Recipe corner: labneh with roasted tenderstem broccoli

Of COURSE it was the case that on one of the hottest days of the year I should have planned an evening meal that required a lot of time spent cooking. Just as on a similarly warm day a few weeks ago, I went to a pastry making class (at Betty’s Cookery School and it was tremendous fun, albeit attempting flaky pastry in 20 degree plus heat is rather messy). My sense of timing has always been admirable. 

Anyway, last Saturday night we had sort-of mezze. I say sort of because the dishes and flavours were taken from a range of cuisines and thrown together in what I would like to think was a fusion (rather than confusion) of gastronomic experiences. But I fully concede I might be deluded on that point; never let it be said I achieve authenticity in my cooking. 

We had D’s amazing Merguez sausages, roasted and served with a simple houmous and a few whole chickpeas for texture. We had Ottolenghi’s iman bayaldi, a stewed aubergine dish that I’ve been meaning to make for ages. We had za’tar flatbreads. And we had roasted broccoli on labneh. 

So, this latter dish was inspired by two things; a perusal of the original Moro cookbook, and a starter I ate at the late, lamented Reliance sometime last year. (For those not au fait with the Leeds pub scene, The Reliance was a fantastic gastropub and Leeds institution, and the menu was magic for interesting vegetable based dishes).

Even if you don’t try this particular combination, I’d urge you to give labneh a go - so easy and SO delicious. It found it to be similar in taste and texture to Boursin cheese; my next batch I am going to combine with cracked black pepper and smear all over a baguette. 

Ingredients

For the labneh (first stage):

300g full fat Greek yoghurt

Generous pinch of salt

(Second stage):

Small clove of garlic

Spring onion, finely chopped

Salt and plenty of black pepper

For the garnish:

100g trimmed tenderstem broccoli spears

Tbsp olive oil (plus extra for garnish)

Tbsp flaked almonds

1-2 tbsp pickled jalapeño chillis, roughly chopped (optional)

Serves 2 as part of a mezze spread or side dish

Making labneh is incredibly easy but you will need a large bowl, a muslin cloth, a wooden spoon and room in the fridge.

Line the bowl with the cloth and spoon in your yoghurt. Add salt and stir through. Then, gather up the sides of the cloth and tie round the handle of the wooden spoon (other kitchen implements will work too), which you have laid across the top of the bowl, so that you end up with a little money bag of yoghurt, suspended over the bowl. The bag should not touch the bottom of the bowl. 

I feel like I have repeated the word bowl too often in that paragraph.

Leave overnight in the fridge. Mine was suspended for about 22 hours in total and I thought the consistency was perfect but the longer it stays in there, the firmer it will be.

When you come to make the dish, preheat the oven to 180 degrees and toss the broccoli in olive oil and seasoning. Once the oven has come to temperature, you will roast for around 20 mins.

Drain any liquid from the bottom of the labneh bowl and remove the cheese from the muslin cloth. Beat lightly to loosen and then you can add any flavouring you wish. I kept this relatively simple by stirring through a little garlic, a spring onion and lots of seasoning. Spread the labneh on a serving plate.

Lightly toast the almonds in a dry frying pan over a low heat.

When the broccoli is roasted and the ends beginning to look a little charred, remove from the oven and place on the labneh. Drizzle over a little olive oil and sprinkle on the almonds and jalapeño chillies (if using).

Note: if you’re not a fan of crunchy broccoli, you may wish to blanche the spears in advance of roasting.

When in Rome (eat as the Romans do)

Pretty much every main meal we ate in Rome, we tried to seek out restaurants doing Roman food - sometimes traditional and sometimes a more modern spin but always rooted in the rich culinary tradition of the city.

We were there in the springtime, so it was the season of the carciofi (artichoke); a troublesome vegetable that I've never really bothered with at home. But, partly due to the variety grown over there, and partly due to the time, trouble and copious amounts of oil employed in cooking them, these were a genuine delight, rendered almost creamy in flavour and texture. They seem to like to put them in a lot of things: sandwiches, pasta and even tossed through a plate of simply cut and shredded meat to make a surprisingly rich main course.

The classic pasta dishes of Rome, the mainstays of every menu, appear to be carbonara (cheese, guanciale, egg), cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper) and gricia (cheese and guanciale). The pasta that we ate was definitely firmer than we tend to have it in Britain - not crunchy but definitely exhibiting that classic, if elusive, description of "al dente". And the dishes were a bit saucier than I tend to cook them which was interesting to note. 

Offal also plays a big part in Roman cuisine. Oxtail popped up on most menus - including the most beautiful, rich, sticky bowl of oxtail risotto which is definitely one to recreate at home. On our final evening, we tried the local delicaies of Roman style tripe and pork tendons. I try not to be squeamish about food but, I must admit, I had struggled with the idea of trip when our good friend A had proposed it earlier in the trip, but when it turned up on a tasting menu it was only right to try it. And reader, although it probably won't make my top ten dishes of the year, it was very tasty indeed (although I think that is mainly down to the delicious sauce it was tossed through; that quiveringly pallid Yorkshire dish of tripe and onions still carries no appeal whatsoever). The tendons, to the right of the picture, were lightly pickled and, although the texture was slightly odd, were very interesting to eat.

The Food Wot I Ate - a 2021 retrospective

2021 was the year that started with a lockdown and ended with not-a-lockdown-but-most-of-us-choosing-to-stay-indoors-anyway. It did a good impression, in parts, of being normal but it really wasn't. It was the year where many of us queued up like dutiful citizens to get not one, not two but three jabs in the hope it would grant us freedom but then realised that freedom was slightly scary. A funny old time.

In the latter half of the year, as reflected in my occasional blog posts, D and I tried to get back into the swing of eating out and we were rewarded with some absolutely fabulous meals. Whether it was because after twelve months of home cooking and takeaways the novelty of restaurant food triumphed over all critical faculties, or that the restaurants we visited were just that good it is impossible to be entirely sure, but we were blessed with some truly superlative dishes. And I haven't even told you about our trip to Roots yet at the back end of the year, where Tommy Banks's team is doing fantastic things on the banks of the River Ouse.

It's been tough to narrow it down, but there are definitely a few dishes that deserve an extra special mention:

Starter / Snack of the year:

It faced stiff competition, but the "prawn toast" at Lake Road Kitchen wins the day. A heady combination of fresh, bouncy prawn, garlic butter and a crispy brioche coating. The whole table could probably have just sat and eaten a bucket of these and been perfectly content. Nothing outlandish going on with the flavours and ingredients, but flawless execution shows that it isn't always necessary to push boundaries - garlicky, buttery seafoody goodness will always be a pleasure to eat.

