November is almost here, it’s cold and I’m resisting the urge to pull on a woolly hat because, to be honest, they just make me look like an overgrown baby, all round cheeks and dimples. I'll have to give in eventually but October just seems a bit too early.
Aside from the Winter wardrobe woes I’m also looking for something, anything, to focus on other than another day spent in an overly air-conditioned office where opening windows is classed as a potential health and safety disaster. What it all boils down to is this, amidst the petty frustrations of day to day living I need a distraction, I need a purpose, I need a goal, I need to blog every day between now and November 30th (hmm, somehow that last part doesn’t sound like the obvious conclusion to have come to). I tried this last year and was, frankly, crappity crap crap crap. I wrote a grand total of ten posts. To be fair, or to feebly excuse myself, this is still my highest ever monthly total but I don’t think a one third completion rate qualifies as success, ever.
So, 2008, another year, another November, but this time I have learned my lesson and am aiming small. Some days you’ll get the whole kit and caboodle, photos, recipes, the lot. Some days maybe a few carefully (I hope) chosen words will suffice. Some days I may be feeling a little uncommunicative and it will just be a picture. So wish me luck, pop by frequently, and get ready to offer me a congratulatory (or conciliatory) glass of bubbles on the 30th.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
ROASTED SWEET POTATO FALAFEL
Leon, for those of you who don’t know, is the culinary fast food saviour for anyone who lives, works, or frequently visits central London. When I first moved my favourite was the aioli chicken with summer slaw and basmati rice, a few months later the moroccan meatballs had moved to the top. At the moment it is (or was, see below) all about the roasted sweet potato falafel wrap. Mildly spiced sweet potato falafels with crunchy slaw, a big slice of pickle, and aioli wrapped up in a flatbread and all for £3.20. Bargain. So, when I realised that there was a cookbook with all the best Leon recipes ready for making and eating at home I pounced. I had been planning on making a sweet potato and goats cheese spoon bread that has been bookmarked forever but my Amazon parcel arrived and I was easily swayed, as I so often am.
I baked the sweet potatoes and managed to resist the temptation to just eat them as they were (I’m more than a little addicted to baked sweet potato at the moment), mixed the flesh with some cumin, coriander, garlic, salt, pepper, and gram flour, formed the sticky mix into (and I quote) ‘falafelly type things’, sprinkled them with sesame seeds, and baked for 15 minutes. We munched them in pitas with salad and houmous.
I decided to head to Leon again for lunch today. They’ve started serving the new Winter menu (maybe they were waiting for the first snow) and I’m now doubly glad I got my last fix for dinner as sweet potato falafel are off the menu. It was a halloumi and sweet chilli wrap for me. Oh well, it was a pretty good substitute and I can always get my falafelly fix at home.
As a little side note if you do make this or any other baked sweet potato dish can I suggest putting the sweet potato skins back in the oven for a few minutes with a little sprinkle of sea salt and eating them as a pre dinner snack? They will get stuck in your teeth but that doesn't matter.
I baked the sweet potatoes and managed to resist the temptation to just eat them as they were (I’m more than a little addicted to baked sweet potato at the moment), mixed the flesh with some cumin, coriander, garlic, salt, pepper, and gram flour, formed the sticky mix into (and I quote) ‘falafelly type things’, sprinkled them with sesame seeds, and baked for 15 minutes. We munched them in pitas with salad and houmous.
I decided to head to Leon again for lunch today. They’ve started serving the new Winter menu (maybe they were waiting for the first snow) and I’m now doubly glad I got my last fix for dinner as sweet potato falafel are off the menu. It was a halloumi and sweet chilli wrap for me. Oh well, it was a pretty good substitute and I can always get my falafelly fix at home.
As a little side note if you do make this or any other baked sweet potato dish can I suggest putting the sweet potato skins back in the oven for a few minutes with a little sprinkle of sea salt and eating them as a pre dinner snack? They will get stuck in your teeth but that doesn't matter.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
(ALMOST) ANY VEG SOUP
I used to think that there was some magical skill involved in making soup. I thought that the proportion of ingredients was vital, I thought you needed a mysterious understanding of solid to liquid ratios, I thought it all sounded like a recipe for disaster. I watched people knock up soups without a second thought. When I asked what had gone in they just shrugged and said 'oh just some vegetables, stock, seasoning'. I didn't believe them.
I bought many unsatisfactory plastic containers of faux home made soup. I made a few soups from recipes and, one day, I learned that those people whose soup talents I envied were right. It really can be just veg, stock, and seasoning.
