Ratatouille
We’ve had limited success with ratatouille in the past, mostly I think because I usually cook it and I don’t like it very much. As much as I try to pay the same due care and attention to everything I cook, I tend to get distracted if I’m cooking something I don’t like; it doesn’t help when you’re not entirely sure how it’s supposed to taste either. Stephen loves ratatouille though so I made some up earlier in the week for him to take to work and eat for lunches. Although he’s too polite to say so, I think when I’ve cooked this for him in the past I’ve made it too soggy. This time I managed to keep my patience and cooked all the elements separately which led to a much firmer dish.
This is based on a Sophie Grigson recipe from her book Vegetables.
Serves Two
4 courgettes, sliced lengthways and then cubed
1 aubergine, cut into chunks the same size as the courgette
1 red pepper, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 teaspoon corainder seed, roasted and crushed
6 large tomatoes, deseeded and roughly chopped
Bouquet garni
Salt and pepper
Start by frying the courgettes until they are browned all over. Remove from the pan and allow to drain on some kitchen paper.
Add some more oil if necessary and then fry the aubergine until they are brown. Add to the courgettes.
Again, more oil if needed and then fry off the pepper. Add to the courgette and aubergine.
Next, on a very low heat, cook the onion until it has softened but not browned. Add the garlic and coriander and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes and the bouquet garni, season and cook for 20 minutes.
Add the reserved vegetables back to the pan and cook for 10 minutes.
Broad Bean, Pea and Lemon Spaghetti
This is another recipe from The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Ella. After the success of last week’s broad bean dish, we were keen to try something else that had been recommended to us from the same book, even if it did mean yet more bean shelling. The original recipe included asparagus which we left out since the season is over, we also used creme fraiche instead of the suggested double cream.
We both enjoyed this but weren’t as excited by it as we were the braised broad beans; I think I should have used more basil and lemon. As ever, bacon would have been a really good addition too.
Serves Two
150ml creme fraiche
Juice and zest of one lemon
450g fresh broad beans, podded
200g spaghetti
450g fresh peas, podded
2 tablespoons mascarpone
40g Parmesan cheese, grated
Small bunch of basil, torn
Salt and black pepper
Start by putting the pasta on to cook. At the same time, cook the broad beans until tender, remove from the heat, rinse in cold water and remove the outer skins.
About five minutes before the pasta is cooked, take a separate pan and add the creme fraiche and lemon zest, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for three minutes.
At the same time, cook the peas until tender. Drain and add to the broad beans.
Drain the pasta, reserving some of the water and return to the pan. Add the lemon juice and seasoning. Next add the creme fraiche, the mascapone, the parmesan and stir together. Finally, add the vegetables and the basil, stir until incorporated and serve.
I found the timings quite difficult, the original method was written for fresh pasta and suggested cooking the vegetables in the same water as the pasta. I didn’t have fresh pasta though which is why I worked it out as above. I’m not sure how Maria Ella’s version would have worked with broad beans though anyway, since the double podding takes a while and would mean everything else would be going cold while you were shelling beans. Unless you can double pod before cooking but I tried this and made a mess.
Beef Rendang
This dish has been following us around lately, we saw Rick Stein cook it last week and then Dan from Food Urchin also posted his version. We saw it as a sign and resolved to make it as soon as we could.
As with most South East Asian dishes, there are various different recipes available, all of which vary quite considerably. Now that we know a little bit about the principles of that kind of cooking, we’re more confidently able to mix and match our favourite elements. While it may not be wholly traditional, the end result generally appeals to our tastes which, for us, is part of the fun of cooking something from scratch.
Serves Two
Paste
1 onion, chopped
2 large red chillies, chopped
3 gloves garlic, crushed
Thumb sized piece of ginger, grated
1 stalk lemongrass, chopped
Zest of half lime
1/2 tbs ground coriander, roasted and then crushed
1/2 tbs ground cumin, roasted and then crushed
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
Vegetable oil
1 can coconut milk
500g of braising steak, cubed
1/2 tbs soft brown sugar
Salt
1 tsp tamarind concentrate/paste
Juice of half lime
Start by making the paste. Combine all elements and then either blend in a food processor or bash in a mortar and pestle.
