Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Broad Beans and Mint
Kerri and I had been talking about other things to do with pasta and broad beans. We have loads of mint growing in our garden too and thought that would work well with it. Kerri was out this evening though, so I threw something together quickly.
I sweated some onions and garlic, then added some cherry tomatoes. When the tomatoes had softened, I popped them with a wooden spoon and stirred it all up. Added some white wine, some broad beans and let it bubble away for a short while. Then threw in loads of chopped mint, some grated parmesan and seasoned.
It was okay but not brilliant; could do with some work on the seasoning maybe. Or adding bacon.
Lamb Rump and Champ
We had lots of potatoes and cabbage to use up this week and when we found some spring onions lurking in the fridge, the sensible option seemed to be to make champ. It’s a rather wintery dish for this time of year but it worked brilliantly with the lamb. The spring onions really complimented the sweetness of the new season lamb and the cabbage gave it an extra bite.
It also meant we got to use the griddle pan again which gave us some nice stripes and helped to char the outside of the lamb.
Barbecued Chicken
We picked up some Kentish strawberries on Saturday, the first ones we’ve had this season. They were ok but not that sweet and by Sunday they seemed past their best. While thinking about what to do with them we remembered Rossinis – Prosecco and pulped strawberries – that we’d had at the Anchor and Hope a couple of summers ago. Stephen went off to pick up some Prosecco and we crushed the strawberries with our stick blender. They were really good, the fruitiness of the Prosecco worked well with the strawberries and all in all, it was a great way to use them up.
We obviously needed something to eat as well and luckily had decided on chicken. Last year, we attempted to smoke a chicken but it didn’t work out too well so this time we decided just to cook it on the Weber with the lid on which worked much better. The chicken had picked up lots of smoky flavour from the charcoal and fell off the bone but wasn’t at all dried out. We served it with a simple salad and some potatoes we’d cooked in the coals.
Cassoulet
Cassoulet is one of those dishes that has attained a somewhat mythical aura over the years and people are sometimes surprised or disappointed that there is no “authentic” single recipe for such an iconic dish, but rather that various people or regions have different versions of it. It is of course a dish of peasant origins and people would have used what ingredients they had to hand at the time, rather than following a specific recipe. The beans were there to make the meat go further, and at least some of the meat would have been preserved. Which leaves us with typical ingredients being beans (white haricot beans), bacon, confit duck, sausages, pork and/or lamb or mutton.
Based on my own experiences of eating cassoulet in restaurants, I had formulated my own opinions on what should and should not be in cassoulet: It should always contain bacon, confit duck, Toulouse sausages and should not contain any lamb or mutton. So when I found this recipe that contained lamb and no confit duck, I initially disregarded it, but upon re-reading it, decided that it didn’t sound all that bad and of course my opinions on its “authenticity” were unimportant.
Cassoulet is a good wintery dish, but we found ourselves wondering what to do with some cannellini beans during the week and decided that it would be a good excuse to make cassoulet, which we have never cooked before. Cannellini beans are a little larger than the smaller haricot beans that are “traditional” but the recipe mentioned above specified them, which was a reason for using it even in the face of its almost unforgiveable confit duck omission.
The recipe is available via the link above, but here is a quick overview: Cook the beans for an hour with an onion and herbs, bacon and the rind from the pork belly. While the beans are cooking, brown diced lamb and pork belly and then roast them with the sausages. Then combine everything in a large casserole dish and cook in the oven for two hours.
This turned out nicely but didn’t have as much flavour as I remember some restaurant versions having. It is of course one of those dishes that is really hot when you first taste it and you can’t taste much, but then as it cools down the flavours develop. Which is a reason not to be greedy and impatient, but we had enjoyed the smell of it cooking so much that we didn’t have a lot of patience left by the time it was done. And there is some left over too, I’m sure it’ll be even better when reheated.
If anyone is interested, the Wikipedia cassoulet page describes the differences between some regional variations.
