Challah Bread

After the fun of plaiting a loaf last week I thought I'd have a go at baking Challah - a traditional Jewish type of bread which is somewhere between a normal white loaf and a brioche - the dough is enriched with eggs and a little milk and sugar, which makes it deliciously rich without losing the light airiness that we associate with yeasted breads. I followed Paul Hollywood's recipe for this, using a three strand plait shape - a total breeze after the eight strand fun last week! The shaped dough is egg-washed, left to prove and then baked for about 25 minutes. It does take on colour quickly so it's worth watching it - I put a sheet of foil over mine after the first 15 minutes to stop it browning any further. Here it is in all its glory:

It's great toasted and buttered, and I reckon any stale leftovers would be great in a bread and butter pudding (not that there's much chance of stale leftovers in this house!).

Burns Night

25th January - the one day of the year when, traditionally, Scottish people are allowed to consume more alcohol and saturated fat than is recommended by their doctor....

I have a real fondness for Burns Night, perhaps because as an expatriate Scot living in the North East of England I feel I ought to celebrate my Scottish roots when I can, lest I become converted to the ways of the 'sassenach'! I like the fact that the food we eat for this celebration isn't the excess of the prime cut of meat or the enormous roasted bird that we associate with other annual festivities - in true Scottish spirit the haggis is a humble, thrifty food that all of us can afford, and in my view every bit as delicious as leg of lamb or a roast turkey. The main ingredients, of course, are the heart, liver and lungs from a sheep, plus beef suet, oatmeal, onion and spices. We get a little squeamish at the idea of offal these days - haggis comes from a time when we would never have dreamed of wasting any part of an animal, especially not when it tastes so good. Team this "chieftain o' the puddin' race" with 'bashed neeps' (mashed swede) and 'champit tatties' (mashed potato) and you have a meal fit for Rabbie himself, for little more than £1.50 a portion. For our Burns night we had a three course Scottish feast. First up, homemade oatcakes:

....with some Strathdon Blue highland cheese, homemade chutney and mustard pears:

Next, the main event! Macsween haggis, honey roasted 'bashed' neeps, buttery 'champit tatties' and a whisky cream sauce:

Bashed Neeps

The Chieftain

Making the first incision

Gently does it!

Thar she blows!

Let battle commence!

And, to finish, a seasonal take on a classic Scottish desert - Rhubarb and Whisky Cranachan! Rhubarb, honey, whisky cream and toasted oats in perfect harmony:

Happily, we had leftover haggis for the next day, which naturally enough found itself on top of a pizza, along with the rest of the strathdon blue and some shredded brussels sprouts. Even I was dubious about the wisdom of this combination, but I'm happy to report that it was delicious, although I fear it may not catch on in Italy:

Just like Granny used to make...?

Oh, and we had a little leftover rhubarb and cream, so a 'deconstructed cranachan' followed:

A good weekend for food, a bad weekend for my arteries!

Broccoli Pasta

I do enjoy the challenge of creating a satisfying meal from whatever you have in your fridge and cupboards. This was a good way of using up some broccoli that needed eating, and it required nothing more than what most people already have in their cupboards.

Serves 2

Half a head of broccoli, broken into small florets

1 onion, sliced

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

Parmesan

A little full-fat milk or cream

Herbs (parsley, basil, oregano - whatever you have to hand)

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

200g Pasta

1) Get a large pan of salted water on the boil. Cook the broccoli in the water for about 5 mins or until just tender. Remove it with a slotted spoon, leaving the pan of water on the boil. Add the pasta to the water and cook until 'al dente'.

2) Sweat the onion in a little olive oil until soft. Add the garlic, fry for a minute. Add the cooked broccoli, stir to coat in the oil, then add the milk, parmesan (to taste) and herbs. Remove half of the contents of the pan and blend until smooth. Return to the pan. Season the sauce with salt, pepper and more parmesan to taste. If it's too thick add more milk or some of the pasta cooking liquid. Stir into the pasta, serve with more parmesan and black pepper.

Very green!

