Nourished

Recent Vegetarian Recipes

Get your bake on…

Where to Eat…

A Few Thermomix Recipes

Book Review

Social Suppers… by Jason Atherton

Screen Shot 2014-10-23 at 18.55.52With over 100 recipes, broken down into four sections, this is a cookbook to suit most levels of cook, and is a very comprehensive selection of cuisines and styles.

The following are examples in each section:

Starters:
Tuna tartare DIY; confit tuna with piperade and chives’ salmon crude with pickled cucumber, wasabi and avocado purée; Spansh tomato bread with sardines; pastrami of sea bass with gazpacho garnish; beetroot-cured sea trout with roast beetroot and horseradish cream; kohlrabi, apple, whisky, walnut and sea trout salad; scallop ceviche with pickled fennel and lemon confit…

Main Courses:
Loin of venison with beetroot and venison sauce, braised cabbage; Roast venison and beetroot with poached pears; roast Anjou squab, with yakitori of innards, Brussel sprout and braised red cabbage; roast duck breast with mini roast potatoes, turnips, beetroot and carrot purée; Spiced roast pheasant with pumpkin, bread sauce and home-made granola……

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FrontPage

Fregola Sarda, with Salsa Verde

Fregola Sarda is a form of pasta from Sardinia, similar to Israeli couscous, or giant couscous, but toasted in an oven which gives it an additional dimension.  If you can’t find fregola sarda, you could substitute giant couscous.

Cook as per the cooking instructions – in my case it was simmering in boiling water for around 10 minutes.  Make sure you drain the fregola well, allowing it to sit in a sieve over the pan for 5 minutes, to let off a little of the steam.

Salsa Verde Ingredients:

4 anchovies (in olive oil)
4 large handfuls of herbs (I used parsley, chervil, basil, coriander, and mint)
2 Tablespoons of capers
Extra virgin olive oil (as much as it takes to emulsify the sauce, about 200ml for me)
Juice of 1 lemon
2 cloves of garlic

Method:

I much prefer to chop my herbs and capers by hand, as I hate the texture when I process them, but that doesn’t stop me whizzing my anchovies, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic into an emulsion.  When it’s a near fine consistency, pour over the hand-chopped herbs and capers, and season to taste (it should already be pretty punchy, but don’t forget you’re going to use it to sauce the fregola, so that will dilute it somewhat.

When you’re ready to serve the fregola, mix in the salsa verde thoroughly.

This is an excellent accompaniment to any dish, though I’m not sure I’d have it on its own.

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Baking

French Apple Tart…

Another weekend, another tart.  This time Ina Garten‘s apple tart.  Another incredibly simple recipe, this one is a combination of apple slices and puff pastry.  If the quantity of sugar looks a little daunting, I have to say, it did all absorb into the apples, and didn’t taste too sweet.  Total prep time is minimal if you use shop bought puff pastry – I think I had the whole thing in the oven within ten minutes!

Ingredients

for the pastry
300g plain flour
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon sugar
170g cold unsalted butter, diced
150g ice water

for the apples

4 Granny Smith apples
150g sugar
55g cold unsalted butter, small-diced
½ cup apricot jelly or warm sieved apricot jam (see note)
2 tablespoons Calvados, rum, or water

Method:

  • For the pastry, place the flour, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse for a few seconds to combine. Add the butter and pulse 10 to 12 times, until the butter is in small bits the size of peas. With the motor running, pour the ice water down the feed tube and pulse just until the dough starts to come together. Dump onto a floured board and knead quickly into a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
  • Preheat the oven to 200ºC  and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
  • Roll the dough slightly larger than 10 x 14 inches. Using a ruler and a small knife, trim the edges. Place the dough on the prepared sheet pan and refrigerate while you prepare the apples.
  • Peel the apples and cut them in half through the stem. Remove the stems and cores with a sharp knife and a melon baller. Slice the apples crosswise in ¼-inch-thick slices. Place overlapping slices of apples diagonally down the middle of the tart and continue making diagonal rows on both sides of the first row until the pastry is covered with apple slices. (I tend not to use the apple ends in order to make the arrangement beautiful.) Sprinkle with the full ½ cup sugar and dot with the butter.
  • Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the pastry is browned and the edges of the apples start to brown. Rotate the pan once during cooking. If the pastry puffs up in one area, cut a little slit with a knife to let the air out. Don’t worry! The apple juices will burn in the pan but the tart will be fine! When the tart’s done, heat the apricot jelly together with the Calvados and brush the apples and the pastry completely with the preserve mixture. Loosen the tart with a metal spatula so it doesn’t stick to the paper. Allow to cool and serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes:
  • Judging the diagonal line is a little harder than it appears – I score a faint line along the edge of the chopping board to ensure you get the first line in correctly.  The others are then a little easier to judge…
  • Even if you’re not keen on Calvados, do use if for the glaze – the smell is ridiculous, your kitchen will smell fantastic!  You could also scent some creme fraiche with Calvados too…
  • Ina is keen to point out more than once that you should take the apples to the point of slightly blackening them – it’s this additional caramelisation with adds to the flavour – don’t be afraid – keep an keen eye on them, but push it a tiny bit further than you think.  I did rotate mine several times, but the colour was still darker on one side than on the other – looking at my photo, it’s possible that I had more butter on one side of the tart than on the other – try to ensure it’s evenly spread
Core the apples with a melon baller, and nick out the root
Scatter the apples slices with sugar and butter
The tart, glazed with apricot preserve and calvados

Baking

Tamarillo Tart Tatin

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I’m crazy about tamarillos, but since I’ve tried them cooked, I’m coming up with all manner of ways of using them…  Their high glutamate content particularly suits the roasting or caramelisation process, which makes me think of tart tatins.  I’m not crazy about the apple version, which can be very sweet, but I have made plum and tomato versions quite often.  Tamarillos seem like the perfect variation, especially as their tartness lends itself to the process.

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Baking

Doughnuts, the Justin Gellatly way…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAmazingly, I’ve made doughnuts several times before and the results were very disappointing, and certainly not worth repeating.  I knew I’d followed the instructions properly, so something else was going wrong.  Hmmn. Maybe doughnuts weren’t for me.

I became aware of Justin Gellatly on twitter (of course) – famous for his doughnuts at the St John’s Bakery, he left after a decade to set up his own Bread Ahead in Borough Market.  Soon the twittersphere was flooded with instagram pics of his ridiculously good combinations, and though not  a huge doughnut fan, I became quietly obsessed with checking out the pics.  When he released his book earlier this year, it quickly made its way to the top of my pile.  But still – no doughnuts.

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Bruschetta

Heritage Tomato Bruschetta

Heritage tomatoes have so much more flavour than the industrial variety – sure  they may be a funny shape, or sometimes a little ugly, but beauty occurs in the mouth too.  I’ve been reading an amazing book about umami recently, which is why my timeline is flooded with things like tamarillos, but I wanted to use tomatoes too.  Both have high levels of glutamate, which is a key component in umami – probably explaining why so many of us like them.  By far the most popular tomato dish in our house is the simplest, but with perfectly good ingredients, simplicity really is key.

I’m not really going to give you any more than a cursory recipe – as that’s all it requires.  Cut a ciabatta in half lengthways, and pop it into a hot oven (200ºC or so), and let it become golden.  As you remove it from the oven, smear it with a whole clove of garlic, the roughness of the ciabatta will gate it over the surface.  Concentrate particularly on the crusty edges.  Chop your tomatoes by hand, not in a machine, and include some herbs.

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Book Review

Food for Thought… By Alan Murchison

Screen Shot 2014-10-23 at 19.00.06Alan has worked in a number of world-class restaurants, including Inverlochy Castle, Claridges, Nobu, L’ortolan and Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons.  His restaurants La Bécasse in Ludlow and L’ortolan in Shinfield both have Michelin stars, and made Alan the only chef with more than one Michelin starred restaurant outside London.  He’s also appeared on a number of television shows, including The Great British Menu, Hairy Bikers and Market Kitchen.

The book is divided into the following sections:

The Start  |  The Journey  |  Starters  |  Mains  | Cheeses  |  Desserts, and Basics

Without doubt this is one of my favourite.  Ironically Alan had a great deal of trouble getting this book published, and ended up publishing it himself.  This makes the resulting book even more remarkable, because the dishes are fabulous and the pictures make you want to get yourself straight to his restaurants.

There are a number of quotations alongside beautiful shots of the countryside.  The photographer Mark Law, get’s his own section – Julia Charles, the nutritionist gets a section – favoured suppliers get a section…  This book is a celebration of Alan’s journey, and the people who have helped him along the way….

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Book Review

The MEATliquor Chronicles…

MeatLiquorBy far one of the most original cookbooks in my collection. The recipes are easy to follow, and straight forward. The book is so much more than a cookbook though – it’s a journal which documents the beginning of Meat Liquor through it’s various incarnations, to the beast it is now. There are lots of photographs of the crew, little vignettes, there’s a whole conversation about queuing, refereed by Stefan Chomka… In fact, maybe that’s why I like it so much? It feels like my twitter stream, full of the opinionated and food obsessed people I love.   I’ve listed some of the recipes at the bottom, but I can’t imagine you’ve found your way to this book without knowing who Meat Liquor are. If you do, yes, my darlings – you’re going to love it!

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Baking

The GBBO: Big Book of Baking…

GBBOCoverPeople buy the GGBO books for a variety of reasons. There are profiles of the bakers featured in the 2014 competition, some of their specialist bakes, and usually the technical challenges. I noticed that a couple of the technical challenges weren’t included, so to make doubly sure you get what you want, I’ve listed them all here.

The technical challenges for each week of the 2014 GGBO are:

Cake: cherry cake
Biscuits: Florentines
Bread: ciabatta
Desserts: tiramisu cake
Pies and tarts: mini pear pies (not included)
European cakes: dobbos torte
Pastry: Breton kouign amann
Advanced dough: Croation povatica
Patisserie: German schichttorte (not included)
Final: perfect sponge, caramel, choux pastry as petit four

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Book Review

The Artisan Marshmallow… by Paige Couture

Cover-mashmallowThe joy of a single-subject cookbook is that it gives your the broadest range of recipes, and this single tome on marshmallows should keep most marshmallow fans happy for ages.

It’s broken down into the following sections (and examples):

  • Easy (classic vanilla; honey and almond marshmallow cake; mocha latte; liquorice allsorts; peppermint…)
  • Fruity (apple, cinnamon and rose marshmallows; double raspberry marshmallows; fresh ginger and lemon…)
  • Swirly (peanut, salted caramel swirl; apple, spice and chocolate hazelnut swirl; honey and peanut butter swirl…)
  • Cutesy (chocolate honeycomb; jam doughnut; filled chocolate; gingerbread with almond praline; orange blossom…)
  • Boosey (B52; Cointreau and honey, with pine nut praline; cranberry cosmopolitan; gin with a lemon twist…)
  • Hipstery-y (chai; chocolate and chilli; liquorice twists; coconut, lemongrass and palm sugar muffins…)
  • Variety (choc peanut wagon wheels; citrus roulette with chocolate ganache; cosmopolitan rocky road…)

Beautifully shot, lots of variety, helpful technique tips, lots of ideas to inspire future efforts