Now the soup I most often make is simply an assortment of root vegetables. It is naturally creamy, always tasty, and mostly bright orange (apart from the time I threw in a lot of purple sprouting broccoli that needed to be used up, we named that batch pond soup, it was still good). There is always a leek (an onion occasionally but I prefer a leek), and apart from that nothing is too fixed. There might be a couple of large potatoes, carrots, and parsnips. There could be sweet potato, squash, celeriac, turnip, swede. Sometimes I have some left over broccoli (see colour warning above) or cabbage. Use what you have, buy what you fancy, a few starchy ingredients and a few to add sweetness are my standards. My best piece of advice is to have two bowls in front of you when you are preparing your veg, one for peel and one for the pieces. No one needs a cluttered chopping board and no one needs to be going backwards and forwards to the bin with all that peel every 30 seconds.
Just dig out a large pan, melt some butter, let’s say a tablespoon, add the leek (or onion), and garlic if you want some, to soften, after a few minutes throw in the rest of your vegetables that have been chopped into roughly equal pieces. Stir them round, season a little, pour over enough hot stock to cover (I mostly use a weak stock of Marigold vegetable bouillon apart from on the rare occasion that I have an abundance of fresh chicken stock). Add a bay leaf if you have one, don't worry if you don't. Cook for about 25-30 minutes, check all of the veg are cooked, blend until smooth (hand blenders are cheap and perfect for soup), check the seasoning (trying not to burn your mouth), add a bit more liquid if it is more baby food than soup, serve. Last night we had walnut bread and a fresh Dutch goats’ cheese to eat with the soup. We ate lots and still have two pots in the freezer for future cold evenings.
I bought many unsatisfactory plastic containers of faux home made soup. I made a few soups from recipes and, one day, I learned that those people whose soup talents I envied were right. It really can be just veg, stock, and seasoning.
Now the soup I most often make is simply an assortment of root vegetables. It is naturally creamy, always tasty, and mostly bright orange (apart from the time I threw in a lot of purple sprouting broccoli that needed to be used up, we named that batch pond soup, it was still good). There is always a leek (an onion occasionally but I prefer a leek), and apart from that nothing is too fixed. There might be a couple of large potatoes, carrots, and parsnips. There could be sweet potato, squash, celeriac, turnip, swede. Sometimes I have some left over broccoli (see colour warning above) or cabbage. Use what you have, buy what you fancy, a few starchy ingredients and a few to add sweetness are my standards. My best piece of advice is to have two bowls in front of you when you are preparing your veg, one for peel and one for the pieces. No one needs a cluttered chopping board and no one needs to be going backwards and forwards to the bin with all that peel every 30 seconds.
Just dig out a large pan, melt some butter, let’s say a tablespoon, add the leek (or onion), and garlic if you want some, to soften, after a few minutes throw in the rest of your vegetables that have been chopped into roughly equal pieces. Stir them round, season a little, pour over enough hot stock to cover (I mostly use a weak stock of Marigold vegetable bouillon apart from on the rare occasion that I have an abundance of fresh chicken stock). Add a bay leaf if you have one, don't worry if you don't. Cook for about 25-30 minutes, check all of the veg are cooked, blend until smooth (hand blenders are cheap and perfect for soup), check the seasoning (trying not to burn your mouth), add a bit more liquid if it is more baby food than soup, serve. Last night we had walnut bread and a fresh Dutch goats’ cheese to eat with the soup. We ate lots and still have two pots in the freezer for future cold evenings.
Monday, 13 October 2008
CRANBERRY, ALMOND, AND HONEY GRANOLA
After at least a few months of eager anticipation I bought Nigella Christmas on the day it was released. I must have been in a funny mood the day I bought it because when I looked at it I was hugely disappointed, I just couldn’t get over it. I looked through my new book, which should have been my pride and joy, and couldn’t get passed my initial impression that it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. I put it down and waited for the weekend to have a good read through and, relief, I fell in love. I want it to be Christmas now, I want to throw Christmas parties with an overabundance of food in candle lit rooms, I want Nigella’s Christmas china, I want her little reindeer salt servers, in short I want it all.
There is one problem with this. It is October. It isn’t even late October. I can’t start making Christmas food. I’m not about to start stirring up a pudding, feeding a cake, and drenching dried fruit in copious quantities of brandy for mincemeat. So what did I do? Simple, I made granola. Cranberry, almond, and honey granola from the brunch chapter to be more precise. I mixed together oats, sugar, cinnamon, salt, almonds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, honey, and a little oil. I baked it until it was golden brown and the whole flat smelled of cinnamon and then popped it into a jar ready to be eaten for breakfast. I’m going to make a double batch next time.