Pigeon Breast, Puy Lentils, Winter Veg

I've written before about how highly I rate the meat of the wood pigeon. Basically, if you like venison, you're bound to like pigeon. Flavoursome, plentiful, cheap, healthy - there's really nothing not to like. Here, I've teamed it with puy lentils (flavoursome, plentiful, cheap, healthy.... sounds familiar!) which I love. They soak up flavour brilliantly provided you dress them while they're still hot, and their earthy flavour goes really well with the richness of the pigeon breast. You might want to serve two breasts each, although we found one was satisfying enough, with plenty of other flavours going on. You could even serve it without any meat, perhaps with a chunk of crusty bread to mop up the lentils.

For the Pigeon Breast:

1 or 2 Pigeon breasts each

Olive oil

A knob of butter

Salt & black pepper

For the Puy Lentils:

75g Puy lentils per person

1 Bay leaf

A few parsley stalks

Half an onion

(For the dressing):

2 tbsp Olive oil

1 tsp English mustard

1 tsp Honey

Lemon Juice
1 Garlic clove, crushed
Salt & black pepper

For the Winter Veg:

2 Carrots, peeled and sliced into medium chunks
Half a celeriac, peeled and diced
Half an onion, sliced
2 sticks of celery, diced
30g butter
A pinch of sugar
Lemon juice
Flat leaf parsley
Kale or cabbage (optional)

1) Wash the lentils thoroughly under cold water. Put them in a pan with the bay leaf, parlsey stalks and onion, add enough cold water to cover, bring to the boil and cook for 20-30 minutes until tender. Meanwhile, shake up the dressing ingredients in an empty jar, taste and adjust as necessary. When the lentils are cooked drain them, remove the bay leaf, return to the pan and add the dressing. Set aside.

2) Put the carrots, celeriac, onion, celery, butter and sugar in a pan with a pinch of salt and pepper. Add enough cold water to cover, bring to the boil and simmer with the lid off until the water has evaporated. The carrots should be tender and buttery, and the celeriac should have collapsed into a sweet puree. Finish with lemon juice and parsley. If you're serving kale/cabbage too then boil until tender and dress with olive oil and lemon juice.

3) When you're nearly ready to serve, heat a pan on a high heat. Rub salt, pepper and olive oil on the pigeon breasts then cook in the hot pan for 4 - 5 minutes, turning every minute. Add the butter for the last minute, basting the breasts. Set them aside on a warm plate to rest for 5-10 minutes. Serve!

I hid my lentils under everything else for some reason - lentil surprise! Presentation has never been my strong point.....

Plaited Loaf

This one was a bit of fun - an attempt at Paul Hollywood's 8 strand plait, as featured in his 'How to Bake' book. The dough is just a standard white bread dough (using 600g strong white bread flour). Once the dough has risen to at least double its original size it is knocked back, then split into 8 equal portions (I found each piece weighed 126g - it's worth being quite precise).

Not too little, not too much!

Next, the balls of dough are rolled out into strands of around 40cm in length:

Bread or sausage?

Next, the plaiting begins! The trick, I think, is keeping it quite tight and making sure the strands remain nice and thin.

Bread or octopus?

Eventually you reach the end of the strands, and at this point I find it's usually a good idea to hold the shaped dough up and get someone to take a photo of you looking smug:

I made this.

The dough is then left to prove for about an hour, while it nearly doubles in size.

Time to 'prove' your worth, dough!

Finally, the dough is baked at about 220C for about 30mins, with a baking tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven to help delay the formation of the crust, and thus help it rise further. I found my oven browned the crust pretty satisfactorily after about 15 mins, so I turned it down to 180C for the remainder of baking. As with all bread, a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom is a fairly good indicator that it is cooked, although if you're in any doubt then an extra 5 minutes will do it no harm.

When the bread has cooled sufficiently, the final step is to have another smug photo taken with the finished product:

Did I mention that I made this?

Every bit as important as looking good, it tastes great too. Good quality flour and a good slow rise are two of the key things when making a loaf (and, coincidentally, these are two things that are so often neglected in commercially produced bread). Furthermore, it slices into a pleasing cloud-shaped cross-section - certainly cheers me up in the morning!

