Stars in your Eyes

Pie is one of my favourite savoury dishes. In my experience even the poorest restaurants that can't even make tomato soup from a can taste nice somehow can make a half-decent pie. I was certainly in need of a pie to fortify me on the penultimate Saturday of November as I had managed just five hours sleep the night before following my re-election as secretary of the local cricket club at its Annual General Meeting.

The month of December was soon going to be on me so I elected to make a pie that I often have at this time of year. The recipe is derived from a dish sometimes known as a Starry Vegetable Pie. However I have my own way of preparing the vegetables that improves on the original recipe.

I first took three large Sweet Potatoes, half a large Swede and four Carrots and peeled them as well as topping and tailing the Carrots and the Sweet Potatoes. I then cut these vegetables into small centimetre squared cubes, which in the case of the Swede was no mean feat considering it was tough and wiry and as anyone who has prepared Swede will tell you this makes it exceptionally difficult to peel and cut.

I steamed the vegetables for around twenty minutes until they were soft enough for a fork to go through them without too much trouble. I then left the vegetables in a sieve and covered the sieve with a pan lid to keep the vegetables warm.

In the meantime I put two diced red onions and four finely sliced cloves of garlic into pan with half a pint of vegetable stock and half a pint of red wine, seventy five grams of puy lentils and seventy five grams of red lentils and a quarter of a pint of boiling water and simmered the contents of the pan fiercely for around half an hour. So as to ensure the pan did not boil dry I topped it up periodically with cold water and wine. After half an hour when the lentils had softened I added some sprigs of fresh Rosemary and let the contents of the pan stew slowly on the hob until there was enough liquid to cover the other ingredients but not too much that the rest of the contents of the pie when cooked would be drowned.

While the lentil mixture stewed on the hob I made the puff pastry that the filling of the pie was to be contained inside. The way to make the pastry is to first use the same technique as that used to make shortcrust pastry, i.e. by taking ten ounces of plain flour and five ounces of margarine and working them into fine breadcrumbs before using some milk or water to bind them into a pastry until you have a pliable pastry dough.

The way to make puff pastry from this point is to roll the pastry out flat and then fold half of it towards the centre of the pastry that has been rolled out and then roll the pastry with a rolling pin. This technique should be repeated around ten times so the pastry has plenty of air in it.

When the pastry was completely rolled I used half of it to line two centimetre deep and twenty-five centimetre wide pie dish, which I had previously greased. I then added the steamed vegetables, twenty five grams of crushed walnuts and the lentil mixture which I poured on top of the vegetables so that a proportion of the liquid they had been cooked in filtered evenly throughout the pie.

I then squeezed the juice of half a lemon onto the filling of the pie and then covered it with the remaining pastry making sure to press the edges of the pastry that topped it into the edges of the pastry covering the bottom of the dish. I then cut three slits in the top of the pie to allow some of the heat to escape during cooking and brushed the pastry with skimmed milk to keep it from drying up when in the oven.

I cooked the pie in the oven for 30 minutes at 170 degrees (180 for non-fan ovens) until the edges became a golden brown colour and then served it with some boiled peas. The pie proved to have a rich taste thanks to the wine, pastry and the rosemary while the lentils provided plenty of protein and the vegetables gave much substance to the dish. This pie certainly ticked all the boxes for being a fortifying winter meal.

Golden brown at the edges and ready to serve

A cross section of the pie midway through the meal. 

Hearts of Artichoke

After a chilled out Friday in mid-November at the local snooker club with an ex-work colleague I followed it up with another mellow Saturday and Sunday of quiet winter walks and early nights due to a number of active things I had been involved in over the last month or so finally catching up with me.

On the Sunday afternoon I made a soup that I had been meaning to for some time but had been stopped by the fact that I had not been able to find a supplier of artichoke locally until I recently discovered a niche supermarket out in the sticks that sells canned artichoke hearts.

Today's album on the player was Yes' 1977 offering Going for the One. The band have created some excellent music over their career that rocks and is pretty atmospheric. However to be fair to their critics they have also been responsible for some genuine rubbish. It is perhaps for this reason that the NME once described them as the worst band ever, obviously the NME had not heard Blue, Hearsay or One True Voice before coming to this rather unfair judgment on the band.

As the pounding title track of the album bounced between the speakers I fried five whole whole garlic cloves (after having first topped and tailed them and peeled them) with a large white Spanish onion that was about the size of a cricket ball and had been sliced into very thin pieces. I fried them for about fifteen minutes in olive oil until the onions became translucent and the veins were visible. I then drained the hearts of artichoke from the two cans they had arrived in and then added them to the onions and garlic. Next I added a pint of chicken stock, a quarter of a pint of milk then simmered the contents of the dish on the hob for around forty five minutes until the artichoke hearts softened.

After leaving the dish to cool off the hob for an hour I blended its contents and blended it on a medium setting on the blender so as to ensure the artichoke hearts were properly cut up. I then added the mixture to a pan with half a tub of plain Greek Yoghurt, stirred the yoghurt into the mixture and then warmed it through. The dish was then ready to serve.

The taste was interesting but memorable as the artichoke made it taste slightly sweet and the shredded artichoke pieces served to provide some much needed fibre.

The Artichoke in a pureed form in the soup. 

Sage Derby

On the first Sunday in November I was still recovering from the exciting late night epic Halloween Gig that I had attended on the Friday. In order to help regenerate myself for the week ahead I headed out with my puppy to a local beauty spot that's a viewpoint from which you can see five counties on a clear day and is in within about forty five minutes' walk of my house. On the way there I bumped into a scatty middle-aged woman who said she knew of me (but did not know me personally) and started asking me for careers advice. All things considered when I returned home I was therefore I was in need of some food to pick me up after the long walk and being verbally tackled by the bizarre woman.

As winter was now definitely now with us I made something including some traditional winter ingredients and for me nothing says winter like bread filled with sage and onion. I also had another good reason to make this bread as I intend to make for it a chili chess night to be held at the house of two good friends of mine at the end of the month.

The album of choice was my recently purchased re-mastered CD of the Walker Brothers' debut album 'Take it Easy with the Walker Brothers'. This edition features a number of bonus tracks from singles and EPs released at the same time as the original album which add only good things to the excellent mix of original songs and inspired covers pervading the original record. Choice cuts include 'Make it Easy on Yourself'', 'Dancing in the Street' and their take on Bob Dylan's 'Love Minus Zero (No Limit)'.

The first job was to lightly fry for around ten minutes a diced white onion, six shredded sage leaves and a tablespoon of dried sage. The trick with frying these ingredients was to ensure that the onions went transparent but did not burn and that the sage was softened without burning. When the frying was complete I took the pan of sage and onion off the hob and left it to cool.

Next job was to make the dough and I did this by mixing fourteen ounces of white bread flour and a sachet of yeast in a mixing bowl before adding the sage and onion and gradually adding half a pint of water to the mixture. The trick was to add the water gradually so as to allow the dry ingredients time to absorb it and avoid the dough becoming overly sloppy. If you try this one at home do make sure you have some spare flour on hand if your dough comes out too wet at first.

Once the dough was dry but easy to manipulate I kneaded it by punching it hard in the bottom of the bowl and then turning it over and doing the same to the other side of the dough. It may help readers who try this recipe to imagine the dough is the face of someone you dislike so you put the required energy into kneading the dough together.

Once the dough was kneaded into a ball I left it in a warm place to rise for about an hour. I then cooked it on 190 degrees (200 for non-fan ovens) for twenty five minutes until it began to brown around the edges and I could pull a skewer out of it clean.

The results were satisfying; the richness of the bread coupled with the sage and onion served to make it taste like a really rich stuffing that you would serve with a roast dinner. I will definitely try and make this for the upcoming chili and chess night.

Like a big ball of stuffing- but tastier and richer. 

Barleycorn

The trip to town on the Wednesday of my week off saw my recent past flash before me; I saw someone from school walking behind me, a  current fraternal contact stopped me near the largely deserted market stalls and touchingly I bumped into an old boss who I admire immensely. I was able to tell her as to how things had changed over the last few years and that I had pushed myself towards a proper career thanks largely to her which made it a warm reunion for both of us. Tellingly she parted with the words "everything happens for a reason". Maybe she was right.

