh fruit and with little more to mar its healthiness than a sugar syrup, it comes close to being one of the rare non-naughty naughty foods.

It's the right time of year to experiment with making sorbets, given all the fresh fruit on offer and the flavors they might make together. I'm currently having a bit of a love affair with watermelon, and since even I find it a bit of a challenge to work my way through 10 pounds of fruit, it has been given the sorbet treatment. I've also been missing the option of enjoying my Pimms O'Clock when the mood for something refreshing, fruity, and alcoholic overtakes me, so Pimms style sorbet has also been created.

I threw mint into both of them to make them that much more refreshing, and though they were slightly similar in taste the Pimms sorbet also had a bit of lemon and so a bit more tartness. I loved both and have happily convinced myself that I'm getting part of my 5 a day from eating them. I next want to experiment with canned and frozen fruit in the hope of extending the sorbet season beyond just the summer. I'll happily put on an extra woolen sweater in the winter if it means being able to eat such lovely frozen fruitiness.

Watermelon & Mint Sorbet, and Cucumber, Strawberry & Mint Sorbet (AKA, Pimms Sorbet)
each serves 4 dessert portions

Watermelon and Mint

125 g sugar
125 ml water
about 2 pounds of watermelon (4 cups when cut up), diced de-seeded
small handful of fresh mint

Cucumber, Strawberry and Mint

125 g sugar
125 ml water
1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced (about 2 cups when cut up)
1 package strawberries, green tops removed
1 handful of fresh mint
juice of half a lemon

Method for both:

Dissolve the sugar in the water by heating it over a medium heat. Wait until the sugar is entirely dissolved, resisting the desire to stir but possibly swirling the pot if some of the sugar is being stubborn.
Remove the sugar syrup and cool down.
Put the fruit and mint leaves into a blender along with the cooled sugar syrup (and lemon juice, if following that recipe).
Blend the mixture for at least a minute, until everything is very smooth.
Pour into an ice cream maker and churn until frozen and smooth.

Broad Bean Hummus

2008-07-30T21:43:00.003+01:00

One of the early declarations of love I heard from Mr A&N was that he was totally, madly, utterly enamored with broad beans. The pinnacle of the broad bean world could be found in his grandparents garden; according to him, they grew the most wonderful beans known to man and his adult summertimes were spent with sighs of recollection for those beans he could no longer have. At that stage I wasn't able to tell a broad bean from a carburetor, so I needed Mr A&N to introduce me to this magical bean.

There is very little that he and I disagree on, and those few things disappear almost completely once we move into the food arena, but none of my attempts to fall in love with the broad bean brought me even slightly close to enjoying them. Also known as the fava bean in North America, I found the broad bean a bit too much like one of my only hated food stuffs, the lima bean. It was powdery and slightly bitter, and when simply boiled and dressed with a bit of butter or oil, its powdery bitterness was intensified to a degree that I couldn't face a mouthful of them. As much as I enjoyed shelling the large pods with their wonderfully velvety insides, that's as far as I've been willing to get to broad beans for a while.

And now with our weekly vegetable box delivery, broad beans have been brought straight to our door and are harder for me to turn my back on. I decided that rather than just demanding Mr A&N eat them all (hardly a hardship for him) I should again try to embrace them and maybe make them in a different way. Broad bean hummus seemed to hold out the hope of doing away with the powdery texture I didn't enjoy and forcing some different flavors into the mix. Just like chickpea hummus, I threw in garlic and some lemon, and went a bit luxury with extra butter and herbs. Served with good crusty bread, I actually did enjoy it and ate my whole slice. I might not be returning to simple, boiled broad beans any time soon, but at least now I stand a chance of enjoying both the shelling of the pods and what follows from that.

Broad Bean Hummus
enough for 1 1/12 dozen small tapas bread triangles, or 2-3 large, generous toppings for good crusty bread

1 kg broad bean (fava bean) pods
bunch of fresh oregano (optional)
2 soup spoons of cooking liquid
1 large/2 medium cloves of garlic
juice of 1 1/2 - 2 lemons
knob of butter (about 10-15 g)
olive oil (about 1/4 C)
salt and pepper to taste

Boil water in a medium-sized pot and when boiling, place the oregano in with it.
Shell the broad beans and when all are shelled, place them in the pot of boiling water.
Boil the beans and oregano for 5-7 minutes or until the beans are nicely softened.
Drain the beans, reserving a couple of soup spoons of the cooking liquid and a few springs of oregano.
Place the beans, reserved liquid, and oregano in a blender. Add in the garlic, lemon juice, and butter, and turn the blender on.
Slowly add the olive oil, letting the mixture blend itself for 60 seconds or so once the oil is added. If it looks to dry (or if it's so dry it's not even blending), add a bit more oil (or water if you're being healthy) and continue blending. Otherwise, test the mixture and adjust for taste. Add more oil if it still doesn't taste creamy enough, and add salt and pepper.
Serve over bread, either as a tapas-style starter or as a bruschetta-style accompaniment to a main course.

Lavender, Orange, and Almond Cake

2008-07-27T20:04:00.004+01:00

In a recent moment of culinary creativity, I bought a large bag of lavender flowers. A really rather unintentionally large bag - I ordered it from the internet and since the weight of dried flowers doesn't much register in my mental scale of weights and measures, it was much larger than I knew what to do with. It is still in my larder with barely a dent in it, battling in fragrance with some of my stronger Indian spices and making for an interesting-smelling cabnet (and one which I couldn't bear opening during my sicker days of pregnancy).

One of the two main things I wanted to do with the lavender was to try variations of lavender cake. I also wanted to try making lavender (and other) flavored chocolates, but summer isn't the best time for those experiments. The Diane Henry cookbook Crazy Water, Pickled Lemon has both a chocolate lavender truffle and a lavender cake recipe - the truffles will be saved for another time, but the cake was tackled now.

The first thing to do is grind up the lavender flowers with sugar until they create a fine powder. The whole house filled with powdery floral fragrance, making me think of summer times in the South of France, buzzing bees and pots of honey. Mr A&N, on the other hand, felt as if I had emptied the contents of his grandmother's hankie drawer into the blender and was proposing to do strange cooking things with this. His impression of the cake didn't improve when it was in the oven (hot handkerchiefs) or when I urged him to try little leftover crumbs from the tin (buttery handkerchiefs).

I liked the cake enough on its own - lightly floral with a very buttery crumb to the cake - but it became more than the sum of its parts with the cream cheese frosting. The tangy cheese cut the floweriness of the cake down to size, and Mr A&N finally found that he liked it enough to have slice after generous slice. Which was helpful, since (as he reminds me) men are pregnant as well, and he didn't want me to be the only one to feel like I was eating for two.

Lavender, Orange and Almond Cake
from Diane Henry in Crazy Water, Pickled Lemon

For the cake:

4 tsp dried lavender buds or the flowers from 8 springs of fresh lavender
9 oz superfine sugar
9 oz unsalted butter
juice and finely grated zest of 2 oranges
4 eggs, beaten
7 oz self-raising flour, sifted
2 oz blanched almonds, ground

For the topping:

10 1/2 oz cream or ricotta cheese
2 1/2 oz confectioner's sugar
finely grated rind of 1 orange

Optional decoration of candied peel and frosted lavender:

2 large oranges
3 1/2 oz superfine sugar
8 springs fresh lavender, flowers only
1 egg white, lightly beaten
superfine sugar, sifted

Pre-heat oven to 375 F / 170 C.
Combine the lavender flower and sugar in a coffee grinder or blender (the coffee grinder will give a finer powder). Grind until the powder is as fine as it can be.
Cream together the butter and lavender sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the orange rind, orange juice, and the eggs. Beat until well combined, adding a spoonful or two of the flour if the mixture starts to curdle.
Otherwise, once the wet ingredients are well blended, fold in the flour and the ground almonds.
Pour into a greased and lined 8" spring-form pan, and bake for 40 minutes.
Once done, let cool for 15 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack.
Make the topping by mixing the cream/ricotta cheese with the confectioner's sugar and orange rind.
Spread on to the cake once it's fully cooled; refrigerate the topping in the mean time.
Decorate the cake with the orange peel and lavender flower, if using (see below).

