Antipasto Antipasta?

The pairing of tuna and butter beans makes for a classic Italian antipasto, and a combination that I adore.  It also works well as a suppertime pasta dish and this is a simple recipe using mainly storecupboard ingredients, except for an onion, some parsley and a lemon (and if I can pick those up in our tiny, though fabulous, village post office then I'm sure no-one else will find too much of an excursion in them). As for the pasta, I am currently having a total linguine moment, so I used that tonight, but cavatappi and fusilli have worked equally well for me in the past.

Pasta with Tuna and Butter Beans

250g dried pasta (and see above)
200g can good-quality tuna in olive oil
1 small onion, halved and finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled
 can butter beans, drained and rinsed well.
chopped fresh parsley
grated zest of one lemon and a spritz of its juice
Cook the pasta.  Meanwhile, drain the tuna and reserve the oil.  Heat the oil in a heavy pan and fry the onion with the whole garlic cloves until the onion is very, very soft.  Tip in the butterbeans and turn in the oil until they are warmed through, then add the tuna to the pan with some parsley and the lemon zest.  Fold it all together carefully; try not to break the tuna up too much or the dish will lose its pleasing texture.  Drain the pasta (reserving some water from the pan) and toss it with the tuna-and-bean mixture, adding a little of the pasta water and a squeeze of lemon juice to bring the flavours and consistency together.  Please, no cheese...

 *****

We went to Pizza Express in the half-term holidays while we were on a shopping jaunt to Carmarthen and the children were freshly, as always, enamored of the famous dough balls with garlic butter.  Ever since, they have been regularly nagging me talking about them and finally I thought it was time I knocked up a home-style batch; driving to Carmarthen just for an order of dough balls would be extravagantly decadent in the extreme!

Dough Balls

450g strong white flour
7g sachet easy-blend dried yeast
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
250ml warm water
 flour, fine semolina or cornmeal, to dust

garlic butter, to serve

Mix all the ingredients for the dough together and knead for 5 minutes.  Put the dough into an oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.  Knock the dough down and knead for another 5 minutes.  Re-cover and leave for another 30 minutes or so.  Divide the dough into 16 and roll into balls.  Place on a floured baking sheet and dust them with a little bit of flour (or, even better, a little fine semolina or cornmeal/polenta flour).  Leave for 30 minutes until puffed up and then bake at 200°c for 15-20 minutes until tinged with gold.  Serve warm, with dishes of cool garlic butter on the side.  Dip the balls into the butter, or break them open and spread with the butter; your style, your choice.

Cath xx

Homemade Pâté Heaven - It's Easy, I Promise!

Pâté is one of those things that, if you love it, you really love it.  I really like making my own, homemade, pâté, it can be just what I want it to be. That being said, however, I am quite 'conservative' about how my pâté should taste; I like a good livery flavour and not too many extra (for which read extraneous) flavours.  I would much rather eat a small portion of a good, simple pâté like this one than have twice the amount of strange, ersatz pâté, with odd things added to it.  This seems especially to be a problem in the run-up to Christmas, but the supermarkets especially (though independent butchers are not totally immune; I have seen some very odd things in my time) do seem keen to push pâté on us as a 'luxury' food, studded with all manner of fruits and striated with bizarre, and jarring, vegetable purées.  No matter, though, once you taste this you will always want the good stuff...

Really Easy Chicken Liver Pâté


I use GIA's Garlic Purée in my pâté, because I like it to be as smooth as possible.  You can, of course, substitute a minced clove of fresh garlic.



2 x 227g cartons of frozen chicken livers, defrosted and drained

200g butter
2 tbsp double cream
2 tbsp brandy
1 tbsp garlic purée (and see above)

Heat a frying pan and melt the butter.  Fry the chicken livers until well browned, the put everything from the pan into the food processor, with all the other ingredients.  Whizz to form a smooth purée, then pour and scrape into ramekins or one larger serving dish.  Chill the pâté until set, and until needed.  Serve with hot toast, warm rolls and, for my preference, a dish of cocktail gherkins (or cornichons, if you must) to provide tang and crunch.

Cath xx

Intermission-lude

It's been a while, I know, and the reasons are far too many and varied to go into at length.  Suffice it to say that our bathroom ceiling collapsed during a storm a few weeks ago and, ever since then, we have been busy picking up the pieces - both figuratively AND literally!  Now, however, the roof has been replaced and order is (just about) restored. After what feels like weeks of quick dinners, I'm ready to return, with a vengeance, to the kitchen.  I've missed real cooking terribly and I can't wait to find some more lovely things to share with you...it's nice to be back to writing to you again!


On that note, try this for a midweek supper in the hot weather.  Based on our great lunchtime favourite, this brings a teeny tweak of sophistication to the classic Welsh rabbit.  I can even imagine this being served, to people rather less greedy than us at any rate, as an elegant starter on a 'waffeur-thin' croûte with a delicate side salad. Ha!