Marmalade Making

I spent last weekend peeling, chopping, squeezing, boiling and decanting. The result was 11 jars of homemade marmalade, and quite delicious it is too! I had never made marmalade before, and there were no shortage of recipes to choose from - it seems that marmalade recipes are, quite rightly, a great source of pride to their authors, having been honed and refined every January, year after year. Everyone seems to more or less agree on the proportions - 1 part Seville oranges, 2 parts water, 2 parts sugar and about 1 lemon per kg of oranges. It's the method that causes disagreement - to cut the orange peel chunky or to shred it finely? To soak overnight or boil the oranges whole? To set the preserve to a firm jelly or leave it a little runny? It's a minefield for a marmalade novice like myself, but after a certain amount of research I decided to follow Nigel Slater's Recipe from his 'Kitchen Diaries II', along with occasionally consulting Dan Lepard's in-depth discussion of the method and science of marmalade making.

Seville oranges, the bitter variety that we need for marmalade, are in season during January and early February. It's worth seeking out organic, unwaxed fruit (not hard to find - Waitrose stock them, and I'm sure any decent greengrocer will too) as you are going to be using the peel as well as the pulp. I got particularly lucky when I bought mine - the cashier decided that because they were knobbly and green-tinged they must be a bit dodgy, and try as I might to explain that they were a special type of orange she insisted on giving me a discount on them. If you insist! Golden granulated sugar seems to be the sugar of choice, with some people adding a little black treacle at the end of cooking to produce a characterstic dark coloured preserve. You don't need jam sugar with added pectin, because the oranges (specifically the pith and pips) naturally contain enough pectin to set the marmalade.

Anyway, the method involved first peeling your oranges (10 of them) and lemons (2 of them):

Then chopping up the peel to your desired thickness. This is probably the most labour-intensive part of the process - it took me over half an hour to chop up all the peel, but it does fill the kitchen with wonderful citrus scents.

Chop chop!

The peel then goes in a bowl (or two bowls if, like me, you don't own a bowl big enough) along with 2.5 litres of water, the squeezed juice from the fruits, the pulp (chopped) and the pips (tied up in a muslin bag). This gets left to soak for 24 hours, to release the pectin from the pith and pips.

The next day, the peel, pulp, pips and water get transferred to a pan and boiled for about 2 hours until the peel is soft enough to squish between two fingers. After that, the bag of pips is removed, the sugar is added and the mixture is boiled (skimming off any froth that bubbles up) for 15-45 mins until set (this is tested by putting a tablespoon of the mixture on a saucer and chilling in the fridge for a few mins - if it forms a skin it's ready. Alternatively, use a sugar themometer - the setting point is 105C). When the marmalade boils it does tend to froth up, so you must have a big enough pan so that it won't bubble up over the sides, burning your hands and ruining your hob - I decided my stockpot wasn't quite big enough so I made the marmalade in two batches, straining the peel (but reserving the liquid) after the initial 2 hours of boiling, weighing out the peel and liquid into half quantities. Bit of a faff, so perhaps a big preserving pan might be a good investment in future! Once the marmalade has reached setting point, it's a good idea to leave it for 10 mins so that the peel is evenly distributed throughout the preserve.

Marmalade comes up to the boil

Finally, the marmalade is decanted into sterilised jars, and left to cool. After that, all you have to do is look forward to breakfast the next morning!

Done!

North East Food Heroes: NEOG

As part of a new monthly feature I'm going to focus on some of my favourite places to buy, eat and shop for food in the North East. I think we've got some amazing producers in this region, and as I hope I'm demonstrating in this blog, it's possible to eat extremely well even on a fairly low budget.

So, without further ado, my first 'North East Food Hero' is NEOG (North East Organic Growers)!

NEOG run a weekly organic veg bag scheme from their farm in Bomarsund, Northumberland. We have been receiving a weekly veg bag from them since June 2012, and even through an appallingly wet summer the quality and variety of veg has been terrific. They grow what they can themselves, and source the rest from a network of other organic farms, primarily local, with the occasional import during the less fruitful months (sourced as close as possible, and never air freighted). Veg bags are delivered weekly to a number of different links across the region (we pick ours up at St Thomas' Church in Newcastle city centre on a Wednesday). Buying our veg direct from growers helps to keep costs down (we pay £11 for a large bag, which provides the two of us with the vast majority of our weekly veg requirements). It also means we're often getting fresher veg than the supermarket could ever offer - carrots that left the ground hours rather than days ago, and sweet tasting freshly cut greens. 