The fourth piece of my past to come flying back at me was when I visited the town's newly opened record shop and picked up a secondhand copy of Radiohead's groundbreaking 1995 effort "The Bends". When I was at uni I fell out badly with a housemate who was obsessed with the band and therefore to me they were always guilty by association to an extent.

However the following day as I listened to the album while making a barley and sweetcorn casserole I was able to marvel at the sheer quality of the album. There are many high points and it's certainly one of those albums that reveals something new each time you listen to it. The best tracks include the opening distorted stomp of 'Planet Telex' and the biting power of 'Just' as well as the dreamy cynicism of 'Fake Plastic Trees'.

The casserole recipe was quite simple. I first fried eight ounces of Pearl Barley  for five minutes until they began to brown. I then added a pint and a half of vegetable stock to the Le Cresceut dish that the Barley was frying in and boiled it vigorously for three quarters of an hour while adding more stock if the dish looked to be boiling dry.

In the meantime I boiled two sets of sweetcorn on the cob for half an hour to soften them up and once they had softened I drained them and sheered the sweetcorn from the cobs. I then cut the sweetcorn into small squares and added it to the barley, after it had cooked for its allotted time, with a quarter of a pint of creme freche.

I stirred the contents of the Le Cresceut dish well and after a further five minutes of warming the dish through I served it. I had never tried pearl barley before but it made a textured and enjoyable alternative to rice while the sweetcorn and the creme freche added flavour to the dish that made it fortifying and filling. The meal certainly set up well for the following days trip to Manchester and Sheffield which involved cocktails on the 23rd floor of the Manchester Hilton, Danish food, an Ellie Goulding gig and meeting some exciting characters.

You'll find it hard to locate a more healthy and fortifying meal than this. 

Rule Daal

On the Tuesday of my recent week off in October after surviving my half-yearly check up at the Dentist I went for a dish that wouldn't be too hard on my teeth. I am very much a fan of curry and other spicy dishes so with this in mind I went for a Red Lentil Daal.

To continue with the heavy rock theme of the recent soundtracks to my culinary projects I stuck Hawkwind's 1975 space-rock masterpiece 'Warrior on the Edge of Time' . Released in 1975 it finds the band near the peak of their powers with epic and driving songs washed with synthesizers, saxes, guitars, driving bass and atmospheric flute such as "Assault and Battery" and "Golden Void". The album still sounds fresh today and sections of it clearly influenced the punk-rock movement that emerged two years later and lots of today's ambient and trance music.

I boiled eight ounces of white rice for around half an hour and while the rice boiled I did the following:

1. I fried in my Le Cresceut dish two ounces of sliced ginger root, one teaspoon of coriander, one teaspoon of turmeric, one teaspoon of ground cumin and three finely sliced cloves of garlic. As these ingredients slowly fried for a couple of minutes I cut up a yellow pepper into one centimetre squares and added it to the dish.

2. While these ingredients fried I boiled eight ounces of red lentils fiercely in a frying pan for around twenty minutes until they began to turn golden were soft enough to cut with the edge of a spoon. I took care to ensure that by the time they had cooked they had absorbed most of the water they had boiled in and could therefore they could be added straight to the Le Cresceut dish.

After the lentils had cooked with the contents of the Le Cresceut on a low heat for a further ten minutes I served them with the boiled white rice. The combination of Turmeric, Cumin, Ginger Root and Garlic served to help rid me of my cold that had been troubling me for a few days as the intense flavours cut through my sinuses and brought a real freshness to my day.

The Daal glowed a dull gold colour as a result of the bright yellow Turmeric in the recipe.

Butterflies are free to fly

One thing I always like to do at the start of a week off is to make some cake to consume periodically during the course of the week. This time round I decided to make some butterfly cakes. The soundtrack was Cat Stevens' final album 'Back to Earth' which was recorded in 1978 and was his last record for nearly thirty years. The album was Stevens' best since his peak in the early seventies with the one-two punch of 'Tea for the Tillerman' and 'Teaser and the Firecat'. It is quite melancholy and one senses an era ending as the album unfolds but there is also an engaging purity and passion to the record that perhaps was due to Stevens recently converting to Islam which gave him a new focus in life.

I first made the sponge mixture by creaming together four ounces of low-fat margarine with four ounces of caster sugar until the grains of sugar in the bowl had been fully absorbed by the margarine. I then beat two eggs in a separate bowl and gradually stirred each into the mixture, which by now had become somewhat sloppy. So as to thicken the mixture enough to cook it properly I added four ounces of self-raising flour and stirred it in until the mixture had a consistency akin to that of a thick Angel Delight Pudding.

I greased sixteen patty tins in a baking tray with more margarine and then added enough of the mixture to reach the top of each individual tin. I cooked the mixture on 180 degrees, 190 for non-fan ovens, for twenty minutes and then put the tray to one side to cool.

While the sponges were cooling I made some butter cream icing by adding two ounces of low-fat margarine and four ounces of icing sugar to a bowl and stirring them together thoroughly using the same technique as I had to cream the margarine and sugar for the sponge mixture. This created an icing that was at first runny but set hard like cement after a period.

Once the sponges had cooled I took each out of its container and cut the top off them. I then cut each top in half length-ways and where I had removed the top from each sponge I put a layer of icing and then attached the two slices of sponge back onto each cake in the shape of a butterfly's wings.

I don't eat a lot of traditionally sweet cakes of this type however as I was on holiday this made a pleasant change and by using low-fat margarine it ensured that the sweetness in the cake was a tempered by a limited amount of fat.

Winged wonders- the freshly iced cakes.

Casseroled Pumpkin

The third part of my mission to use Pumpkin as an ingredient in every course of my evening meal last Saturday ,as a result of it being Halloween Weekend, was to make a Pumpkin Casserole. To me using Pumpkin in recipes is symbolic of the onset of winter as I'll make it at the time that it's Halloween which is invariably the time when the clocks change to British Wintertime.

The album I listened was by an act who's music always reminds me of wintertime; the album was the Walker Brothers' 1978 offering Nite Flights. The Walkers'  work, and particularly the solo work of their most famous member Scott Walker, has with its use of layers of strings and latterly electronic and avant garde touches an almost claustrophobic feel that reminds me of dark nights and short days. In that respect it is a perfect soundtrack to winter. Nite Flights was the final album in a trilogy recorded in connection with the Walkers' short lived comeback and their last album to date. The previous two albums were smothered with lightweight but enjoyable easy listening material .However this album dabbles in electronica and everything from the cover to the lyrics suggests a darkness hidden within which are some first rate songs that influenced David Bowie among others.    

As the opening pulses of 'Shutout' bounced out of the speakers I fried in my Le Cresceut dish 2lb of tomatoes. Prior to placing the tomatoes in the dish I cut them into five or six pieces so as they would cook more quickly. I lightly fried the tomatoes until the skins began to peel off. When they were at this stage I turned off the heat and left them to cool in the dish for ten minutes. The fact their skins were peeling made them easier to puree when the time came.

After ten minutes I took a mixing bowl and balanced a sieve over the bowl and then gradually added the cooked tomatoes to it. The trick here is to push the tomatoes from side to side using a wooden spatula so that the soft flesh and the juice filters through the sieve and into the bowl below. In doing this the skins of the tomatoes are left on top of the sieve and discarded. It's a laborious process but one that's worthwhile as when all the skins are discarded a tasty puree is left for inclusion in the casserole.

After the tomato puree had been prepared I took the flesh from a pumpkin the size of a football and cut it into cubes. The extraction of the pumpkin flesh is certainly a challenge; the first step is to take a very sharp knife (as you will break the blade from the knife otherwise if you use a blunt one; believe me I know) and cut the top off the pumpkin. You need to then cut it in half length-ways and then cut the two halves in half. At this point you're left with lots of stringy pith with seeds  attached to it that is damp and sticky to the touch. The trick is to cut underneath the roots of the pith and then scoop them out with the seeds. This leaves the edible flesh that can then be cut from the skin, cubed and washed.