Mushroom Rabbits

200g hard cheese, grated (such as a good, strong cheddar)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp Dijon mustard
4 tbsp plain flour
1 egg and 1 egg yolk, beaten
2-4 tbsp milk 

6 large flat mushrooms

Beat the fisrt 6 ingredients together. Pile onto the mushrooms (gill sides), place on a baking tray and bake at 180°c for 15 minutes until the  mushrooms are tender and filling is slightly risen , browned and bubbling. Pop onto a piece of sourdough toast or a halved ciabatta roll and eat warm, with a salad to accompany.

Cath xx

Twiddley-Diddley-Kidneys

There seem to be very few people (veggies excepted, ha-ha!) who really dislike kidneys.  My whole family ADORE them and we eat them quite often; mainly in Kidney Turbigo, but also occasionally in Kidney & Red Wine Pie, as made by my Mum and now by me.  This sort-of riff of the classic Devilled Kidneys is another favourite, with mushrooms added and a wee scoosh of sherry.  It's also very nice with just the mushrooms if you want a vegetarian dish, naturally swap the chicken stock for vegetable (or leave it out entirely, and see below). 

Sooooo... for coring the kidneys, you need a sharp knife and a pair of sharp scissors.  Cut the kidney in half lengthways.  As you will see, there is a distinct gristly white core.  Use your scissors to snip this away; don't worry if you lose a little meat as it comes away.  If (as usual) there are any little bits of the core left , snip these out separately.  Halve the kidneys again for this recipe, then I soak the kidney pieces in milk until I cook them.  This may well be nonsensical superstition, but it's what I do.

Sherried Kidneys & Mushrooms

This also makes a lovely first course, served on a crisp piece of toasted bread. The amount below serves 4 as a main course, so should easily provide for 6 to 8 people as a 'starter'. One proviso, though; omit the stock from the recipe in this case... We like quite a 'saucy' dish when we eat this as a main, not so good for a first course.

40g butter

1 onion, chopped

1 tbsp plain flour

1 tsp English mustard powder

8 lambs’ kidneys, halved, cored and halved again

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

250g mushrooms, sliced

50ml dry sherry

100ml hot chicken stock

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Melt the butter in a large pan and soften the onion.  Meanwhile, add to the flour a little salt, some ground black pepper and the mustard powder.  Toss the kidney pieces in the seasoned flour, then  add it all to the pan and fry until the kidneys are brown.  Add the garlic and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are just tender.  Pour in the sherry, then add the stock and stir in the Worcestershire sauce.  Simmer gently for about 10 minutes, until the sauce has thickened somewhat.   Throw a handful of chopped parsley over, and serve with rice.

Cath xx

Side Orders

Finding things to go with easy suppers can sometimes be more of a problem than grilling some chops or roasting a chicken.  Putting on some rice or bunging some potatoes in the oven to bake is simple enough, but what about the vegetables?  Imaginative, tasty ideas are always useful and I thought, today, I'd share another of my favourite side dishes with you.  These courgettes are really easy, and really tasty.  The 'secret ingredient' is balsamic glaze which you can get in Sainsbury's and, I believe, in Tesco.  As an added bonus these are delicious cold for lunch the next day, with some shaved parmesan over the top and some nice bread to mop up the juices.  Lovely as part of a mixed antipasti first course as well, if you can bear to cook them the day before and let them cool.

Roasted Balsamic Courgettes


4 tbsp olive oil
1 head of garlic, separated into peeled cloves
3 courgettes
balsamic glaze (and see above)
parsley, roughly chopped

Pour the olive oil into a roasting pan and add the halved garlic cloves.  Pop the tin into a 180°c oven  for 5 minutes while you prepare the courgettes.  Halve them lengthways, then chop into 2cm chunks.  Tip these into the roasting tin and toss well to coat them in the garlicky oil.  Roast for 20 minutes, then squeeze over a good souse of the balsamic glaze.  Toss again and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.  Throw over a mass of chopped parsley to serve. Good hot, great warm - and gorgeous cold too.  Result!

Regeneration

Back-to-school day turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax in the end; heavy snow overnight and this morning meant that the local schools were all closed and - yay! - my babes were at home for one more precious day of holidays.  With favourite toys out and happy sounds emanating from the sitting room, I retreated to the kitchen for my reward; a little pottering in anticipation of a lovely, leisurely lunch instead of the rather rushed affair of days ruled by the school-run.

For all the hand-wringing that goes on at this time of year about the leftovers from the festive season I, for one, love prinking bits of box-bound remains in the fridge to make something different and delicious.  To wilfully (and woefully, I'm afraid) paraphrase Dr Johnson "a woman who is tired of cheese, is tired of life".  However it must be said that at this time of year the cheeseboard which I usually fall upon with such enthusiasm begins to lose a little of its appeal.   Just a little, mind.  To remedy that, I like to make this little dish...