Halloumi
Several months ago, we had a griddle pan but it wasn’t a particularly good one. It was a non-stick one which still managed to stick, and it had quite shallow, wide ridges, which didn’t seem to work that well for griddling. At some point it mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again.
Every now and then we felt the need to griddle something but of course couldn’t without a griddle pan, so we recently picked up a new one. A cast iron one with deeper ridges. A real one in other words.
So, with our new griddle pan hanging in the kitchen, we wondered what to cook in it. Steak came to mind, but we’d just barbecued some steak recently to decided against that. I can’t remember exactly how we decided on halloumi, but once we had then we were convinced it was the best idea.
We served it with a pepper and caper salad, which was slightly sweet and sour (a bit too sour actually as I was a bit heavy handed with the vinegar) and went well with the saltiness of the halloumi. And a slice of spelt and sunflower seed bread, which had a dense, closed texture which also went very well with the rubberiness of the halloumi.
Salmon with Broad Beans and Tomatoes
I saw this salad on a food blog somewhere but can’t remember which one, I tracked the original recipe down to here though and set about cooking it last night. It was very simple and tasted really good, if a little too densely flavoured. Our version looks nothing like the picture either and I think I probably caramelised the tomatoes a little too much.
We served it with salmon which I think would have worked well if the dish had been lighter, as it was though it overpowered the salmon and worked much better with the bread.
I think this would work very well with spaghetti though which I may well try tonight.
Barbecued Steak!
With the weather promising to be sunny and warm today, we were off to a good start. Periodically, evil clouds would float across the sky, but luckily only obscured the sun for short periods and it was still warm in the late afternoon. Kerri had been home and put potatoes into the oven to bake before I got home, as well as having made salad, so the only thing left to do was to make a fire and cook steak.
Which didn’t take long. They were ribeye steaks, which have been our favourite for a while now and even though we left them on for a little longer than planned, they were still very succulent and full of flavour. Simply done seasoned with salt and pepper immediately before cooking, then cooked for a few minutes on each side and then rested, they were perfect. The baked potatoes were brilliant, with crispy skin and light, fluffy insides. Mmmmm steak! Mmmmm baked potato!
Sausages and Mash!
It seems like years since we had sausages and mash. It has been months at least. Tonight we bought some Duchy Original sausages which, after much experimentation, had decided were the best that could be bought from Sainsbury’s (which is where we found ourselves).
We were a bit apprehensive this time because, during our absence from the sausage market, they had acquired a “New Improved Recipe!” label. Usually finding this on a food product means that they have a new, cheaper and nastier recipe with more artificial additives and the marketing department is trying vainly to make it sound like a good thing.
Luckily this was not the case this time and the sausages were still very good. We served them with mashed potato. Due to Kerri’s current obsession with leeks, we mixed some sliced, sauteed leeks into the mash, along with some mustard and butter and salt and pepper. This all worked rather well together.
Add some cabbage on the side and some home made onion gravy all over everything and it was a very tasty dinner indeed. We did take some pictures that included gravy, but it all got rather messy, so we stuck with a gravy-free one.
Quiche
I toyed with titling this post “Leek, Bacon and Gruyere Tarlet” or something similarly “foodie” but decided I’d stick to what it actually is, which is quiche. I’m not sure if I’ve ever cooked this before; I have a very vague memory of cooking Quiche Lorraine in Home Economics at school but since I’ve managed to successfully block out most of that hideous term (the fact that our “teacher” couldn’t actually cook and bought all her food from the ready-meals aisle of M&S being just one reason) I can’t be sure.
I’ve seen a lot of interesting quiches (or “tarlets”, depending on the establishment) on lunch menus recently. I’ve seen them popping up in magazines and blogs a lot too and Stephen and I actually had a reasonable one from M&S (could I be more hypocritical, given my earlier comment?!) last week so I thought I’d give it a go. Until I realised I didn’t have a quiche dish. My mum has been trying to pass one on to me for months but I keep saying no, citing my lack of cupboard space and dislike of eggs (I’ll come to that later) as valid reasons for my refusal. So, on his way to cricket this morning Stephen took me to what we like to call “the-most-expensive-cooking-equipment-shop-evah”, so I could purchase one (sorry Mum) but they were closed. Unwilling to give up, I accepted Stephen’s less-than-enticing offer to take me to Hammersmith so I could visit T K Maxx.