Bread of the year:

Not just of the year but probably ever - the brioche at Raby Hunt has to be tasted to be believed. It really says something that in a magical multi course tasting extravaganza, the bread course is still the memory that really lingers. Special mention, though, to Roots where the warm sourdough was served with what they described as "cheese custard" and I will describe to you as "grown-up Dairylea". Yum.

Meat / fish of the year:

Often, the meat and fish courses on a menu are slightly less exciting than the beginning and end of the meal - don't you think? The snacks and starters and desserts are where much of the innovation and fireworks tend to take place. I say that - but then, am reminded with a smile of the amazing lobster ravioli at Raby Hunt, or the doughnut stuffed with venison and damson jam at Roots. Still, the stand out for me is, I think, the amazing lamb shoulder at Le Cochon Aveugle. A buttery potato pancake, topped with shredded lamb, yoghurt and black garlic. I might be a little biased, since lamb is my absolute favourite meat to eat, but this was a really high quality piece of cooking.

Cheese course of the year:

D and I absolutely love it when restaurants do something a little different for the cheese course. I mean, we love it when we're presented with a big cheese trolley as well (who isn't?) but it's exciting to see something else - and the soufflé at Raby Hunt is the perfect case in point. The vin jaune sauce and walnuts added different flavour notes and textures but the star of the show was the fluffy, cheesy cloud trembling in the middle - at once both incredibly light and fearsomely rich. Bliss.

Dessert of the year:

Again, in the face of stiff competition, Lake Road Kitchen triumphs here for me. I still think about that Savarin-Brillat cheesecake on a fairly regular basis. Simple - a plain cheesecake and a couple of fruity twiddles - but perfect. A special mention, though, to Inver's rice pudding which...well, suggested to me that maybe rice pudding isn't the worst thing in the world after all but that in the right hands can be a lovely, lovely thing. Well played, Inver.

Home cooked dish of the year:

Like all good (obsessive) foodies, we keep records of what we cook and eat and scrolling back through 2021 I can see lots of comfort food type dishes on there which is probably indicative of our state of minds whether we realised it or not. We don't very often cook the same dish regularly, which suggests that Diana Henry's teriyaki salmon was a real favourite (made twice within the space of a month). I also recall absolutely swooning over the smoked haddock hash that we made at the start of the year and then never got around to repeating - definitely one to have again soon. However, I think the most representative dish of the year must be the humble meringue. Since lockdown #1 D has been making all the household mayonnaise from scratch and, as a result, I have been regularly making meringues to use up the surplus egg whites. We eat them with Chantilly cream and whatever fruit we happen to have to hand, and they have been one of the great simple pleasures of the year. Not one that I appear to have taken a photo of though - so please accept a picture of the cat instead, enjoying her dish of this and every year, chopped fresh prawns. 

Recipe corner: Mussel and bacon pizza (jingle all the way!)

The thing about authentic Italian pizza is that tends to be pretty simple. Tomato, cheese and then a few, carefully chosen, toppings. Not enough of anything to create sloppiness: a crisp base and the structural integrity of the whole is important. No weird combos. No doughiness, no ten tonnes of cheese (that is the province of Domino's and their ilk). I get all that and I appreciate it. But SOMETIMES it is fun to play a little bit and end up with something which is somewhere between what an Italian Nonna would appreciate and what drunk people order at eleven pm with a side of chicken wings.

When I wrote this up in my notebook I called it "Pizza Bianca del mare e dell'odore" which means "A white pizza of the sea and the sty". And I like that title very much. It sounds so much more elegant than mussel and bacon pizza. But I've stuck with the English for the blog title because it's probably a bit more useful. 

This is a pizza that combines seafood and cheese, that is a little bit on the sloppy side and, to be honest, is a bit of a bloody faff if you're making it because it involves numerous processes. None of them difficult but it's not easy home cooking. Jamie couldn't squish it into a 30 minute meal. So I probably haven't sold it to 99.99% of the people who will come across this blog post. But for the rest of you, who are intrigued, you are in for a tremendous treat. I think this is the most delicious pizza that I've ever made.

When I wrote pizza 101 back in July 2016 (!) I was using Paul Hollywood's dough recipe, but I've fallen out of love with that recently after a couple of issues with the dough being just too sticky to practically use. So I turned to Dan Lepard and, sure enough, his recipe and method worked perfectly. I won't repeat it here but if you DO pop over to have a look I would note:

I used a tablespoon of malt extract and all water, rather than open some of D's precious beer

I went up to 200ml of water - 50ml fresh boiled and 150ml cold from the tap to get it luke(ish) warm.

I initially made the dough the night before using and left it in the fridge overnight before moving on to the stretching and folding stage. This has the benefit of spreading the effort a bit as well.

I was making personal sized pizzas, so divided this recipe into 6 (actually, I made a half batch and divided it into 3). This was a generous portion. If you're not greedy, you could reduce the portion size further.

And for the topping...

Ingredients

1/2 kilo mussels

Splash of white wine or Vermouth

150ml milk

3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and bruised

Large sprig of thyme

15g Parmesan

10g butter

10g flour

75g pancetta (or diced bacon)

Small onion, thinly sliced

100g firm mozzarella, grated

75g smoked cheese, grated

Makes 2 generous individual pizzas

OK, so firstly we want to cook the mussels with no more flavourings added than a splash of white wine. Clean and de-beard the crustacea then heat the wine in a large, lidded pan until it simmers madly, and tip them in. Cover the pan and cook for around 5 mins, shaking gently every so often. They'll be ready when the majority of the shells are yawning open. Incidentally: we tend to buy up bags of mussels whenever we make it the fishmonger, cook and freeze them for future use. But if you do this be sure to freeze them alongside their delicious liquor.

Make the white sauce by first infusing the milk with the garlic and the thyme. Place all together in a small pan, scald the milk (which means heating it until the edges are beginning to bubble) then turn off the heat, cover and leave alone for at least a couple of hours.

Then we make a roux - melt the butter, add the flour and stir briskly to make a paste. Pour in the infused milk, bit by bit, stirring vigorously every time to eliminate lumps. When you've added all the milk, add the mussel liquor - again, bit by bit. Gently bubble the sauce for a few minutes to ensure that all the flour is cooked out (the easiest way to check this is by tasting it - if you can taste even a hint of flour, cook for a bit longer) then season with the grated Parmesan, a tiny pinch of salt and a little pepper. This is the base of your pizza.

Fry off the pancetta until crispy and then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon. Then, turn the heat right down and soften the onion in the bacon fat.

Finally, assemble your pizza. Take your rolled out bases and spread across the white sauce. Top with the cooked mussels, bacon and onion and finish off with the mozzarella and smoked cheese. If you have any spare, sprinkle a few fresh thyme leaves over to finish. Bake in a very hot oven for about 12 minutes until everything is bubbling and beginning to brown. 