Potted Stilton

This quantity fills two ramekins, but increase the quantities as you like.

75g butter
150g stilton
1/2 tsp English mustard powder
pepper
2 tbsp port

Melt the butter in a small pan.  Meanwhile, mix the mustard powder and a little pepper into the port and set aside.  Crumble the stilton into the food processor or blender jug and pour over the port and, when melted, the butter.  Whizz to a smooth paste and scrape into ramekin dishes.

I like to eat this with my favourite tiny toasts and some chutney or, even better, the last of the Christmas cranberry sauce.  Now then, cheese is a real superfood...

Cath xx

Favourites Old and New

This first course is a 1950s American favourite. Retro-Food.com informs me that the Lipton company first printed the recipe for its 'California Onion Dip' on the back of Lipton onion soup mix packets in 1954.

I first came across the idea in my copy of Kitschy Canapés by Babs Harrison and recently rediscovered it while book-trawling retro catering ideas for my 30th birthday party later this year. As the vrai Lipton Recipe Secrets Onion Soup Mix is un available to us limeys, I substitute a sachet of Knorr French Onion Soup mix. Mixed with a 300ml carton of sour cream and chilled for an hour or so, it makes for something that is way more than the sum of its parts. Things become classics for a reason, don'cha know..?

Speaking of which, may I present my new best thing. After a Facebook-based conversation with an old (the friendship, not the friend) mate, I was introduced to this, and could hardly wait to cook it for dinner tonight to accompany some plain-cooked Lincolnshire bangers.

Daniel's Favourite Potatoes

new potatoes
mustard
mature cheddar

Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain them and 'crush' lightly with a potato masher, to break them up but not too much. Mix in some mustard (I used wholegrain, but Daniel's original uses English mustard). Bung in a dish, top with cheese and melt it, in the oven or under the grill.

This is the sort of food you SCOFF!

No Basket Required

Chicken and Chips is, to us, a pretty perfect Friday night feast. I made my Crisp Chicken, supplemented today by Nigella Lawson's 'Fast Fries' from Nigella Express. I used maincrop potatoes instead of new and cooked them in the oven instead of frying them. I find that I am always less harried by food that is out of sight (and the reach of children) in the oven than on the hob. I am hugely grateful for the idea of breaking up the spuds by bashing them with a rolling pin. Totally therapeutic! Also, because the potatoes are bagged up, there's nothing more than the oven tray (not even a knife) to wash up after making these.


To start tonight's meal, I adapted one of my favourite party snacks. I know, I know, "life's too short to stuff a mushroom" and believe me I agree with you, but this way makes it quicker, honestly. I make no apologies for using 'Bacos' rather than actual bacon - I know they're as proceesed as you can get, but I do have rather a soft spot for them (and see here for more on this subject). No matter, though, here we go.

Cheese & Bacon Mushrooms

mushrooms
'Bacos' (or cooked bacon, if you'd rather)
chopped parsley
grated cheese

'Pull the stalks out of the mushrooms and put them, cup-side up in an ovenproof dish. Don't throw the stalks away, will you - there's always 'shrooms on toast or an omelette to be had with the leftovers! Sprinkle 'Bacos' into each hole and cover with chopped parsley. Blanket the whole lot with grated cheese, grind over some pepper and bake at 200°c for 20 minutes. Serve with salad leaves.

Supper in the Garden - just!

Only just, as well - the end of our meal was rudely interrupted by a crash of thunder, so (putting aside any wistful thoughts of a evening spent lingering in the sun with a drink) we rushed the children and the crockery inside before the rain came down. And how it came down!

Never mind, at least we did get supper outside tonight. We've had lunch outside for the last few days, but I hadn't been quite brave enough to go the whole hog until this evening. It was a lovely supper, though; just right for a warm evening and not too many pots to wash up afterwards. We started with chickpea patties and tzatziki. I used to make the patties for the children, when they were babies, as early finger food and I suddenly thought how easy it would be to make them again; to use for ambulant snacks or as part of a first course.

Cheesy Chickpea Patties

Strong Cheddar or Parmesan are my choices for the cheese, however any hard cheese would suffice.

2 x 410g cans chickpeas, drined and rinsed
60g cheese, grated (and see above)
1 egg
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp tahini paste (if you have it)
2 tbsp olive oil
chopped parsley

Bung everything in the processor and whizz to form a nubbly purée. Scoop out spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking sheets, then bake for 30 minutes at 160­°c until just tinged with brown. Cool on a rack, then store in an airtight box until needed.

To go with, I made tzatziki. For me, it is the apotheosis of hot-weather food and during the summer I make it once a week or thereabouts, as inevitable as the rain which follows the heat. I should own up, here, that I have never been to Greece, but I did know a lot of Greek students at university and something rubbed off, I guess. This is so easy and way better than the dismal stuff you can buy in a tub.