Heat your wok until it’s hot, add some vegetable oil and the cream from the top of a tin of coconut milk. Fry until the combination begins to split.
Add the paste and fry until it darkens and becomes aromatic. Add the beef, ensure it is well coated with the paste and cook until browned all over.
Add the rest of the coconut milk, the sugar and salt, the tamarind and the lime juice. Bring to the boil and then reduce the heat, simmer for one hour.
Remove from the heat, leave to cool and then refrigerate overnight. When ready to eat, heat the curry slowly and serve with jasmine rice.
I cooked this yesterday and then left it in the fridge overnight so that the flavours could develop, interestingly I think we both preferred yesterday’s version as the ginger and lemongrass came through much more and added a lightness to the overall flavour. I’m happy with the way this turned out but next time I need to remember to increase the chilli.
Puy Lentil Salad with Mozzarella
We had some leftover mozzarella from the weekend and had decided we wanted to eat lentils this evening (it’s a Monday thing) so decided to combine the two in a salad. I had a quick browse online and came across a Good Food recipe which matched what I had in my head fairly closely so, that’s what we did.
The end result was good but the sundried tomatoes we used in place of the suggested sunblush tomatoes were a little too strongly flavoured. The rest was good though and the mint and lemon juice gave a good lift to the earthy lentils.
200g Puy lentils
1/2 red onion , finely chopped
1 lemon, juiced
Olive oil
3/4 red pepper, roasted
4 sundried tomatoes, sliced
1 ball mozzarella
Small bunch mint
Serves Two (with a small portion left over)
Cook the lentils in simmering water for 20 minutes. Drain. Meanwhile, soak the red onion in half the lemon juice for 5 minutes. Roast the sliced red pepper in some oil for 20 minutes.
Once the lentils are cooked, add the oil, lemon juice, drained onion peppers and tomatoes.
Stir through the mozzarella and mint, season and serve with some grilled bread rubbed with olive oil.
Stuffed Pork Fillet
We’ve not had much luck with stuffed pork loin and sadly, this was no exception. While the flavours worked well together, the pork unfortunately dried out. The original recipe did say to cook the pork in a foil bag with the top left open which we thought seemed a bit pointless, perhaps that would have helped to keep the meat moist though.
This was a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe which is very simple, just slice a pork fillet in half and stuff with a sausagemeat stuffing, tie up and cook for one hour. He suggestions serving with mashed potatoes which we did but I think roast potatoes and gravy would have worked very well.
The Quest for Perfect Pizza
It seems very self-obsessed to call something that you’ve cooked yourself “perfect” but, having spent a fair amount of time getting our recipe just how we wanted it, I think we’ve finally mastered our own version of perfect pizza.
We’ve experimented with different types of dough and have finally settled on Jamie Oliver’s recipe – we do still have some trouble getting it to rise in our draughty kitchen but it doesn’t seem to affect the finished dish.
Our preferred tomato sauce is easier than versions we’ve used before and has just the right balance of richness and sweetness: a simple case of frying some garlic until it begins to colour, adding a tin of good tomatoes and some herbs with a touch of salt and pepper and cooking for just a few minutes.
Toppings vary, this one was chilli, anchovies, capers, lemon juice and lemon zest – another Jamie recipe. Salami or cured ham usually feature though, as do olives. Our favourite mozarella comes from Marks and Spencer although there seem to be new brands popping up all the time so this changes depending on where we happen to be shopping.
The real key to perfect pizza though is the cooking method. A pizza stone makes a huge difference, it transmits heat in a way that a regular baking tray doesn’t and is something we’ve used right from the start. A hot oven is crucial too. We thought using the barbecue was the way to go but, after several attempts, we realised we just couldn’t keep the heat in for long enough to create the crunchy base that is so important.Â
The revelation came in the form of Heston Blummenthal, well known for his pursuit of perfection. His method for perfect pizza requires a cast iron frying pan and an oven heated for 20 minutes by the grill. We use his grill method but in conjunction with the pizza stone and it works a treat: if Stephen’s singed hair wasn’t a good enough indicator of just how hot the oven was, our oven thermometer registered an amazing 300 degrees, quite a feat considering the dial only goes to 190.