With Delia Smith’s stern warning that anything other than metal dishes would do ringing in my ears, I searched the baking section for a suitable vessel. There was one lonely looking metal dish that looked like it was going to have to do but it had a strange, raised bottom to it that didn’t appeal. Having decided that today was Quiche Day though I wasn’t really in a position to argue so I took it. It was only on leaving that I realised there was also a Habitat in Hammersmith so I headed there to see if they had metal quiche dishes with more attractive bottoms….they did indeed but they were individual cases which would have been fine for a tarlet but didn’t seem right for an actual quiche. I then spotted a beautiful, brown, stoneware dish for the bargain price of £5. What would Delia say though? Well, Delia’s been saying an awful lot lately about cheating hasn’t she so I thought I’d cheat too.
I’d done a little research into quiche but couldn’t find a recipe that was exactly what I wanted so instead I improvised. I cheated again by using frozen pastry (my hands are too hot for the real thing) but did follow Delia’s advice on baking the pastry blind, then egg-washing and baking for a further five minutes.
I sauteed some leeks (I told you I was obsessed with them didn’t I?) and some bacon and allowed that to cool before spreading the mixture over the base. I then added some pine-nuts that were leftover from the pesto, some grated Gruyere cheese and a mix of 275mls single cream, two eggs and an extra yolk. The quiche was then baked in the oven for 45 minutes.
It looked good but we had to wait until today to find out how it tasted. We did manage to get it out of the non-metallic case too so clearly ignoring Delia’s advice was the best option 🙂
Asparagus Pesto
I had no idea if this was going to work, partly because I’ve never seen asparagus pesto before and partly because my previous experience of trying to make pesto in our Tragimix (or Mini Magimix to give it it’s real name) was very trying. We had about eight stems of very tired looking asparagus lurking in the fridge that I was loathe to throw out. Stephen had bought a bunch for his Thursday night pasta and these were left over. The asparagus season is so short that it seems a shame not to make the most of it while it’s available. So, buoyed by a glass of wine, I decided to give it a shot.
I steamed the asparagus until they were quite soft (to give the Tragimix a fair start), toasted some pine nuts, roasted some garlic and tore up some basil. When the steaming and toasting was complete, I threw the asparagus and the pine nuts into the blender, switched it on and crossed my fingers and toes. It seemed to be working so I bravely added the basil and some oil. At this point I realised that I hadn’t grated any cheese and the garlic was still in the oven. I turned the blender off while I retrieved these vital ingredients and again crossed my fingers that I would be able to get the blender to go back on. My planets must have been aligned because it happily started whirring again allowing me to add the cheese and basil.
When it seemed fairly well combined, I turned the machine off and put a spoon in to taste…not only had the Tragimix finally completed a whole task but the resulting dish tasted really good! One of the reasons I like making my own pesto (apart from using up random-fridge-items) is that you can vary the quantities to suit your own taste. I love, love, love pesto but rarely eat it because the combination of oil, cheese and nuts often gives me heartburn. For that reason, I tend to use more green stuff and less of the oily stuff. It also makes me feel virtuous, I’m practically just eating vegetables aren’t I?
So, no specific recipe but about eight spears of asparagus, 30g of pine nuts, three stems of basil, s&p, one clove of garlic (I forgot to mention that I roast this before blitzing because I don’t like the harshness of raw garlic in pesto), a tablespoon of oil and [vague] some [/vague] parmesan.
We used some of the pesto for dinner this evening with some interesting troife pasta and some roasted tomatoes. The pasta was odd though in that it cooked rather unevenly, some was perfectly al-dente while some remained hard. Perhaps it just needed a longer cooking time overall.
