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Platinum Pudding or Glen Brittle Cheesecake

Completed Glen Brittle Cheesecake

I, along with thousands of others, decided to enter the Platinum Pudding competition run by Fortnum and Mason, to celebrate this great landmark in our Monarch’s reign. I am not usually one for competitive cooking, but as all I needed to do was to have fun creating a pudding recipe in the comfort of my own home, it seemed a fairly stress-free challenge.

My pudding was inspired by the Queen’s love of her Scottish home Balmoral. A few years ago we were on a tour of the Outer Hebrides, over the month of August. One day we drove through a place called Glen Brittle on the Isle of Skye. I remarked to Paul that it sounded like a breakfast cereal! I immediately started creating a breakfast bar recipe, the main ingredients of which were oats and pine nuts. I did make these and had ideas of grandeur and trying to sell them online, but this would be very complex.




Hence when I came to devise my Platinum Pudding recipe, I thought that it would be fun to use the Glen Brittle as a a base for a cheesecake. I decided that I would have to include raspberries, as they are so symptomatic of Scotland and that great pudding Cranachan. Plain chocolate would have to be in there somewhere, as some quick research indicated that Her Majesty loves very dark chocolate. The pudding is designed to be one for summer, when the main Platinum celebrations will be taking place. I would not normally buy out of season raspberries, but had to on this occasion for the purposes of testing the recipe in February!

I had a very warm and friendly e-mail from Fortnum and Mason telling me that I had not reached the shortlist. I really appreciated hearing back from them.

So here is my recipe which I am sharing with you today. It will not be widely available (in fact not at all!) in the shops, so you may like to try it for yourselves. I congratulate, in advance, the winner of the competition and look forward to trying the winning recipe!

70g Oats

65g pine nuts

25g pumpkin seeds

87g butter

62g soft brown sugar

1 tab golden syrup

325g full fat cream cheese

175ml double cream

75g caster sugar

zest of a lemon, juice of half

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

160g fresh raspberries

1 tab cassis liqueur or similar

60g plain chocolate

gold edible spray

Make a flapjack base by melting 62g butter, brown sugar and syrup. Then bubble slightly, stir in the oats, 40g pine nuts and pumpkin seeds. Bake for 12 minutes at 180 degrees C in a parchment lined loaf tin (size not important as it gets bashed up later on!)

Cool the Glen Brittle flapjack then bash it up in a bag with a rolling pin. Melt the other 25g butter and mix in the crumbs. Press this into a 20cm parchment lined springform cake tin and bake for 5 minutes to firm up.

Whisk the cream, lemon, vanilla and caster sugar to soft peaks, then whisk in the cream cheese. Spread this over the cooled Glen Brittle base. Chill for an hour or so.

Make some chocolate bark by melting the chocolate in a basin over a pan of simmering water (don’t let the basin touch the water). Spread into a small rectangle on baking parchment (about 7 x 3cms). Cool for few minutes then spray with a little gold. Chill until firm.



Toast the remaining 25g pine nuts in a frying pan over a low heat. Bash up half of the raspberries in a pan over a low heat with the cassis. Strain through a metal sieve.

Assemble your Glen Brittle Cheesecake!

Turn the cheesecake out onto a plate, removing the paper carefully. Put the rest of the raspberries on the top, drizzle with the raspberry coulis, sprinkle over the pine nuts. Break the chocolate bark into shards and arrange decoratively over the top.

Eat!

May be an image of strawberry and dessert

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Contents of the Fridge Summer Soup

https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/cookery-books-i-love

We are off on holiday soon, so I have been tidying out the fridge and giving it a deep clean. I have also managed to plan meals using up left-overs from the freezer and taking into account those oddments of salad and vegetables which always seem to be lurking. I am really pleased with myself. Sometimes I just cannot resist buying new stuff even when I have things in the freezer which I should thaw out and use. So this week’s menus including beef tagine twice – once with jacket potatoes and salad and the second time with polenta and a tomato and avocado salsa.