There is one problem with this. It is October. It isn’t even late October. I can’t start making Christmas food. I’m not about to start stirring up a pudding, feeding a cake, and drenching dried fruit in copious quantities of brandy for mincemeat. So what did I do? Simple, I made granola. Cranberry, almond, and honey granola from the brunch chapter to be more precise. I mixed together oats, sugar, cinnamon, salt, almonds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, honey, and a little oil. I baked it until it was golden brown and the whole flat smelled of cinnamon and then popped it into a jar ready to be eaten for breakfast. I’m going to make a double batch next time.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
CHOCOLATE BANANA BREAD
I was promptly punished for my 4am excesses with a horrible cold. Off I went to bed and pretty much stayed there for three days. I would have stayed there for longer but we had people to see, people who I couldn't miss, specifically two very good friends from Boston and their four week old baby, followed by two friends from Toronto who were coming to stay. So with one thing and another, friends, late nights, eating out rather a lot…, eating anything worth a mention in the flat has been thin on the ground. There was an involtini that was delicious (thanks Nigella), a few quick meals, a very late night kebab (oops), a great Indian takeaway from Rasa, and finally, and most importantly, a meal at Moro. It was a Monday and we were hungry – we ate a lot, all good.
So after all that I didn’t really have a post planned. Well I did, I had planned to do a Sugar High Friday entry. I even had my cupcakes all planned out but the right cupcake baking time just didn’t present itself. I had been half writing posts and deleting them and planning meals in my head and not making them. Then, on Saturday, we stayed in the house all day apart from a quick excursion to buy the paper. There were some blackening bananas on the worktop, and there are way too many in the freezer to justify adding any more, so banana bread it was as it so often is.
The recipe comes from How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I have never made the original version with the booze soaked fruit. I skip right to the end of the recipe in the book and the description of the chocolate banana bread. I ignore the part about substituting 25g of flour for cocoa powder and just make the plain, slightly vanilla scented bread without any of the fruit (except bananas obviously), and stir 100g of dark chocolate through at the end (give or take a square or two that goes in my mouth instead). It's the recipe I use the most and it's great. My favourite part about it is that you can make it at the weekend and have moist banana bread to slice and wrap in foil and enjoy every day of the week which makes a working week go a lot more smoothly.
So after all that I didn’t really have a post planned. Well I did, I had planned to do a Sugar High Friday entry. I even had my cupcakes all planned out but the right cupcake baking time just didn’t present itself. I had been half writing posts and deleting them and planning meals in my head and not making them. Then, on Saturday, we stayed in the house all day apart from a quick excursion to buy the paper. There were some blackening bananas on the worktop, and there are way too many in the freezer to justify adding any more, so banana bread it was as it so often is.
The recipe comes from How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I have never made the original version with the booze soaked fruit. I skip right to the end of the recipe in the book and the description of the chocolate banana bread. I ignore the part about substituting 25g of flour for cocoa powder and just make the plain, slightly vanilla scented bread without any of the fruit (except bananas obviously), and stir 100g of dark chocolate through at the end (give or take a square or two that goes in my mouth instead). It's the recipe I use the most and it's great. My favourite part about it is that you can make it at the weekend and have moist banana bread to slice and wrap in foil and enjoy every day of the week which makes a working week go a lot more smoothly.
Monday, 15 September 2008
BODEAN'S
When you've stayed up until 4am drinking, chatting, and dancing, a certain type of food is called for. Hangovers usually induce very specific cravings, sometimes a full English, sometimes pizza, yesterday it needed to be something in a bun. We started out debating a trip to gourmet burger kitchen but then remembered Bodean's. We questioned whether we could cope with the bus to Soho but the lure of the pulled pork was too much to resist and it was so worth it.
We pushed open the pig themed door and took a seat. After inhaling our sandwiches, a boston butt (pulled pork with coleslaw) for Chris and a plain pulled pork for me, fries, and pickles, Sunday looked a lot brighter.
Friday, 12 September 2008
CHORIZO CAKE
In July, for my birthday, I was given 'Piri piri starfish' by Tessa Kiros. As with all of Tessa's books the writing and photography are beautiful and, even better, the book panders to one of my aesthetic weaknesses, a good ribbon, in this case a wide blue and white (if you're wondering what my definition of a good ribbon is then it includes colours that work with the book, material not likely to fray too easily, and preferably more than one in a cookery book. The winners so far are the triple colour co-ordinated ribbons in Skye Gyngell's books but this Portuguese flag ribbon comes in close behind).
Despite having the book since July and mentally marking more than a few recipes I only got around to do anything about it earlier this week when I picked out a dish of peas with chorizo and on a whim decided to make chorizo cake to go with it. The book uses the Portuguese 'chourico' throughout but I'm guessing that, unless you are fortunate enough to live near any Portuguese shops, you will be using chorizo as I did.