We still haven’t mastered the black, blistered edges that pizza cooked in wood-fired oven creates but I’m not sure we’re ever going to manage that in a domestic oven. This is as close to perfect as I think we’re going to get but I’m quite happy with “almost-perfect pizza”
Pizza Dough – makes two pizzas (this is originally Jamie Oliver’s recipe for 6-8 pizzas with quantities amended for 2 pizzas and the method altered to allow for a hand mixer)
250g Tipo ‘00’ flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
4g dried yeast
1 teaspoon golden caster sugar
160ml lukewarm water
Sieve the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes (until it starts to bubble slightly) then pour into the bowl. Mix together with a wooden spoon and then knead with a hand blender until you have a smooth, springy dough. Place the ball of dough on a flour-dusted surface and flour the top of it. Cover with cling-film and leave for 15 minutes.
Remove the cling film and knead the dough around a bit to push the air out with your hands, form into bases and top with tomato sauce.
Tomato Sauce
Olive oil, for frying
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Small bunch or oregano or basil
Tin of tomatoes, juice discarded
Salt and pepper
Fry garlic in olive oil until it just begins to colour, add the tomatoes, herbs and salt and pepper and break up the tomatoes. Cook on a low heat for five minutes. Blend if preferred and leave to cool.
Toppings
I don’t think I need to tell you what to put on top, (although I would tell you not to use pineapple, if you asked me) but I would say don’t forget to oil the edges of the dough as it makes a big difference to the all important crunch factor. A final point is, let the pizza cool before you slice or start to eat. Aside from the fact that cheese heated to 300 degrees will remove a layer of skin from your fingers, it will allow everything to set and the base will continue to crisp as it cools down.
Method
Remove all but one shelf from the oven, add the pizza stone and turn the grill on to maximum. Shut the door and leave the oven to heat up for 20 minutes. When you are ready to cook your pizza, remove the stone from the oven, close the door so the oven heats back up, and add the base to the stone*. Add the toppings as quickly as you can and return the stone to the oven, shut the door and leave the pizza to cook until the cheese has melted and the edges of the pizza have coloured. This will probably take about five minutes.
*Ideally, you should assemble the pizza before sliding it on to the stone so that as little heat as possible is lost, we haven’t ever managed this successfully but give it a go if you’re feeling brave.
Braised Broad Beans with Lemon and Mint
This dish was recommended to me by a friend and comes from The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Ella. The original version uses dill but since I’m not much of a dill fan, I opted for the alternative suggestion of mint.
I love broad beans but I don’t enjoy the podding, I know many people talk of it being therapeutic or go misty eyed recounting stories of sitting on their grandmother’s knee in the summer sunshine but I just find it makes my hands sore and turns my nails green. A kilo of beans that need double podding made my hands very sore and green indeed and I began to worry about the effort versus fulfilment ratio. I need not have worried though because the end result was quite simply brilliant.
The smaller beans had broken down and merged with the leeks and spring onions into a tasty (although not attractive looking) mush leaving the larger beans with a decent amount of bite and providing a great contrast. I’m not sure if this was supposed to happen or not but I liked it anyway. The lemon and mint added a light touch to the full, earthy flavour and created a cohesive and well rounded dish.
We served this with some griddled halloumi cheese and some toasted white bread that had been rubbed with garlic and drizzled with oil. The combination worked very well but I think this is a dish that has many possibilities: blended slightly and served as a dip, blended completely and served as soup or as it is but with the addition of bacon.
As much as we both loved it, it’s going to be a while before I can face shelling another kilo of broad beans though so those options will have to wait for now.
Serves Four (I’m not sure about this, we ate the whole lot with cheese and bread as well, four as a starter maybe?)
1 kg fresh broad beans in their shells
Olive oil for frying
Four spring onions and four baby leeks, finely chopped (original recipe states 1 onion, chopped, or a bunch of spring onions)
1 garlic clove, crushed
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of sea salt
300ml vegetable stock
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Small bunch of mint, finely chopped (original recipe stated dill)
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the beans and cook briefly (about two minutes for large beans). Rinse under cold water and then remove outer skins.
Heat some oil in a large pan and gently fry the spring onion and leeks until softened – about three minutes.
Add the garlic, sugar and sea salt and cook for a further two minutes.
Add the beans and the stock and simmer over a low heat for about 20 minutes.