Tzatziki

The easiest way to dry the rinsed cucumber is to put it on a clean teatowel, gather up the corners and squeeze!

1 cucumber
salt
500g tub Greek yoghurt
2 tsp 'Lazy Garlic'
1 tsp lemon juice
chopped parsley

Quarter the cucumber lengthways and scoop the 'seedy' bit out of the centre with a spoon. Chop the cuke and plce in a colander. Sprinkle with salt, mix well then put a plate on top and set aside for 20 minutes or so to draw out excess water. Rinse and dry (see above). Mix the dégorged (for that is what you have done) cucumber with the other ingredients in a large bowl. Serve with, well, anything you like really.

The main course that followed is really simple and well received by all (maybe not veggies). You can, once assembled, freeze this in the dish, if it's freezerproof, then cook it (once defrosted) for 20 minutes at the same temperature given in the recipe. If you aren't prepared to 'lose' your oven dish to the freezer, line it with a big sheet of foil before you assemble the melt. You then freeze it like this and, once solid, simply 'pop' out the foil-bottomed block, wrap it over and return to the freezer. Bingo! I made one of these towards the end of both my pregnancies, to provide sustenance after each of our babies were born.


Tuna Melt

750g potatoes
25g butter, melted
1 small onion, finely diced
1 stick celery, finely diced
2 x 160g cans tuna in spring water, drained
chopped parsley
4 tbsp mayonnaise
150g Cheddar cheese, grated

Peel and grate the potatoes. Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the grated potato, press down and brush with the melted butter. Bake at 180°c for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the other ingredients (bar the cheese) together. When the potato-lined dish is ready, spread the tuna mix over the base and top with the grated cheese (this is the point at which to cool and freeze it). Return to the oven for a further 15 minutes.

Sticky Chicky

This morning was a lot of fun; playgroup was cancelled today because the church hall was being used as a polling station, so I invited a friend and her little boy over instead. After playing in the garden, dressing up (and just a teeny bit of gossiping), we all had lunch together. I'd prepared Chicken Strips and made some garlic mayo to go with, plus we had bread, olives and all sorts of salad bits. I brought out some Chocolate Muffins for pudding. Chris trotted off to school with a full tummy and a big grin on his face. I only hope he wasn't too exhausted.

We've had, for the most part, a truly gorgeous afternoon. I took the opportunity to do a bit of pootling about in the garden, putting a trellis on the side of the shed for my sweet peas, weeding the patio pots and cutting dandelions from the lawn to bring indoors. Why is that that so many people seem to think of dandelions as a weed? They're one of my favourite garden flowers and look just like their name; a 'dandy' lion. If a flower could be a diva, this one would...a flashy, brassy cabaret of a flower. They are now sitting in an old Shippams fish-paste jar that we dug up when we moved in and started clearing the garden.

Tonight's dinner had a vaguely Oriental feel to it, but as usual it was inauthentically so. The first course is inspired by those lovely steamed dumplings, stuffed with char siu, that you get with dim sum.

Hoisin Pork Rolls

250g pork mince
6 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp tomato pureé

Fry the mince until browned, then stir in the hoisin sauce and tomato pureé. Leave the filling to cool while you make the bread dough.

3/4 tsp active dry yeast
400g strong white (bread) flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
300ml warm water

Mix together and knead to make a soft dough. Leave to rise until doubled, then knock back and divide into 12. Flatten the pieces into discs and place a blob of filling in the centre, then pull the edges up to cover it completely. Place the rolls on an oiled baking sheet, dust with flour and leave to rise again for half an hour or so. Bake at 200­°c for 15-20 minutes until puffy and tinged with brown.

The main course was these chicken pieces, doused in a marinade and left in the fridge earlier today, before being blasted in the oven tonight, accompanied by rice and a cucumber salad.

Sticky Chicken

10-12 chicken thighs or drumsticks (or both!)
4 tbsp sunflower oil
4 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp garlic vinegar
1 tsp ground ginger
black pepper

Whisk all the marinade ingredients together, then turn the chicken pieces in the mixture and leave them to soak up the flavours for a few hours. When dinner time is looming, lift the pieces out and place them on a rack over a baking tray, then cook at 200°c for 30-40 minutes, until cooked through, crisp and burnished.

Quack-amole

I love avocados, though I'm sure my hips don't thank me for that. They are (she writes in her defence) full of so-called 'good' fats and extremely good for the skin and hair if the (mainly self-appointed) experts are to be believed. Incidentally, the avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable, though much like the tomato I always think of it as the latter.

While we are all recent converts to Mexican food, I've never been particularly keen on traditional guacamole (i.e. with tomato in it) and I remain indifferent. As I have taken to adding soft cheese to this, for a milder flavour and to lighten the calorific load, this has no business calling itself 'guacamole', nor would I presume to do so. I feel that the food I cook must have some integrity, however silly that may seem. Avocado Dip it is.