For the candied orange peel:

With a sharp knife, cut the orange rind off into strips (don't worry about them not being too fine at this stage).
Remove any pith left on the back of the peel, then set about cutting the peel into fine, julienned strips about the length of your little finger.
Squeeze the juice from the oranges and top it up with water so that it reaches 1 cup (if need be).
Put the juice in a pan with the sugar, and heat gently until the sugar is melted.
Add the strips of rind and simmer until the liquid is evaporated (about 30 minutes).
Remove the pieces of rind with a fork and leave to dry on a piece of waxed paper, gently separating them first.

For the frosted lavender:

Brush each lavender sprig with egg white, then sprinkle with the superfine sugar so that it is well covered.
Set them aside on a cooling rack in a warm place so they can dry.

A Return

2008-07-23T21:58:00.003+01:00

Hello world.

It's been a while, and a topsy-turvey spring-into-summer in which life got in the way of blogging. Both my parents have been in the hospital at different points in the last couple of months with their own worrying health problems. Luckily, my father has come through the worst of his pneumonia with only the need to put on some more weight to bring him back to normal. My mother stays more of a long-term worry and a last-minute trip home recently showed me how difficult things may be. It's never easy getting old or watching those close to you get old, and feels even more difficult when you have to start thinking about questions around your loved one's care.

On a positive side, I've also spent the last many weeks struggling with a different sort of problem. Happily, I am pregnant, bringing with it lots of excitement but also an entirely different relationship to food. I've been fairly sick a good part of the time so far, and even more than the emotional strain of family problems, the physical impossibility of keeping up a food blog during the worst of the sickness was a persuading force on the blog break. It is difficult when the most exciting thing you can report for a week was that you one night felt up to eating 11 Ritz crackers and having a sweet mint tea, and then spent the next 5 nights refusing any proximity to food.

At 20 weeks now, things have evened out though still aren't perfect. Food has more of a necessity than before - I need to eat dinner by 7pm or else I'm at risk of cleaning out the nearest cupboard without any discrimination for what I'm eating. It fills my tummy, but doesn't lend itself to creative cooking and experimenting with new ideas. I'm sure life will have many more changes once baby is here, and not just on the food front.

Mr A&N (who has been wonderful throughout, please note, dear reader) and I did get to grab two weeks away in France as something of a last hurrah before family life changed. Although the pregnancy eating guidelines seem like a full-frontal attack on the French diet (no soft or blue-tinged cheeses...no rare meat...no cured meats...no liver...no pate...lay off the wine) I bought tins of foie gras and forbidden drinks home as my souvenirs, to be indulged in in 4-5 months time. We also got to hone our parenting skills on the farm we stayed at, adopting a hen and her six chicks. They would be found outside our door first thing in the morning for the first of their feeds, and any walks around the grounds were spent with the whole two- legged family following behind our each step. Maybe not perfect practice for a human baby, but it felt nice to be needed.

:: Pause ::

2008-05-15T08:17:00.003+01:00

Some of you may have noticed that I've been on a bit of a pause. Not a break, just a pause. Life's platter has been a bit full for me at the moment and getting this month of May as breathing space has been needed. I hope to be back into the blogging world in the next couple of weeks, when I have the time and energy to enjoy thinking and writing about food again. I look forward to catching up with everyone very soon.

In the mean time, here are some signs of life from my garden. The purple flowers are from some (admittedly overgrown) chives and the white flowers are the buds of strawberries. The edible things are growing - as are the weeds, but let's move swiftly on - and all the gifts of summer will be very welcome in my kitchen.

See you all soon.
Annemarie

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops

2008-04-27T16:43:00.006+01:00

I'd like to start this post with an apology (not to hijack this month's Daring Bakers task). It's been a bit of a topsy-turvey month for different personal and family reasons, and although everything should be fine in the long run it has left me quite tired and not feeling inspired to cook or blog beyond the basic. The biggest sign of this is that my Google Reader account (which I've been avoiding for ages, letting the posts pile up) today reports 855 posts from you, fellow bloggers, which I haven't been keeping up with. So apologies everyone for not visiting and commenting on your efforts, and I hope to get back on the game soon.

Evidence of this tired/distractedness is this month's DB Cheesecake Pop making. One weekend after the other, I have been too busy or not had the energy to tackle it. Yesterday was to be the day, but I wound up feeling too poor to face it. This morning, then, after some lazy newspaper reading and more feeling poorly, I rallied Mr A&N to come to the kitchen with me to be my hands while I read the recipe out to him and barked instructions at him like a drill seargent.

As Mr A&N took his time to precisely measure out his ingredients, debating the merits of imperial vs metric measurements, I had a glance at the posting date for this recipe. The date? Today. Oh crap.

With 24 hours for the pops to do their firming up, I won't get to taste them by the post date, but they'll at least be finished. Hopefully. So now for a bit of race-against-the-clock semi-live blogging:

14.35 (GMT): I read out the ingredients for Mr A&N and he begins setting his mis en place. He takes the packets of cream cheese from the fridge, and weighs them on the scales. He keeps the cream cheese in their plastic containers while weighing them, and guesses at the weight of the container vs. cheese and dumps the amount he sees fit into the mixing bowl. I request he weighs it all again now that it's just cheese and mixing bowl, but he declines. He offers for me to take over the task if I disagree with his methods. I decline. We are at a weighing impasse (a weighty matter, perhaps, would have been a better phrase. Ah well - it's written, now).

15.02 : Mixing begins with the hand blender. This is Mr A&N's first time with a hand blender. He's both fascinated and repulsed at using machinery to carry out a man's (woman's) job, but carries on with a studious, furrowed brow.

15.18 : Mixing is finished, and the water is boiling in order for the hot water bath to be set. Mr A&N pours the cheesecake into the tin (the whole time questioning the lack of crust, and wondering why what he's doing is considered 'daring') and takes great care to smooth the top of the cake evenly.

15.23 : The cake goes into the oven. I set the timer for 45 minutes just in case this cake wants to bake for the prescribed time.

16.08 : It doesn't. I stick it in for another 11 minutes.

16.19 : Nope. Another 11 minutes.

16.30 : Cake is done (ish). I drain the water bath and wipe the tin off, and cover the top in plastic wrap. The cake should now take 3 hours to chill in the fridge (minimum). I speed the process by sticking it in the freezer for an hour and a half.

18.00 : Cake comes out of the freezer. It's very firm and chilled, so I decide to risk it. I start sloppily gouging out dough balls. The cake isn't quite firm enough and the balls are refusing to come together, never mind the idea of shaping them. They're a proper rag-tag group of misfits. But as this cheesecake A-Team is all I have, I get out my pack of 225 flouroscent flexible straws and cut 8 of them in half to insert into my misfit balls. I don't know what I'll do with the other 217 straws.