The contents of our NEOG bag in early September

Having no control over what veg we get week to week might seem restricting, but in fact we have found it quite liberating - cooking with whatever the season provides helps us avoid the inevitable banality of mindlessly putting the same things in our shopping basket week after week. It forces us to be imaginative in the kitchen, consulting the cookbooks and throwing unusual combinations together. It also gives us, in the risk of sounding a little hippy-dippy, a sense of being in tune with the seasons - when we eat asparagus we know spring is here, when we eat courgettes we know that summer is in full swing, and when parsnips turn up in our bag we know the frosts have set in. Far from restricting our diet, it gives us ultimately more variety, with our way of eating changing from month to month.

NEOG also offer side orders of things like fruit, honey, organic eggs (we get bananas and lemons as part of our weekly order) at very reasonable prices. We've even had some of their gooseberries, which were delicious! If all this sounds like something you might be interested in then check out their website for information on how to start a trial. For me, they are true food heroes - organic vegetables, cheaper and fresher than you can buy in the supermarket, grown by people who care. What's not to like?!

Ricotta & Sundried Tomato Ravioli

Making use of another Christmas present here - my new ravioli press! I've been making occasional batches of fresh pasta for the past year using a pasta roller. The process takes a while, but it's very good fun working the pasta dough through the roller as it gets thinner and thinner. I still use a lot of dried pasta, but when I have the time it's very satisfying to make my own, and cut it to whatever shape/thickness I want. The basic recipe for pasta dough is very simple, involving only two ingredients - flour (tipo 00) and egg. Roughly 100g flour to one egg (multiplied as required), kneaded, rested and then rolled out. For ravioli, you want quite a thin pasta sheet - rolled out to setting 8 on your machine - as it will be doubled up when you assemble them. If you don't make your own pasta, then I'm sure you could still have good results if you buy sheets of fresh pasta to make ravioli with. Provided, of course, that you have a ravioli press!

Serves 2

For the Ravioli:

150g fresh pasta, thinly rolled out

100g ricotta cheese

50g sundried tomatoes, finely chopped

1 egg, beaten

parmesan

parsley, finely chopped

salt and black pepper

For the Sauce:

1 small glass of white wine

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

50g green olives

20g sundried tomatoes

2 tbsp double cream

parmesan

salt and black pepper

1) Arrange the pasta sheet on the ravioli press according to instructions. In a bowl, combine the ingredients for the filling, only adding as much egg as you need to bind it all together. Spoon the mixture into the ravioli, filling them completely to avoid any air bubbles forming.

2) Place the other half of the pasta sheet on top and roll over it with a rolling pin to seal. Turn the ravioli out.

3) Get a large pan of salted water boiling rapidly. Meanwhile, sweat the onion in a little oil until soft but not browned, add the garlic and fry for a minute then add the wine along with the olives, sundried tomatoes, a good sprinkle of grated parmesan and some salt and pepper. Allow the wine to bubble and reduce, then add the cream and heat through for a minute or so. Cook the ravioli in the boiling water - they should pop up to the surface after a minute or so. Cook them for a further couple of minutes then remove from the water and let them steam dry. If the sauce is too thick, add a little of the cooking water, then serve with a grating of parmesan and a grinding of black pepper.

Home-Baked, Stone-Baked Pizzas

It was an extremely successful Christmas as far as kitchen equipment goes - amongst other things we now have a mixer, a mincer, a ravioli press, a proper carving knife and, perhaps most exciting of all, a baking stone (from http://hobbshousebakery.co.uk/) for all my bread baking exploits! A baking stone essentially gives you that stone baked effect in a normal oven. It absorbs heat much better than a baking tray and therefore gives the dough more of a lift when it goes into the oven, allowing it to rise more as the air pockets expand. All of this means that as well as great loaves, I can now make proper pizzas with a crispy, blistered base:

Couple of stone baked white bloomers

Just like Mama used to make....

