Happy meals - nature's bounty

We've been lucky this week; a good friend gifted D some of the produce from his lovely garden, which meant we had a huge tub of tomatoes that were just on the verge of overripe and some lovely plums and greengages. Although we meal plan to the point of almost obsession, the original plan was jettisoned to ensure that this got used.

And what a lovely supper it was too! I cut the tomatoes in half and placed them, cut side up, in an oven proof dish, seasoned liberally with not only salt and pepper but onion granules, garlic granules and a few chilli flakes too. Drizzled with balsamic glaze and added a few thick slices of butter. Then roasted for 50 minutes until the tomatoes were collapsing into themselves and the buttery juices. Stirred through 4 finely chopped anchovies, a small handful of capers and a flurry of Parmesan before adding pasta and some starchy pasta water to create a clinging sauce. More Parmesan and, voila. 

This was followed by a greengage dessert cake, made from this recipe, warmed through in the microwave and served with a good splodge of cream. We don't often have pudding midweek, but this seemed warranted. I liked the texture of this cake very much, a good, dense, buttery crumb with a sweet crust, and the sharp greengages contrasted well. 

The remainder of the fruit has been transformed, by the very talented D, into a spiced compote which will be delicious with yogurt in the coming weeks. I am very tempted to do some homemade granola as well - Nigella has a couple of recipes that look interesting, including one with olive oil.

Weekend eats (and kitchen talk) - April 2023

As I mentioned in my last but one post, we recently had some major construction work done on the back of our house, which included completely reinventing our formerly tiny kitchen. Previously, we had a fairly large (for a bog-standard 1930s semi) dining room which had a LOT of dead space, partly due to a very small and rather pointless back extension. At the same time, the kitchen was a small galley, with limited storage and limited surface space. It certainly wasn't comfortable for two people to cook in at the same time. The oven was ancient, and one of the five gas hobs hadn't worked in a decade (let's gently gloss over the reason why neither of us ever thought to get it repaired or, indeed, why the oven itself with many year's worth of baked on grime never found itself at the receiving end of a deep clean.) The surfaces themselves were appalling, the decor that peculiar shade of pale, sickly yellowish beige that seemed to be so popular back in the seventies. In short, a bit of a nightmare, especially for people who enjoy cooking and want the kitchen to be at the centre of the home.

Circumstances at last allowed for us to rip it all out and start again. It has been a long, painful and ludicrously expensive process but we are now there, bar a little bit of final painting, and to say that I am delighted is an understatement.

From this...

To this:

Isn't it lovely?

I'll admit, though, I've found it a tiny bit difficult to get into the swing of cooking in the new space. It doesn't really feel completely mine yet and I'm a bit nervous about making a mess. So D has done most of the heavy lifting, cookery speaking, so far. This weekend was the first time I really started to relax and enjoy it a little bit more. I made floury buns and coleslaw to accompany some excellent hotdog sausages on Saturday evening, and on Sunday we had a joyous Welsh rarebit for breakfast and bacon chops with mustard mash, smoky creamed spinach and roasted asparagus for supper and it was all very, very nice indeed. 

Recipe corner: a basic template for houmous

It's been an up and down few weeks since I last posted.  In reality, very little has changed.  Our household (me, D, the cat) remain much as before the lockdown in the UK started lifting.  Because we are in the very fortunate position that we can both work full time from home, and have pretty much been able to get all shopping delivered throughout, we have decided to keep more or less to ourselves for the foreseeable.  Although the world has become very small, some days - most days - that feels OK.  I miss my extended family and I miss my work colleagues and I miss sitting in a bar with a pint and a packet of Scampi Fries, but the longer this goes on, the more "life before" takes on a certain dream-like quality.