18.09 : I try to find space in the freezer for my tray of misfits. The deepest draw is the meat draw so I try shoving them in with assorted lamb parts and a three-pack of mackerel. There's one casualty as I try to get the tray in, and Mr A&N averts further disaster by removing the drawer, gently laying the baking tray on top, and getting the drawer back in without cussing or shoving. I eat the casualty and find it tastes very good. I quickly go back to feeling sick as Mr A&N cooks us dinner.

19.13 : After a dinner which I didn't eat, I test the pops for frozen-ness. They're still fairly squidgy so it will be more time yet. The day light is fading and with it my chance to get clear pictures of the finished pops. Which might not be a bad thing, given how the are looking.

20.02 : I try the pops again. They could be harder. I couldn't wait. Out come the dried coconut, cherries, and almonds, as does the chocolate for melting. Coating the pops is a bit of a messy affair, and it doesn't do anything to improve their looks.

20.20 : The pops are coated and need to be photographed.

20.28 : Feet up on the sofa time.

Thanks to Elle from Feeding my Enthusiasms and Deborah from Taste and Tell for setting the challenge; you can find a posting of the recipe on Deborah's site. I look forward to tasting the finished product tomorrow.

Beetroot and Fennel Salad

2008-04-22T20:20:00.003+01:00

It was a busy Saturday. I had fennel and beetroot in the cupboard. Two separate things, one might think, but according to the world that exists within my head, these two facts were very linked and could only be solved together.

In between normal Saturday food shopping and cleaning, we spent the day gardening, trying to bring some order to the overgrown former building site that our back yard had become. I garden more for edibility than for beauty so my main concern was to get the herbs potted and tended to, and to clear and prep the vegetable patch for all the goodness that awaited it. Though the rest of the garden is still not fit to have children running around in it, we have planted our 2 varieties of peas, our two types of lettuce, rhubarb (which takes 54 weeks to come a-cropping; no need to rush things), aubergines and cantaloupes, and purple sprouting broccoli has its patch laid out and is waiting to go in the ground.

And in the back of my mind were the fennel and beetroot. I felt they could come together in a salad, and a quick google search pointed me in the direction of combining them with lentils to make the salad complete. The fennel was from our organic vegetable delivery box, and the anisette smell from it was unlike any I've smelled from fennel before - it was fresh and strong and a fabulous perfume that tempted you to stand about and sniff the bulb until your nose lost sense of any smell that came before or after it.

I had to leave the salad to be finished by Mr A&N as I needed to soak my tired gardening body in the bath tub. Before coming back down the stairs, I noticed that the smell had changed from one of fennel to one of a very strong garlic - Mr A&N is never shy with the garlic, but this smell was quite something else. The salad was simple and refreshing (albeit garlicky), with the beetroot coloring everything its distinctive purple color - including my top, when I dropped some lentils down the front of it.

The salad we made was inspired by the one I found on RecipeZaar from Um Safia.

Beetroot and Fennel Salad
side dish for 4-6, or light meal for 2

2 beetroots, cleaned and trimmed
1 Tbs olive oil
1 fennel bulb, leaves trimmed and set aside
200g puy lentils
(optional: 200g cheese such as feta or halloumi)
For the dressing:

1/4 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
1 clove minced garlic
chopped fennel leaves from fennel bulb

Preheat the oven to 180oc.
Coat the beetroot with the tablespoon of olive oil and bake in the oven for about an hour (or until tender).
Cook the puy lentils in boiling water until tender (about 20 minutes). Drain, and set aside to cool.
Allow to cool thoroughly (about 45 minutes), then peel and chop into cubes.
Remove the fennel leaves, finely chop them, and set aside.
Slice the fennel into thin pieces.
Add the fennel, beetroot, and lentils together (and cheese too, if using it).
Mix the ingredients for the dressing together, and add to the vegetables.

Celery and White Bean Soup with Tomato

2008-04-18T17:03:00.006+01:00

It’s cold again. More than once this year, I’ve declared Spring had arrived, only to be rudely shouted down by the weather. Flowers and showers alone don’t change the season, just as one warm day doesn’t mean the snow won’t follow. For example: London doesn’t see much snow, but it has had a few flurries since Easter – i.e., since the arrival of Spring. Luckily I still get a bit of a thrill from each snow-fall, especially since the London kind arrives with large snowflakey clumps and melts within hours. While it’s down, the blanketed quiet is such a peaceful cocoon from the normal background hubbub that you only realize the previous noise by its absence. The snow a couple of weeks back combined with our winter veg box glut of celery, and we found ourselves again facing the idea of celery soup. Unlike the previous celery soup (who knew there could be so many celery soups?), we used celery rather than celeriac this time around, and tempered the flavor with white beans and tomato. Since I’m a sucker for a nice sausage, I also couldn’t resist fry up some fresh chorizo and throwing those chunks on top.

Universal opinion among our guests was that the soup was wonderful for the wintery day, and that the chorizo was (naturally) the favorite part. The celery wasn’t overly strong and the tomato did threaten to take nudge aside the taste of the celery a bit. I thought the soup was pleasant but unspectacular, a good winter warmer and an excellent use of celery, but without the chorizo or extra paprika we threw in that it would have been a bit dull.

Everyone's love of the chorizo got me musing on why the world couldn't be more perfect by there existing there a chorizo tree, in which all of God’s creatures could enjoy fresh sausage and eat to their heart’s content without fear of chorizo shortage or animal welfare. Surely this would be the route to peace love and harmony among all creatures, great and small. With a bit more thinking, I realized that however perfect this chorizo tree sounds on first description, God would never allow it since it would turn the world into a Land of the Lotus eaters, with doped-up chorizo fiends doing nothing productive other than sitting in our gardens and nibbling. But if there’s a Garden of Eden, I now know what mine will be stocked with.

Finally, I will introduce to you one of Ambrosia and Nectar's more recent readers, Murphy Moore, who came around to enjoy the snow and the soup. Son of faithful eating companion Amanda, he's not yet old enough to be fed his own meals here so he'll have to live vicariously through Mama's dining in the mean time. He is of course welcome around whenever he likes.

Celery and White Bean Soup with Tomato, adapted from Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark Serves 4-6

250g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight, or 650g drained tinned beans
5 Tbs olive oil
1 large head celery with leaves - celery sliced into 1 inch pieces, leaves set aside
8 spring onions with green tops, sliced into 1 cm rounds
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
500g good quality tomatoes
1 Tbs sweet paprika
2-3 fresh chorizo sausages (about 1/2 sausage per person)

Make some celery salt by laying out the celery leaves on a baking tray and heating in a medium-low oven. Move them around every so oft to keep them from burning.
When leaves are quite dry and crumbly, remove from oven and crumble with equal parts of sea salt. Set aside.
Drain the soaked beans and add to a saucepan, and cover with plenty of fresh water.
Boil for about an hour, skimming off any scum that arises during the cooking. Add any extra water needed if it boils away too quickly. Season with a bit of salt and set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and add in the celery. Cook until softened, about 10 minutes.
Add the spring onions, garlic, and a good pinch of salt.
Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. The vegetables should be soft and beginning to caramelize.
Add the tomatoes and half the celery salt, and cook for another 5 minutes.
Drain the beans, keeping back 250 ml of the cooking liquid, and add both to the pot with the vegetable mixture.
Add in the paprika.
Bring to a low boil and simmer for another 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning and adjust.
Heat a frying pan up with a small amount of olive oil to prevent the sausage from sticking.
Slice the fresh chorizo into half-inch thick disks, then quarter them.
Fry the chorizo pieces for about 5 minutes or until cooked. They usually give off a good amount of oil - fatty, but tasty.
Serve the soup in bowls with the chorizo and some of its oil spooned on top.