To make 2 pizzas I use:

125g Strong White Bread Flour

125g Plain White Bread Flour

3g Fast-action Dried Yeast

5g Salt

160ml Water

1 tbsp Olive Oil

In a bowl, combine the flours, yeast and salt, keeping the yeast and salt on seperate sides of the bowl. Add the water and mix with one hand until the dough starts to come together. Tip it out onto a clean surface, add the oil and knead for 5-10mins until smooth and stretchy. Form it into a round. Clean the bowl out, lightly oil it, place the dough in it and cover with clingfilm. Leave to rise for 1-3 hours. If you have a baking stone, preheat your oven to maximum well before you intend to bake, with the stone on the shelf in the top of the oven.

Ready for the oven!

Once risen, tip the dough out onto the surface, deflate it with your fingers and divide into two equal portions. Form each into a ball then roll them out to roughly 1-2mm thickness. Coat them well with semolina or polenta and place on a wooden board or a rimless baking sheet. Add your toppings (don't overcrowd it) and transfer either to your baking stone (the transfer can be a little tricky - make sure the pizza isn't too big for the stone, and that the base is well coated so that it won't stick to your board) or to a preheated baking tray. Bake for up to 10 mins - keep an eye on it, you'll know when it's done.

A word on toppings:

• For a tomato base you can use tomato puree, but I think you get a much better depth of flavour if you fry a little garlic and thyme in olive oil, add a tin of plum tomatoes, mash them with a fork, add a bay leaf, salt and pepper, and a pinch of sugar and reduce down for 30 mins until you have a deliciously tomato-ey paste.
• If you're using veg such as aubergine, courgette, pepper then it's nice to roast them for about 30 mins first - that way you get a nice caramelisation, and they lose a lot of their water content, meaning you don't get a soggy base.
• When you've arranged your toppings, a little drizzle of olive oil will help get everything nice and charred.
• I went for a classic Mediterranean style roast veg and buffalo mozzerella topping on this occasion, but sometimes it's good to think outside of the box - try some seasonal veg like kale or beetroot, or some local cheese - blue works great, as does goat's cheese.

Aubergine and Red Pepper, pre-roasted

Roast 'Middle White' Pork Belly

Pork belly is, undoubtedly, one of my favourite cuts of meat. When cooked properly, it offers us crispy, salty crackling, meltingly tender meat and a delicious layer of fat. However, as is always the case with meat, we must chose what we buy carefully. The quality of pork available to us in this country varies considerably – at worst we have pork imported from the EU, reared in conditions that would be illegal in this country (sows confined in stalls, unable to even turn around). That’s not to say that the standards in the UK are consistently higher – our cheap UK pork comes from pigs who are still reared intensively indoors on wooden slats, without even any straw for bedding. We’re talking about social animals of a similar level of intelligence to dogs here – pigs love rooting around in mud, and they like having their own space from time to time. Frustration in our intensively reared pigs often leads to them biting each other’s tails, and as a result it is common for piglets to have their teeth clipped and tails docked without anasthetic. All of this simply because we refuse to pay a few extra pennies for our bacon? Not for me thanks.

There is, of course, an alternative. The main labels to look out for if you want to buy pork from pigs that have had a happy life (and regardless of what you think about the ethics, there is no doubt that slow growing, traditionally reared pork tastes much better) are free range and organic. ‘Outdoor-bred’ and ‘outdoor-reared’ pork varies in welfare standards – the pigs still spend a large portion of their lives indoors, sometimes in less than desirable conditions. If you can, it is worth searching out a local producer of rare breed pork – these pigs are traditional breeds, shunned by commercial agriculture post-WWII when production intensified because they grow slowly, and don’t deal well with a life indoors. Without exception these rare breeds (Middle White, Gloucester Old Spot, Saddleback and more) taste amazing. They have more fat, which gives the meat flavour and keeps it moist during cooking. Happily, while it is fattier, it tends to contain more mono-unsaturated fat and less saturated fat than intensively farmed pork so is also a healthier option. A great number of small producers across the country are now specialising in rare breed pork – we get our middle white pork and bacon at our local farmers market (http://ravensworthgrangefarm.co.uk/). If you have a producer near you then I urge you to support them – without these producers the breeds would eventually die out which would be a great, great loss. Yes, it costs a little more than cheap supermarket pork but who cares? Eat less, and eat better quality.

