Vegetarian

October 12, 2014 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.

October 12, 2014 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

October 12, 2014 Baking

Tamarillo Tart Tatin

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.

…

October 12, 2014 Baking

Doughnuts, the Justin Gellatly way…

Amazingly, 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.

…

October 11, 2014 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.

October 8, 2014 Book Review

Plenty More… by Yotam Ottolenghi

Mr Ottolenghi has three cookbooks in the top 20 on amazon – no mean feat!! Why is he so popular? Can one person be a zeitgeist in their own right? If they can, then he is… The recipes are clean, full of flavour, use a variety of ingredients, and more importantly for me at the moment, don’t rely on mountains of meat… If we’re going to encourage people to eat a broader variety of food, we have to make it flipping delicious!…

October 1, 2014 Recipe

Cumin spiced carrot salad

I thought it might be fun to make Indian food for our inaugural book club meeting. Being a handful of girls, it clearly had to include a salad – but I suddenly realised that actually, I’m not sure what an Indian salad looks like… Having never been to India, I haven’t see any first-hand, and I’ve never seen anything beyond raita, or onion salad on an Indian restaurant menu. {I even looked at the menu on the Benares website, just to make sure I hadn’t forgotten any} Most vegetarian dishes tend to be cooked rather than raw…

So the thought process began somewhat in reverse: which spices could I use to marry to the other Indian dishes, and which salad ingredients might marry to those spices.

After my intense cardamom overload of late, I thought I’d switch to cumin seeds, which led me to combining them with carrots. Cumin, caraway, parsley, and carrots are all members of the same Apiaceae family, and compliment each other well. The rest, as they say, is history… I kept some in the fridge until the following day, and it was just as refreshing then…

Ingredients:
8 large carrots, sliced into shards (or lengthways)
1 tablespoon of cumin seeds
1 teaspoon of caraway seeds
3 tablespoons of white balsamic vinegar
8 spring onions, finely sliced
½ cucumber, peeled, deseeded, and cut into slices
handful of parsley, finely chopped
salt and pepper to season

Method:
Combine all of the ingredients together and leave to meld – you need to leave it for at least an hour to allow the cumin seeds and carrot to soften a little. You will see my bowl is only half full – I put some additional salad leaves into mine, but clearly not while it was ‘curing’, or it would have wilted the leaves

January 5, 2014 Recipe

Gordon Ramsay’s Baked Spice Porridge

My predictable January health kick survives* – we’ve reached the 5th – and although it’s a Sunday morning, I’ve managed to stall breakfast long enough to make baked porridge. I’d caught this recipe earlier in the week on Ramsay’s show, and located the recipe online. I have to say, it’s so much nicer than perhaps it sounds! Forget that oats are a good source of soluble fibre, help reduce cholesterol, and provide an invaluable source of manganese and non-meat protein – this thing tastes yummy too!

Ingredients:
Serves 4–6
150g (5oz) jumbo rolled oats
seeds from 1 vanilla pod
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1⁄2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg, plus a little extra to sprinkle
50g (2oz) whole blanched almonds
50g (2oz) blanched hazelnuts
75g (3oz) raisins
1 ripe pear, peeled, cored and chopped into small chunks
500ml (18fl oz) milk, plus extra for serving
200ml (7fl oz) double cream
2 tbsp demerara sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.
Combine the oats and vanilla seeds in a mixing bowl – use your fingers to rub the seeds through the oats. Add the spices, nuts, raisins and pear and mix well. Stir in the milk and cream,
and then pour the mixture into a baking dish. Dust with a little extra grated nutmeg.
Place in the oven and bake for30–35 minutes, or until the oats are completely softened and the liquid absorbed.
Heat the grill on its highest setting. Sprinkle the top of the porridge with the sugar and place under the grill for 3–4 minutes, or until the sugar has melted and created a crust.
Serve warm, with a little extra milk on the side if desired

Notes:

I omitted the cream from mine, but I used whole milk, and upped it to 600ml
Do leave your nuts whole if you can, they will soften in the mix
I used 100g dried cranberries instead of raisins – I’m not that keen on raisins these days
I forgot to put in the pear – damnation – I have some excellent pears too
I used my Thiercelin Pain d’Epices spices, because I’m becoming vaguely addicted to the scent – although Hubby did say that it smelled a little like a Christmas pud, so beware
If you’re not going to pop your vanilla bean pod into sugar, you could put it into the porridge to cook alongside the other ingredients
Hubby had his porridge without milk on the side, but I did, it’s pretty thick otherwise
I cooked mine in a Le Creuset dish, which meant that when it cooled down, I was actually able to cut it into strips – like a soft breakfast bar. It’s actually even more delicious cold – that’s my breakfast for tomorrow sorted, with some fresh fruit, and a splodge of natural yoghurt I’ll be good to go…

The Porridge and Milk

The Baked Porridge

Delicious, but even nicer when set, and cut into slices