If you have any sense at all, you'll allow it to cool slightly (and, in doing so, begin to solidify) before eating.

Meal planning: veggie (or is it cheese?) week

We decided to have a meat free this week.  It is something we do from time to time just for fun.  I'm sure all of us are aware of the importance of eating fewer animal products from an environmental point of view and, in general, I don't think we're too bad but there is always room for improvement and a week of veggie dishes always acts as a salutary reminder of how possible it is to eat well without the inclusion of meat or fish. The thing is that we've definitely ended up quite cheese heavy!  

Monday: root vegetable and pearl barley soup with bread (and cheese)

Tuesday: Cacio (cheese) e pepe

Wednesday: Mushroom risotto (finely grated cheese stirred through at the end)

Thursday: Saag paneer (cheese), Punjabi dum aloo and rice

Friday: "Fish" finger sandwich...with halloumi (cheese)

Saturday: Vada pav and Punjabi Kadhi with onion bhajis (wot, no cheese..?  But wait...)

Sunday: Aubergine CHEESEcake

Now, I am all for cheese in all its forms but...maybe next time we need to aim for vegan week?  Or, at the very least, get a few vegan options in there?

Recipe corner: cheese and pepper chickpeas

Lots and lots of food writers are doing sterling work at the moment across all of social media, making loads of recipes and cook-alongs and tricks of the trade available to us mere mortals.  I have always been an avid Ottolenghi fan anyway (his book "Plenty" remains one of our most utilised) but he has had some fabulous stuff over on Instagram which he saves to his Stories. When he mentioned doing a sort of take on cacio e pepe, but with chickpeas, then I had to give it a go.

You will note that lockdown has not improved my food photography skills any.  Sigh.  Although I suspect it would be hard in any case to make a pile of gloopy beige chickpeas look attractive (not really selling it there, am I?)  Anyway, forget about the crappy picture, these chickpeas were DELICIOUS.  Look, so good it made me shout.  D was less enamoured and, of course, he is entitled to his opinion (he is WRONG.)  I suspect that the problem here was partly that I didn't quite get the sides right.  I served them with a tomato and chorizo couscous salad and flatbread which, while nice in their own right, weren't quite...there.  

Anyway.  My chickpeas needed less cooking and slightly more water than Ottolenghi's so I've included my timings and quantities on the below write up - a lot is going to depend on the peas themselves, the soaking, your oven...you just need to cook them until they are nice and soft and most (but not all) of the liquid has been absorbed so that you're left with a very slightly soupy texture that will thicken up into a silken, clinging sauce once the butter and cheese has been added.

Cacio e pepe should really just be about cheese and pepper so don't be afraid to be bold with the latter.  Since Ottolenghi himself supported the initial addition of garlic, I'm going to go one step further and chuck a couple of aromatics in at the cooking stage, but you could quite happily omit these.  Oh, he also originally suggested a couple of pickled chillies as a garnish.  I didn't bother as I had a bit of heat coming through from the couscous, but I think that they would be a lovely addition.

Ingredients

150g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight

Tbsp olive oil

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

Couple of Parmesan rinds

2 bay leaves

Sprig of thyme

750ml water

Pinch of bicarbonate of soda

50g butter, fridge cold

25g Parmesan, finely grated

Heaped tsp black peppercorns, roughly crushed

Serves 2

Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan).

Take a pan large enough to hold all the soaked chickpeas comfortably and that will go in the oven - some sort of casserole dish is ideal.  Over a low heat, warm the oil and then fry off the garlic for just a minute or so, until the raw edge has disappeared from the smell.

Drain the chickpeas and add to the pot, tossing well in the garlicky oil.  Then throw in the rinds, the bay and the thyme and cover with 750ml of water and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda.  Bring the lot to the boil and then cover and transfer to the oven.

My chickpeas were cooked perfectly after just an hour in the oven - the original recipe called for an hour and forty five minutes.  I would suggest checking after an hour.  Cook until the chickpeas are tender and the consistency is still slightly soupy.  

Remove from the oven and discard the Parmesan rinds and the herbs.

Add the butter and the Parmesan in 4 lots, stirring well each time to ensure that they have melted completely.  The residual heat in the dish should do this without the need to apply any further heat from the hob.  Then finish by stirring through the black pepper and a pinch of salt (if needed).

Serve.  With...something.

Made in Oldstead

We can't eat out at the moment but fortunately some restaurants are making it possible to eat out at home.  That sentence makes NO SENSE.  But you know what I mean - some restaurants have moved into the takeaway business.  Or perhaps, more accurately, the posh ready meal business.  I, for one, am glad and wish that I was rich enough to buy from all of them all of the time.  I want these places to survive and be around when we emerge, blinking, into the sunshine of non-lockdown.  Although knowing Britain, the end of lockdown will coincide with a period of monsoons.  Our weather systems tend to have a finely tuned sense of irony.

Anyway, back to the point.  This weekend we donated £70 of your English pounds to the "Save the Local Restaurant" fund that is The Black Swan at Oldstead's food box scheme.  Another cracker of a sentence there. 

We love The Black Swan.  Well, I say that.  We've been twice.  We loved it on the second occasion and liked it very much on the first.  The food that they are making for the food boxes is not the equivalent of the food that you would get in the restaurant.  Of course it's not.  It needs to be packed and transported and reheated.  It needs to be plated up at home.  This all calls for dishes that are robust and simple with minimal garnishes.  Not necessarily adjectives that you associate with Michelin starred chefs. 

Having said that, if your expectations are set at the correct level, this is a very enjoyable experience indeed, and it was nice to have a weekend "off" from cooking.  I've been cooking a lot during this period; the kitchen has become even more a place of solace and escape than usual, but it is still nice to be cooked for.  And when it is Tommy Banks and team who are doing the cooking, it is especially nice.

As I said, the cost of the box was £70 but for that you get two lots of two three-course meals.  We decided to have the starters for lunch and then the main event and puddings in the evening which meant we effectively got four meals out of it.  That is pretty decent value to my way of thinking.

On Saturday, there was a tartiflette made with Ogleshield - a fabulous British cheese that rose to the occasion admirably.  There was bacon and caramelised onions and creaminess.  The dish required a smidge more time in the oven than specified in the instructions (the potatoes were sliced quite thickly and weren't quite as yielding after 20 minutes as we might have wished).  And we roasted the accompanying asparagus rather than boiling and dressing in butter as were directed to do.  Yeah, rebels.

This was followed by a beetroot treacle tart served with a schnapps-laced marscapone.  The tart looked beautiful (I am quite the fan of pink food) although the beetroot didn't seem to add much to the flavour profile that I could discern.  The marscapone was excellent.