Anyway, back to the roast pork belly:

Really easy to cook – make sure the skin is dry, and score it with a sharp knife (or get the butcher to do it). Rub plenty of salt into the skin, and a few aromatics if you fancy (crushed fennel seeds, coriander seeds, caraway…. etc.). Preheat your oven to maximum and roast the pork for about 20 mins until the skin crackles, then turn it right down to 160C and roast for a further 2 hours or so until the meat is very tender. I threw a loads of root veg, and a few segments of lemon and orange under the pork for the last hour of cooking. Rest the meat for at least 15 minutes once it comes out of the oven. Serve with the roasted roots and anything else you fancy. The meat should be so juicy that you don’t really need a gravy. Makes great leftovers for sandwiches, stir frys, salads etc.

In other news, a trip to the farmers market this morning yielded a pheasant, a woodcock, roe venison strip loin, 2 pigeon breasts, 2 guinea fowl breasts, 2 middle white pork chops, 2 packs of middle white bacon, middle white chipolatas and 4 pig kidneys. Should keep us going for a month or so!

A Salad of Jerusalem Artichokes, Cabbage, Mushrooms and Hazelnuts

A nice winter salad this one – Jerusalem artichokes arrived in our veg bag this week, and a bit of googling tells us that they are not, in fact, an artichoke, nor are they from Jerusalem – they’re a member of the sunflower family. The knobbly tubers are similar to potatoes, but much harder to peel because they’re so god-damn knobbly. Quite an unique taste – sweet and distinctively nutty, in the kitchen they behave much like potatoes. You can boil ‘em, roast ‘em, gratinate ‘em, mash ‘em and probably even make chips with ‘em. I opted for the par-boil and roast option (along with a few fat cloves of garlic), roasting for about half an hour til they turned a bit crispy and caramelised. Team them up with some lightly boiled savoy cabbage, some slowly sautéed onion and mushroom, some toasted hazelnuts (half of them bashed until they crumble), a good dressing of olive oil and apple balsamic, and a warm slice of buttered toast and you have a light, unusual, and really rather classy supper.

The only thing to bare in mind here is that jerusalem artichokes, while delicious, rival even swede and baked beans with their ability to make you fart. Not necessarily a problem in my book, but if you’re expecting company then perhaps they’re not the veg of choice…..

Gnocchi with a Mutton, Orange & Parsley Ragu

This rich, warming pasta sauce was an improvisation, but one that seemed to work very well! I served it with homemade gnocchi, following this recipe, but there would be no shame in using decent ready made gnocchi, or serving it with pasta. The skins from the (baked) potatoes required in the recipe were served up as a little ‘antipasti’ – I spooned a little ricotta into each half and grilled them for a few minutes until crispy, then drizzled them with a little olive oil and balsamic…. Nothing Michelin-starred about it but it always feels good not to waste anything in the kitchen!

To do this justice you need good quality mince (I used mutton, but lamb or good quality beef mince would work too) and a decent, drinkable, red wine, as it forms the base of the sauce. ‘Cooking’ wine has no place here!

Mutton, Orange & Parsley Ragu

Serves 4, with pasta or gnocchi

 

400g mutton or lamb mince
2 onions (red and brown), thickly sliced
2 sticks of celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 leek, diced
5 cloves of garlic, bashed
1 tsp dried oregano
4 tbsp tomato puree
2 glasses of red wine
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 orange
a bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped
apple balsamic vinegar
olive oil
salt & black pepper

1 Heat a little olive oil in a large pot. Brown the mince, seasoning with plenty of salt and black pepper. If the mince releases a lot of fat, skim most of it off, leaving approx. a tablespoon (save the fat you have skimmed off for the next time you cook roast potatoes etc.). Chuck in the onions, celery, leek and carrot and fry until the onion is soft. Add the oregano and tomato puree, fry for a further couple of minutes. Add enough wine to cover everything, and let it bubble for a few minutes. Add the bay leaf, cinnamon stick, star anise and thinly pared zest of the orange to the pan, and a splash of water to cover.