I sliced a large onion up thinly together with three cloves of garlic and fried them lightly with some fresh Rosemary leaves and fresh Basil leaves. In the meantime I boiled eight ounces of red lentils for twenty minutes in a pan in just enough water to cover them. When the lentils were soft I added them to the pumpkin, onion, garlic and herbs which were still frying in my Le Cresceut. I then added the tomato puree to the Le Cresceut, stirred it into the rest of the ingredients and cooked it lightly on the hob for a further five minutes.

To make the dish ready for serving I cooked it in the oven at 165 degrees (175 for non-fan ovens) for fifteen minutes after which time it was ready to serve. For a casserole without meat this one had a lot of richness and flavour. As a rule pumpkin is pretty bland vegetable but when it's cooked with rosemary, basil, garlic and onion it comes alive with taste. Although the tomato puree was an effort to prepare the fact it was fresh gave it an edge over its tinned counterpart found in supermarkets which often has an artificial taste. The lentils meanwhile provided the necessary protein to help fortify me against the colder weather now accompanying the changing of the clocks.

An eclectic mix of lentils, herbs, fruit and vegetables

Alternative Pumpkin Bread

On Friday night I went to a gig by entertaining local band the Seventy, who those of you who follow this blog regularly will know I have mentioned before. The gig on Friday night was the fourth time I have seen them and it was a Halloween themed gig with the band, the two who supported them and the majority of the members of the audience wearing Halloween fancy dress. In keeping with the Halloween theme the band opened with a rocked up version of Ray Parker Junior's 1984 hit Ghostbusters which worked a treat and the remainder of the set was of a similarly high quality. It was also an opportunity for catching up with a wide range of people and doing plenty of dancing.

As a result of my adventures at the gig I decided to make something suitably Halloween themed and what better example of Halloween than something with Pumpkin in the recipe? The choice was some Pumpkin Bread. When people think of Pumpkin Bread they tend to think of the sweet dish from the United States, which is usually more like the equivalent of a fruit loaf as we would call it this side of the pond, in terms of the ingredients used to make it. However my dish was a savoury dish that was designed to go with some Pumpkin and Chili Soup I had prepared earlier.

The soundtrack to the cooking was the Rolling Stones' flawless 1971 offering 'Sticky Fingers' which contains the evergreen hit 'Brown Sugar' the underrated and epic heavy rock of 'Sway' the genuine country of 'Wild Horses' and the sophisticated and reflective closer 'Moonlight Mile' among its track list.

I first poured a pound of white bread flour into my mixing bowl together with a sachet of easy blend yeast and mixed the ingredients together. I then left the bowl on one side and took six ounces of flesh from a pumpkin the size of a football and fried it with the leaves from three sprigs of Rosemary from the garden. After lightly frying the Pumpkin and Rosemary  with a teaspoon of Nutmeg for around twenty minutes, by which time the Pumpkin flesh was soft enough to cut with the edge of a tablespoon, I turned the heat off the hob and left the pan with the Pumpkin and Rosemary in on the side to cool.

Next I added a quarter of a pint of milk to the flour and yeast and stirred it in until the flour and yeast had absorbed the milk. I then added the Pumpkin and Rosemary to the bowl and kneaded it into the flour, yeast and milk until a soft dough was formed. In order to ensure the dough was dry enough to be cooked I added a couple of tablespoons of flour to it and kneaded them into the dough.

I then found the warmest place in the house and left the dough in a mixing bowl there to rise for an hour. After it had risen I put it on a greased baking tray and cooked in the oven at 180 degrees (190 degrees for non-fan ovens) for half an hour. After taking it out of the oven I left it to cool on a wire rack and then served it with the Pumpkin and Chili Soup. The presence of the soft Pumpkin flesh in the bread made it quite moist while the Rosemary and Nutmeg helped liven the taste of what would have otherwise been a bland bread if I had only put Pumpkin in with the dough. This bread proved that Pumpkin Bread doesn't just have to be a sweet dish to have as a pudding.

Straight out of the oven and cooling down

All sliced up and ready to eat- on this occasion with Chili and Pumpkin Soup

Red Revolution

Today's blog article is all about the use of Red Cabbages in cooking and moreover how to use them in a creative way that doesn't just involve boiling the flavour out of them and then serving them with a white sauce to disguise their lack of flavour.

The first approach I used to make this usually dull vegetable interesting was by frying half of it, after it had been finely diced, in a Le Cresceut Dish with enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the dish until the cabbage began to soften and turn partially brown. The trick when frying cabbage is to stir it constantly otherwise it tends to stick to the pan and burn very quickly.

After the cabbage softened I added the flesh from two Cox's Apples. So as to give extra flavour to the dish I did not peel the apples before I cut the flesh, cubed it and added it to the red cabbage. At the same time I added two tablespoons of brown sugar, three sprigs of thyme from the garden and half a pint of cider. In this instance I used Bulmer's Cider which worked very well.

After simmering the contents of the dish until the cider had been absorbed into the cabbage and apple it was ready to serve to the guests of a meal I was hosting to herald the end of the working week and for me the start of a well-earned week off from the day job. The rich taste of the cider-soaked cabbage helped compliment the giant sage Yorkshire Pudding, steamed sprouts, lentils in gravy and roast potatoes that also formed part of an enjoyable meal and a fun evening.

Two days later it was the second Sunday in October and I needed something to compliment the corned beef hash I had prepared, see previous blog entry entitled 'Hashtag', and as it was a Sunday and I wasn't at work I prepared the Red Cabbage left over from the previous Friday by slow cooking it in the oven.

Kiss' 1985 hair metal platinum smash "Asylum" was on the playlist. The album has been described by the allmusic guide as being "chock full of nondescript fluff" a criticism that sounds similar to that handed out to the band Spinal Tap in their eponymous film when a reviewer described  their album 'Shark Sandwich' as being more like 'sh%t sandwich'. Accurate as that may have been for the Spinal Tap album to dismiss Asylum in similar terms would be a little harsh as although the band is clearly on autopilot for some of the record guitarist Bruce Kulick plays hard throughout and drummer Eric Carr clatters round the kit more than enough to ensure that the better songs like 'King of the Mountain' are memorable.

I first finely shredded the half of red cabbage remaining from Friday, cored two Cox's apples and then cut the flesh into cubes as well as dicing a large clove of garlic and a red onion. I then melted an ounce of butter in my Le Cresceut dish and cooked the cabbage in it for five minutes. I then added the apples, onion, garlic, two bay leafs, three sprigs of thyme, a teaspoon of grated nutmeg and half a pint of cider.

After taking the dish off the hob I cooked it in the oven at a temperature of 140 degrees, 150 for non-fan ovens, for three hours. Once the dish had cooked I discarded the bay leaves and served it with the corn beef hash I had previously prepared.

When compared to the Red Cabbage dish I had made the previous Friday this cabbage had more of what I would call a 'lived in feel' as slow cooked meals often tend to. What I mean by this is it had a more richer and mature taste compared to the more instant but also pleasant taste of the other red cabbage prepared a few days earlier.

The slow cooked take on red cabbage; rich and mature. 

Hashtag

When I was a child one of my favourite foods was corned beef hash. I especially used to like it mixed up with mashed potato. I think I got this from my granddad who first came across the dish when he was growing up in Scotland and he brought the dish down south with him after the war. He always refers to it as "corned beef and tatties". It's a simple meal albeit very tasty.

The Sunday before last I decided to make a variation on it called corned beef hash. It had been a wet and windy morning that had followed a wet and windy, but extremely excellent, Saturday night sampling flavoursome Mexican food while wearing an oversize Sombrero all as part of a friend's birthday celebrations. If the corned beef hash that I was about to make was simple comfort food to take my mind off the damp Sunday morning weather then the album of choice to listen was simple comfort music. I chose Kiss' 1987 platinum blockbuster Crazy Nights, which despite being cheesier than a Welsh Rarebit has many catchy songs that are played by the band with a passion and power that firmly sticks one finger up to critics and musical snobs. It's therefore the perfect record for a rainy day and helped me get stuck in to the task of dicing a large white onion, cleaning, peeling and cubing three white potatoes.

I first fried the white onion pieces in some olive oil in a frying pan for around five minutes until they began to brown. At the same time I added a pinch of black pepper and a quarter of teaspoon of mustard which I mixed into the onions. In the brief period that the onions were cooking I cut three slices of corned beef into small squares and after the onions were ready I added the corned beef and the cubed potatoes to the frying pan and spread them out throughout the pan.