For the peas you just need to caramelise a finely chopped onion in two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan, then add a whole garlic clove, a tablespoon of chopped parsley, and about 50g of chopped chorizo. Leave it for a minute or two and add 400g of fresh or defrosted frozen peas, give it a good stir and season then pour in a cup of hot water. It needs to simmer for about ten minutes until the peas are cooked and most of the water has disappeared. Fish out the garlic clove and make two (we had three eggs left in the house so I made three) gaps in the peas and crack an egg in each gap, leave to fry until the white is set and the yellow still soft and serve.
While I was preparing this the cake was cooling. We cut a few slices to have with the peas and it was delicious but almost too much, too cakey, too rich, really the peas don't need anything. We wrapped it up and the next day I took a slice to work and, as sometimes happens, the next day it was so much better. Delicious eaten on its own with no other competing flavours, less dense than the evening before when it had still been warm, just a great desk bound snack. We decided to finish it off alongside some small pots of home made soup that had been living in the freezer, fab.
CHORIZO CAKE from 'Piri piri starfish ---Portugal Found---' by Tessa Kiros
Serves 8-10
5 eggs
100g of melted and cooled butter
5 tablespoons of olive oil
185ml of milk
310g of plain flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
100g of presunto, prosciutto or similar ham, in one thickish slice (I could find none of these so bought some pancetta, fried it and used this instead)
100g of chorizo sausage
Heat the oven to 200˚ C (400˚ F/Gas 6). Butter and flour a large ring tin (the sort you'd make a creme caramel in) or a loaf tin (which is what I used).
Beat the eggs with electric beaters until very fluffy and creamy. Add the butter and oil, whisking in well. Add the milk and flour in alternate batches, mixing the baking powder and salt into the flour. Whisk until you get a smooth batter.
Chop up the ham and chorizo, crumbling it through your fingers to separate any pieces that are stuck together, and stir into the mixture. Scrape into the tin and bake for 35 minutes or so until puffed and golden (if you're using a loaf tin, cook it for 5 minutes longer). Cool a little, remove from the tin and then slice into thick chunks to serve.
Despite having the book since July and mentally marking more than a few recipes I only got around to do anything about it earlier this week when I picked out a dish of peas with chorizo and on a whim decided to make chorizo cake to go with it. The book uses the Portuguese 'chourico' throughout but I'm guessing that, unless you are fortunate enough to live near any Portuguese shops, you will be using chorizo as I did.
For the peas you just need to caramelise a finely chopped onion in two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan, then add a whole garlic clove, a tablespoon of chopped parsley, and about 50g of chopped chorizo. Leave it for a minute or two and add 400g of fresh or defrosted frozen peas, give it a good stir and season then pour in a cup of hot water. It needs to simmer for about ten minutes until the peas are cooked and most of the water has disappeared. Fish out the garlic clove and make two (we had three eggs left in the house so I made three) gaps in the peas and crack an egg in each gap, leave to fry until the white is set and the yellow still soft and serve.
While I was preparing this the cake was cooling. We cut a few slices to have with the peas and it was delicious but almost too much, too cakey, too rich, really the peas don't need anything. We wrapped it up and the next day I took a slice to work and, as sometimes happens, the next day it was so much better. Delicious eaten on its own with no other competing flavours, less dense than the evening before when it had still been warm, just a great desk bound snack. We decided to finish it off alongside some small pots of home made soup that had been living in the freezer, fab.
CHORIZO CAKE from 'Piri piri starfish ---Portugal Found---' by Tessa Kiros
Serves 8-10
5 eggs
100g of melted and cooled butter
5 tablespoons of olive oil
185ml of milk
310g of plain flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
100g of presunto, prosciutto or similar ham, in one thickish slice (I could find none of these so bought some pancetta, fried it and used this instead)
100g of chorizo sausage
Heat the oven to 200˚ C (400˚ F/Gas 6). Butter and flour a large ring tin (the sort you'd make a creme caramel in) or a loaf tin (which is what I used).
Beat the eggs with electric beaters until very fluffy and creamy. Add the butter and oil, whisking in well. Add the milk and flour in alternate batches, mixing the baking powder and salt into the flour. Whisk until you get a smooth batter.
Chop up the ham and chorizo, crumbling it through your fingers to separate any pieces that are stuck together, and stir into the mixture. Scrape into the tin and bake for 35 minutes or so until puffed and golden (if you're using a loaf tin, cook it for 5 minutes longer). Cool a little, remove from the tin and then slice into thick chunks to serve.
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