But there are down moments.  I was broken by cake a couple of weeks ago.  It was good cake too - Nigella's Clementine Cake which is usually pretty foolproof but, on this occasion, because I was trying to deal with it alongside cooking something else, I rushed and it didn't come out of the tin properly; I ended up with half cake, half crumbs.  Such a small thing but I had a proper, screaming tantrum.  And then, for the next few days, found myself bursting into tears at random intervals.  To be clear, I don't think this was really about cake (and, in retrospect, it may have had a lot to do with hormones) but it made it obvious that I'm not 100% OK.  I don't think anyone in the world is 100% OK at the moment.  The fact that I'm OK an awful lot of the time puts me among the very, very luckiest of people.

Anyway, I post the below recipe more for my future reference than anything else - but if you are a houmous fan and have never made it yourself then I think it is well worth it if you happen to have a decent little food processor handy.  The secret to the perfectly whipped texture is, of course, the liquid that the chickpeas were cooked (or canned) in.  I came quite late to this realisation and had all but given up making it before I found out because I only ever produced an oily, claggy disappointment of a mess.  It's taken me a few goes to get the proportions quite right but I think that I'm there now - so I record it for posterity.  

This recipe produces, to my mind, the perfect basic houmous.  All the flavours are in harmony, nothing is too strident.  Once you have that you can play around with your flavours. I didn't weigh out exactly how much this produced, but in terms of volume was probably about the equivalent of the size of standard pot you buy in a supermarket.  Precise, eh?

Note: A true aficionado will probably:

a) remove the skin from the chickpeas before blitzing but, I'm going to be honest, I am not that person.  The results without removing the skin are perfect for my unrefined palate and

b) shudder in horror at the prospect of "flavoured" houmous.  But again, I am not that person.  Caramelised onion houmous is my particular favourite - and it goes beautifully with cheese.  So there.

Ingredients

50g dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 fat clove of garlic, finely grated or crushed

3 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp tahini

Tsp sea salt (or, a generous pinch if you don't tend to measure such things)

NB: if you are using tinned chickpeas, this amount dried equates to about half a drained tin.  Simmer them gently in the can liquid for 10 mins or so to soften slightly and then proceed per the recipe.  Then buy some dried chickpeas and try it that way next time - you'll never go back!

This is barely a recipe but...

Drain the soaked chickpeas and then put them in a large saucepan, add enough water to cover them by about a centimetre, add the bicarb and bring to a boil over a medium heat.

Boil until soft - by which I mean it will crush easily, with minimal pressure, between your thumb and index finger.  The timings will depend on your chickpeas - I gave my last lot just half an hour, but it can take longer.  Keep the water topped up to roughly a centimetre or so over the pulses throughout and skim off any of the grungy looking foam that rises to the top.

When cooked - drain RESERVING THE COOKING WATER.

Put the chickpeas in a little processor - nothing else initially - and blend to a coarse paste.  You then want to add enough of the cooking water to create a perfect texture - and should do this gradually, a tablespoon at a time.  I have found that my optimum texture comes from between 5 and 7 tablespoons of liquid.  What I would suggest is take it down to ever-so-slightly too thick (for me, I would check at 3 or

4 tablespoons).  Then add the other ingredients so you can gauge what effect these have.  And only then finish adding enough water to get it to where you need it to be. Remember, it may vary as it is partly dependent on how much liquid the chickpeas have absorbed during soaking and cooking.

Now you have your basic houmous you can go mad!  Drizzle with olive oil and strew with pomegranate seeds!  Whack up the garlic!  Throw something entirely incongruous (like, say, caramelised onion chutney that needs using up) in there.  Have fun.  And eat smeared on pitta, or toast, or just with a spoon.

With love to all of you out there who are not quite OK.  Rather like the weather today, things remain changeable and sometimes rather gloomy, but the sun, always, inevitably, indubitably, comes out in the end.

Easter Sunday lunch - 2019

For the second year in a row, D and I decided to push the boat out a bit for Easter Sunday lunch.  Although we did not eat it at lunchtime.  And we are neither of us practicing Christians (although I still maintain that my Catholicism is lapsed rather than totally extinct.)

