Afghan Adventures

It was the middle of January and the mild weather was slowly giving way to some Tundra type frosts. In order to prove that the January Blues were a mere urban myth we had booked to spend a long weekend in North Yorkshire. It was a weekend that was memorable, spontaneous and full of winter sun. On the Saturday evening of the trip we went a-wandering to downtown Pickering and stumbled upon a wonderful curry house for our evening meal. It seemed that anybody who was anybody in the village was there and I enjoyed an excellent Afghan Curry. It was, in fact, one of the best curries I had ever tasted. A link to the site of this tasteful restaurant is at: Noyon | 7 Eastgate, Pickering, YO18 7DU | 01751476969 / 01751477039 | (noyonindian.co.uk) 

A weekend later, with time on my hands due to the Dogg and I not wanting to walk far in the cold Sunday ice, I decided to make my own version of this curry. 

The ingredients were as follows:

Two Chicken Breasts cut into small cubes and supplied by the ever wonderful Stretton Hall Farm | Facebook 

Two tablespoons of dried coriander. 

Two tablespoons of dried mint.

Two teaspoons of dried Cumin.

Five crushed cloves of Garlic

Four Tablespoons of Coconut Oil.

Two teaspoons of Garlic Salt

Half a teaspoon of Black Pepper.

One well-diced Red Onion. 

A tin of chopped Tomatoes.

A tin of Kidney Beans in Chilli Sauce. 

One Vegetable Stock Cube

On the player was Sinatra, Frank Sinatra. On this particular release from 1968, he and Duke Ellington teamed up and travelled incognito by calling the record "Francis A and Edward K" being their first names and middle initials. The record finds the pair in the early Autumn, in the case of Sinatra, and the winter, in the case of Ellington, of their careers. They however handle the excellent choice of material assuredly to create an engaging album. 

So to the method of this dish, it goes like this:

1. Put half the Coriander, Cumin, Mint, Garlic Salt Coconut Oil and one of the Garlic Cloves into a bowl with the Chicken Pieces. Mix the ingredients well together, cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in a cool place for a couple of hours to allow the mixture to marinate. 

2. When the marinated chicken is ready add to a Le Cresceut or large, deep frying pan with some melted butter. 

3. Fry together with the red onion on a medium heat for around twenty minutes then add the rest of the herbs and spices, Coconut Oil and half the chopped tomatoes before stirring them together and cooking for another fifteen minutes. 

4. Add the vegetable stock cube and the other half of the Chopped Tomatoes and mix together keeping the heat at just below medium for another twenty minutes.

5. Add the rest of the Garlic and the Red Kidney Beans and stir thoroughly while keeping a medium heat to ensure everything is cooked and blended together. After fifteen minutes of doing this the flavours should be blended and the dish ready to serve. 

On this occasion I served the dish with Rice that was mixed with Cardamom pods. The unique part of this curry is that the mint gives it a fresh flavour that contrasts with the spices to ensure it is strong tasting but has a rich creaminess behind the initial strong taste. It was a flavoursome replication of a meal that was part of a wonderful, memorable weekend. 

Broadbean Bazaar

 It was the wettest day of the month and rain drops hung like beads of sweat on the lush grass growing near the railway track running close to my home. It was the morning after some hard work in helping my cricket team to get a draw and the lion's share of the points to move ourselves off the bottom of the table. It was also the morning after some revelations, albeit ones that would naturally open the door to something wonderful and new, with the realisation that the love you take is always equal to the love you make.

Against these rather deep Sunday Morning thoughts it was time to get creative with the remainder of some delicious bacon sourced from Stretton Hall Farm | Facebook . I had three slices left and I slashed these into small cubes and fried them for around three minutes. Then I put them to one side on a serving plate. 