Remove from the heat, stir in the lemon juice and mint and leave to stand for an hour before serving. Don’t worry if there looks like too much liquid, the beans will continue to soak this up while they cool.
Barbecued Sardines
For a while now we have been keeping an eye out for fresh sardines, so it was some coincidence that on the day that we decided that we were going to barbecue fish, we came across some Cornish sardines in Waitrose. We gutted them, then marinated them in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper:
We also had some baby leeks that we coated in a little olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper before putting onto the barbecue. The barbecue was a little too hot at this stage and the green, leafy ends of the leeks got singed, but the white ends were mostly okay.
Then we put the sardines on. The barbecue was still too hot at this stage (impatience…) and the oiliness of the fish and marinade caused some worrying flare-ups that endangered my eyebrows at times. We kept moving them around and turning them (which was the main cause of the flare-ups) and they were soon cooked, albeit a little darker than intended:
Although they were a little more “well done” than intended on the outside, they were perfectly cooked on the inside and very tasty. The leeks were really good too and are something we should try again with a little more patience when the fire is not as hot.
Steamed Salmon with Stir Fried Vegetables
After a long weekend in Sweden where we survived mostly on crisps and Daim bar ice-cream, something light with plenty of vegetables was definitely required this evening. A quick browse through the vegetable archive of the site led me to a steamed fish dish which was exactly what I was looking for.
I started off by marinating some salmon fillets in lime juice, garlic, coriander, lemongrass and chilli. After about 30 minutes, these went into the bamboo steamer where they sat happily for 10 minutes. In the meantime, Stephen stir-fried some vegetables in oil, spring onion and garlic before adding some soy sauce and fish sauce just before the end and serving with some rice.
The fish was good, the vegetables were good too actually but the combination of the two wasn’t quite right. The vegetables were too highly seasoned for the delicate fish and the more subtle flavours of the lemongrass and coriander were lost against the powerful soy sauce and fish sauce. Another one for the “needs some work” category.
Sweden
We arrived back from a long weekend in Sweden this afternoon. We went over because I was playing cricket and we were staying in a small town so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to do much gastronomic exploring, but we took a few pictures of anything other than our staple diet of crisps and beer as we went along.
The most interesting gastronomic experience was actually seeing the bag of freshly picked golden chanterelle mushrooms that some people had found in the forest. We were initially keen on the idea when someone suggested going to look for mushrooms, but ended up sitting around drinking too much strong lager instead of going. Which in hindsight was a missed opportunity, especially seeing as the weather in Sweden has apparently been ideal for mushrooms this year, with alternating wet and warm spells.
On the first evening it was certainly wet rather than warm, so we paid a visit to a bar / restaurant nearby. We had visited it when we visited two years earlier and were rather wary of it, but the only alternative that we knew about was a particularly nasty pizza place.
I chose pyttipanna, which I had eaten elsewhere last time we visited. It is a dish of diced potato, meat and sometimes vegetables, often served with beetroot and a fried egg:
I think that my pyttipanna won in the edibility stakes that night, as others ordered… pasta bolognaise:
… a mystery pasta that I can’t remember the name of but can see that it contains bacon, olives, cream and some herbs:
… and there was another dish that was schnitzel with a mushroom sauce and “roast” potatoes which was almost inedible except for the superbly fresh chanterelles in the mushroom sauce.
The next day we had hot dogs during a break in the cricket. They were actually served during a drinks break rather than during the lunch break. Here is one with mustard, ketchup and “roasted onions”, which look a bit like deep-fried onion crumbs and give a nice oniony crunch when sprinkled onto things:
While investigating the local supermarket, Kerri found a bag of cinnamon rolls, which were rather tasty. Then the next day someone brought some home made ones along to the cricket, which were very tasty indeed. They are known as “kanelbulle” in Swedish:
A barbecue the next day, with chicken burgers and beef burgers. Sadly the only picture of an assembled burger was one that I’d already half eaten and that didn’t look very appetising, so these have to do:
And this little fellow was a bit too small to eat, so we threw him back, but clearly he told all his larger friends to avoid the apparently tasty worms floating around nearby because we didn’t catch anything worth eating:
If we find ourselves there again, we’ll see if we can organise to go over a couple of days early to visit Stockholm and the lakes and also do some proper gastronomic exploration.