Today I made some really lovely cold soup. Now it might have been gazpacho or it might not have been. I know people can get very hung up on the authenticity of recipes. I was very interested to hear Jay Rayner on Radio 4 yesterday saying that it is fine to put cream in carbonara as long as it tastes good! I always put cream in my carbonara by the way! He is also not keen on pineapple on pizza, but purely for flavour reasons, not anything to do with authenticity. Here is my recipe, using oddments from the salad drawer and supplemented from the store cupboard:

Sarah’s Summer Soup

  • 3 small cucumbers (grown by our cleaner/handyman team)
  • Some chunks of sad-looking cos lettuce
  • A few celery stalks
  • A handful of cherry tomatoes (not from the fridge of course, as who keeps tomatoes in the fridge?!)
  • 3 cucumbers (grown by our cleaner/handyman team)
  • A small pot of left-over canned tomatoes
  • Another can of canned tomatoes
  • A dash of tabasco
  • A dash or 2 of pomegranate molasses
  • A tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
  • A splash of Worcestershire sauce
  • A home-grown chilli (Hurrah! one of my few successes in the garden!)
  • Some radishes
  • A few anchovies
  • Plenty of seasalt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

Save a few radishes, anchovies and pieces of fennel to chop up by hand. You could save some cucumber and tomatoes too. Blitz everything else in a blender (works a bit better than a food processor) with a can of water, swilling out the tomato juices. Check the seasoning and adjust as necessary. Chop your saved vegetables and anchovies and mix in afterwards, or use as a garnish

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This is the Whey to make Soda Bread

Parsnip, Cheese and Apple Soda Bread with whey
Spicy Roast Squash Soup with Parsnip and Apple

Yesterday I made cottage cheese with my old milk. Today I did the next stage of my sourdough loaf, adding whey instead of water. The bread will be ready tomorrow; pictures and taste review to follow!

I had a small amount of whey left; see the picture below:

So I made a soda bread loaf, using whey instead of milk or yoghurt. I have to say that it turned out really well and was so good with the spicy soup. Recipes for both dishes are below:

Parsnip, Cheese and Apple Soda Bread

Ingredients:

6oz (150g) plain flour

6oz (150g) rye flour

1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3 tsp cream of tartar

(you can use 2 tsp of baking powder instead of the above two ingredients, or use self-raising flour if you like)

4oz (100g) butter

2oz (50g) cheddar or other cheese

1/2 large or 1 whole parsnip

1/2 apple of your choice

1/4 pint (150ml) whey, buttermilk or a mixture of milk and yoghurt, or even slightly off milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 C or 400 F Gas 6

Grease a baking tray

Weigh all the ingredients into your mixing bowl apart from the liquid, grating the peeled parsnip, the apple (no need to peel) and the cheese. You can also grate the butter into the bowl if it is very hard, or rub it in with your fingers.

Carefully mix in the liquid of your choice. You might not need it all but you do want a really soft dough, wetter than pastry.

Try not to over-work the dough, then form it into a round or oval shape. Lightly brush it with a little left-over milk or whey. I like to slash a few knife marks in my loaf. Alternatively you could make small scones if you prefer, using a round cutter. If you do this, don’t roll the dough out, but just pat it lightly so that you have thick scones (about 1/2 ” or 1.5 cms).

Bake in the hot oven for about 35 minutes for a loaf or about 12/15 minutes for small scones. Unlike yeasted or sourdough bread, it is fine to cut soda bread when it is quite warm; this does not squish and spoil it.

Spicy Roast Squash Soup with Parsnip and Apple

This recipe is very flexible and I am not giving very precise quantities. This is roughly what I did today.