As I steamed the Broad Beans I had plucked from my garden, the Rolling Stones' excellent album "Exile on Main Street" blared noisy defiance on the player. It was just the inspirational music that was needed after some recent challenges I had faced. The record is one that despite containing sounds as old as the hills, remains fresh and vital. Those of you who haven't checked it out could do worse than take a listen at: Exile On Main St. - YouTube  

The Broad Beans were steamed for around ten minutes to ensure they remained flavoursome but not too al dente. After that I fried in the bacon fat left over from the earlier frying two diced Onions and a diced clove of Garlic. I fried them for ten minutes until the Onions were translucent. I then added the Bacon Pieces, the juice of one Lemon, six fresh Mint Leaves and three small heads of fresh Parsley and mixed all these ingredients together. Then I added the Broad Beans and warmed everything through. 

I served the mixture on a bed of fresh red lettuce leaves. With the use of a lot of fresh, green vegetables this dish had the positive tastes that summer meals bring. 

Pizza the Hutt

The Sunday before the jubilee found me on a wonderful walk with an old friend that saw us stumble across my parents and their ginger Dogg, lots of remarkable wildlife and a fistful of wild garlic that went into a gluten free pizza recipe.

After returning from my walk I opened the conservatory door and let sunshine slide in while I put on Status Quo's powerful and direct 2002 effort "Heavy Traffic". The Quo's music always sounds better on long, sunny days when cooking or going on a long drive. The record begins with the skilled shuffle of "Blues and Rhythm" and takes in along the way a strong cover of "Jam Side Down" with a good deal of trademark piledriving thrown in for good measure. 

For the Pizza dough I placed into a mixing bowl 400 hundred grams of gluten free bread flour, a heaped teaspoon of xanthan gum and five tablespoons of olive oil. I made a well in the middle of the mixture and gradually added in 250 millilitres of warm water. Then I added all the dry parts of the mixture into the water and then kneaded the dough powerfully to create a flat circle at the bottom of the mixing bowl. I covered the bowl with clingfilm and left it in the fridge for a couple of hours. 

When I resumed making the dish I took the pizza dough from the fridge and rolled it out on a greased baking tray. I spread evenly over the top of the dough, until it covered it, slices of charcoal cheese that I found at the wonderful Stretton Hall Farm | Facebook   . I used two of the five leaves of Wild Garlic that I had foraged locally to place on top of the cheesy base. 

Next I spread a tin of chopped tomatoes atop the pizza and the three other Wild Garlic leaves together with a diced, homegrown Cayenne Pepper. 

I cooked it in the oven for ten minutes on Gas Mark Seven and then served the Pizza with a side of homegrown lettuce. It proved to be a pizza that was spicy and rich with a dough that didn't make me bloated what with the lack of gluten. 

Gluten Free Jubilee

 I'm no Royalist but I do like the excuse to make a good biscuit and this week set to work on some gluten free jubilee biscuits. 

I made these jubilee biscuits, which were shaped roughly like the flags found on Royal Navy Ships of yesteryear, by taking 140 grams of Demerara Sugar and creaming them in a mixing bowl with 100 grams of Unsalted Butter until the mixture was rather fluffy. 

Then I added 350 grams of Gluten Free Plain Flour and a heaped teaspoon of xanthan gum. This gum takes place of the gluten as an agent to bind the mixture together. After stirring this into the butter and sugar it was time to soften the dough mixture with seventy five grams of treacle and a beaten Duck Egg.  Once this had been carried out, I squeezed the dough mixture to ensure the cold butter was crushed and I kneaded the dough.

With more Quo, this time their fine 1986 effort  "In the Army Now", playing; I rolled out the dough and cut rudimentary flag shaped pieces from it. 

The pieces were added to greased baking trays and cooked for ten minutes on Gas Mark 6 before they were put out to cool and then placed in an airtight container. 

A couple of days later I came back to the biscuits to make the icing. On the player was the Verve's excellent "Urban Hymns" album which has the right mix of stadium filling energy and mellow introspection. 

I took some blue rolling icing and red rolling icing and arranged it atop the biscuits to make a rudimentary Union Jack. The only thing that didn't quite work was that the white icing sugar was too runny to use effectively, but the general pattern of the flag just about made the design work. 

What the biscuits might have lacked in accuracy, they certainly made up for in taste as the treacle gave a burned feel to the biscuits that stopped the rich topping being too overpowering. Tasting the biscuits for the first time just before my weekly cricket training session was just one of several things I was to discover during this week that were exciting and new. 

The taste was a little better than the design, but you get the idea.

Wild, Wild Pesto

 It was the morning after an action-packed pie and pea supper at the cricket club. I was somewhere but I was nowhere. I was here but I wasn't and any other similar oxymoron you'd care to think of. What I did know was that I was at a hilltop over a disused quarry surrounded by nature and clear views fifty miles to the south, west, east and north-east. I could also see my house and the two schools where I grew up. All those sights made me realise I was closer to the destination I needed to reach than I thought.

After the Dogg and I searched thoroughly in quarry turned nature reserve for exotic butterflies, we descended into the valley and soon found ourselves in a wooded area with a stream gently flowing south. There the smell of Wild Garlic, synonymous with the start of summer and lots of bright sunny days to come, was everywhere. It flowered around the banks of the stream and I gathered clumps of the leaves. They had the feel of moist recycled paper and the smell of the best Italian Restaurants in the City.

At home I was inspired by a good friend of mine and a talented cook, who is making one of the bravest decisions of her life to leave town to live on a Western Island, who recently made Wild Garlic Pesto. All recipes for this are slightly different. My one goes like this:

Ingredients:

Five large Wild Garlic Leaves.

The juice of half a Lemon.

100 grams of Pine Nuts.

25 grams of grated Charcoal Cheese that I sourced from the brilliant Stretton Hall Farm Shop. Check them out at: Stretton Hall Farm | Facebook 

Three tablespoons of Sunflower Oil. 

With Van Morrison's excellent recent venture into the Great American Songbook, 2017's "Versatile", playing quite loudly, I embarked on preparation of the Pesto. It went like this:

1. Shred the Wild Garlic with a small, serrated knife into as small pieces as possible. 

2. Pour the Sunflower Oil into a small bowl. 

3. Squeeze the Lemon Juice into the same bowl. 

4. Add the Wild Garlic, Charcoal Cheese and Pine Nuts and mix well together.

5. Serve with your choice of main. I served mine with Roast Chicken Pieces, Mashed Potato with homegrown Fresh Mint and a side of Homegrown Pak Choi. 

The Wild Garlic has a less strong but more flavoursome taste than Garlic Cloves. It also blended well with the Cheese, Lemon and Pine Nuts. It certainly help to give my Sunday Dinner a certain sophisticated richness. 

Pesto Power

 The hot weather had returned and a recent weekend had yielded a warm evening slurping craft beer in a hipsters' paradise close to a fourteenth century tavern and the discovery of a jade insect that had appeared two weeks earlier than usual. Also some unexpected time on my hands last Sunday saw me emulate the late Duke of Windsor, who killed much spare time during his retirement by working hard in the garden. 

The fruits, or should that be herbs, spices and vegetables, of my labour in the garden yielded some homegrown chilis, rocket and basil. With the warm weather I elected to use these in a Mediterranean Pesto and Pasta Dish. 

The second of two 10cc supported Sedaka Albums was on the player in the shape of "The Tra-La Days Are Over" which was the straw that broke the camel's back in as far as shaking Sedaka's backing band out of their funk to form their own band and fly high with commercial success of their own. Recorded at the famous Strawberry Studios in Stockport, it's hard to believe this very listenable and commercial pop offering came out of the same studios that around six years later yielded Joy Division's bleak and iconic masterpiece "Unknown Pleasures". 

This dish is a simple and filling one to make and the ingredients are as follows:

200 grams of Cherry Tomatoes cut into halves.