As for Sunday's meal: I would say it was pretty much the definition of British comfort food.  There was ox cheek pie with the most gorgeous beef dripping crust.  On the side, a portion of pickled manglewurzel which is apparently, is a type of beet commonly eaten by livestock.  Lucky livestock, say I - this was lovely.  Reminiscent of sauerkraut.  We may, may have snuck some mashed potato onto the plate as well because I am from the East End of London and it is practically treason to not serve pie with mash. Also, we are greedy.  But I've upped the exposure on the picture so that you can barely see it.

The theme of comfort food continued with the dessert of elderflower cake with duck egg custard.  Cake and custard is pure school dinners as far as I am concerned.  Actually, (and here is a sad tale) I never had school dinners when I was at primary school.  My cruel mother insisted on making me a packed lunch every day.  So while I know of the concept of school dinner cake-and-custard I have never experienced it firsthand.  I suspect TBS's version was considerably superior to St Mary's RC Primary School.

An indulgent weekend then but worth it.  For anyone reading who lives in the Oldstead, York, Harrogate or North Leeds area and wants a treat then I would recommend this most highly.  For everyone else, I hope that the restaurants round you are similarly rising to the challenges faced by the industry.  I don't think it is possible to quantify how much joy these pubs and restaurants bring to our lives and we will miss them if they go. 

Recipe corner: cacio e pepe

You may recognise this dish as having been particularly trendy - oooh, a good year ago, maybe more. Now, obviously, the cool kids have moved on but I still think it is worth posting this methodology for posterity. This is the sort of simple, quick pasta dish that I can imagine will remain on our regular meal rotation for many years to come.

This recipe comes, with a few tiny tweaks for personal taste, from the wonderful Smitten Kitchen blog. I must admit, I follow very few American food blogs and cook from them seldom. The reasons for this are neither sinister nor snobbish; when I first started really getting in to blogs, and bookmarking recipes, I soon found myself with a “to make” list that would never get made if I lived to be 500 and cooked something different every day. In order to get things to more manageable levels, I decided to restrict myself to UK sites. I recognise that I’ve probably missed out on a lot. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Smitten Kitchen somehow survived the cull I would never have learned about this fabulous foolproof method for cacio e pepe.

I would recommend warming the plates or bowls before serving. The pasta will start to cool while you’re tossing it in the sauce and if you don’t want it to be cold within a minute or so of starting to eat, a warm plate is a necessity.

Ingredients

200g dried spaghetti

90g pecorino cheese, finely grated
Half a teaspoon black peppercorns

You will also need to have some water to hand, and a small processor / chopper

Serves 2

Put a large pan of salted water on and bring to the boil.

In a pestle and mortar, grind the peppercorns. How fine you take them is up to you - I want a good flavour without crunchy bits being caught in my teeth, so I take it quite fine.

Set aside a small amount of the cheese for garnish. Then, put half the remainder into the mini processor along with a tablespoon of water and blitz - it will start to come together and clump. Add the other half of the cheese in with another tablespoon of water and half of the pepper. Blitz again. Continue to add water, a tablespoon at a time, until you have a paste roughly the consistency of cream cheese. This was about four tablespoons for me last time I did it. Add the pepper to taste (note: I would probably always end up using the full quantity but I like it peppery).

Cook the spaghetti in the boiling salted water for around 8 minutes, or until al dente. Use a mug to scoop out some of the pasta water before draining and returning to the pan.

Add about half of the cheese and pepper paste along with a couple of teaspoons of pasta water and toss vigorously (I must admit, I tend to stir vigorously rather than tossing - I am messy by nature and don’t want to end up splattered in sauce). Continue to add the paste - a generous tablespoon at a time alongside a teaspoon of pasta water, stirring again each time, until the pasta is coated in a light, silky sauce. If you add it too quickly, you will end up with gummy lumps of cheese stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Plate up and garnish with the reserved cheese and another grind or two of pepper.

Recipe corner: carrot, tomato and feta soup

A beautiful soup is a wonderful thing and I haven’t posted a soup recipe for AGES.

It was partly, perhaps, a reaction to Weight Watchers (where zero point soup, aka joyless, fatless veg purée) is heavily endorsed that I had all but stopped making the stuff. But one day, after yet another disappointing pot of ready made supermarket offering, fishing around for the one, desultory chunk of chicken in what purported to be chicken soup, D pointed out that we should really go back to doing it ourselves. He’s right; given that one only has a finite number of meals, why waste your time on crap?

Here then is a delicious, sweet and summery concoction, courtesy of Nigel Slater. I did mine slightly differently to him in that I blitzed the carrot element to be quite silky smooth (I like a smooth soup) and then stirred the tomatoes through to add texture at the end. The carrots were the mellow backdrop to the peppery, sprightly basil flecked tomatoes with a final zing from the feta. Lovely. I must admit, I also used a bit less oil than he recommended. Weight Watchers habits die hard...

Ingredients

Tbsp olive oil
Large onion, roughly chopped
400g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
Litre of very dilute veg stock (I used a tsp of Bouillon powder in total)

Tbsp olive oil
500g cherry tomatoes, quartered
Garlic clove, peeled and lightly bruised
Small handful basil leaves, shredded

To garnish:
120g feta cheese, crumbled
Basil leaves, torn
4tsp olive oil

Serves 4

Place a nice, large saucepan over a low heat. Warm the oil and then cook the onion until pale and soft. Then in go the carrots with a hefty whack of salt and pepper to cook slowly for a further 10 minutes. Pour in the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to bubble away for half an hour until the carrots are soft. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before blitzing to a smooth purée with a stick blender (or in a processor). This can all be done in advance.

Shortly before serving, put the quartered tomatoes in a second pan with the oil and garlic and cook down, over a low heat, for 10 minutes or so until you have a sweet mush. Season, stir through the basil and then add to the carrot mix and heat the whole gently.

To serve, garnish with the crumbled feta, some torn basil and a drizzle of olive oil.

Meal planning and catching up

*Slinks back in with a new post.  Torn between starting with abject apology for absence (which always feels slightly self-aggrandising since it pre-supposes that anyone actually missed self in the first place) and just acting like it never happened.  Wrestles with dilemma.  Deletes and rewrites and deletes same chunk of text multiple times.*

Anyway (in lieu of any excuses, I’ll opt for an aggressive stance), in this day and age how many people still read blogs?  Especially little backwater blogs like this one where the writer still uses their original Blogger template and eschews any sort of decent photography preferring to stick with everything look like primordial sludge.  The blogging scene ain’t what it was all those years ago. Feel free to shoot me down if I’m being an unreasonable cowbag but I reckon that it used to be about sharing personal experiences with like-minded people in a nice, low-key manner and creating a little virtual community of kindred spirits.  Now, you get people who actually put the career of Influencer on their passport (or would do if you still had to list your career on your passport).  So everyone who has a blog wants it to be the biggest, shiniest, shoutiest blog in the world in order to attract attention and, thus, money.  Oh, not to mention the bloggers have to have a presence all across social meeeeeja.  Which kind of puts paid to the fact of anonymity.

I think that it’s a little bit sad.  But then, I suppose if someone had Discovered me and offered me ludicrous sums of money / amounts of free stuff to write about what I love, thus saving me from a life of Desk Bound Drudgery, I would probably have taken them up on it.  So maybe it’s just envy talking.

ANYWAY.  What’s going on with me?  Work – busy, busy, busy.  But good.  Food – we’ve cooked some really lovely stuff lately that I hope to get round to posting, but there may not be pictures because I think I have to really give up on the whole pictures thing.  I’ll just illustrate everything with a photo of my cat.  Weight – well, still there.  At this stage of the game I think it’s going to take a serious bout of novo virus to kick-start things on a downwards trajectory again. 

And as for meal planning this week…

Monday: as long term friends will know, we often have ready-made soup on a Monday night.  This is partly a hangover from our 5:2 days, ensuring a relatively low calorie start to the week.  It also means that after getting through Monday we don’t have to worry about any elaborate cooking.  But D finally cracked and said what we were both thinking – soup can be a bit dull.  So now, Monday is going to be soup-and-bread-and-cheese night. We’ve got some chicken and vegetable broth along with a lovely looking piece of Caerphilly to enjoy.  I’ve had some baguette dough defrosting in the fridge since this morning – I’ve not tried freezing it before, so not sure how it will turn out but am hopeful it will work well.

Tuesday: currently, spiced monkfish with chutney and flatbreads, but this may end up bumped to the weekend.

Wednesday: spaghetti carbonara – D is out for a couple of pints after work but I should be able to whip this up quickly when he comes home starving.

Thursday: roasted vegetables with couscous and feta.  We used to cook a stove-top version of this on a regular basis when I was a student.  It was the go-to “We’ve been eating rubbish for several days and require some proper nutrients” meal. 

Friday: we’re both out for a leaving do, so no current plans in place.

Saturday: might end up being the monkfish.  Otherwise, we have steak in the freezer all ready to be turned into steak sandwiches.

Sunday: D has a yen for chicken Kiev.  So he’s going to make that.  He has done a homemade version before and it worked out very well, so I have high hopes for this.  What could be nicer than crispy chicken drenched in garlic butter?

And that takes us nicely back round to Monday.  Quite a meaty weekend, so might need to balance that out with a few more veggie based meals next week (never a major hardship).  Hope whatever you find yourself cooking and eating is lovely. A bientot! 

Recipe corner: Saag paneer (spinach and paneer curry)

Of all the British Indian Restaurant curries, saag paneer is one of my all time favourites and I think that I’ve finally come up with a home version that is good as any I’ve eaten out. I’d be the first person to say that I am not versed in authentic Indian home cooking. My recipe, detailed below, is a mash up of several others that I have collected like a spice loving magpie. In fusing these dishes together, I’ve probably created something as inauthentic as you like but, my view with cooking is that the most important question is always: “Does it taste good?” as opposed to: “Is this how my grandmother’s grandmother made it?”

NB: Since both of my grandmothers’ grandmothers were probably Irish peasants, I can’t imagine that they were concerned with much more than boiling up enough potatoes to keep their families fuelled.

Right - let’s talk the recipe. It may seem like something of a faff to cook, and spice, spinach and paneer separately and, if so, make the spinach as written and then just bung the cubed paneer cheese in at the end and stir well. You don’t even need to fry the cheese really, I just like the little additional texture that it gives.

Also, as with all curries, this one will benefit from sitting around in the fridge for a couple of days while all the flavours get to know each other. What I would suggest is, making the spinach in advance then spicing and frying the paneer fairly last minute to really maximise that lovely textural contrast mentioned above.

Some more top notch food photography for you...

Ingredients

For the spinach:

2 tsp rapeseed oil
Tsp dried fenugreek seeds
Medium onion, finely chopped

Generous tbsp of tomato purée, mixed with 120ml boiling water

2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Fresh ginger (equivalent weight to the garlic cloves), grated
0.5 tsp chilli powder
Heaped tsp cumin
Heaped tsp ground coriander
0.5 tsp turmeric
Heaped tsp garam masala
Generous pinch of salt

225g frozen spinach (around 6 “pucks”)

For the paneer:

120g paneer cheese, cut into small cubes
Tsp rapeseed oil
0.5 tsp each of: ground coriander, cumin and paprika
0.25 tsp turmeric
Generous pinch of salt

Serves 2

Start with the spinach. Heat the oil, gently, in a large pan and add the fenugreek seeds. As they start to brown off and smell a little toasty, add the onions and fry until they are softened but not brown.

Next, in goes the diluted tomato purée and the rest of the spices. Mix well. Keep the heat nice and low and simmer everything together for about 5 minutes.

At this point you can add the spinach. Again, mix well and stir gently to allow it to melt and combine with the ingredients. Turn the heat down low, low, low, cover the pan and cook for 15-20 mins. You will need to check and stir frequently. If it is drying out, add a splash of water.

Place the paneer cubes into a large bowl, drizzle over the oil and sprinkle over the spices. Toss to combine.

To finish the curry: heat a dry frying pan over a gentle flame, add the cubes of paneer and cook, regularly shaking and turning, until start to go crisp and golden on all sides. Stir through the spinach before serving. The whole thing can be done in advance, paneer and all, but for maximum flavour and texture, make the spinach slightly in advance and stir the paneer through at the last minute.

MPM: 7th January 2019

It’s 2019 mes amies! And how has it started off for you? I am not going to spend my first meal planning post of the year whingeing so I’m just going to say it is Sunday evening, my cat is on my knee and I had the most AMAZING steak ever last night. Reader, Google reverse searing. It will change your life.

This makes it clear that I’m not doing Veganuary. While I wholeheartedly applaud any of you who have risen to this particular challenge, I am just going to come out and admit that I love animal products far too much to ever give them up. We buy the best quality that we can possibly afford but even so, my refusal to give up eggs, cheese, steak, smoked salmon...(continue list ad infinitum) probably makes me selfish. I certainly intend this year to make renewed efforts to ensure that a high proportion of my meals, particularly during the day, are meat free.

Let’s look at meal planning then. I’m going to brunch with some work colleagues on Saturday (and, by brunch, I mean extended piss up) so I’m assuming I won’t need supper. D has a Ginger Pig pork chop in the freezer that he plans to devour. Elsewhere:

Monday: roasted spiced squash and red onions, couscous with olives, goats’ cheese. We have some beautiful Yellison leftover from Christmas that I am excited to use.

Tuesday: soup

Wednesday: more goats’ cheese, this time combined with some beautiful green veg and lemon to make a zingy risotto.

Thursday: we’re going to use some homemade Merguez sausages to do a spicy twist on a toad in the hole, with harissa onions.

Friday: monkfish with Romesco sauce.

Sunday: we’ve been bumping a Diana Henry miso chicken and sweet potato traybake for weeks now and, dammit, we’re doing it this week.

Happy cooking all!

Recipe corner: Sausage and kale gratin

This is my take on a dish called panade, which, I must admit, I knew nothing about until I started to look for ways to use up some kale lurking at the bottom of my fridge. Hugh F-W described it in an old Guardian column as a sort of cabbage, onion and stale bread gratin which doesn't sound immediately tasty. It certainly isn’t attractive which is why I haven’t bothered to include a picture. An unattractive, rustic dish combined with my lamentable food photography skills equals a picture that looks like nothing on Earth.

I liked the idea of the layers of bread, cheese and cabbage all melded together by the stock. But why not add a bit of additional interest in the form of crumbled up sausage meat? My mind was going along the route of a pimped up stuffing which can often contain some element of offal. For my first version, I used a bit of haggis that had been languishing in the freezer, for the second, some crumbled up slices of black pudding. Both excellent, although I know neither ingredient is to everyone’s taste so I have suggested sausages in the ingredients list below. Incidentally, while I have included weights and measures in the recipe it is really the kind of dish that can be adapted to suit individual taste. If you want to be a bit heavy handed with the cheese, or whack in another sausage that you happen to have lying around, I certainly won’t tell.

This can be a side dish or a main event depending on how hungry you are. It is rustic food, a meal for an Autumn evening of long shadows and air that nips at your fingers.

Ingredients

150g curly kale
Tsp butter
Salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste

3 small onions, thinly sliced
Tsp vegetable oil
Tsp butter
3 standard size sausages, meat squeezed from casings
3 large sage leaves, finely shredded or generous tsp dried sage
Salt, pepper

50g cheddar cheese, grated
3 slices of bread, crusts removed, cubed
250ml vegetable stock

Heat together the oil and butter in a small pan and then turn the flame beneath them down to the lowest possible setting. Add the onions and stir well to coat in the fat. As they just begin to cook, add the sage and season well and then cover and cook for around 20 mins until golden or soft. Stir regularly and add a splash of water if they look to be sticking.

Meanwhile, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Cook the kale for 4-5 minutes and then drain and rinse under the cold tap to prevent it cooking any further. Squeeze as much liquid from the kale as possible and then return to the pan and melt through the butter over a gentle heat, seasoning well with pepper and mace.

Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan) and boil the kettle to make up the stock.

After 20 mins, add the sausagemeat to the onions and combine well. Cook for a further 5-10 mins until the meat is beginning to crust and colour.

Place half of the sausage and onion mixture in the bottom of a small, preferably buttered, gratin dish and top with half of the bread and the cheese. Then spread across all of the kale. Finish with another layer of sausage, then bread and cheese.

Pour over the hot stock. Cover the dish and bake in the oven for 35 minutes then remove the cover and bake for a further 15 or until the whole lot is a golden, bubbling mass. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes before serving.

Recipe corner: Tomato butter sauce and a creamy Parmesan dressing

Before we get to pizza, I just wanted to post this pasta sauce recipe. It apparently was all the rage among food bloggers in oooh, 2010 or so so I’m either late to the party (likely) or bringing sexy back (less likely). It’s very lovely though. It reminds me of tomato sauces that I’ve eaten in Italy - light and sweet and clinging. Very different from the almost jam like quality you get when starting a tomato sauce from a standard soffrito. It also has the very great advantage of requiring very few ingredients and very little effort. One need never reach for a jar of sauce again.

To go with it a salad dressing which harks back to the Caesar dressing that I first posted years ago, which utilises a molten egg yolk to create something that tastes far richer than the points would suggest. The Parmesan adds a ton of umami flavour, the mustard a good kick. And this basic dressing recipe would be a good base for any other flavourings you might want to throw in, depending on what your salad is accompanying. This recipe makes enough to properly drench two decent portions of salad which is great when there’s not too much else going on. Alternatively, you could settle for an elegant drizzle and probably get away with counting it at zero points.

Tomato butter sauce - ingredients

200g tin chopped tomatoes

18g butter

One small onion, peeled and sliced in half

Serves 2, 3 Smart Points (WW Flex) a portion

The instructions for this are blessedly easy. Simply stick all the ingredients together in a heavy bottomed saucepan. Set over a low heat and bring to the gentlest of simmers and then turn the heat down as low as possible - a diffuser works well here if you have one - for around 45 minutes. As it cooks, give it the occasional stir, ensuring the tomatoes are lightly crushed into the buttery juices. It is ready when little droplets of fat appear on the surface of the sauce - see picture below.  NOT the most prepossessing looking thing, but getting there. Discard the onion, season with salt if required and then serve over pasta.

A note: I tried making this with a shallot but I don't think it worked quite as well so I would urge you to go for an onion.  It won't give an overtly onion flavour but it is an important constituent part and I think that the shallot was just a little too mild to deliver.

Creamy Parmesan dressing - ingredients

1 egg

2 tbsp 0% fat Greek yoghurt

2 tsp rapeseed oil

Tsp dijon mustard

15g Parmesan cheese finely grated

Scant squeeze of lemon juice

Serves 2 generously, 2 Smart Points (WW Flex) a portion

You'll need a little processor for this.

Bring a pan of water to the boil and then lower in the egg and set a timer for three minutes.  Remove as soon as it is done and immediately stick it under the cold tap to stop the cooking.

Meanwhile, put the yoghurt, oil and mustard into the processor and give them a quick whizz to introduce them to each other.  Grate the Parmesan - you could skip this step and let the processor do the work, but your result won't be as smooth and creamy.

CAREFULLY peel your egg.  Have the processor close at hand so if you accidentally pierce the yolk while you are doing so you can ensure it all gets into the mix.  The white should be just about set but depending on the size of your egg may be a little bit snotty which works beautifully in the dressing but be warned if you're slightly squeamish (as I know some people are when it comes to eggs).

Blend again until the egg is completely incorporated and you have a smooth, pale yellow dressing.  Add the Parmesan, a squeeze of lemon juice, a pinch of salt and a good whack of pepper and whizz for a final time. Check the seasoning - it may require an extra hit of lemon just at the end.