2 Leave to simmer on a low heat, partially covered, for at least an hour, adding a little water if it starts to dry out.

3 Add the chopped parsley, the juice of half the orange, a good splash of balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Adjust the seasonings as appropriate – you want a good balance between sweetness (orange), acidity (balsamic vinegar) and salt. Remove the Bay leaf, cinnamon stick and star anise. Serve with gnocchi or pasta, top with some good ricotta cheese and more parsley.

Purple and Green Stir Fry

We were delighted to get a purple cauliflower in our local organic veg delivery this week:

The taste isn’t vastly different to that of a normal white cauliflower, but it’s fantastic to look at! From an aesthetic point of view it would seem a crime to smother it in cheese sauce, so instead I decided to use it in a stir-fry with some autumn greens – far more artistic!

1 Purple Cauliflower, broken up into florets

1 Red Onion, thinly sliced

1 Pak Choi, leaves and stalks seperated, shredded

1/2 a Green Chilli, finely chopped

1 Clove of Garlic, sliced

1 Tbsp Sesame Seeds, lightly toasted in a dry pan

Good quality Chilli & Garlic sauce

Peanut butter (I actually used some homemade cashew nut butter – cashews, sunflower oil, salt and honey, blended together, but peanut butter would also work)

1 tsp Sesame Oil

1 tsp Soy Sauce

First make the sauce – mix the chilli sauce, nut butter, sesame oil and soy sauce. Taste and adjust – add more of each component until you hit on a balance you’re happy with. Steam the cauliflower florets for 5 minutes until tender but still ‘al dente’. Set aside. Heat a tbsp of sunflower oil in a hot wok, add the red onion and the stalks of the pak choi. Stir fry for a couple of minutes. Add the garlic and chilli, fry for a further minute. Add the cooked cauliflower and the leaves of the pak choi, stir fry for a further minute or two until the leaves begin to wilt. Stir in the sesame seeds and the sauce, allow it to heat through then serve, either with rice (egg-fried if you fancy) or noodles.

A healthy, tasty, quick, and colourful meal for a chilly November evening. Just a shame we’re not sophisticated enough to know how to use chopsticks…..

A whole chicken goes a long way....

The 2.2kg organic free range chicken we got at the farmers market earlier this month has yielded us 8 extremely generous portions, and 2 litres of the most deliciously chicken-y tasting stock I’ve ever made. I jointed the chicken after we bought it, the 2 breast portions made the ‘chroizo stuffed chicken breast’ from our previous blog, while the legs and carcass went in the freezer. We used the leg portions this week in an oven baked chicken curry – vaguely following this recipe. I added some chopped fennel and missed out the chopped tomatoes, using some tomato puree instead for a thicker sauce. The results were great – chicken leg meat is, in my view, far more delicious than breast meat and the crispy, salty skin makes it so much more interesting than the bland chunks of anonymous meat you get in the average takeaway. We ate it with some cous cous and roasted veg that we had leftover from a previous meal.

The chicken carcass, a few days later, was roasted along with cubed swede, celeriac, carrot, onion and whole garlic cloves until the remaining meat on the chicken was cooked through, and the veg were slightly caramelised in the lovely juices from the chicken. An amazing amount of meat came off the carcass, so we ate half of it with the roasted veg, some pearl barley and cabbage for dinner:

The leftover chicken and veg was then fried up the next day for lunch, with some crusty bread:

….So there we go – 4 meals each from 1 large chicken, and a couple of litres of finest stock in the freezer.

Squash, Apple and Cider Soup

A real seasonal bowl of soup this one – and a result of consulting several different soup recipes involving pumpkins/root veg and cider. I used a couple of small harlequin squashes, and a cooking apple, with onion, garlic, allspice, ground ginger, nearly a whole bottle of organic dry cider and enough stock to cover the veg. Caramelising the onion at the start rather just sweating it seemed to add a nice flavour. When the squash was soft the soup was blended, cream stirred in and garnished with cox apple slices, fried in a little oil and butter until brown, and then seasoned with a little cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar.