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.

Recipe corner: spicy pineapple pickle

So you remember how in my last post I gave you a recipe for a pineapple cake?  Today we find out what happened to the other half of the pineapple.  You may, of course, wonder why we didn't just eat said pineapple and I couldn't tell you the answer.  I tend to eat more fruit at work, when it is in my lunchbox and just there than when I am at home.  It's not that I don't like it, I just tend not to think of it.  Definitely an area for improvement.

Anyway, pineapple pickle.  This was a last ditch attempt to save some pineapple that was going a bit brown and (no other word for it) manky.  It was a dying pineapple.  It was on the brink between this life and the next.  And it made a fantastic pickle I am very happy to say.  We had it with a curry (paneer and red pepper, if you're interested, from Meera Sodha's lovely "Made in India").  We had it with some jerk chicken and potato salad (our food combinations are somewhat random at the moment but don't judge - this was delicious!) And we had it in ham and cheese toasties wherein it was EPIC.  

Talking of random - I realised once I had started that I didn't have any mustard seeds (don't worry, they've subsequently been ordered online - the importance of a fully stocked spice cupboard is not to be under estimated) so I, er, rinsed off a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard.  It clearly didn't affect my enjoyment of the finished product but it felt a bit weird.  Mind, I read somewhere the other day that Jack Monroe, who has managed to carve out an entire career telling people what to do with random tins of food, recommends rinsing off spaghetti hoops in one of her books to make a store-cupboard version of cacio e pepe*.  So rinsing is apparently a thing in times of desperation.  

*I will, most very definitively, not be trying this.

Ingredients

2 dried chillies, soaked in boiling water (I see no reason why you couldn't sub in a fresh chilli if you didn't have dried.  If you do use dried, then soak them for at least an hour or else they won't be soft enough to blitz.

1 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated

1 garlic clove, grated

1 tbsp yellow mustard seeds

1 tsp ground turmeric

200ml white wine vinegar

Tbsp light brown sugar

Half a ripe pineapple, cored and cut into chunks

Drain the chillies and put in a pestle and mortar along with the ginger and garlic and a good pinch of salt.  Pound to a paste.  Add a tiny splash of the chilli water if it needs a little bit of help to amalgamate.

Heat a small, dry frying pan and then, when it is nice and hot, dry fry the mustard seeds until they start to the pop.

Transfer the seeds, and the paste, into a bowl large enough to hold all the pineapple, then add the turmeric, the vinegar and the sugar.  Set aside for 10 minutes or so, stirring every so often, until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Taste at this stage.  You may wish to add a bit more sugar if your vinegar is a particularly sour variety.

Add the pineapple and a decent pinch of salt.  Stir to ensure the fruit is coated in the liquid.  You could transfer it to a jar at this stage if you intend to take a nice picture of it for your blog (which you then forget to do).

Don't eat straight away - let it sit and collect itself for at least an hour before serving, and preferably longer.  The original recipe said that it would last three days in the fridge but I reckon you'd get a bit longer out of it than that.  Still, once you try one of those toasties you'll probably run through it in no time.

Recipe corner: pineapple upside-down cake

I make no apologies for publishing something so unashamedly retro because it is, without a shadow of a doubt, exceedingly good cake.

I've been baking quite a lot over the last few weeks.  For one thing, barely going out means that I need to keep a supply of potential snack food on hand.  For another, it is a very soothing activity and makes me feel very content in a sort of 1950s hausfrau sort of a way.  Also (and this is particularly pertinent to this post) we have been getting all sorts of random fruit and veg in our weekly box which we wouldn't normally buy and baking is a good way to make sure everything gets utilised.  

I read through quite a few recipes before settling on this one, which originates from the BBC Good Food site.  The method, of smearing the butter and sugar mixture all over the bottom of the cake tin rather than melting it down into a caramel, seemed to me to be pleasingly faff free and it worked a treat.  When you look at the ingredients list, the scant amount of sponge mix might seem like an error but I think it produces an excellent ratio of fruit and caramel to cake.  

Treat this recipe as a blueprint to pull out whenever you have some random soft fruit that you need to use (perhaps in your weekly box, or a tin lurking at the back of the store cupboard).  I had great success with making an upside-down plum cake the other week (in fact, D preferred the plum version to it's pineapple cousin).  Inspired by that, and again in the quest for the perfect distribution and ratio, I would encourage you to imagine a plum cut into eighths when slicing your fruit.  When I made the version in the picture, my pineapple chunks were a bit...chunky.

Incidentally (and I'll stop whiffling and get to the recipe in a second) I make this in my silicon cake tin and it works like a charm.  I am slightly obsessed, I won't deny it, even if it does fly in the face of tradition somewhat and means that I run the risk of losing my 1950s hausfrau badge.

Ingredients

50g light, soft brown sugar

50g softened butter

Tsp ground cinnamon

250g pineapple, cut into smallish chunks (see note above)

100g softened butter

100g caster sugar (golden if you happen to have it)

100g self raising flour

Tsp baking powder

Tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan).

Combine the 50g butter with the 50g sugar and the cinnamon until it reaches the texture of very damp sand.  Spread this across the bottom of a 20cm cake tin and about a quarter of the way up the sides (you don't have to be too precise here).  By far the easiest way to do this is with your hands.  Pretend you're making sandcastles.

Arrange the fruit across the caramel mixture.  Aim for as even a distribution as possible.

Now for the cake.  Cream together the rest of the butter and the sugar until pale and fluffy.  Then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one, and stir through the vanilla extract.  Finally, sift in the flour and the baking powder and gently fold through so that you have a soft, smooth batter.

You now need to spread the cake mix on top of the fruit.  It may look like there isn't enough, so spend a bit of time, preferably using a silicon spatula, to make sure the mixture is evenly spread.  

Bake in the oven for 25-35 mins (my oven is a beast so I start checking after 20).  The cake is ready when a skewer (or a small piece of dried spaghetti, my weapon of choice) comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool for 5 minutes and then you need to turn it out onto a plate.  This is less scary than it sounds.  Place your hand flat under the cake tin (use an oven glove if it is still too hot to handle at this stage) and cover the exposed cake layer with a large plate then turn over in one swift, smooth movement.  Believe me, I am the clumsiest person in the world and I have managed several times without incident.

This cake is lovely warmed, with cream or ice cream for a school dinners-tastic pudding, but cold with a cup of tea is good too.  Whatever floats your boat.

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. 

A journal of the plague year

Greetings from what feels like day 10,367 of lockdown.  Here in the UK, we are supposed to be in phase 2 or level 3 or something but since I (in common with much of the population) didn't actually understand an awful lot of the government guidance issued earlier this week (I mean, I understood some of the individual words themselves just not what they were supposed to convey when squished together in a sentence) I am just staying exactly where I am. 

The world is very small right now.  There is the house, the little garden, the occasional foray to the Sainsburys Local on the corner and, on one memorable occasion, a jaunt ten minutes down the road to the pharmacist.  That is it.  Certain things, occasionally, will come to mind and I will realise that I miss them and long for them so strongly that I experience a momentary flash almost akin to physical pain.  But then it passes, and I sink back into my little life, not contented exactly, but certainly not unhappy. 

Work is busy and that helps a lot.  D and I are both able to work full time from home so we have two stations set up - one in a little study at the front of a house (with a proper desk and a view of the street), one at the end of the dining room table (colder, feels less "professional", but closer to the kettle).  We alternate between them.  We have our little routine; whoever is based downstairs makes the first cup of tea of the day, we always stop for Popmaster (and the second cup of tea) at half ten, lunch is twelve on the dot.  As I said, a little life.

We've been eating well though, I'll say that for us.  I'm going to try and publish some recipes on here in the next few weeks to make sure some dishes get saved for posterity.  Quite a lot of baking (our flour stocks remain healthy for now), some random combinations (food waste, always something of an anathema has now become an absolute no no.  D baked up potato peelings the other week - NB: good, but probably needed slightly less time in our beast of an oven) and lots of comfort food type dishes.  This weekend a glorious treat; The Black Swan at Oldstead (of Michelin star and Tommy Banks fame) are doing food box deliveries and this week have extended to Leeds.  Two three course meals for two people (so four meals in all) for seventy of your English pounds.  I will share pictures.  And if you happen to live in the vicinity (they're delivering to Oldstead, York, Harrogate and North Leeds) then check out the website (not an ad.  Not sponsored, although if they'd like to, I am shameless, shameless.  I will extol their virtues to all 5 of my readers all day in return for some nice food.)

I hope that all of you out there are staying safe and well; and to all on the frontline - not just the doctors and nurses but the people who man the checkouts in the supermarkets, the delivery drivers, the posties, everyone, thank you very much.  I am acutely conscious that the only reason I am able to whiffle on from the safety of my own home is because you are out there facilitating that.