LiveSTRONG Day: A Taste of Yellow Escabeche

2008-04-15T18:54:00.004+01:00

However young or old any of us are, we've all had some type of experience with cancer - some more viscerally than others. The grandmother you've never met but whose death broke your father's too-young heart; the friend's sister who missed out on her final year of high school but beat the cancer and became a pediatrician so she could help other children; those times you've been to the Doctor's office with the odd-looking mole and held your breath until the results came back. A taste of yellow is the brain-child of Barbara at Winos and Foodies, a way for food bloggers to wave the banner of cancer awareness.

This mackerel escabeche gets its bright yellowness from the cornmeal encrusted fish and the saffron in the sauce. The recipe comes from Tommi Miers, a winner of Master Chef and now a restauranteur and TV chef working to bring Spanish and Mexican flavors to the UK. The escabeche cooks the fish both through heat and through acidity, while the raisins and onions add a touch of sweet and the olives a touch of salty. It was very similar in flavor - and color - to the chicken with white wine, and saffron and pine nuts I made a short while ago, both dishes being a good way to bring a bit of Spain and a touch of yellow to your meal. Serve with some god, hearty bread on which you can pile all the bits.

Mackerel Escabeche, from Tommi Miers
serves 4

4 + 4 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
2 large red onions, sliced
200ml good chicken stock or water
1½ tbsp good quality sherry vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 large dried red chilli, or a few small ones, finely chopped
A pinch of saffron
75g pitted green olives, quartered
75g raisins
4 fresh mackerel, cleaned and filleted
3 tbsp cornmeal/polenta
4 tbsp pine kernels, toasted, to serve
Freshly chopped flat leaf parsley, to garnish (optional)

Start by making the escabeche: heat 4 Tbs of the olive oil into a hot frying pan and cook the garlic and onions over a low heat until softened and lightly coloured, stirring regularly.
Stir in the stock, sherry vinegar, bay leaves, chilli and saffron.
Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for around 10 minutes. Stir in the raisins and olives.
While the sauce is cooking, prepare the mackerel. Cut each mackerel fillet in half lengthways and dust in seasoned cornmeal.
Heat 2 tbsp of the olive oil in a large, non-stick frying pan and cook the mackerel fillets in two or three batches for just 1 - 2 minutes on each side, adding extra oil if necessary.
Drain on kitchen paper and transfer to a shallow dish.
Spoon the escabeche over the mackerel fillets and leave to infuse for half an hour.
Sprinkle the pine nuts over, and scatter with a little chopped flat leaf parsley if you have it on hand

Rhubarb Ice Cream

2008-04-12T09:45:00.004+01:00

Like many a convert, I have become more passionate and vocal about the cause of rhubarb than those who might have grown up believing in its magic. I invariable have an 'Oooh, rhubarb!' moment if I see it mentioned in a recipe book or spot its pinkness on display at the market. This Saturday afternoon will be spent planting my fruits and vegetables for the season, with rhubarb included among the seeds I've bought (that is, if the weather holds. And it better, since I've just stuck the laundry outside).

This recipe for rhubarb ice cream so caught my eye that I finally bought an ice cream maker because of it. The ice cream maker had been on the wish list for a while, particularly because we only eat non-diary ice cream in the A&N house and it can be very hard to come by in the UK. Now that we have a kitchen big enough to hold gadgets, the ice cream maker jumped the gadget queue and was designated my next birthday present (in June, perfect for the start of ice cream season). But, as rhubarb isn't available in June, I ignored all that had been decided and bought the ice cream maker last week. Some would point fingers and say I lacked patience, but I'll just point out I've wanted that ice cream maker for a time that spans years, so really, I've been very patient indeed.

The ice cream is made with a custard base with stewed rhubarb and its syrup added into the mix shortly before the end. The picture of the finished dessert in cookbook was enchanting - a delicate pink cloud of creaminess, the frozen-egg-and-cream equivalent of Cinderella when she puts on her slipper or Snow White when she wakes from her slumber. The custard base led me to think of serving meringues with it to use up the egg whites, furthering the delicate airy nature of the dessert. It was enough to make me stick my arm out the window for the birds to perch on as I sang to them and whipped up my kitchen delights.

Clearly I was deluded, and I should have known that a first attempt at something rarely produces stunning effects. The basic vanilla ice cream was luscious and didn't taste or feel compromised by the thinner soya cream and milk we added to it. I think the problem came from the rhubarb (*gasp!* Not the magic rhubarb!). The rhubarb didn't break apart enough once it was added, and since it was late-season rhubarb I probably should have cooked it longer than I did. The bigger problem was the syrup. Again, I probably should have cooked it down further, added it in sooner, and made sure it was cold rather than just cooled, but as soon as it was poured into the ice cream it turned the ice cream texture into a liquid from which it never recovered. The meringues were crushed while being juggled around the oven to accommodate other things.

It still tasted wonderful, but the rhubarb chunks suffered once they were put into the freezer, becoming solid crystalized masses that reminded you where every one of your fillings were and made you shrink back a bit in the remembered-pain of having had cavities. Tips for future ice cream making were learned, and more may follow, but I'm still looking forward to the ice cream season with excitement. As well as my birthday, now that I have another present coming to me.

Winter Rhubarb Ice Cream, from Skye Gyngell's A Year in My Kitchen Ice cream base:

450 ml double cream
150 ml whole milk
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
6 large egg yolks
120 g caster sugar

Rhubarb flavoring:

1kg rhubarb
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
180 g caster sugar
150 ml verjuice or water

Start by making the custard base: pour the cream and milk into a heavy-based pan an place over a low heat.
Scrape the seeds and place the seeds and the pod into the cream mixture.
Slowly bring to the boil, remove from heat and set aside for 15 minutes so it can infuse.
Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and sugar together in a separate bowl until the mixture
turns thicker and paler.
Gently reheat the cream mixture and pour it into the eggs, whisking as it's poured.
Place everything, now combined, into the pan and heat over the lowest possible heat, stirring until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon (about 6 - 8 minutes).
Remove from heat and set aside in a bowl to cool.
Wash and trim the rhubarb, then cut into 2 inch/5 cm chunks.
Place rhubarb in a saucepan with the vanilla pod, sugar, and verjuice/water. Turn the heat onto medium and stir gently to start the rhubarb off.
Bring to a simmer, then turn heat down to cook gently for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. The rhubarb should be soft and on the verge of falling apart (if using later season rhubarb, you may need to cook for closer to 20 minutes).
Remove the rhubarb and set aside in a dish. Taste the syrup to make sure it's both tart and sweet at the same time (adjust for taste if needed) and turn the heat up to simmer away half the syrup.
Pour over the rhubarb and allow to cool completely.
Once the custard is cooled, pour into the ice cream maker. Just before the ice cream sets, pour in the cooled rhubarb and syrup, and churn for a further 10 minutes.

My Favorite Roast

2008-04-09T17:26:00.003+01:00

I had a chance to make my favorite roast this weekend: a leg of lamb, done with your typical rosemary and garlic, but with the surprising addition of...anchovies. It's a meal I've tried in Italy and am told it's not uncommon in France, either. Although they sound like a completely mis-matched ingredient, the anchovies melt along with the butter and leave behind a simple, salty tenderness.

This particular recipe comes from the Simon Hopkinson book, Roast Chicken and Other Stories. It was last year voted as the favorite cookbook among chefs in the UK, which made this little-known cookbook sell out very quickly. I didn't feel overly compelled to get the book until Mr A&N came home from a job with daily stories about how his boss loved the foods the book lead him to - simple, classic dishes but all knee-meltingly excellent. His boss, to all intents and purposes, was a Very Large Man, but he also Really Enjoyed His Food - not fatty unhealthy ready-meal food, but fatty unhealthy home-made food of the gourmet domain. Simon Hopkinson, he swore, knew how to make some good things fairly simply (and to tell some nice stories around them).

The lamb from this comes out very, very tender and juicy. We tend to like our lamb pink, but even if you err on the side of well-done your lamb should still be in succulent enough shape. The gravy it produces is also a rather perfect kind of gravy, but do take care to drain off any extra fat - not doing so might just send some of you rotundly plummeting over the heart-attack precipice. My favorite Sunday roast dinner indeed, probably made all the tastier since I know I'll only be having it a couple of times a year. Please note, I only had time to take pictures of it pre-cooked, since once that thing was out of the oven and being carved up everything else got lost in the blur of me trying to get as much lamb into my mouth as possible.

Roast Leg of Lamb with Anchovy, Garlic, and Rosemary from Simon Hopkinson
serves 4

1.8kg/4lb leg of lamb
100g/4oz tinned anchovies
small bunch of rosemary
4 large garlic cloves, peeled and sliced lenghtways into 3 pieces
75g/3oz butter, softened
black pepper
1/2 bottle white wine
juice of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 220 C/425 F.
With a sharp knife, make about 12 2-inch deep incisions into the fleshy side of the joint.
In each of these incisions, insert a sliver of garlic, half an anchovy, and a small sprig of rosemary, and push them all into the cut well.
Cream the butter along with any remaining anchovies and smear this all over the meat. Grind black pepper on top of this.
Place the lamb in a roasting tin, and pour the wine around it. Tuck in any remaining rosemary into some incisions, and squeeze the lemon over the lamb.
Put in the oven, and roast for 15 minutes.
At the end of the first 15 minutes, turn the temperature down to 180 C /350F.
Roast for a further hour (or slightly more/less depending on how you like your lamb cooked), basting from time to time with the juices that come out.
Leave the lamb out of the oven and untouched for 15 minutes before carving.
Use this 15 minutes to make the gravy with all the leftover juices.

Prune and Armagnac Tart

2008-04-03T20:48:00.005+01:00

When trying to find a dessert that would go well with our beef and prune tagine, I turned to my new favorite cookbook: A Year in My Kitchen by Skye Gyngell. Even though I have more cookbooks than it's possible to regularly cook from (I started a spreadsheet of the recipes I'd like to make, their key ingredients, and the books they're in. I managed to record all that for one of book), I have only 3 or 4 that I'll really turn to for inspiration, and Skye's book has already increased that number of core books to 4 or 5. Since the book is arranged seasonally, I optimisticly turned to 'spring' hoping I could speed the season toward me with my choice of recipe.

And so the prune and armagnac tart. This is a very classic French flavor combination, and I was still in a bit of a reverie from a friend's description earlier in the week of his home-made prune and armagnac ice cream. With prunes in the main course as well, I thought it would be a nice flavor arc through the meal. With two times the prunes initially needed, though, I actually had to go out and buy another packet of prunes - something I didn't think I'd be doing until I was in my 80's and afflicted by a certain sluggishness.

The prunes I bought were not pitted which turned out to be something of a poor choice since my hands were hunched in cutting and pitting position while covered in sticky prune goo for what felt like much longer than it was. My patience grew short, and I'm not known in the A&N household for being The Patron Saint of Patience to begin with. The pastry recipe for the tart was excellent - crispy, subtly sweet and nicely buttery, and kept well for a couple of days. The pastry combined well with the prunes, which tasted like a rich jam. Next time, I would probably double the almond mixture on top since I do like my almond topping and I didn't get much of the sense of the orange blossom water. Other than the torture of pitting the prunes, it was an easy but sophisticated dessert to make, and is very open to being tweaked with different flavors and combinations.

Both Pastry and Tart from Skye Gyngell's A Year in My Kitchen

Pastry

250g plan flour
pinch salt
125g unsalted butter, shilled and cut into cubes
25g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1 egg
25-40 ml ice-cold water

Sift the flour and salt into a mound on a cool surface.
Scatter the butter, sugar, vanilla and lemon zest over the flour, then toss the ingredients together using a knife or pastry scraper.
make a hollow in the middle and add the egg and water and toss again.
Gather the dough close to you and, with the heel of your hand, work it away in a quick movement. Keep bringing the dough back to you and working it until it is evenly combined (don't worry if little bits of butter show through, it is important not to overwork the dough).
Once the dough has come together, continue to knead to a minute or so, very lightly.
Wrap the pastry in greaseproof paper and chill for 20 minutes (no longer or it will be difficult to roll).

Prune and Armagnac Tart

The pastry recipe above (already halved)
300g good quality prunes
30 g unsalted butter
2 eggs
120g caster sugar
few drops vanilla extract
1 Tbsp orange flower water
5 Tbsp double cream
3 Tbsp ground almond
3 Tbsp armagnac (or brandy) to drizzle
icing sugar, to dust
creme fraiche, to serve

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to about 3mm/just over an inch thick.
Lift the pastry carefully and place over a 25cm/10 inch flan tin. Press the pastry into the sides and bottom of the tin, then use your rolling pin rolled on top to cut the excess pastry off.
Prick the base all over with a fork, then place in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180C / 375F.
If not already pitted, pit the prunes and place in a bowl. Cover with hot water and leave to soak for 10 minutes and then drain.
Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly.
When the half hour is up, line the pastry tin with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans in order to blind-bake the pastry.
Bake for 15 minutes. Remove the beans and bake for another 5 or until the pastry is golden, then remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Increase the oven temperature to 190 / 390.
In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, vanilla, orange flower water, cream, and almonds. Whisk together lightly until evenly blended, then stir in the melted butter.
Scatter the prunes evenly over the pastry base, then ladle the whisked egg mixture over the top.
Carefully place on the middle shelf of the oven and immediately turn the temperature back down to 180 / 375.
Bake for 25 - 30 minutes until the topping is golden brown on the surface and slightly wobbly in the center.
Remove from the oven, and while still warm drizzle with the armagnac.
When the armagnac is absorbed, lightly dust with icing sugar. Serve either warm or cold.

Beef and Prune Tagine

2008-04-01T21:32:00.008+01:00

I love Moroccan food, and it always surprises me to hear of people who don't have any experience of the cuisine and so don't know the wonders that they're missing. The cuisine artfully ties together the different cultures and influences across the centuries: Middle Eastern, Moorish, Spanish, Jewish. It's the interplay of warming, infusing spices with some element of sweet and element of meat, drawn together in a stew and served with thirsty cous cous that helps you lap up all the wonderful juices the stew gives off. Our choice of honeymoon destination was almost solely guided by our stomachs, placing Japan and Morocco on our (very) shortlist. In the end, we went to Japan because of the greater probability of curious computer games and bizarre vending machine opportunities, but Morocco remained a close second.

Since it is a former French colony, you can also find excellent Moroccan food in France. When we were last in Paris we visited a Moroccan restaurant housed in an old bistro. As I walked to my table, I cast a glance into the kitchen and saw one of the most wonderful sights my eyes have seen: a tub, the size of the sliced-off end of an oil-tanker, filled with cous cous. The man trying to stir the cous cous didn't attack it with a spoon but with a broom with a large paddle attached to it. I had loved Moroccan food up to that point; after I saw this, though, I said a quick prayer to be granted forgiveness as I felt an urge to renounce my husband and pledge myself in marriage to the man who was running that kitchen.

I was recently given a beautiful tagine as a gift by my brother. A typical tagine is an glazed clay affair and acts as something of a slow cooker, trapping the steam produced during cooking and returning it to the wide-based bottom and keeping the food moist. This tagine is even more glorious than your usual one since it's a crimson red Le Creuset version, and sits in your kitchen like a smooth erupted volcano, aglitter in the sunlight.

Tagine is the name for both a style of cooking and the dish it's cooked in. The tagine we made came from our reliable Moro cookbook. Beef and prune tagine, the book tells you, is one of your most classic tagine combinations but shouldn't be dismissed for being predictable. Since it spent nearly 3 hours cooking, we all got to smell it developing its flavors. The aroma was torturously good, and the four of us eating were hungry in a manner that not even an empty stomach can induce. There was enough to generously serve four, and none of us could bear leaving any behind uneaten. A trip to Morocco will come some day, but in the mean time I'll always have Paris. And my shiny red tagine.

Beef Tagine with Prunes, from Casa Moro cookbook
Serves 4

40g unsalted butter
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 Tbs finely grated onion
4 Tbs roughly chopped fresh coriander
1.2kg / 2 1/2 lb stewing beef, cut into 3cm cubes and trimmed of excess fat
40 threads saffron, infused in 2 Tbs boiling water
400g / 1 lb stoned prunes, soaked in cold water
2 Tbs runny honey
salt and pepper
To serve:

1 Tbs sesame seeds, lightly toasted

180 g whole blanched almonds, friend in olive oil until just golden

4 Tbs fresh coriander leaves

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan or tagine base, heat up the butter and olive oil over a medium to high heat.
When the butter starts to foam add the ginger, 1/2 tsp of black pepper, cinnamon, onion, and coriander.
Fry for 30 seconds, then add the beef and stir well for a minute or two so it is coated in the spice mixture.
Cover the meat with water and add in the saffron infusion. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer.
Drain the prunes, then add half to the meat.
Cover the pot, and simmer gently for about 1 1/2 hours until the beef is very tender and juicy (or, cook in an oven at a low temperature, at around 140 C / 280 F).
Add the remaining prunes along with the honey and some salt and pepper.
Simmer for a further 30 minutes or until the meat is tender and the sauce has thickened and reduced some. (We did this final stage with the tagine uncovered on the stove rather than in the oven, but the choice is yours)
Serve with sesame seeds, almonds, and coriander leaves over the top.

The Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

2008-03-30T11:49:00.004+01:00

The primary rule that all Daring Bakers need to keep in mind is that they may not deviate from the month's chosen recipe. Except, of course, when they're told to do so. Morven of Food, Art, and Random Things gave the gift of creativity when she chose Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake as this month's task. Other than following the basic cake recipe and turning the confection into a layer cake, we were given free reign over how we decorate and flavored our creations.

The main thing that restrains my creativity is my own mind, which is a shame. When trying a new recipe, I like to follow it closely to the suggested recipe so I can form my opinions of it before thinking of ways of improving it, so I knew I'd be sticking to the bulk of what Dorie had written. I did latch on to the idea of cherry jam in my layers and cherries on top, mainly because a cherry on top connotes to me the idea of a special treat, and this being your perfect party cake is a pretty special occasion. I found naturally colored cherries from a UK website selling bulk baking goods, which made a nice and comforting change from the uber-red cherries with they're goodness-knows-what-chemicals-in-them that I grew up eating (they also sold green cherries - green cherries? Green??! I'll stick with natural, thanks very much).

Knowing that it wouldn't be a challenge for this house of two people to eat a whole iced cake, simply a Very Bad Idea, I took all my ingredients, measuring bits, tins and hand mixers away with me over the Easter weekend which was spent with Mr A&N's extended family. The only challenge, then, would be in ensuring that the cake had enough slices for the 15 people who would be there, as well as making sure that I didn't produce such a poor product that I didn't just leave my mother-in-law doubting my cooking skills, but left my husband's Aunts, Uncles, siblings, cousins, assorted spouses and friends shaking their heads in sadness at my lack of skills. Just the relaxing baking atmosphere in which I like to cocoon myself.

I found the cake and icing quite straight-forward to make, with my ancient hand blender (inherited from Mr A&N's grandmother) heating up worryingly as it clocked up the 10 minutes the icing demanded of it. The baking cake smelled wonderful, although working with an untested oven meant that I had to reduce the heat halfway through the cooking since the cake was getting a bit too brown too quickly. The cake fell a bit and pulled in from the sides of the tin as a result which made it look small and unlikely to feed 15, but once it was sliced into its layers its height promised better things.

The cake was a talking point as everyone eyed it up through the afternoon, and everyone dipped in for a slice (with 16 cherries dotted around the edges, serving sizes were partitioned nicely). The general reaction was that this was indeed a fine party cake and reminded most people of childhood birthdays. Most were fans of the icing, but would have liked the cake to have been a bit lighter and springier - the overall effect was more dense than expected. There was one lone slice left which no one felt right claiming, so I was able to get up early and take a photo of the mangled layers before diving in for what was my Easter breakfast, saving that cherry on top for my last bite.

For the recipe, please either have a look on Morven's blog or worship at the altar of Dorie's Baking From My Home to Yours.

Celery and Leek Soup with Truffle Oil

2008-03-28T21:18:00.003Z

Mr A&N and I found ourselves with a day off together at the end of the Easter break. An extra day off is a prized thing and should be treated differently to your normal weekend day - there should be no cleaning, no grocery shopping, no chores or running about here and there. On my extra days off, I like to behave like I'm a tourist and take my camera and myself out into the city and see what I can find. I've lately been feeling as if I were in a bit of a rut, which isn't uncommon for me at the end of winter (I figure it's better at the end, with spring on its way, than at the beginning). When I'm in this rut, life seems to only move between paid work and house work with no time to do things I enjoy and no sense of taking advantage of the city I live in. Even when I know this isn't actually true, this winter-time fug stays with me. A day out in London, exploring a different area through new eyes, was coming just in time to help me re-charge my dead batteries.

We headed to Notting Hill, a place I've semi-explored a number of times but hadn't been back to in a while. It wasn't until we were there that I remembered a great spice shop in the area, and before I had finished whacking myself in the forehead for being thick and forgetting to copy down its location, we stumbled on the store. Called The Spice Shop (good name, eh?), it's a small but packed space, full of sachets and canisters of all sorts of wonderful things, many of which came home with me.

Across the road from The Spice Shop is another fantastic store, Books for Cooks. Just like the Spice Shop, it's a place that will make anyone cooking-inclined be beside themselves with possibilities. I had wanted some books about the science of baking and cooking, and I was able to scan through a few titles and chat to the staff about what they'd recommend. I also had my eye caught by a cookbook that I've been flipping through without purchase for ages. A Year in My Kitchen by Skye Gyngell was the Cookery Book of the Year winner last year and is another contribution to the seasonal and non-fussy cooking genre. The spirit and place moved me, and into my bag it went.

I pawed through the cookbook over lunch and one of the first recipes to make me go 'Oooh' was a celery and leek soup, topped off with truffle oil (which I had, conveniently, just picked up from the Spice Shop). We already had a large celeriac from the previous week's vegetable box and had more celery arriving that day, so any plan to get rid of it all was a good one. Potatoes and cream helped thicken it out, and it tasted like a deeply flavored, grown-up leek and potato soup, particularly with the touch of truffle oil. I'll be looking through the cookbook more this weekend, since I'm already enticed and want to find out what else is possible.

Celery and Leek Soup with Truffle Oil, from Skye Gyngell
serves 4

400 g celery (or celeriac - we used a combination of the two)
2 leeks, mostly white parts
50 g unsalted butter
2 medium or 1 large potato, peeled and chopped
2 bay leaves
2-3 thyme sprigs
a couple of flat leaf parsley stems
salt and pepper
1 liter chicken or vegetable stock
150 ml double cream
truffle oil, to drizzle

Separate the celery stalks and peel them finely, then chop roughly. If using celeriac, skin and chop into small cubes.
Melt the butter in a large pot over a low heat. Add the celery and leeks and cook gently for 15 minutes or so, until the celery is soft but not colored.
Add the potato, bay leaves, thyme and parsely and season with a bit of the salt and pepper.
Pour in the stock and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
remove from the heat and discard herb.
Puree the soup in small batches in a blender so it is quite smooth. Pass through a chinois before returning it to the pot so that the soup is very smooth.
Pour in the cream and reheat gently.
Check the seasoning and serve with a small drizzle of truffle oil.

Veggie Burgers

2008-03-26T20:35:00.003Z

I've been enjoying the long Easter weekend in the UK, topped up by me with another couple of days off to detox from work. Part of my relaxation regime was to spend the weekend with Mr A&N's immediate and extended family at a house in the middle of the countryside.

The weekend was put together by Mr A&N's mother in order to draw the scattered strands of the family together at a central point to everyone. "There's going to be walking involved" Mr A&N complained before we even got there. "Why does everyone in my family seem obsessed with walking?". Perhaps because it's an enjoyable and healthy alternative to sitting around on your ass all day, I suggested. "Bah" he replied.

To organize the weekend, Mr A&N's mother wrote letters to everyone explaining what foodstuffs they should bring and when their cooking duties would be. We were assigned Saturday lunch (soup) and Saturday dinner (roast night), and were instructed to aim to feed six. With 15 of us gathering, though, we felt that we should cater for more than six people so that no one was left with an empty plate and a half-filled stomach. We weren't the only ones pondering how to locate and fit half a side of a cow into the oven; Mr A&N's lovely-but-slightly-nervy Aunt sent a message to all declaring she was 'v v stressed figuring out the menu' and wondered if others felt the same.

We decided to take artistic license with our instructions and bought supplies for hamburgers for all. Except that among the 'all' were a few vegetarians, and though we knew that we would probably not be expected to put food together for them, we also didn't want to leave them out. Luckily, veggie burgers slotted into the theme quite easily.

The burgers were a huge success, although it did mean that Mr A&N had to stand over the small frying pan cooking the burgers in batches and queuing up hungry hordes until the next burger was cooked. The meat version was made with beef (though lamb would have been even tastier), chopped chili, coriander, and a bit of lime juice, while the veggie version was a bean and vegetable medley. The veggie burger had the same warm, comforting, soft and squidgy qualities that make a normal hamburger so luscious, but it was simply minus the meat. The recipe Mr A&N found for Mexican veggie burgers included chopped almonds which came through a surprising amount in both taste and texture, and had the added bonus of using up the fennel from our veg box.

It has only been at weddings that we've been able to see all the cousins and aunts and uncles, and with no more of those on the horizon it's only weekends like this past one that bring us all together. Understandably for a family who genuinely enjoys each other's company, there is talk of making our group weekend a yearly thing. Of course, Mr A&N would have to keep his hiking boots in a polished state - as he feared, there were daily 3-hour treks through fields and forests, despite driving winds and blizzard-like snow. He did have my sympathy, really, as we were at one stage blinded by horizontal snow and almost couldn't move forward, but as his mother would say: it's character forming.

Veggie Burgers, adapted from The Veggie Table
makes 6-8 burgers

½ C almonds, finely chopped
1 tsp ground coriander
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bulb fennel
¾ C coriander/cilantro
1½ C black beans or black-eyed peas, cooked or canned
1 C bread crumbs
½ red bell pepper, seeded and minced
2 Tbs toasted wheat germ or untoasted rolled oats
¼ tsp ground cloves,
½ tsp salt
black pepper
1½ t olive oil
flour for coating

Heat almonds and ground coriander in dry frying pan over medium-high heat, stirring or shaking constantly, until almonds are lightly toasted, about 1 minute.
Food process garlic, fennel, and coriander/cilantro until finely chopped.
Add beans, and pulse repeatedly until chopped but not liquidized.
Transfer to bowl and mix in almond mixture, bread crumbs, bell pepper, wheat germ, and spices.
Taste and adjust seasonings.
Shape into six -eight patties with floured hands, adding more bread crumbs if necessary.
Lightly sprinkle flour onto a plate, and gently press each side of the burgers onto the flour.
Fry the burgers in the 1½ Tbsp oil (topping up if needed) over medium-high heat until crust forms, about 3 minutes per side.

Blood Orange and Rosewater Sorbet

2008-03-19T22:10:00.004Z

One of my more trusty restaurant companions, Amanda, has had to step down from her dining-out duties temporarily since she has more important matters to look after in the shape of her 3 month old son. Any time out together is precious, and in order to make things easier I travel across town to see her. It's hardly a chore to see a good friend, but in London traveling to different parts of town can be seen as a feat akin to traveling across the arctic with nothing but a chocolate bar and one spare pair of dry socks to keep you going.

"I'm going down to Hammersmith to see Amanda" I told one friend.
"What, tonight? You have to go to work tomorrow - are you going to stay overnight?"
Bravely, I would be returning home the same night. From east to west London and back east again, all within 24 hours. Amazing.

Matters are made more difficult by where I live, since London Transport has decided to exercise their right to disrupt your travel plans and is closing the tube line I need to get home by 10pm. Each night. Until November. Hooray.

Knowing that I was spending the evening out across town and had to get on the tube by a given time meant that we had to be efficient with our fun. We tried, and despite the two of us being the fastest takers that Mr A&N knows, fun took precedence and it was a rush to the tube. And so, with this evident pressure to get on the train and get home, what do I do? Why, my eye catches site of a small grocery store and I wander in like a loved-up fool, just to browse the shelves in case there's something marvelous in there.
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And what happens but I do find a wonderful thing: essence of rose water and orange blossom water. I've had some wonderful cakes and desserts flavored with each of these things, and had intermittently tried to track some down for myself. They're both regular features of middle eastern cuisine, but cooking with floral essences was also used quite a lot in medieval european cooking. I'm intrigued by why once-common flavors fall out of fashion, and am looking forward to experimenting with them in my cooking.

One of Mr A&N's most memorable desserts was eaten at Moro, and combined rosewater and cardamom in an ice cream. Although it would be difficult to make ice cream without an ice cream maker, I turned to the Moro cookbook to see if there was any inspiration or guidance for how to use my prized flower waters. In there, I found a recipe for blood orange and rosewater sorbet, which appealed for it beautiful pink color and use of the short-seasoned blood oranges. It was a beautiful palate cleanser, hinting at spring things to come with the tang of citrus and the hint of the rose garden.

And the tube on that night? I leaped on the last train home, feeling ever so triumphant - until that tube stopped two stations away from home and declared it was going no further and we'd all have to find other ways home. Nuts.

Blood Orange and Rosewater Sorbet, from the Moro Cookbook

200g/7oz caster sugar
100-150ml/3½-5fl oz rosewater, to taste (I would tend toward the higher amount of rosewater, just so you can be sure to taste it)
600ml/1 pint blood orange juice
½ blood orange, zest only
squeeze of lemon

Place the sugar and rosewater in a small saucepan over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Simmer for a couple of minutes until a thin syrup has formed. Allow to cool.
Add the syrup to the orange juice along with the zest and a squeeze of lemon, to taste.
Churn in an ice-cream machine, or place in the freezer, stirring the sorbet by hand every half-hour for the first two hours to prevent crystallisation.

Caldo Verde

2008-03-16T18:21:00.003Z

We've recently (finally) signed up for a vegetable box delivery - once a week we have an assortment of organic vegetables delivered to our door. We went with Abel and Cole after they were recommended by several friends, and are very pleased with them so far. Aside from the fruit and vegetables the specialize in, Abel and Cole also act like a small online grocery store, and we're enjoying batches of fruity soy yogurt as well as some incredible fresh fish and meat. What having a veg box also means is that we're landed with plenty of vegetables (a good thing, don't get me wrong) and have to think of ways of using them before they go off. It's helping us increase our vegetable intake while cutting down on the meat a bit, and whenever we're stuck with how to pull of the trick of cooking armfuls of vegetables at once, we revert to soup.

I found this recipe for a Portuguese soup on the BBC website, originating from the Hairy Bikers (for anyone not familiar with their show, they are what they say they are: two large, bearded bikers who ride around different continents and sample and cook local food. Great job if you can get it, I say). I was interested in the soup not just because it used the vegetables we needed to cook with, but because I don't have a huge amount of knowledge of Portuguese cuisine.

What I do know about Portuguese food, in fact, could be written on the back of a matchstick. I know that they love pork, as a lot of continental Europe does. I know that they were a great sea-faring country and so brought touches of their cuisine around the world (for example, firey-hot Indian Vindaloo is a corruption of the Portuguese term 'vinho de alho' or 'vinegar and garlic' which is what the meat is prepared with). I also know of their reliance on cod and salt cod in particular, illustrated by the story a friend told me about how a power outage when she was a child forced her family to get a take out meal since her mother couldn't cook that night's cod, and it lives in her memory as one of the more exciting nights of her childhood.

So the Portuguese soup? It was very tasty but I felt it could have been better with a slight tweak of both the recipe and my behavior. The recipe only calls for 1 chorizo sausage but I would be inclined to add 2-3 (Mr A&N pouted that I was making him eat peasant food when, the last time he checked, he hadn't been a peasant for at least 2 generations). I also always suffer from adding too much liquid to my soup stock since I make the stock in my large pot and always feel the chicken looks so lonely without more water around it. I would next time follow what's said and only add the amount called for. It was still a very good and hearty soup, and nicely livened up by the swirl of spicy oil added on the top. I'm intrigued to find out what else Portuguese food has to offer me.

Caldo Verde, from the Hairy Bikers
makes 1 large pot

2 nice fat onions, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
60ml/2¼fl oz olive oil
1 chorizo sausage
6 large potatoes
1.5 litres/2 pints 13fl oz good vegetable or chicken stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 bay leaves
large bunch of greens or cabbage
smoked paprika and olive oil, for dressing

In a frying pan, sweat the onions and garlic in the olive oil until translucent.
Chop the sausage into small chunks and add to the onion.
Sweat the onions and sausage for a few more minutes and then add the diced potatoes. They will absorb all the flavour from the sausage.
Transfer the mixture to a large pan, add the stock, seasoning and bay leaves, and cook until the potatoes are soft.
Meanwhile, very finely chop the cabbage.
When the potatoes are ready, mash them into the broth to make a thick base.
Blanch the greens in boiling water for one minute to take off any bitterness, drain, then add to the simmering broth.
Add as much cabbage as the broth will support - if you want heavy soup add loads of greens, if lighter, add less, and simmer for a few minutes.
Mix the smoked paprika with some olive oil to make a dressing, and drizzle this on top of the individual bowls of soup.

Chicken with White Wine, Saffron, Pine Nuts and Raisins

2008-03-13T19:21:00.008Z

We don't eat much chicken in our house, unless it's a whole roast that gets slowly worked down into left-over pieces and soup stock. Chicken parts just seem so expensive compared to buying the whole thing, and when the cost is taken into account we just gravitate to other meats like lamb or pork. A good chicken recipe does turn the head, though, and this one from the Borough Market Cookbook was the equivalent of a lithe, buxom blonde in a bikini (or, more to my liking, George Clooney taking one of his pot bellied pigs for a walk).

This was also perfect for having guests around - fairly simple to prepare and it could just bubble away in the background without you worrying how your level of drinking might impair the final outcome. I wasn't entirely convinced by the dish as it did cook away; the saffron with the wine gave off a slightly acidic smell that I didn't think promised good things. Everyone, though, loved it, with the chicken coming out tender and the raisins adding a nice touch of sweet to the dry wine and the exotic saffron. A bit of cous cous on the side helped lap up the sauces and went with the vaguely North African aura of the dish. And, ideally for my thrifty mind, you can make it by jointing the chicken into 8 pieces, leaving the chance for you to make stock from the carcass. It's firmly entered the Must Make Again list, and fairly near the top, too.

For the one-pot-wonder that this is, I'm submitting this to Lis at La Mia Cucina for this month's Weekend Cookbok Challenge.
Chicken with White Wine, Saffron and Raisins, From Borough Market Cookbook (Meat and Fish)
serves 4

1 medium chicken, jointed into 8
1 Tbs flour
3 Tbs olive oil
2 large onions, cut into half-moon slivers
6 garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
600ml dry white wine
1 pinch saffron threads
75 g raisins (the original recipe calls for currants)
60g pine nuts
10g fresh parsely

Dust the chicken pieces with flour
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed casserole dish and begin browning the chicken on all sides. Make sure there's enough room for the pieces (you may need to do it in batches) since you want the chicken to brown nicely and not be crowded in to the pot. Remove chicken as it crisps and set aside, and keep the oil in the casserole.
Crush the garlic with a pinch of sea salt in a mortar and pestle.
Saute the onion in the casserole dish that cooked the chicken, stirring and loosening any brown bits left behind from the chicken.
When the onion is turning lightly golden, add the garlic paste and stir, cooking for about 30 seconds.
Put the chicken back in the dish, placed together snugly and with the skin side up.
Stick in the 2 bay leaves, tucked underneath the chicken pieces.
Season with salt and pepper, and add in the wine and saffron. Make sure the saffron is submerged in the liquid.
Bring to a simmer and cook for 40-45 minutes, or transfer to an oven at 180C / 350 F and cook for the same amount of time in there
After 20 minutes of the cooking, sprinkly the rasisns (or currants) and pine nuts over the chicken.
Check the level of the liquid - there should be at least 240ml / 1 C of liquid in the dish so top up with water or chicken stock if needed.
Serve with parsely scattered over the top.