Ingredients

1 butternut squash

1/2 Parsnip

1/2 Apple

(you see that I have used the other half of these two ingredients in my soda bread)

Spices – about a tsp each of whatever you fancy eg cumin. ras el hanout, coriander, turmeric, fresh ginger

I onion

Stock or water as needed

Method
Roast your squash in a hot oven (200 C or 400 F Gas 6). I cut mine into big pieces without peeling and drizzled with olive oil and spices. I saved about a third of the squash to use in a salad on another day, but you could just make more soup! The timing will vary depending on how big you cut up the squash. I just cut mine into 4 pieces. I removed the seeds and stringy bits from the bulbous end. So mine took about 40 minutes to cook. You could of course cut the squash into smaller pieces and even peel it if you want to. When mine was cooked and cool enough to handle, I scraped the flesh away from the skin.

Whilst the squash is cooking, cook the onion, parsnip and apple in some olive oil in a big saucepan. Add the squash and let it all cook together for a while until all is soft. You then just need to add water or stock (chicken or vegetable would work, but I used enough flavours to manage without stock) to generously cover the veg in the pan. Season well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook for about another 15 minutes. Go easy on the liquid, as you can always add more later if it is too thick.

Blitz your soup as you like it. With squash I tend to make it quite smooth with just a few chunks left in for texture. Check the seasoning and enjoy with your soda bread. I also tried some of my cottage cheese from yesterday and it all went together really well!

This made enough soup for roughly 4 people. Using the whole squash would probably make enough for 6.

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Stuffed Squid: A tasty, economical meal




Stuffed Squid ready to cook

I love squid, and fortunately Paul does too! Even my daughter Jess is gradually getting a taste for it. She prefers it cut into rings, in breadcrumbs or batter, deep-fried. This however is one of my favourite ways of serving it. Do try it, and I can assure you that it will not be tough and rubbery! You probably know that squid either needs to be cooked very quickly in a hot pan, or long and slow in a casserole, for at least 45 minutes. Anything in between and it will be as tough as old boots.

Squid stuffed with Spinach and Pinenuts, served with Roasted Vegetables and Tomatoes

Ready to cook in the above photo

Ingredients for 2 servings

6 squid

4oz Fresh Spinach

2oz Pine Nuts

1oz Chunky breadcrumbs (make your own from stale bread)

3 sun-dried tomatoes

1 fresh chilli

4 medium-sized new potatoes

1 courgette

Olive Oil

Stick of fresh rosemary

Half a 400g can of chopped tomatoes

Method

Slice the potatoes into chunky pieces – about 4 slices from each. Put in a small roasting tin. Drizzle with olive oil, add the rosemary stick and seasoning and roast for 20 minutes at 200 degrees. Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a small, dry, frying pan. Slice the deseeded chilli and cook for a few minutes in a little olive oil. Put the spinach in a colander and pour boiling water over it. This will wilt it. Mix the spinach, breadcrumbs, pine nuts, chillis and chopped, sun-dried tomatoes. Prepare the squid by pulling the legs out of the bodies. Make a small snip down the side of the body, about a quarter of the way down. Fill the bodies with the stuffing mixture and secure with  cocktail sticks. When the potatoes have roasted, add the courgette to the tin, sliced into chunky pieces. Roast for another 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat a griddle pan until it is smoking. Add a small amount of olive oil and sear the squid bodies and tentacles for a couple of minutes each side.

Squid cooking on the Griddle

Remove the tin from the oven. Add the tomatoes, then put the squid bodies and tentacles on top. Cook for another 5 minutes in the oven.

This is a meal in itself, but if you are like me you might dollop a spoon of thick Greek yoghurt on the top!

Squid stuffed with Spinach and Pinenuts served with Roasted Vegetables and Tomatoes

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Harvesting Apples and Pears




I am a keen gardener when it comes to growing food, but not always successful. Some years I spend weeks and weeks sowing and nurturing vegetable seeds, and then they either produce very few crops, or the whole lot is consumed by slugs. I have had success some years with beetroot, spinach, peas and courgettes, but have to admit that this year was a bit of wash-out.

This is why fruit trees can be so rewarding; you generally get very good crops for little or no labour at all. Of course the down-side is that there is an awful lot of fruit to deal with all at once. We are consistently getting good crops of apples from our three trees (Cox’s Orange Pippin, Ribston Pippin and Bramley) and this year we had 11lbs pears from the Doyenne du Comice tree.