I turned up the heat on the hob and once the potatoes and corned beef began to hiss I used a wooden spatula to look underneath the pieces and when they had started to brown I turned them over to fry the other side. So as to stop the food burning I added some extra olive oil to the pan to keep it moist. Once the potato pieces were soft enough to be cut with the wooden spatula and had browned on both sides I finished it by placing some fresh parsley on top and then the dish was ready.

This was genuine comfort food; the fried potatoes and the corned beef gave the meal a taste that was like the smell of a well-kept chip shop at peak serving hour. It certainly helped fortify me after my soaking that morning while walking the dog. The richness of the red cabbage cooked in cider that I had made to compliment it lent the meal some sophistication. The red cabbage dish will be featured in the next blog entry so watch this space...

The fresh parsley from the garden was the perfect finish to this meal. 

Personal Gingery

To help provide some motivation for my colleagues at work I recently made some gingerbread to take in for them. I used to bring my cooking projects into work more regularly but the job has become busier and some of my other free time has been taken up by accepting two public appointments. Still I managed to get some time to make some Grantham Gingerbreads which differ from normal gingerbread in that each piece is cooked individually rather than in a large block that is then cut up after it cools down.

I made them by creaming together four ounces of margarine and three and a half ounces of caster sugar. I then added the yolk of an egg and four ounces of self-raising flour and stirred these ingredients thoroughly together until a soft paste was formed. I then added two teaspoons of powdered ginger and mixed them into the paste.

After greasing a baking tray with margarine I added individual blobs of the paste to the tray. The blobs were around two centimetres wide and one centimetre high. I cooked them in the oven at 130 degrees (140 for non-fan ovens) for forty-five minutes.

The results were a gingerbread that was soft, not too tough on my teeth and (as one of my work collleagues commented) flavoursome without being  too overpowering.

Soft but tasty: the gingerbread just before I took it to work.

Lemons, Leeks and apple in a risotto

Quite a while ago on this blog I made a soup with leeks, lemons and apples in the ingredients. Last Sunday I decided to revisit the idea with a twist; I would use the ingredients in a risotto. With thoughts of a challenging week ahead and the icy keyboard sounds of Rush's 1987 album Hold Your Fire playing out around me I diced a white onion and prepared a leek by removing its outer leaves and clearing the dirt clinging to it. I sliced the leek narrowly lengthways and then cut in half the thin slices so as they would cook more easily.

I warmed some olive oil on the hob in my Le Cresceut dish, sprinkled in some white pepper and added the onion and leeks. I then fried them carefully on the hob until the onion became translucent and the leeks began to brown slightly. This process took around 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes I added the unpeeled, cubed flesh of a Cox's apple to the dish and stewed it with the leeks and onion for 10 minutes. I then added the juice from half a lemon, ten ounces of risotto rice and half a pint of white wine. Now came the tricky bit; I stirred the mixture repeatedly on a medium heat until rice became slightly translucent. I needed to stir the mixture continuously because otherwise it would stick to the bottom of the Le Cresceut dish and burn. I then gradually added half a pint of vegetable stock until the rice became bloated and soft.

To add an extra richness to the meal I melted two ounces of Parmesan into the mixture and once the melting was complete it was ready to serve. Like the leek, lemon and apple soup I made, on paper you would think these ingredients would not go together but they certainly did on this occasion to provide a filling and enjoyable risotto.

This risotto certainly tastes better than you'd think.

Sprouts In October?

When I was at school I remember watching cult T.V comedy series Bottom which starred Rik Mayall as Richie and Adrian Edmondson as his housemate Eddie. One of my favourite episodes was set at Halloween and included Rik Mayall's character making Mexican flavoured sprouts. Adrian Edmondson's character questioned this move as it was only October. His character's questioning does have some grounding in traditional best practice however; my gran once told me that sprouts should only be eaten after the first frosts arrive. The reason for this is that the frost makes them sweeter. Although this was historically true advances in farming and harvesting of fruit and vegetables have meant that these days you can have sprouts before the first frosts as they will still taste as sweet.

With this in mind I set about making a sprout and sausage soup last Saturday, despite the weather continuing to be mild. I needed something substantial and warming to help me recover from the effects of consuming some seven per cent anchor steam beer the night before. The soundtrack for preparation of the soup was Rush's excellent 1976 breakthrough album '2112' which is a concept album about mind control. However beyond the weighty subject matter, which makes the album sound like it should only be listened to by professional train spotters with long beards and few social skills, are some extremely catchy melodies, superb playing and a real drive that makes the record accessible for a wide-range of listeners without the need to appreciate to story line.

I first fried a diced white onion with two vegetarian sausages until the onion became translucent and the sausages became a nut brown colour. I then cut one of the sausages in half and kept one half on the side while returning the other to the Le Cresceut dish in which I had been frying it with the other sausage and the onion. I left the onion and sausage on a low light and began to prepare the sprouts. The trick with the sprouts is to peel the first few layers off them so that all the bad bits are removed. Then it is necessary to tail them and cut a cross mark across the bases of each sprout.

Once the sprouts were ready I added them to the onions and sausage together with a pint and a half of chicken stock. I then simmered the contents of the dish for half an hour until the sprouts were soft and added a little black pepper to the mixture while it simmered. I then took the dish off the heat and left it to cool for half an hour.

After half an hour had passed I blended the ingredients, returned them to the Le Cresceut and added three tablespoons of plain, unsweetened soya milk. Some variants on this recipe use sour cream instead of soya milk and chorizo instead of vegetarian sausages however my recipe does ensure that you have a tasty, flavoursome soup that is healthy as well.

After I had warmed the soup through it was ready to serve and I garnished it with some slices of the pre-cooked vegetarian sausage and fresh parsley. The taste was very earthy and the soup was certainly very full-bodied; perfect early Autumn food.

Fresh Parsley on top of the soup helps give a freshness to the otherwise earthy taste. 

Parmesan Party Bread

The week leading up to the penultimate Saturday in September had been a tiring one as I had fallen ill after becoming worn down by lots of nonetheless enjoyable meetings during the week to do with work, family and friends. On the Saturday itself I had been invited to the housewarming party of one my best friends at his new girlfriend's house. After taking copious amounts of Beechams I headed to the top of the nearest hill to get some fresh air and when I returned home I set about making some bread for my friend, his girlfriend and their guests to enjoy.

I decided to make a variation on a bread I had taken to previous party that some of the guests of tonight's party had also attended and enjoyed. I started by mixing together in a bowl seven ounces of strong white bread flour and five ounces of wholemeal bread flour with a sachet of yeast. After stirring these ingredients together I added a beaten egg, that I had first let warm to room temperature, and a quarter of a pint of milk. I stirred the egg and milk into the flours and yeast to create a soft paste into which I kneaded two further ounces of wholemeal bread flour so as to make the dough pliable but dry enough not to stick to the bowl. I then left the dough on my windowsill in the late September sunshine to rise for half an hour.

While the dough was rising I fried a diced red onion and a diced white onion with a pinch of white pepper for twenty minutes until the onions became golden. When the bread had risen I rolled it out flat and spread the onions out evenly over the surface. I then grate an ounce of Parmesan Cheese over the onions and took the corners of the bread and folded them together to form a parcel of pastry.

I brushed the top of the bread with milk and then cooked it in the oven for twenty-five minutes at 190 degrees (200 if it was a non-fan oven). After leaving the bread to cool I wrapped it in foil and headed out to the party. It proved to be a hit as the guests took just half an hour to devour the whole loaf at what was a memorable and entertaining evening.

Get it while you can: the bread shortly before it was finished off.

Sweetness and Spice

After a night spent celebrating the birthdays of two friends at a new curry house in town I decided to keep up my intake of hot Indian style food by making a sweet potato and pepper soup. This is a soup with ingredients that share much in common with those found in many curries made in this country.

As the haunting opening to Mike Oldfield's 1973 masterpiece "Tubular Bells" pinged out of the speakers of my stereo I fried a diced white onion in oil with a teaspoon of Paprika and fresh coriander for around five minutes until the onion pieces became a golden colour. As always with my soups I like to add the spices early in the preparation as it gives an extra taste to the finished product.

