a pasta day

Further experimentation on the “what can we have for lunch” brought forth a simple and delicious dish:  pasta, drizzled with good olive oil, lashings of grated parmesan, and generous quantities of torn basil leaves from the forest^H^H huge pot on the kitchen window sill.

Supper was a courgette bake – saute onions and garlic, some dried chilli, some slices of courgette.  Add a can of tomatoes and cook down for ten minutes.  Throw in half a glass of red wine if you have it about.

Mix with pasta, and put in an oven proof dish, top with torn basil and a chopped mozzarella, bake at gas 6 or so for 20 minutes.

We eat this a lot – it’s delicious.

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veg box 29 July 09

Our first from Abel and Cole – broad beans, spinach, potatoes, onions, courgettes, cherry tomatoes, mango, apples, tangerines, curly cabbage.

Plenty of meals there – first thoughts are that the spinach will go into some dhal, and probably a lasagne.  Pasta bake with the courgettes, or maybe a moussaka. Indian cabbage, and/or cabbage with mozzarella, or maybe even a cabbage risotto (which is surprisingly nice).  Not many broad beans, so probably do them for lunch with pasta, feta and lemon.

Potatoes, tomatoes and fruit will go to general provender.

I also bought a rosemary and walnut sour dough loaf, which will be today’s lunch, with cheese and an apple.

All in all – pleased. Although I can see this could prove quite expensive quite quickly!

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bramble and nectarine flan

First brambles of the season on Flickr

Pete picked the first of the brambles on Saturday – we didn’t get much from them the year before, as the landlord hacked the plants right back, but they’ve returned to glory this year. I must clear some freezer space, because they are truly delicious.

There weren’t all that many, and there was also half a pack of frozen pastry left from the walnut and stilton flan, and there were some nectarines in the fruit bowl.

Pete rolled the pastry into the rectangular flan tin, and tipped the baking beans straight on top. It’s a trick everyone does once, I think, so just as well to get it over.  We fished them out, added some greaseproof paper and put them back.  Blind baked it at gas 6 for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, I put about half a packet of digestive bikkits in a plastic bag, and whacked them with a rolling pin, all the time muttering the name of my least favourite client under my breath.  Added a couple of tablespoons of ground almonds.

Into a shallow pan went blackberries, 2 fat nectarines and a cinnamon stick (well, why not?) and some water, and I cooked this down until the nectarines were soft, and I had a nice brambly syrup.  The nectarines were fished out, set aside to cool, and then cut into neat(ish) slices.

The digestive/ground almond was spread across the pastry base, and then the brambly mixture poured over the top, and the nectarine slices placed over that.  Then it went back in the oven for 15 minutes.

When it came out, it looked nice, but a bit dry.  Pete said “add some alcohol”, so we poured a shot glassful of Cointreau over the top.  It was still a bit dry, but we didn’t care – we soused it in double cream and scoffed it anyway.  It rapidly became known as Cointreau Pie.

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stilton, walnut and red pepper quiche

More party food, concocted from bits and bobs.

One pack of frozen shortcrust pastry removed from freezer – I know, I know, but I’m hopeless at pastry.  Just am.

Got Pete to roll it out and line the flan tin because he’s better at it than me.  There’s half the block left, and some nectarines in the fruit bowl, which is giving me an idea for individual nectarine tarts, but we’ll see …  This long thin flan tin is a wonderful thing – much easier to serve the contents.

Lined with greaseproof (this is important), added my trusty baking beans, and baked it blind at gas 6/200˚C for ten minutes.

While that was going on, I sliced half a red pepper and chopped a small onion, and sautéd them down in some olive oil.  Added a few finely chopped sage leaves from the garden at the end.

Whisked four eggs and the remains of the double cream in the fridge, added chopped up Stilton (about 100g, I’d say), and about 40g of walnuts, which I had first put in a plastic bag and bashed with a rolling pin while muttering the name of someone under my breath.  Added sea salt and black pepper.

Removed the greaseproof and baking beans from the pastry (this is important too), spread the pepper/onion mix on the bottom, topped with the egg/cheese/walnut mix.

Returned it to the oven for about 35 minutes.  It rose a lot, but is sagging back now.  It’s a slightly worrying brown shade, but I’m going to put that down to the walnuts, because it doesn’t smell burnt …

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chicken wings with lemon, black pepper and bay leaves

We are summoned to a supper party tonight where we must bring a dish.  We’ve not been very well all week, and so no shopping has been done, thus a rummage in the store cupboards and freezers was required.

There were two packs of chicken wings (10 wings in all) in there, so here’s what I did:

Put them in a shallow dish, and anointed them with lots of olive oil, the juice of a lemon, lots of black peppercorns – crushed, not grated – and about a dozen bay leaves from my lovely bay tree.  I left them to marinade for about an hour, then put them on a metal tray and baked them at gas 6 / 200˚C for about 50 minutes.

Simples, as the meerkcat would say.  But delicious and good for a party, as it’s finger food.

However, there were far fewer chicken bits than I thought, and it looked a bit spartan, so I had to have a think about something else to take.  That’ll be the next post, any moment now!

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apricot and blueberry upside down cake

apricot and blueberry upside down cake, originally uploaded by ramtops.

We had some apricots going wrinkly, and some blueberries that needed using up.

I halved the apricots and removed the stones, then put them and the blueberries in a shallow pan with a little water, some honey, and a good pinch of ginger. Simmered them gently for about five minutes.

I beat 125g of butter, 200g of granulated sugar and a slosh of vanilla essence until light and fluffy, then added 40g ground almonds, 125ml of yogurt, 125ml of milk and two eggs, and beat again. Then folded in 150g plain flour and a teaspoon of baking powder (I never use self raising).

I put the fruit in the bottom of an 8″ silicone sponge pan, and poured the cake batter on top. Cooked at gas 4/180˚C for about 45 minutes.

This would work well with any soft fruit, I think – it certainly worked very well with blueberries and apricots!

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apricot and blueberry upside down cake

apricot and blueberry upside down cake, originally uploaded by ramtops.

We had some apricots going wrinkly, and some blueberries that needed using up.

I halved the apricots and removed the stones, then put them and the blueberries in a shallow pan with a little water, some honey, and a good pinch of ginger. Simmered them gently for about five minutes.

I beat 125g of butter, 200g of granulated sugar and a slosh of vanilla essence until light and fluffy, then added 40g ground almonds, 125ml of yogurt, 125ml of milk and two eggs, and beat again. Then folded in 150g plain flour and a teaspoon of baking powder (I never use self raising).

I put the fruit in the bottom of an 8″ silicone sponge pan, and poured the cake batter on top. Cooked at gas 4/180˚C for about 45 minutes.

This would work well with any soft fruit, I think – it certainly worked very well with blueberries and apricots!

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impulse soup

The weather was unseasonal and rainy, and forecast to be like that for the week. Neither P nor I are feeling particularly well, either, and so we decreed Soup.

There wasn’t much in – we’ve cancelled the box from Box Bush Farm, as we weren’t happy with the service. The last box we had contained spinach, lettuce, a limp cabbage and some chard, and two bunches of carrots – not very varied, we thought. There were a few apples and bananas too, but we have been disappointed. So we are currently veg boxless until I decide whether to give Abel and Cole a try.  Anyway, I digress.

We had lots of carrots.  Lots.  But not much else.  So I sliced them very thin with the fancy addon for the Kitchenaid mixer, and hurled an onion in there too, and sweated them down in some oil.  Rummaging in the fridge brought forth a jug of stock from the Moroccan rack of lamb I did last week, so that went in.  And a carton of creamed tomatoes, and a mugful or so of lentils.  Left it to cook for about 90 minutes.

Lovely – the stock gave it a lovely spicy flavour.  And it will do us for the week.

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gooseberry sponge pudding

A friend of mine regularly sells produce from her garden to support the LibDems, and this week she was offering gooseberries.  I bought 10lbs (for a fiver!) – 6lbs have gone to make wine, 2 bags full in the freezer, and the rest I put into a pudding last night.

The goosegogs went into a bowl, and I put in a good sloosh of elderflower cordial (gooseberries and elderflower are a match made in heaven) and a little honey. I didn’t even bother to top and tail them!

I beat 5oz of marg and 5oz of sugar until it was light and creamy, then added 2 eggs and 5 oz of ground almonds bit by bit (egg, then half the almonds then egg then rest of the almonds) and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla essence.

Lobbed the mix on top of the fruit and scattered with quite a lot of slivered almonds, as I’d opened a new bag last week, and some of them didn’t fit into their airtight jar and I wanted to use them up.

Baked at 180˚ for 50 minutes.  Gorgeous.

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moroccan style rack of lamb

Ages ago – a couple of years – we bought half a salt marsh lamb for Lots of Money. The meat was beautiful and it was worth every penny, and for some reason the rack remained in the freezer.

We hauled it out on Saturday, with a view to roasting it for Sunday dinner, but when the time came round, we didn’t really fancy it.  However, out of the freezer it had come and thus it had to be used up.

So on Sunday night, in the slow cooker, I put four carrots, one courgette and a dozen shallots and a sliced red pepper, together with a glug of olive oil, and left it on low for four hours.

Then on Monday morning, in went some cardamon seeds, pomegranate seeds, a pinch of paprika, a sloosh of tomato ketchup, some apple juice, some water, a load of tamarind paste, and the rack of lamb, cleaved into two.  In rummaging through the kitchen drawers at the weekend looking for something, I found some natural cotton bouquet garni bags, so in one of them went bay leaves, savoury, sage and parsley (all from the herb garden). I seasoned with salt and pepper, put the lid on, and left it on low for about 10 hours.

The meat fell off the bones, and the flavour was wonderful. We had it with plain boiled potatoes, as there was plenty of veg in with the meat.

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