I usually serve this as a first course with tortilla chips or, occasionally, with hot toast. Breadsticks and crudités accompany it well as part of a buffet spread and, if you want something a bit more celebratory, it also goes very well with smoked salmon.

Avocado Dip

I pinched the idea of seasoning the lemon juice before adding it to the other ingredientsfrom one of Nigella Lawson’s books, though I forget which.

2 or 3 avocados, depending on size
2 fat spring onions, very finely chopped
100g low-fat soft cheese (or 0% Greek yoghurt if you prefer)
juice of ½ to 1 lemon, to taste
a good pinch of salt and a twist of pepper

Mash the avocados well, then add the spring onions. Beat the soft cheese until smooth, then stir this into the avocado mixture. Stir the seasoning into the lemon juice and then pour it in, mixing well. Scrape the dip into a halfway decent-looking bowl, then cover the surface with clingfilm immediately and keep it there until seconds before you serve it. The lemon juice helps the dip to keep for a little while before turning brown, but don’t push your luck...

After our first course we enjoyed a pasta bake made with 200g of pasta, cooked and mixed with some leftover cooked chicken from Sunday's roast and some tinned sweetcorn. It was all bound together with a cheesy sauce and baked with more cheese atop.

Noshy Gnocchi

Much as I do love a pasta bake (and plan one for tomorrow evening), I' d never cooked anything with gnocchi until tonight. Tearing a riff on a favourite pasta recipe seemed appropriate, though, so I knocked up some blue cheese sauce and replaced the broccoli with spinach (yum...).

We started with a platter of Antipasti (read: I foraged in the fridge for anything feeling remotely Italianate and laid it all out on my big SYNTES SKISS plate from IKEA. With a glass of breadsticks and another holding celery it was a respectable first course that encouraged the children to try a little of everything, though not to like it all straightaway. As I'd included olives and anchovies, I was not particularly surprised!

Gnocchi with Spinach & Blue Cheese Sauce

The gnocchi I used was 'The Best' from the chiller cabinet at Morrisons. If you'd rather make this into a pasta bake, just substitute an equal amount of cooked pasta (i.e. about 200g -250g dry weight) for the gnocchi and proceed with the rest of the recipe.

30g cornflour
30g butter
1 pint milk

Put all three ingredients into a pan and bring to the boil, whisking all the time.

200g Danish Blue cheese, chopped

When the sauce has thickened, remove it from the heat and stir in the blue cheese, along with some pepper (but no salt)

2 big handfuls spinach leaves, washed
500g pack 'fresh' gnocchi


Wilt the spinach by putting it into a colander and pouring a kettleful of boiling water over it. Squeeze the excess water out with tongs and arrange this with the gnocchi in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Pour the sauce over, pushing everything down well to cover it.

50g fresh parmesan, grated
50g breadcrumbs

Mix together and sprinkle over the top of the gnocchi. Bake at 200°c for 15-20 minutes until golden on top and bublling around the edges.

Perky Turkey

It's been soooo hot today; not that I'm complaining, you understand. I've been shivering in "It's Spring, dammit!-denial" for weeks now, so it's rather nice that the weather has finally caught up with my wardrobe. James and I spent the afternoon (while Chris was at school) outside, playing and sitting, chatting to friends, respectively. I wasn't sure, on the way home, if the meal I'd planned for this evening would go down terribly well because of the heat. I'm happy to report that it did, after all - clean plates all round.

This is definitely a throw-it-together kind of meal. You can vary this in all sorts of ways to make it suit your mood and (in my case, anyway) what needs using up from the freezer.

Turkey Enchiladas

300g turkey, sliced
400g can mixed beans, drained and rinsed
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
6 flour tortillas
100g cheddar cheese, coarsely grated

Heat a little oil in a large pan and fry the turkey strips until just cooked through. Add the beans, then stir in half of one can of tomatoes. Use this mixture to fill the tortillas, laying the 'wraps' side-by-side in an ovenproof dish. Tip the rest of the tomatoes into the pan, along with 100ml water, and bring to the boil. Pour this sauce over the tortillas, pushing the edges down to cover everything well. Top with grated cheese and bake at 180°c for 25 minutes until golden brown and bubbling.


For an easy first course, I set out a bowl of yoghurt and another of Salsa Mexicana Verde (from a can!), with some shop-bought tortilla chips. The salsa, which came from Mexgrocer, is quite tangy and piquant but nonetheless addictive for that. The boys aren't so keen, but there's time...

24 Carrot Gold

Tonight's first course was based on the memory of a salad my mum used to occasionally pack in my school lunchbox; shredded lettuce and carrot with cheddar cheese and salted peanuts. I always loved the combination of carrots and peanuts and have tried here to recreate that particular taste sensation, though in a slightly more dinner-friendly way. I suspect that it will also make a brilliant 'side order' salad for barbecues in the summer, but that little experiment will have to wait. You'll notice no cheese is included here, though - while I admit that it would (almost certainly) be fab with some crumbled feta cheese, sadly once again I am the only one willing to travel down that road... It did in fact go down very well with all of us tonight and my dreams of lunch tomorrow were dashed by the scant leftovers.


Carrot Salad

3 large carrots
handful of raisins or sultanas
100g bag salted peanuts
fresh parsley, chopped

Peel and coarsely grate the carrots. Combine all the above ingredients in a large bowl.

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic vinegar
1/4 tsp ground cumin

Whisk together, pour over the carrot salad and toss well to coat evrything in the dressing. The salad will sit happily for a bit while you get other things sorted out.

Speaking of which, we followed this salad with a Tuna Lasagne, made tonight with some leftover mixed bean salad, from the other day, in place of the peas. A successful substitution, one I was pleased with and which used up most of the remaining bean salad. I will (thankfully) be able to add that to the laughably minute serving of carrot salad to cobble together a lunch tomorrow.

Getting Saucy!

It's been a while since I blogged, chiefly because my parents visited and I wanted to spend time with them. However, now we're back in business! Still going with the plan-ahead weekly menus and I have to tell you, it really does make life easier, not having to hear that daily whinge of "what's for dinner?" with no definite answer to give. It makes the weekly food shopping easier, if I don't have to 'guess-timate' what food we might eat during the course of the week. It certainly saves money, plus it avoids the guilt of impulse-buying food that might get thrown away because it goes off before we get around to eating it.

Tonight we started with a simple platter of ham and mozzarella with French bread and basil oil, which I make by whizzing a bit of pesto (from a jar) with some olive oil. This is one of those really easy first courses that is always well-received but which takes (relatively speaking) no work at all. You could, depending on your constituency, add a few olives to the plate. As the only keen olive-eater in the house, though, I don't bother and just snaffle a few while I'm cooking.

Afterwards, we left the bread on the table as an accompaniment to our main course of Broccoli Cheese, to mop up every last scrap of the tasty sauce. I've mentioned the all-in-one method of sauce-making before, but it deserves a repeat entry; discovering it revolutionised the way I cook and for that I thank Saint Delia. And for the top of the broccoli (or cauliflower, for that matter) cheese, please consider using a 50/50 mixture of grated cheese and fresh breadcrumbs. Such a lovely crunch.

Basic All-in-One White Sauce

40g butter
40g cornflour
1 pint milk
1 tsp mustard (if you're making a cheese sauce)

PLUS

grated cheese or chopped fresh parsley (for cheese sauce or parsley sauce respectively)
grated nutmeg (if it's to be a plain white sauce)

Bung everything into a pan and bring it to the boil, whisking all the time. Simmer briefly, to thicken the sauce and cook out any floury taste remaining, then flavour if necessary (with grated cheese, chopped parsley or whatever). Bada-bing, bada-boom!

Go forth and make sauce...

To Begin With

It doesn’t seem terribly 'cool' anymore, but I like having a proper first course; after all, I enjoy the ritual of dinner (almost) as much as the food itself. I’m not talking about fancy individual soufflés and restaurant-style ‘starters’, but just simple, tasty things to take the edge off the appetite while the main course finishes off in the oven, or to stave off the tantrums of hungry children whose Mummy is having trouble browning the pasta bake.

I can always get away with a few bits of ham, salami or chorizo and some ripe tomatoes, if I'm really pushed. Last night, in fact, I knocked up a quick, chopped tomato and mozzarella salad and served it with some of my fail-safe tiny toasts. I make a batch (one baguette's-worth) of these once every couple of weeks and store them in a box for this and that.

My Favourite Tiny Toasts

Cut a baguette into thin slices; spread both sides sparingly with soft butter, or brush with a little olive oil, then place on baking sheets and bake at 200°c for about 8 minutes, turning them over halfway through, until golden and crisp. Cool completely, then store in an airtight container.

As well as last night's salad, these toasts came out this evening to go with a bowl of Smoked Mackerel Pâté that I knocked up while our main course, a Courgette and Goat's Cheese Tart, was in the oven. I had hoped to have some leftovers for my lunch tomorrow, but it was all too swiftly vacuumed up. Oh well...

Smoked Mackerel Pâté

Use peppered mackerel fillets instead, if you like.

200g soft cheese
1 tsp hot horseradish sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice
150g 'natural' smoked mackerel fillets
chopped fresh chives

Beat the soft cheese, horseradish sauce and lemon juice together with a little black pepper. Flake the fish into the bowl, then add some chopped chives and mix well. Scrape it into a serving bowl, cover and refrigerate until needed. As well as the aforementioned toasts, it is particularly good with chicory leaves and celery sticks.

A Little Kitchen Pottering

This morning I decided to make a chocolate blancmange for us to eat after dinner. Blancmange is a great 'storecupboard' pudding; as long as you have a pint of milk, you're sorted and, as anyone with small children usually has either too much or too little milk in the house at any one time it comes in handy as a way to use up the surplus. This was, as you may have guessed, the reason for my making one today. Too much milk, not enough fridge space!