Once the onions had cooked I added five cubed sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes are generally easier to prepare than white or red potatoes as they peel easily compared to these types of potatoes. After I had stirred the sweet potatoes into the oil and ,now spicy, onions I let the potatoes cook for ten minutes.

After ten minutes I added two finely sliced red peppers and a pint of boiling vegetable stock. I then let the stock simmer lightly for twenty minutes which allowed the ingredients in the Le Cresceut to soften. The sweet potatoes were first to soften, as they often do when used in cooking, and then the peppers. After the twenty minutes were up I took the Le Cresceut off the heat and left it to cool for half an hour. I then blended the contents of the dish, reheated it in the dish and served it.

The resulting soup was very rich and the paprika and fresh coriander ensured that it was as strong tasting and memorable as the excellent curry I had enjoyed the night before.

This is a thick and rich soup that has a lot in common with curries served in restaurants up and down the land

Benediction

I felt slightly sore but in the nicest possible way when I woke up on the first day of September. The reason being that I had played a game of cricket the day before at a fairly high level, being division five out of eleven divisions. However the game had been worth it as my teammates are a top bunch of people, I also took a stinging catch when fielding, learned how to score when my team batted and the ground was located in the middle of numerous green fields with a dreaming spire or two on the horizon.

I needed something to revitalise me for breakfast and plumped for a dish that is rich but also full of protein. The dish was Eggs Benedict. The music of choice to cook to was Van Morrison's transitional 1973 offering 'Hard Nose the Highway' The album's mellow Jazziness and tracks such as 'Autumn Song' fitted my relaxed mood and mirrored my realisation that soon the cricket season would be over and the leaves would soon be falling off the trees in time for the clocks changing.

I have had Eggs Benedict on two occasions during the summer at two rather contrasting places; the first was at a Wetherspoons in Shipley the morning after attending a thirtieth birthday party while the second was at the Malmaison Hotel in Glasgow soon after spending a very enjoyable day in the city with a great person. On both of the times when I had the dish previously it was served with a slice of ham and a piece of salmon on top respectively.

However for my tilt at making the dish I played safe and stuck with the basics by serving the the eggs with a grilled muffin and some Hollandaise Sauce. I started by making the Hollandaise Sauce; I stirred together two egg yolks and their whites in a bowl with three tablespoons of white wine vinegar and a tablespoon of fresh Lemon Juice. I whisked them until they formed a thin golden mixture. Next I melted four ounces of low fat margarine in a pan and once the margarine had melted completely I added the melted margarine to the mixture in the bowl and whisked it thoroughly.

I left the sauce on one side and proceeded to bring a large saucepan of water to boiling point. As the water reached boiling point I added an egg yolk and white to a small plastic cup, that was well greased with margarine, which I normally used for poaching eggs. I floated the cup filled with the egg white and yolk on top of the boiling water in the pan and boiled it for six minutes.

At this point theories diverge on the best way to prepare the dish as some favour creating a small whirlpool with a spoon and then dropping the egg in and boiling it for three minutes. It's not wrong to do it this way however I chose my way to ensure the yolk and white remained in shape and because I prefer my eggs hard-boiled.

While the egg was boiling I heated the Hollandaise Sauce on the hob lightly, which caused it to thicken, and grilled two halves of a muffin. When the egg was ready I placed half of the muffin, with the buttered side facing upwards, on a plate and put the egg, once removed from the plastic cup, on top of it. Then I poured the Hollandaise Sauce on top of the egg and put the remaining sauce on top of the other half of the muffin.

Just as the other two types of Eggs Benedict I had consumed earlier in the summer were different from each other, so this current version of the dish differed again. The sauce provided a real richness to meal and was much thicker than the sauce used to make the others while the egg provided plenty of protein and set me up for a day of walking my dog and watching cricket.

Spread the extra Hollandaise Sauce on a spare muffin slice to get the full benefit of this dish. 

Brie-Green Risotto

Peas and Mint in later summer are a combination that go together as well as coffee and cream and the risotto that I made on bank holiday Tuesday certainly lived up to this theory. I began by dicing a large onion and three garlic cloves which I then fried on a medium heat in a Le Creuscet Dish for around ten minutes after first adding a generous helping of black pepper.

Once the onion and garlic had turned a rusty brown colour I added fifteen ounces of risotto rice and stirred them repeatedly into the soft onion and garlic for two minutes. The trick with risottos is to stir the rice constantly to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the dish while ensuring the mixture does not dry up.To help my cause therefore I added half a pint of white wine and stirred it into the rice for ten minutes until the rice became translucent began to bulge noticeably as a result of it absorbing the wine.

Next I added twelve ounces of peas, if you cannot find fresh peas then frozen ones work just as well, again with the idea of ensuring that the risotto did not dry up I poured a quarter of a pint of vegetable stock into the Le Cresceut dish and continued to stir it on a medium heat until the rice, peas, onions and garlic had absorbed it. I repeated the process with another quarter of a pint of vegetable stock until the rice and vegetables had absorbed most of stock while ensuring there was enough stock remaining to keep the risotto from being too dry.

I removed the risotto from the hob and added four tablespoons of dried mint together with three ounces of cubed Brie and an ounce of grated Parmesan. Once the Brie and Parmesan had melted the risotto was ready.

The presence of the Brie and Parmesan added a real richness to this dish as did the white wine however the strength and quantity of the black pepper and dried mint gave a sharpness that made the risotto hot and strong tasting. This one is certainly a dish to enjoy with a glass of white wine as a result.

Another Cup of Coffee (with Pecan Nuts)

I had managed to sneak an extra day off work on bank holiday Tuesday and spent the early morning resting up after a summer of cricket, travelling, fundraising and parties. Every extra minute of my lie in over and above the time I would normally rise to go to work felt like it was helping me re-energize after what had been a very enjoyable four months.

When I got up I took the dog to  a country park which in years gone by was a working colliery that had  once been the lifeblood of the now downtrodden villages that surrounded the country park. I had last been to the park six years earlier when my world was a very different place.

As it was nearly the end of summer I carried on the theme of looking back and marking time by preparing on my return home a sweet dish that although taking its inspiration from a retro recipe from the seventies, was updated to contain several modern twists.

I started by greasing with margarine twelve small patty cake tins contained in a single baking tray. I then made a short crust pastry mixture using eight ounces of plain flour and four of margarine with about two tablespoons of milk to bind the ingredients together to make a pliable pastry.  I cut the pastry into twelve square pieces and moulded each piece into a cup shape that fitted neatly into the cake tins in the tray.

I cooked the pastry cups in the oven at 180 degrees, 190 degrees for non-fan ovens, for twenty minutes and once this period was up I removed them from the oven and from their cases and left them to cool on the side.

While the cases began to cool I began to prepare the filling. The soundtrack to this part of the preparation was Syd Barrett's variable but worthwhile 1988 compilation of rarities and outtakes 'Opel', which ranges from slightly embarrassing quasi-demos to driving innovative songs such as Clowns and Jugglers and the title track.  Barrett is best known as the founder member of rock legends Pink Floyd and almost as well known for his subsequent breakdown and gradual withdrawal from the music scene after masterminding the band's unique and ingenious debut album. I was bought Barrett's solo back catalogue, which is all of two studio albums and Opel, when I was studying for my A-Levels a few years ago and its far out but lovable quirkiness is something I enjoy returning to on occasion.

I creamed together three ounces of brown sugar and margarine in a mixing bowl and followed up by adding a tablespoon of instant coffee which I stirred thoroughly into the mixture together with three ounces of ground almonds. The coffee granules and ground almonds served to provide a rich and raw texture to the filling which I proceeded to spoon evenly into each of pastry cups once I was sure the cups had cooled completely.

I then made the coffee icing by placing four ounces of icing sugar in a mixing bowl with two tablespoons of lukewarm water and half a tablespoon of coffee granules. I mixed the granules into the water to make them dissolve and then stirred the mixture into the icing sugar to create a thick topping that the set hard when left to stand.

Before the icing had a chance to set properly I spread it evenly over the top of the filling in the pastry cups and to decorate I put a Pecan Nut on top of the spread icing. The outcome produced a strong tasting foodstuff that works equally as a dessert or an accompaniment to a mid-morning cup of tea. Certainly the raw taste of the coffee in the dish helped perk up my colleagues when they sampled them the following day at work and the food would not be out place on offer at a coffee shop.

The dish was finished with a Pecan Nut on each one.

Sly Burger

It was half nine on bank holiday Monday morning, I didn't quite know how my loose change had ended up in my sock drawer but what I did know was that I had no hangover and that last night I had attended an awesome party a premier four star hotel. I employed my usual cure for a night out involving, although not as much these days, alcohol by having a cup of green tea, a spot of muesli and an eight mile walk in the late summer heat with my dog.

When I returned home I felt completely human once more and set about making some burgers from scratch and I resolved to stretch myself by making cobs to put the burgers in as well. The procedure for making the cobs has been covered in my blog article on making olive cobs (see http://cookeryisthetruth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/cob-of-olives.html for how to make the cobs) except I did not include any filling or seasoning in the cobs for this blog entry.

Once I had cooked the cobs I left them to cool on the side and began to prepare the burgers. As I had traces of a headache and a slightly sore left shoulder, perhaps as a result of sampling Talisker Whisky and indulging in some strenuous exercise on the dance floor the night before, I opted for some calm music to cook to in the form of Roy Harper's 1971 masterpiece Stormcock. The album is a mellow acoustic record comprising of four long songs with tuneful singing, challenging lyrics and powerful harmonies. Roy Harper is, much like James Brown, his own genre and his music is best described as progressive folk rock of which he is the only practitioner. Whether it is his own genre or not it certainly fitted the mood.

To prepare the burgers I sliced six spring onions, after first washing them and topping and tailing them, into two centimetre long strips and fried them lightly with 6 grams of fresh parsley, 8 sliced chives and two finely sliced garlic cloves. I fried these ingredients until they were soft and only slightly browned and then added half a teaspoon of paprika and half a teaspoon of chili flakes that I mixed into the fresh produce.

While the contents of the frying pan cooked steadily I poured eight hundred grams of Cannelini Beans and Flageolot Beans into a colander and poured cold water on them to remove the excess fluid that was contained in the cans they arrived in. I then added the beans to the frying pan and after mixing them thoroughly into the other ingredients I took the pan off the heat and mashed the contents up with a potato masher.

Next came the difficult part as it involved shaping the bean and herb mixture in the pan into twelve small balls. Once I had overcome this tricky task I put the newly formed burgers on a greased baking tray and place them in the fridge for around twenty five minutes so as to allow them to set.

Once the burgers had set I placed them under the grill and cooked them on each side around five minutes while always making sure that they did not burn. Once the burgers were ready I sandwiched them in the cobs, which I halved first, with some mayonnaise and fresh slices of tomato.

Although the cobs were not quite flat enough to keep the filling contained within them the taste made up for this as strong and rich taste of them coupled with tangy and pleasant taste of the burgers was a winning combination. The tomatoes and mayonnaise contributed a freshness to the meal that was accentuated by enjoying it on the back garden in the evening sunshine.

Red Reign

The day after trying some new local cuisine in the form of my local town's only Tapas Restaurant I decided to try something new myself by cooking a tomato risotto. The weather remained muggy and the ground was still damp from the monsoon-like conditions that had pervaded the nighttime drive home from the Tapas Restaurant as I began by preparing five hundred grams of tomatoes.

Today's record to cook with was by a local band called the Seventy and it comprised of a cover of David Bowie's excellent 1977 song Heroes. The song is difficult to cover as the original version is flawless, however the band (whose bassist I have known for the passed 19 years after meeting him at the start of secondary school)  do a brilliant job. Definitely an act worth seeking out.

I cut the tops of the tomatoes and then boiled them for two minutes in a pan of water. After the two minute period was up I carefully removed the tomatoes from the water and used my fingers to peel off the now very loose skin from them and discarded the skin. I quartered the soft, fleshy and skinless tomatoes and fried them gently in some olive oil in my Le Cresceut dish with two bay leaves which served to give the tomatoes a sharp flavour.

As the tomatoes cooked I boiled two hundred and ninety grams of risotto rice until most of the water had been absorbed into the rice and the rice became soft. I knew it was important to soften the rice early on in the cooking process as there is nothing worse than eating crunchy, under cooked rice in a risotto. Once the rice was properly softened I added it to the tomatoes and then removed the bay leaves as they had served their purpose.

The juice from the cooking tomatoes and the remaining water from the rice created some flavoursome juices to cook the rest of the ingredients in and to aid this cause I added a quarter of a pint of white wine and half a pint of vegetable stock. I let these cook on a medium heat until the rice and tomatoes had absorbed them while always ensuring that there was enough liquid in the dish that it did not boil dry.

I added a pinch of white pepper and a teaspoon of chili powder and stirred them in. I find that chili goes very well with tomato dishes. Next I plucked ten leaves of basil from the pot I had grown on the window sill and after shredding the leaves I put them in the dish. The fresh taste of this basil was ten times better than its dried counterpart found in the supermarket and enhanced the already strong flavours of the food considerably.

After adding twenty-five grams of butter and melting it into the risotto I finished it by melting twenty-five grams of Parmesan Cheese on top of the risotto which gave the top of it a glazed look. The risotto did not disappoint and the rich taste of the Parmesan and white wine, always a winning combination, was kept in check by the sharpness of the chili powder and the fresh basil. As the weather remained warm I ate the risotto out on the back garden in the pleasant Sunday evening sun; an optional extra when eating a dish that tastes that bit better in the summertime.

A rich but sharp mix of flavours makes this Risotto what it is

Chard-tastic

The hot weather still hadn't let up and after an enjoyable recall to the cricket team in some sticky heat the day before I sought out something fresh for Sunday dinner on the last Sunday in July. The inspiration came from a recipe originating in Greece a country with more warm weather than this country; most of the time. The plan was to make a dip using some white chard that I had been cultivating for the passed two months. Chard is a vegetable that is often overlooked by many as it is not regularly available in the supermarkets and therefore the only exposure to it is likely to be if you grow it yourself.

The Chard looks very similar to spinach or lettuce when fully grown and ready to harvest and either the stems, the leaves or both can be used in meals. The taste of Chard is slightly less gravelly than spinach but less bland than most lettuce.

For this dish I harvested enough leaves to fill a small teacup and then covered them with boiling water in a bowl to kill any germs that wild insects may have placed on them during their time in the garden. Next I added them to a pan of boiling water, simmered them for five minutes and after draining the pan left them on one side in a colander to cool.

As I finely cut two cloves of garlic the rather dated drum sounds of Roger Waters' 1987 album Radio KAOS beat out of the stereo. The album was Waters' first after leaving Pink Floyd and is a typically ambitious work which deals with the negative impacts of Monetarism in the form of Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's Policies. Although the references to these long since departed leaders could make the album even more an 80's relic its concerns still ring true today albeit that they apply now to different world leaders.

After the garlic was dealt with I added it to a small bowl with two teaspoons of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of juice from a lemon and seven tablespoon's of fresh, plain Greek Yoghurt. I then added the Chard and whisked all the ingredients together until the Chard had thoroughly blended with the yoghurt.

I served the dip with some raw carrot, cheese and biscuits which the dip's fresh yet spicy taste complemented perfectly.

Culture clash- the freshly prepared Greek Style dip which was served with cheese and biscuits that most English of dishes. 

Squashed Sage

After a warm and entertaining evening at the house of some friends and a pint at the local on the Saturday night the second Sunday in July kicked off with a garden party at a house with a back garden the size of a small village while the afternoon saw the preparation of something light and fresh to counter the fatigue I felt as a result of boiling heat.

I first made some wholemeal pastry from eight ounces of wholemeal bread flour and four ounces of low fat margarine. I rolled out the pastry so that it covered a 25 centimetre wide and two centimetre deep flan case.

As the aggressive opening guitar/ synthesizer riff of Pink Floyd's excellent 1972 offering Obscured by Clouds pushed its way out of stereo speakers I fried half a butternut squash, which I had first cut into cubes the size of a dice used in a board game with a thinly sliced red onion. I fried the squash and onion for around twenty minutes until the squash was soft enough to cut with the edge of tablespoon and the onion was translucent. I then took the dish off the heat and allowed it to cool.

In meantime I broke two eggs in a bowl and beat them hard before adding 250 milliliters of creme freche to the eggs. Next I spread the squash cubes and sliced onion evenly throughout the pastry case and then repeated the process with the eggs and creme freche. I then took several leaves of fresh sage I had obtained from the garden, washed them, shredded them and scattered them over the top of the pastry case. To finish I grated one hundred grams of Shropshire Blue Cheese onto the topping.

I cooked the flan in the oven at 180 degrees (more like 190 degrees for non-fan ovens) for twenty minutes until the creme freche had begun to harden and the edges of the flan had begun to turn golden-brown. Like the Linguine and Leeks dish this one was substantial but the creme freche took the edge of the heavy flavours of the squash and sage to make it fresh enough to eat outside in the garden as the hot summer sun beat down.

Bright and garish to match the summer flowers in my garden

Leeks of Summer

At this time of year, bearing in mind that my part of the country is at present basking in some of the most extreme temperatures it has experienced since summer 2006, it's a good idea to cook main meals that are very light and have lots of fresh ingredients. With this in my mind I set out to cook a leek and lemon linguine dish during the early part of the heatwave that took place on the first Saturday in July.

For me the taste of fresh peas and broad beans cannot be beaten at this time of year and although it was a chore shelling them for this recipe their taste was worth it as it was a far superior taste to that provided by their frozen counterparts.

The CD that played in the background of the afternoon's cooking was Pink Floyd's 1969 soundtrack to the french hippy movie More. It was certainly the case that spaced out Hammond and Farfisa Organ licks of tracks like Cirrus Minor sounded even better with cloudless summer sun coming in through the kitchen windows.

I added enough oil to the bottom of my Le Cresceut dish to just about cover it and fried two diced cloves of garlic, a pinch of white pepper and two well-washed leeks that I'd first halved and sliced length-ways prior to adding to the dish. I fried them on a medium light until the leeks began to soften and turn a very slightly rusty brown colour.

While the leeks, garlic and pepper were cooking I steamed around 150 grams of fresh peas and 150 grams of broad beans for five minutes with a generous helping of fresh mint that I'd previously plucked from the bottom of the garden. When the leeks were cooked I added the broad beans to the Le Cresceut with the juice and zest of two lemons and half a pint of dry white wine. Once I had stirred these extra ingredients into the dish I let them cook in the juice of the wine and lemons for around five minutes so as to soften the vegetables further and make them ultimately taste fresher.

I then added a small tub, about 290 millelitres worth, of creme freche together with 25 grams of grated Parmesan Cheese and the fresh peas that now smelled of fresh mint.

While these ingredients cooked on a low light I boiled in a pan 300 grams of Linguine Pasta, which is like a slightly thinner version of spaghetti, for fifteen minutes until it had softened enough to be added to the Le Cresceut Dish. At the same time as I added the Linguine I also added five stalks of fresh basil from the window box and some ground mint. Once I had stirred the pasta, basil and mint into the other ingredients the dish was ready to serve.

Although the Parmesan made the meal a little rich, as Parmesan does when you add it to any food, the wine, lemon juice and homegrown mint added a real freshness to the dish that meant it was ideal to help cool down during what was a very warm day.

The finished dish; substantial enough to fill you up but light enough to help you cope with the hot weather.

Oranges and Pomegranates

The penultimate Sunday in June was one that gave a chance to relax after over a month of being on the road to catch with a wide range of good friends, have a holiday, play cricket and attend a stag do. That morning the rain dropped heavily from the sky but it was still quite warm so I took the dog a walk round the local wood and after drying out on my return I decided to make a cake.

As it was now officially summer, despite the rain, I made a cake with the juices of two summer fruits in the form of oranges and pomegranates. The choice for music for cooking was equally summery and took the form of the Eagles' 1980 live album titled Eagles Live. The album covered the last tour before their original split and it was a tour that after its last gig saw two of band members having a fight backstage after winding each other up during the gig with numerous insults between each number.

I added 175 grams of low fat margarine and 150 grams of caster sugar to a mixing bowl, I would normally add more sugar however a recent funny turn during a midweek cricket match had convinced me I may become a full-time diabetic if I do not cut down the sugar in my diet. I creamed the margarine and the sugar together for around five minutes until there was no loose sugar left in the bowl and it had been absorbed into the margarine.

I then added gradually the yolks and whites of three large eggs to the margarine and sugar which resulted in the mixture becoming exceptionally sloppy by the time I had stirred the eggs into it. So as to solidify the mixture I added 50 grams of ground almonds and 125 grams of self-raising flour to it gradually by stirring the ground almonds and flour in a little at a time until I had a mixture which was the consistency of partially melted butter.

I poured the mixture into a pre-greased 25 centimetre wide and ten centimetre deep cake tin and then added the grated skin of an orange on top of it. I cooked the mixture in the oven for forty-five minutes at 150 degrees (160 for non-fan ovens).

While the cake was cooking I made some syrup by using the juice of two freshly squeezed oranges, six tablespoons of pomegranate juice and four tablespoons of caster sugar. I stirred the ingredients together in a measuring jug and left them to one side.

After the cake was cooked I pulled it out of the oven and poured the syrup mixture onto the top it so that it soaked into the top half of the cake which in turn gave the cake the texture of a semi-damp sponge.

The cake was ideal food for a summer meal and had a very sweet and fresh taste which was enhanced by serving it with a large pot of plain Greek Yoghurt.

This moist cake tastes even better with a spot of Greek Yoghurt

Cob of Olives

It was a Saturday in mid-May and after having some enjoyable banter with my hairdresser and picking up some Chard Seeds for use in future cooking projects I headed home and started work on some bread rolls or if you come from my part of the country, bread cobs.

With the sounds of aggressive jazzy horns from the opening track of King Crimson's challenging 1970 offering 'Lizard' spitting out of the stereo speakers I stirred together 225 grams of  strong white bread flour, 450 grams of strong wholemeal bread flour and a 7 ounce sachet of yeast in a large mixing bowl. Once these dry ingredients were properly combined I added half a pint of cold water and mixed it thoroughly into the flour and yeast which created a very soft, sloppy and sticky dough.

I realised that I needed to toughen the dough up so I put around four ounces of white bread flour into the bowl and kneaded the dough into the flour until it was dry enough to be flexible but not stick to the work surface when I rolled it out. Sometimes, depending on how well the water has been mixed into the flour and yeast, you may need a little more flour than I have suggested to dry the dough.

Now that the dough was prepared I took it in the bowl to the warmest place in the house, which is a window sill in one of the south-facing rooms, and left it to rise for one hour by which time it had nearly doubled in size.

After the hour had passed I rolled the dough out on a work surface covered in flour and then spread ten baby tomatoes, which I had halved, fifteen black olives (also halved) and the leaves from three sprigs of rosemary evenly onto the top of the dough. I then took the sides of the dough and pushed them to the centre of it so the dough resembled a huge ball filled with tomatoes, olives and rosemary.

I then cut the dough up into eight individual balls that were as large as a standard supermarket bread cob and  cooked them in the oven at 190 degrees (180 for non-fan ovens) for twenty minutes. After this period the cobs were clearly ready as their edges had become brown and crisp.

The positive thing about the taste of these cobs was that although the black olives could potentially have made the cobs taste too bitter, the edge was taken off the olives by the sweet tomatoes and the tangy rosemary which made the cobs appeal to those who do not normally enjoy olives. I took them to a gathering at the house of two of my friends that evening and the cobs complimented their excellent homemade chili con carne; which we both consumed as we sat down to watch the gripping and unpredictable series finale of Doctor Who.

Above and below: road testing the cobs with a spot of cheese

Glazed Look

Some people can get by on four hours sleep, others on eight hours sleep however on the evening of Saturday April the 20th I needed eleven hours sleep after entertaining some friends at a local restaurant on Saturday dinnertime and having a night on the town on the Friday evening.

When I woke up I brushed the cobwebs away with a walk in the local wood in bright sunshine before turning my attention to cooking the evening meal. The main course was something I had made before however one of the side dishes was something that's new to this blog and what I am going to focus on.

To help me through the preparation of some Glazed Parsnips I put Stevie Wonder's 1972 album Music of my Mind on the CD player. The album's synthesisers which, like most of the instruments on the album, are played by Wonder himself give it a lush and warm sound that gave glow inside like the late spring sun that shone through the kitchen window.

I first topped and tailed three large parsnips and then peeled them. They have a habit of being very stringy and therefore a lot of pressure needed to be applied to the skin as I peeled to be sure all the string had been removed. Once this task was complete I cut the parsnips into batons that were five centimetres long and one centimetre thick. I then steamed them for five minutes to soften them up before adding them to a frying pan covered with olive oil on a medium heat.

I turned the parsnips with a knife and fork and as they began to turn brown I added the leaves from four sprigs of fresh Thyme taken from my front garden and stirred the leaves into the parsnips until they coated them.

Once the parsnips had turned a pale brown I added around an ounce and a half of honey together with a pinch of black pepper. I stirred the honey so that it coated the parsnips and once the excess honey had been absorbed into them I turned the heat off and served them with the rest of the dish I had prepared.

As hoped the parsnips had taken on a glazed appearance and by adding the Thyme before the honey I was able to ensure the honey acted to lock in the Thyme to the parsnips and give them extra flavour. The addition of the black pepper meanwhile acted to ensure the honey did not make the parsnips sweet enough to spoil them or the rest of the main course.

As the excess honey evaporates so the parsnips move closer to being ready

Noodling around

One of the many new cookery ideas I brought back with me from my trip to Glasgow was to use noodles in some dishes, especially in dishes involving chili. The recipe I prepared on a Friday night after work in mid-April fulfilled both of these objectives.

The record of choice, bearing in mind I had just got back from an intense week at work, was a bit undemanding pop music in the form of Eric Clapton's 1986 offering 'August'. The album was named after the month his son Conor, who died in tragic circumstances less than five years later, was born is typical of where Clapton was musically in the 1980s and the album is very much a product of its time and a period piece without question. The evidence that points to this includes the presence of a top heavy drum sound, Phil Collins as producer and a duet with Tina Turner, the album is a period piece without question but has a few evergreen songs on nonetheless.

I started by taking some Quorn Pieces that had been frozen and fried them on the hob with a tablespoon of Chili Flakes and a teaspoon of Cumin Seeds. I mixed the Cumin and Chili with the Quorn Pieces until the spices coated the pieces and the pieces began to turn a golden colour. At this point I added a diced clove of Garlic, a finely sliced red onion, around two ounces of sugar snap peas and five thinly sliced pieces of baby sweetcorn.

While these items fried steadily on the hob I boiled a pan of water an once it reached boiling point I added ten ounces of dried noodles to the pan and boiled them for five minutes until they were soft. Once the noodles were soft I added them to the Quorn and the vegetables once the onion, pepper and garlic had softened sufficiently to have a fork pushed straight through them without any trouble.

I added a teaspoon of Chili Powder to the Quorn, Noodles and Vegetables and after they had cooked on the hob for a further five minutes I served the dish. The noodles were an enjoyable addition to my already varied diet and were a fine substitute for pasta or potatoes, which are the usual carbohydrates I consume with my main meals. Any risk of them being bland was quickly dispelled with the warming strength of the chili powder, cumin and the chili flakes while the peas and baby sweetcorn added the right texture to make this a meal to fortify for the night on the town that followed that evening.

A quick and easy meal to make with texture and taste to boot.

Stew of Italy

The first Sunday of April didn't feel like that, certainly not in terms of the weather which was cold enough to allow there to be still snow at the local cricket ground where I had volunteered to help out the day before and it was still cold that evening  when I ventured to the big city to sample some real bitters at niche real ale bar.

That said after a walk in the lingering snowdrifts with the dog on the Sunday morning I needed something warm and substantial for dinner. The choice for the meal was sausage, rosemary and puy lentil stew a dish which is a staple on dinner tables throughout Italy. 

The album I chose to cook to was the Happy Mondays' 1991 live offering simply entitled Live. It was recorded live at Elland Road Football Club at a time when Leeds United had a big rivalry with Manchester United, whose fans included several members of the band. The album is memorable for some sloppy but passionate performances as the band just about hold it together in a live setting. 

I heated some olive oil gently on the hob in my Le Cresceut Dish and then added four Marjoram Flavoured vegetarian sausages and a diced garlic clove. Once the clove and sausages had cooked for two minutes I added a finely cut white onion, two thinly sliced carrots, three sprigs of Rosemary and two celery sticks that were cut into pieces width-ways with the stringy flesh removed from them. 

I fried the contents of the dish on moderate heat for around ten to fifteen minutes while stirring it constantly to stop pieces of food getting stuck to the bottom of the Le Cresceut dish and burning. Once this period was up I realised the dish needed dampening a little so I added half a pint of white wine and half a pint of vegetable stock together with three tablespoons of Puy Lentils to give that extra bit of protein to the dish. 

So as to soften the lentils and finish softening the cooked carrots and celery I boiled the wine and stock fiercely for around fifteen minutes while topping it up with wine and water if it looked that the dish was in danger of drying up. Once the lentils had softened I turned the heat down on the hob and added a can of chopped tomatoes to the dish. After mixing the tomatoes into the rest of the dish I let it cook on a low light for a time while I prepared the potatoes. 

I used three white potatoes that were medium sized. I peeled them and sliced them width-ways so that at their thickets the individual pieces were half a centimetre deep. I fried them in sunflower oil in a wide frying pan turning them frequently until they were brown around the edges and I could put a fork through them. 

At around the same time I tested the stew and found it too was ready. The stew was very rich and the quality of the sausages meant that the lack of meat in the dish was not an issue, furthermore the lentils and strong tasting wine helped make this a substantial dish while the potatoes were crisp and had an extra kick thanks to the extra bit of Rosemary I added to them when they were fried. 

This was certainly a recipe to fight away the cold with. 

Spuds you'll like- the fried potatoes complemented this substantial stew. 

Cooking Allsorts on Tour Part 3

The third and final part of the account of my Easter Trip to Glasgow covers a dish that was something of an experiment. Those of you who follow this blog regularly will know that I like to cook bread and it seemed only right therefore that I cooked some bread for the guests at the party that night.

I decided to cook two loaves of bread; for my first I played safe and made cheese and onion bread- which I have posted on this blog previously, however for the second recipe I improvised and made loaf using some spare onions and cumin seeds as a filling. I had never made this type of bread before and it was certainly a risk to test it out on forty plus party guests, still I've never been short of ambition.

I first took twelve ounces of white bread flour and stirred them together in a bowl with a sachet of yeast. It's important not to underestimate the significance of this early stage of preparation as if the yeast and flour are properly mixed together the bread will rise well after it's kneaded. I then added a quarter of a pint of water to yeast and flour and stirred it in. I found that the mixture was a little soft and the dough kept sticking to my hands so I added two or three more tablespoons of white bread flour and kneaded it into the dough which made it dry but not so dry that it could not be shaped and rolled.

I left the dough on one side in a bowl and diced a large white onion. I then filled the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil and heated it gently for around a minute. Next I added the onions and two tablespoons of Cumin and after stirring the Cumin into the onions I fried the contents of the pan until the onions were golden and translucent. I turned the heat off the hob and turned my attention back to the dough which I rolled out until it was a flat circle I then spread the onions coated with Cumin over the dough. The task that followed involved taking the edges of the circle of dough and pushing them together so that the dough formed a parcel that covered the Cumin and onions.

I cut some slits in the top of the parcel of dough and then cooked it in the oven at 200 degrees (190 if you have a fan oven) for twenty-five minutes. After this period the bread was a deep hazelnut colour and slightly spongy to the touch.

The bread was added to the already extensive party buffet which also included crisps, dips, cheese and onion bread, Simnel Cake and Bacardi Flavoured Angel Delight among other treats. The bread proved a hit with the party's guests and helped make a weekend of catching up with old friends and meeting some amazing new people that little bit more special.

This installment of the blog brings to an end my memories of the Easter Trip to Glasgow, a trip that helped inspire some new recipes, old friendships, finding new faces and future trips to a city where I think I'll be spending more time in the future.