MPM: 1st October 2018

As I write this on Sunday afternoon, I am full of cold and feeling most grumpy about it. I do not feel ill exactly - certainly not poorly enough to spend tomorrow at home, more’s the pity, but stuffed up and sniffy and sorry for myself. I have spent the majority of the day in bed, in some sort of vague protest against germs, kept company by the cat (when I am not making too much noise sniffing and sneezing) and one of Stephen King’s recent doorstoppers which is very bleak and apocalyptic and exactly suits my mood.

Meal planning then; on Friday D will be out on the first of his many birthday celebrations, so I will probably opt for prick and ping, and on Saturday we are going out for dinner with D’s sister and her husband - probably to The Reliance because my brother in law, who is an absolutely lovely chap, appears to have quite a limited range of food that he will consent to eat and The Reliance serve fish and chips. I must admit I do struggle to deal with the concept of otherwise sensible, intelligent adults who have the palate of toddlers but hey, I like The Reliance so it’s no skin off my nose. Recently we had a delicious bar snack there of roasted peppers with ricotta and capers piled onto crusty bread which is something I must recreate at home at some point.

Elsewhere on the meal plan:

Monday: Spinach, ricotta and roasted tomato gnocchi bake. I have so enjoyed rediscovering some of my older blog recipes in this latest crack at WW - there’s some really lovely stuff in those archives. This is exactly the kind of stodgy deliciousness that I’m going to need if this cold carries on into the beginning of the working week.

Tuesday: Mushroom risotto. D is in charge of this one. He promises that there will not be too much butter and Parmesan, but he may need close supervision...

Wednesday: Potato, bacon and asparagus salad topped with Epoisses. The original recipe called for green beans (which D detests) and Brie (we have Epoisses in the freezer leftover from last Christmas that needs using before we start buying cheese for this Christmas). I do enjoy a substantial warm salad for supper and have high hopes for this one.

Thursday: Salmon with pasta pesto. Haven’t had this in a good six weeks and it is one of our absolute favourite things.

Sunday: Fish pie - perfect Sunday fare.

Have a fabulous week all - stay warm and avoid germs!

MPM: 24th September 2018

Greetings chickadees and I think it is safe to say that summer is well and truly over after a weekend which saw us a) light our fire every night b) turn the heating on and c) get pounded by hailstones.  Suits me just fine - I am not a big fan of the hot weather although I have no intention of giving up the salads that have characterised my lunches for the past couple of months.  I love salad and don't see that it should be confined to when the weather is sunny.

I've been back on track for nearly a whole week now (four and a half days counts as nearly seven, doesn't it?) and although it has had its tricky moments, altogether it is going pretty well.  It helps, I think, that we were SO over indulgent last weekend, my body was definitely ready to embrace a simpler, leaner diet.  But, as I said in my last post and said to my WW coach at the weigh in, I will never be the type of person to count, or even attempt to count, on holiday.  Food and drink are two of life's very great pleasures.

Talking of great pleasures, and another sign that winter is on its way - the new series of Strictly Come Dancing started on Saturday night which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Saturday nights from now will definitely have to feature a special sort of supper to honour the occasion.  Actually, this Saturday's supper was very special indeed - inspired by a photo on Bundobust's Instagram feed, I contrived a saag paneer pizza.  If two of your favourite foods are saag paneer and pizza, this is a dish not to be missed.  I may well post the recipe at some point.

Anyway, on to this week.  I am supposed to be going out on Friday, so it is blank for now, but may try and wriggle out of it for various reasons, not least that it would be nice to have two straight weeks of tracking under my belt as we go into October AKA D's 50th Birthday Month.  Elsewhere:

Monday: Tuna and onion (tonno e cipolla) pizza - we have pizza dough leftover from Saturday night and, well, it would be rude not to.

Tuesday:  Mussel paella

Wednesday:  Vietnamese braised pork with vegetable egg fried rice

Thursday: Chicken breast stuffed with goats' cheese

Saturday:  Lobster truffled macaroni cheese - a dish inspired by our recent trip to the Star Inn the Harbour.

Sunday:  A freezer dive - beef and fennel stew with mashed potatoes.

Have a fabulous week all!

Recipe corner: Tuna melt fish cakes

Many people might start this recipe by suggesting it as an excellent use for leftover mash and to them I would say - I never have extra mash. If I make too make mash then I eat too much mash. God, I love mash.

My sister in law, who has a way with potatoes, got us on to making mash by pushing the spuds through a sieve. This method will produce the smoothest, silkiest mash that ever there was. You’d achieve a similar effect with a ricer but I don’t know...something about the sieve method is preferable. Maybe it’s because the additional effort you end up putting in adds a subtle seasoning to the finished product. I should add, however, that it is harder to sieve cold potatoes, so take the time and trouble to make the mash when the potatoes are just cooked.

These fish cakes were thrown together rather, but many of the best dishes are. The thing is, I had planned to cook jacket spuds for tea, but when I actually investigated the potato bag, I had three rather shrivelled, sprouty littleuns that would not have been fit for purpose. This was a more than acceptable alternative that made use of store cupboard ingredients, thus meaning that I did not have to nip out for shopping - after the day I’d had, it is quite likely that a bottle of wine or five would have fallen into the basket. And that would NEVER do.

Ingredients

250g potatoes (raw weight) peeled and thinly sliced
10g butter
50g half fat Cheddar cheese, grated
Heaped tsp English mustard

Can of tuna in brine or spring water, drained
4-5 heaped tablespoons non fat plain yoghurt
Small handful of capers in brine, drained and chopped
2-3 spring onions, finely chopped
Tsp dried dill
1/2 tsp dried chervil

25g plain flour

Serves 2, 9 Smart Points (WW Flex) per portion

Put the potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with cold water, add a pinch of salt and bring to the boil. Simmer for around 10 minutes or until soft and yielding to the point of a knife.

While the potatoes cook, combine the tuna with the yoghurt, capers, spring onions and herbs and season. You want the consistency to be fairly loose so add more yogurt if necessary - fat free plain yogurt is zero point on Flex, so it won’t make a difference to the total.

Drain the potatoes into a sieve and then push them through said sieve back into the pan. Return it to a low heat and stir through the butter, cheese, mustard and seasoning until everything is smooth and incorporated.

Combine the potatoes with the tuna mix.

Sprinkle the flour on a large plate and on to your hands, and shape the mix into six small cakes. Coat them well in the flour and then cover and chill for at least an hour.

Fry in a good non stick pan (use a few sprays of oil if necessary) for 5 minutes or so on either side until warmed through and crisp of crust.

Serve with...well, I went with salad but I am never sure what is the best accompaniment for fish cakes. Let me know if you have any ideas.

MPM: 13th August 2018

I’m so tired this morning. This, despite the fact I had a nap yesterday afternoon and then went to bed at nine o clock, I feel like I could sleep for a week. Thankfully, God invented caffeine and I’m sure that the second cup of strong coffee will be the charm.