Last year, we had duck.  This year, we again blew raspberries in the face of tradition (which demands that one serves lamb on Easter Sunday) and had pork.  Roast belly pork.  Twice cooked.

But first, not so much as a starter as an amuse.  An idea that we blatantly nicked borrowed from the specials board of The Reliance last week.  Little Jersey Royals, parboiled and then tossed in oil and roasted, split and topped with sour cream and caviar (not the real stuff, I hasten to add).  Reader, this is such a simple idea but it is SO effective and would make a marvellous canape, especially during Jersey Royal season.

Onto the pork, and my husband takes roasting belly pork very seriously.  This behemoth of a joint was slow cooked, pressed and then finished under the grill per the method that I've described here.

I, meanwhile, was in charge of side dishes, and I made lightly pickled rhubarb and stem ginger - not quite a chutney - based on Diana Henry's recipe here.  It was absolutely delicious with the rich meat.  She served it with a pork loin that was flavoured with caraway and juniper - I knew that wouldn't fly with the Pig Master, so decided to introduce caraway, at least, into the meal by sauteeing little cubes of potato with caraway seeds until crispy and golden.  Finally, we needed something green and so I made a delicious tangle of kale, blanched and then cooked together with onion, bacon and cream and flavoured with bags of black pepper and nutmeg.  To bring everything together, the splendid pork gravy.  And yes, we did serve the gravy in a miniature gravy boat.  The first rule of Masterchef Presenation is that the sauce should always be on the side.

Having devoured that, we were quite pleased that we had kept the starter light because still to come was dessert and this was another very rich dish, for all that I kept the portion sizes small.  Chocolate ganache, salted caramel sauce and candied salted peanuts.  I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do but used this recipe as a rough guideline.  It tasted like a very posh Snickers which is a Good Thing.

It wasn't till after we had finished that we realised that not only had the starter been a blatant rip off tribute to The Reliance, but the other two dishes were also based on things that we have eaten there in the recent past.  Which tells you that a) we love The Reliance and if you are ever in Leeds, you should go and b) eating out is an important source of culinary inspiration and therefore is entirely justified in all circumstances. 

Happy Easter one and all!

Easter Sunday lunch

Although Christmas Day is generally the time where we push the boat out with regards lunch, we decided to put a little bit of time, trouble and thought into our Easter repast this year.  And, might I say, the results were very pleasing.

We wanted our starter to be nice and simple and, as luck would have it, we still had a packet of Tobermory smoked salmon in the freezer so elected to have that alongside some homemade bread.  It turned out, when said packet was retrieved, that the smoked salmon was actually smoked trout but we enjoyed it just the same.  It needed nothing more than a scrunch of black pepper and a few drops of lemon juice to make it perfect.  As for the bread, my love affair with Dan Lepard's sour cream loaf continues.  Such a good bread.  We ate the last of it yesterday (Thursday), lightly toasted, and it was still very delicious indeed.

For our main course, we wanted to try and recapture the glorious duck dish that we ate at Joro earlier this year.  The duck was brined for 48 hours and then served with a coriander and peanut pesto and a katsu sauce.  To make it more substantial than the original, we added a side of rice through which we stirred D's coriander and green chilli chutney.  This was utterly sublime, and I intend to blog the full recipe very soon so that I don't manage to forget exactly what we did.  If you happen to come to our house for dinner in the course of the next year, it is quite likely that this is what you will be served.

D gave up sweet stuff for Lent, bless his heart.  For six weeks he eschewed puddings, sweets, chocolate, biscuits and cake like a little trooper.  So I let him choose what he wanted for dessert on Easter Sunday, and his request was for a no-bake lemon cheesecake.  When I came to research this, I found that the majority of lemon cheesecake recipes were, in fact, baked.  But I came across this one by Mary Berry which seemed to fit the bill nicely.  It may seem a cheat to use lemon curd as a flavouring but the results were delicious and it was incredibly easy to do.  Instead of making one large cake, which served eight, I opted to half the recipe and make four cheesecake pots which makes life an awful lot easier in terms of serving.  My only criticism was that, for me, the ratio of base to topping was slightly off - the biscuit at the bottom is always my favourite part of a cheesecake.  So, if I make this again, I'd probably up the amount of crumb in the bottom of the pots by half.  Bear in mind though that I am greedy. 

We finished with cheese from The Cheeseboard in Harrogate.  If you ever happen to find yourself in Harrogate, and if you are a lover of cheese, then you must make them a visit.  The selection is amazing and they do nice bread and chutneys too (although obviously my bread is better!)

There may not have been a roast lamb in sight (I will remedy that shortly - one should never have to wait too long for a roast lamb dinner) but a very pleasing meal all the same and it was nice to mark the most important celebration in the liturgical year for all that I would no longer consider myself a practicing Catholic.  I hope that everyone out there on T'Internet, particularly those of the Christian persuasion, had a very happy and holy Easter.  The next stop is surely Spring!

A bad start to the week

Picture the scene. Six thirty in the morning, I was lying in bed pretending to be asleep when D comes in and says, in a voice teetering somewhere between incredulity and panic, "Where's the car? The car's gone."

A little further investigation revealed my purse lying in the middle of the drive and the back door lock hanging off the screws. Somebody or bodies had got into our house in the night, removed the car keys from D's jacket pocket, rifled through my handbag and made off with our car.

Now, there's an awful lot of shit going on in the world at the moment, as recent events in London and Manchester prove. And this incident, is, in the scheme of everything that is happening, tiny and incidental and means nothing to anyone except me and my husband and, possibly, our elderly neighbours. But it just serves as further proof to me that there are some complete and utter wankbadgers out there. People who actually think it is ok to break into someone's house while they are sleeping and just help themselves to a car and then, as if that is not cockwomblish enough, leave the back door open through which our cat could have escaped if she had any sort of nous.

I am trying quite hard to be angry because the alternative is to be frightened. I bet arsewipes like those who paid us a midnight visit, I bet that they get off on making people afraid. They probably find it amusing. Well, screw them and screw all the people like them that shake our faith in the basic goodness and decency of humanity. They are not worth our fear.

Anyway, I apologise for the rant and the fact that the only meal planning I will do today is working out which bits of these spineless lowlifes I would like to chop off and bake in a pie (with apologies to George R. R. Martin). Normal service to be resumed shortly.

Home

The alarm went off at 5:15 this morning and we left Mull by the 7 o clock ferry which smelled strongly of stewed coffee. I dozed for much of the drive and so saw only brief flashes of the dramatic rolling hills that flank the road south from Oban, and the shining waters of Loch Lomond. We stopped once, briefly, for petrol and M&S sandwiches (smoked salmon and cream cheese, ham and cheddar) and, as a result, made it back to Leeds by early afternoon where the first cup of tea, brewed in our own teapot, tasted exactly like home.

The cat is back with us, much to our mutual joy, and is currently curled up next to me. She says to say hello to the blog readers.

I said yesterday that I would decide on my favourite holiday dish on the ferry; I lied. I tried to sleep on the ferry, with my head cushioned on my handbag. When we discussed it last night, D said that he thought Cafe Fish's Goan fish curry was the star turn - and it was, indeed, excellent, so I will go with that - certainly, I've already been searching out recipes online to try and recreate it. But it's hard to compare breakfasts and burgers and high end Glasgow establishments and island pub grub; suffice it to say we have eaten well across the fortnight and, no doubt, the scales tomorrow (or the next day) will bear witness. Sigh.

Still, I'll worry about that later. For now, I'm indulging in the mild melancholia that comes with the end of a holiday, tempered by my pleasure at being back at home surrounded by all home comforts, flanked by the feline and looking forward to an episode or two of Bake Off on the telly box. Life is good.