2 dried homegrown Chili Peppers, diced. 

3 fresh homegrown Basil Leaves.

4 fresh homegrown Rocket Leaves plus extra to garnish. 

A pinch of Black Pepper

0.1 litres of Sunflower Oil.

4 spheres of Tagliatelle. 

200 grams of Halloumi cut into cubes.

5 tablespoons of tap water. 

Pine Nuts to garnish.

The way to make this dish is as follows:

1. Blend the Tomatoes, Chili Peppers, Sunflower Oil, Tap Water, Rocket, Black Pepper and Basil in a food processer until they are pureed into a Pesto Mixture. 

2. Add the Halloumi and Pesto Mixture to a Le Cresceut Dish and warm through on a low heat for about fifteen minutes.

3. Boil the Tagliatelle for fifteen minutes while the Pesto Mixture is cooking, drain and then mix with the Pesto.

4. Once the Tagliatelle and Pesto is stirred together, serve it with a garnish of homegrown Rocket and some pine nuts. 

This dish is light yet has a rich taste offset by the freshness of the Rocket and Chilli Peppers. 

Gluten Free Easter

 Some people are social smokers and drinkers. However I am a social gluten eater as I can only eat a limited amount of the stuff and so just consume it on meals out with friends. That has encouraged me to find new, gluten-free twists on classic recipes. Today I bring you an Easter Bank Holiday Monday gluten free recipe for a Simnel Cake.

The weekend prior to Easter was a time to rest up after a Covid Scare and use the downtime to prepare a gluten free cake to distribute to friends and colleagues alike during Holy Week. On the player were the summery sounds of Sedaka, the eternally unhip yet compelling singer songwriter, who on the offering being listened to was backed by members of the nascent 10cc. The record in question is called "Solitaire" and its title track tells the story of an indifferent lover. It's a cautionary tale to anybody who is thinking of passing up true love and fulfilling relationships by hiding behind indifference. 

So the ingredients of this cake which are as follows:

• 250g mixed dried fruit- a mixture of sultanas, currants and raisins 
• The juice of 1 Orange
• 300g pack marzipan
• 250g unsalted butter , softened
• 200g light brown soft sugar
• 4 eggs , beaten. The eggs I used were sourced from the wonderful Stretton Hall Farm | Facebook
• 175g gluten free plain flour
• 100g ground almonds
• The juice of 1 lemon 
• 2 tsp All Spice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g glacé cherries , halved
• 3 tbsp apricot jam

The way to make this dish is as follows:

1. Grease a cake tin. 

2. Cream the Butter and Sugar together until a fluffy mixture is formed. 

3. Add the beaten Eggs and stir them into the mixture to form a paste. 

4. Carefully add the Gluten Free Flour, fruit juices, almonds, vanilla extract, spice and dried fruit and stir together to get a thick and pliable cake mix. 

5. Place half the cake mix in the cake tin. Then take a third of the Marzipan and roll it out. Place it on top of the cake mix in the cake tin. Then cover with the other half of the cake mix. 

6. Cook in the oven on Gas Mark for two hours. The cake will be ready when a skewer, poked into it, comes out clean. 

7. Remove the cake from the cake tin and leave it to cool.

8. Once the cake is cooled, cover the top with Apricot Jam. 

9. Roll out the balance of the Marzipan and put it on top of the cake. Take some bits to make eleven balls, representing the non-traitorous apostles, to put on top of the cake with extra marzipan to be used for a decoration of your choice. 

Prior to discovering my intolerance for excessive amounts of gluten, I wasn't able to enjoy cakes as I used to and for someone with a sweet tooth this was hard, quite literally, to swallow. However this recipe enabled me to enjoy one of my favourite seasonal cakes without any side effects. It also went down well with those I distributed pieces of the cake to. 

One of our Apostles is missing- there should be eleven on this cake.