:: Pause ::

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

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

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
  

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

Celery and White Bean Soup with Tomato

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)

1. 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.
2. When leaves are quite dry and crumbly, remove from oven and crumble with equal parts of sea salt. Set aside.
3. Drain the soaked beans and add to a saucepan, and cover with plenty of fresh water.
4. 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.
5. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and add in the celery. Cook until softened, about 10 minutes.
6. Add the spring onions, garlic, and a good pinch of salt.
7. Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. The vegetables should be soft and beginning to caramelize.
8. Add the tomatoes and half the celery salt, and cook for another 5 minutes.
9. Drain the beans, keeping back 250 ml of the cooking liquid, and add both to the pot with the vegetable mixture.
10. Add in the paprika.
11. Bring to a low boil and simmer for another 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning and adjust.
12. Heat a frying pan up with a small amount of olive oil to prevent the sausage from sticking.
13. Slice the fresh chorizo into half-inch thick disks, then quarter them.
14. Fry the chorizo pieces for about 5 minutes or until cooked. They usually give off a good amount of oil - fatty, but tasty.
15. Serve the soup in bowls with the chorizo and some of its oil spooned on top.