Chocolate Blancmange

25g cocoa powder
40g cornflour
40g sugar
1 pint milk (yes - bad girl - I know I shouldn't mix metric and imperial but this is easier)

Mix the cocoa, cornflour and sugar together in a large bowl, then add enough of the cold milk to mix it to a smooth paste. Heat the rest of the milk to boiling point, then pour the hot milk over the chocolate mixture. Stir thoroughly, then return the mixture to the saucepan immediately. Sir continously as the mixture comes back to the boil, then let it boil for one minute (still stirring so that it doesn't stick). Pour it into a wetted mould and leave it to cool before chilling until completely set. Turn it out onto a plate and decorate it as gaudily as you like. I always like to see a glacé cherry, don't you?.

In a cooking sort of mood after the blancmange, I suggested to Christopher that we make some houmous for lunch. Dips are one of my (and the boys') absolute favourite things to eat and houmous is the dip I make most often, being whipped up quickly in the processor.

Houmous

I usually use canned chickpeas for this – organic for preference – and rinse them well to get rid of the foul-tasting liquid they come packed in.

420g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tbsp olive oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed, grated or very finely chopped
1 tbsp tahini paste, if you’ve got it
2 tsp ground cumin
juice of half a lemon

Place all the ingredients in the processor and whizz to a paste (I prefer a more interesting ‘grainy’ consistency to industrial smoothness). Taste to see if you need more lemon juice or cumin and add a pinch of salt if you like. Add a little water to thin the houmous to the consistency you like, then scrape itinto a bowl and serve with warm bread and crunchy vegetables, whatever takes your fancy. This makes enough for 2 or 3 people for lunch, but it keeps, covered in the fridge, for a day or so and makes an extremely good sandwich; on brown bread with spinach and grated carrot.

The fabulous plate in the picture is a new favourite - I bought it last week when I was away, on a rare trip to IKEA - credit where it's due!

This afternoon I took the boys to the cinema (a first for both of them!) to see a matinée showing of "Dr Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!". I was pleasantly surprised by how well they both behaved; Christopher pretty much perfectly, and James sat through most of it before wanting to go off exploring and find girls to flirt with. Only one, and already he's a charmer...there may be trouble ahead. The only slight downside of this lovely afternoon treat was that they were, weirdly, too tired to eat much dinner when we got home. I don't know why sitting in a dark room for two hours watching glorified TV should be so tiring, but apparently it is. Ho hum, what do I know..?

Under Pressure

I am so loving the new soup pots! Having something so gorgeous makes me want to use them all the time, so I made soup again for dinner tonight. The other plus with this was that I got the pressure cooker out again. I really want to use it more often - it's so quick, but when I was first given it (it originally belonged to my late Nan), I hardly used it. Pressure cookers do seem rather to have gone out of fashion, but they are so quick and so good. I use it most for puddings, steak and kidney mainly (my number-one favourite), but also for steamed sponge puds and of course the Christmas pudding. It proves to be fabulous with soups like this one, but if you don't have a pressure cooker, you can simmer the soup for between one and one-and-a-half hours until the splits peas are collapsing. Seeing as in the pressure cooker it only needs 15 minutes, you'll understand the appeal, I'm sure. I had some prosciutto that we got cheap and stored in the freezer for cooking with, but any cured ham, pancetta or smoked streaky bacon would be a fine substitute. For that matter, you could leave it out entirely if you want a vegetarian option; the soup will still have plenty of flavour, though I would posit that you might need rather more seasoning in that case.

Split Pea Soup with Prosciutto


1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 sticks celery, diced
1 tsp very finely chopped fresh rosemary
100g prosciutto, chopped (see above)
200g yellow split peas
1.2 litres vegetable stock, hot
fresh parsley (optional)

Heat some olive oil in the pressure cooker (or a large pan). Fry the onion, carrot and celery with the rosemary until just soft. Stir in the bits of prosciutto, then add the split peas. Pour in the hot vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Either put the lid on the pressure cooker and cook for 15 minutes, or simmer for 1 - 1 1/2 hours. Purée, preferably with a hand-held stick blender to save on washing up, then reheat the oup and season to taste. I like to garnish the soup with a scattering of roughly chopped parsley, but it's not obligatory, just aesthetic really.

Serve with some good bread and, for our taste, a couple of types of cheese. Tonight we had some really good, local Caerphilly and a piece of sharp, crumbly Lancashire.

(Not Very) Fancy Feast

I love getting parcels in the post, don't you? Even when I know it's coming because I ordered it, it's still exciting. Today my new Le Creuset bean pots arrived from Pots and Pans, so I had to make some soup to serve in them at dinnertime. We quite often make an evening meal of soup with bread and cheese, but these pots will make a basic supper seem sooo much more glam, I hope. This is the soup I decided to make, which you could just as easily have for lunch or dress it up with a swirl of cream for an elegant first course.

Carrot & Coriander Soup

olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 tsp ground coriander
6-8 carrots, peeled and sliced
600ml vegetable stock
milk
fresh parsley

Heat a little oil in a large pan and fry the onion gently until soft. Stir in the ground coriander, then add the carrots and pur in the stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for half an hour or so until the carrots are really soft. Purée the soup, then reheat gently, adding milk to bring it to the consistency you want. Stir in some chopped parsley just before serving.

To go with the soup, I made some soda bread, which we had with some local Gorwydd  Caerphilly cheese. Soda bread is particularly useful if you want a homemade loaf but are short of time as it's relatively quick to make and bake. It's very good with soup; with a toothsome crust and a good dense crumb, it's brilliant for dipping.

Soda Bread

125g wholemeal bread flour
125g white bread flour
2 tbsp porridge oats
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
200ml milk, mixed with 1 tsp lemon juice

Mix the flours, oats, salt and bicarb. together, then slowly stir in the milk to make a sticky dough. It is very sticky, but try to resist the tempotation to add more flour. Just form it into some semblance of a ball, slap it down onto a lightly oiled baking sheet and cook at 220°c for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180°c and cook for 20 minutes more. Leave the loaf to stand on a rack for 15 minutes, then serve warm.

Because soup, bread and cheese is quite light for the main meal of the day, I like to make it into a real feast by following the main course with a hearty pudding, something like a crumble or steamed sponge. Today I got out the pressure cooker and made a Spotted Dick, studded with juicy sultanas. If you don't have a pressure cooker, steam the pudding for 2 hours in a pan filled with boiling water to halfway up the side of the basin.

Spotted Dick
225g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
125g suet
2 tbsp golden caster sugar
175g sultanas
2 large eggs
about 100ml milk
Grease a 750ml pudding basin. Mix the flour, salt, sugar and suet together, then stir in the sultanas. Beat the eggs and milk together, then add to the flour mixture. Combine all the ingredients thoroughly, adding a little more milk if you need it, to give a soft 'dropping' consistency. Cover the basin with a greased, pleated piece of foil, tie with string, then place in a pressure cooker with 750ml boiling water. Steam for 15 minutes, then cook at pressure for 30 minutes. Turn the pudding out onto a plate and serve, with custard of course.

Friends for Dinner

Well, last night was great fun. Our friends came over at about 6.30pm, so they had some time to see the boys before they went to bed. Unwillingly of course, as they suspected they would be missing out on something. Quite rightly, I suppose. After they were in bed, I tipped the chicken and its marinade into a roasting tin and cooked it for 45 minutes at 200°c. While that was in the oven I assembled some little toasts as a sort of 'nibbly' first course to have with a much-needed glass of wine.

Cut a baguette into thin slices; spread both sides sparingly with soft butter, or brush with a little olive oil, then place on baking sheets and bake at 200°c for about 8 minutes, turning them over halfway through, until golden and crisp. I normally do this earlier in the day, or even the day before, and keep the toasts in a plastic box until I need them. Top them with whatever you like. I made a selection last night, as I normally do when I make these; these are two of our favourite toppings.

Mushroom Topping

mushrooms, chopped finely
zest of 1/2 lemon, roughly chopped
cream cheese
fresh thyme leaves, chopped

Fry the mushrooms in a drop of oil or a knob of butter until soft. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat. Stir in the lemon zest and allow the mixture to cool slightly. Stir in enough cream cheese to bind the mixture, add the parsley and mix thoroughly. You can set this aside for a while if you don’t want to eat straight away, or leave it in the fridge in a covered bowl overnight, which is what I usually do.

Goat's Cheese & Caramelised Onion

onion relish
goats cheese (preferably the soft, ‘log’ type with rind on).

Spread each toast with a little onion relish and top with a small piece of goats cheese. Flash under the grill to melt slightly, if you like. I also make an English Ploughman’s version of this with small-chunk Branston pickle and sharp cheddar cheese, but you do need to melt the cheese for these to be really good.

You need to leave the final assembly of any of the toasts until the last minute to avoid any sogginess. When you want to eat them, just top each little toast, put them on a large plate (or two), take them to the table and let everyone help themselves.

The chicken followed, with couscous, some salad and a bowl of Lemon Crème Fraîche Sauce. Then the cheesecake, which looked great with its topping of chocolate curls (which I did find time to make). We sat around gossiping and polishing off the wine until late. Bliss!

Hubby decided that he wanted to cook dinner tonight, so he got a nice piece of salmon, which he just fried in a little butter. We had baked potatoes with it and some lovely broad beans, just podded and blanched in boiling water for 1 minute before being skinned and turned in hot butter with a little black pepper to finish them off.

We had the rest of last night's cheesecake for pudding, too. Yum!