Anyway, meal planning. A quiet week ahead with some nice food to look forward to.

Monday: Pan fried salmon with Bois Bourdan sauce and crushed potatoes. A Heston Blumenthal recipe from his “At Home” book.

Tuesday: Creamy butternut squash and red pepper soup, homemade flatbreads brushed with smoked butter

Wednesday: Kale and blue cheese gnocchi

Thursday: D is out, so filled pasta for me.

Friday: Skate wings with black butter and capers. This is one of my all-time favourite things to eat but, dear Teapot, butter is high in points. The recipe I’ve used before suggests 75g butter between two people. That’s 14 points worth of butter a portion! I mean…I’m going to eat it, but I will be licking any excess butter off the plate when I’m done and will probably be whingeing about it a LOT.

Saturday: A homemade fakeaway - Nando’s chicken pitta. Now, we went to Nando’s the other week on a pre cinema jolly and I was SO disappointed. I think they might have changed their recipe, or else we just got a really duff cook because it was not nice at all. Too much chill heat without any rounded flavour, woolly, over cooked chicken and the chargrilled vegetables were not so much chargrilled vegetables as crappy, overcooked mulch. So I’m going to make my own Piri-Piri style chicken at home and it will likely cost a hell of a lot less than the £30 we paid for two of us to eat remarkably mediocre food.

Sunday: roast dinner. Probably chicken. Depending on the weather, I’ll either do roast potatoes and standard trimmings, or we’ll have it with a couple of salads, maybe some bread. It’s distinctly cooler and greyer this morning here in Leeds, perfect roast potato weather, but we’ll see how the week pans out.

MPM: 6th August 2018

There are only so many times that one can write “Monday again” or, “Where did the weekend go?” or, “Can’t believe we’re eight months into the year!” without it becoming ineffably tedious. Suffice to say, please take all the above as read.

If nothing else, my returning to Weight Watchers has refocused our attention on meal planning which is excellent news. We’ve more or less completely stuck to the plan these last few weeks and have been eating extremely well. We’re also getting more of a sense of what works well with the current WW ideal – NB: if you like fish, chicken and pulses and can make them the main constituents of your dish, you’re going to be laughing all the way to the (Smart Points) bank. I also continue in my efforts to stick an egg on top of pretty much everything I eat.

This week, we again have no particular plans, other than Tuesday night, when we’re off to the cinema and I am angling to fit in a cheeky Nando’s, having discovered that a double chicken pitta is a mere 8 Smart Points. I have to admit I secretly quite adore Nando’s and yes, I know that I could cook something just as nice at home and not pay ridiculously over the odds for it, but I maintain that it is worth the occasional splurge, especially since there is a branch located very handily for our local multiplex. D is out for lunch on Thursday (probably Nando’s again, the lucky sausage. Fortunately, he is very partial to chicken) so keeping things light on Thursday evening.

Monday: Crab scrambled eggs with pan roasted asparagus.

Wednesday: Prawns with sweet potato mash and chilli vinaigrette

Thursday: Tuna sandwiches

Friday: Twice baked cheese soufflés, roast courgette and spinach salad with balsamic dressing, garlic bread

Saturday: Momofuku chicken wings

Sunday: Butternut squash, sage and amaretti ravioli

Recipe corner: Red lentil, courgette and cheese loaf

I have never been the greatest advocate of yawningly “worthy” food so this recipe is something of a departure for me. Years ago, for reasons lost in the mists of time, D and I decided to detox the Carol Vorderman way and spent a very miserable week eating really bad food. I think that we managed about five days before falling face first into pizza. Ever since, anything like “lentil loaf” which sounds suspiciously like it has been plucked from the pages of a “clean eating” (bleurgh) book has made my toes curl a little bit. Nevertheless, I would commend this particular recipe to your attention because it is, quite simply, delicious. It makes me wonder if I should be a bit more open minded – after all, I’m quite a fan of spiralising vegetables as well – but then I remember back to Carol’s recipe for hummus, which resembled nothing so much as wallpaper paste, and I quickly change my mind.

Anyway, this loaf is utterly brilliant for anyone following the WW Flex programme because lentils and other pulses are now pointed at zero, which means that a slice of this makes a really low point, satisfying meal especially with a bit of salad and perhaps a cheeky hard-boiled egg (also zero point. Everything I eat at the moment, I serve with an egg on the side.) Last time I made it, D fried slices in butter and had them in a sandwich which, he reports, was most excellent. But frying things in butter and eating them with bread is (sadly) not the WW way unless one has run a half marathon and has oodles of points to spare. Behold the loaf in all its glory:



And here, in cross section, with the afore mentioned salad and egg (plus a drizzle of salad cream and another of sriracha). This entire lunch box was 3 Smart Points:



A note on reduced fat cheese. I love cheese. The notion of reduced fat cheese makes me slightly sad. Reduced fat products in general can be awful – and I utterly reject such aberrations as plasticky low fat spreads and “lite” mayonnaise. But I genuinely think for cooking, especially midweek, bog-standard cooking, a decent reduced fat Cheddar will do the job perfectly well in most cases. Pilgrims Choice is fine, as is Cathedral City – I need to try some supermarket own brands and if I come across anything particularly good, I will report back. If you are not counting points then feel free to use whatever cheese you like. A nutty Gruyere might work well with lentils. If you are counting, what I would suggest here (if you are so inclined) is to sub a proportion of the reduced fat Cheddar for a good smoked cheese as it will give the most wonderful flavour to the loaf. I used 50g of a very, very smoky (full fat) cheese and 75g of reduced fat Pilgrims Choice and it still worked out at 2 Smart Points per portion.

Ingredients

175g red lentils
Tsp vegetable Bouillon powder
350ml water
Courgette, grated
120g reduced fat Cheddar, grated
3-4 spring onions, chopped
Tbsp sriaracha (or other hot sauce)
Tsp dried chilli flakes
Squeeze of lemon juice
Egg, lightly beaten

Cuts into 8 decent slices, 2 Smart Points per slice (WW Flex)

Put the lentils in a large pan (big enough, eventually, for all the ingredients), stir through the stock powder and then pour over the water and set over a low heat. Bring the pan to a gentle simmer and then cover and cook for 10-15 mins until the lentils have absorbed the water and formed a thick paste. Mine cooked incredibly quickly and needed a splash more water after just 5 minutes, so it is worth checking regularly.

While the lentils cook, preheat the oven to 180, line a loaf tin (I always tend to use loaf tin liners such as these, but greaseproof paper would do as well) and prep the other ingredients.

Allow the lentils to cool very slightly and then stir all the other ingredients through and pour into the prepared tin. Bake for 45-50 mins until set firm and browning on top.