In the picture above you can see me harvesting the pears in our garden. I have never tried storing apples and pears for use later in the season. In theory I know this should be possible by wrapping perfect fruit individually in newspaper and then putting them into a dry box. The box would then have to be stored in a cool, dry place. We have sheds which are damp and prone to infestation by bugs and larger creatures, so this storage option does not seem worth the risk for the amount of fruit that we have. We therefore enjoy fresh apples for as long as we can, and I cook as many dishes as I can from the rest of the fruit. We prefer our pears cooked, and the fruits in our garden never seem to reach that perfect ripeness which makes them worth eating raw.

Pear Harvest from Vine Cottage – 11lb Fruit

Below I show you some of the dishes that I have made from our harvest, with an indication of the source of the recipe. There are two recipes of my own, with a quick resume of my ingredients and method.

Pear and Cardamom Tart

This recipe is from the trusty BBC Good Food magazine, and includes a frangipane, one of my favourites, which works so well with both apples and pears. Using cardamom in sweet dishes may be new to some people, but it does work really well. My only change to this recipe was to slice and cook and cook the pears first, as there is no way they would have softened enough just cooking them in the tart without the pre-cooking. Obviously this depends on your pears. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1758664/pear-and-cardamom-tart

 

Apple and Pear Crumble with a Meringue Topping

It may seem odd to put a meringue topping on a crumble, but it is something my mother picked up from Fanny Craddock I believe! She used to make crumbles in this way when I was a child, particularly if we had egg whites lurking in the fridge (perfectly fresh of course!) The meringue makes the crumble a bit more squidgy, which is very pleasing.

New Jelly Strainer

Vine Cottage Pear Jelly

Vine Cottage Apple Jelly

I am a great fan of jellies, so treated myself to a new jelly strainer from Lakeland recently. It is quite a challenge to store in my small kitchen, but is well worth the bother. Before I had the jelly bag and stand, I was hanging a muslin bag from a cupboard door and in danger of causing damage to the cupboard (never mind the inconvenience of not being able to use the cupboard whilst jelly-making was in progress!)

Jelly is a great idea for using fruit which is too awkward to peel and cut into sensible shapes, for example crab apples. I also think it is the best way of using medlars and quinces. However, I love jelly so much that I tend to make some every year from whatever apples and pears I have not made into tarts and other dishes. If you have not tried it before, or only bought it from the shops, give it a go. I use jelly in all my gravies, and it is also very good with bread and cheese or a pork pie.  The recipe I use is based on one by Sarah Raven in her book Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. Basically you need 450g sugar per 600ml of liquid, but do have a look at some recipes for more detail.

Pork Shoulder ready to slow-roast

Slow-roast Pork Shoulder with carrots, roast potatoes and Celeriac and Cavolo Nero Colcannon with Thyme and Bacon Crumb

This was last night’s dinner. The Colcannon recipe is from the BBC Good Food Magazine October issue. This would make a meal in itself, and could easily be vegetarian without the bacon.  Slow-roast or pulled pork may be very popular and on many restaurant menus, but that does not stop it from being an excellent dish. It also pervades the house with the most amazing aromas whilst it is cooking!

I did my own recipe last night. I do recommend a pork shoulder if you can get one, as it is cheaper than some other cuts. However, any pork roasting joint will be fine. Mine weighed just over a kilo and was enough meat for 4 people. As there were only 3 of us, we have left-overs. It is probably not worth slow-roasting a joint much smaller really.

I put the meat into a large roasting tin, and added some big chunks of apple and onion. I studded the meat with some rosemary stalks and bay leaves.  I then added about 300ml red wine to the tin and swilled out a dijon mustard jar, pouring the liquid over. I covered the dish with foil and cooked it at 150 degrees for 4 hours, addding some more wine after a couple of hours.  I then poured away the juices and put the meat back in the oven, uncovered, smeared with a little maple syrup. I turned the oven up to 200 degrees and roasted some potatoes at the same time. I made my gravy with the juices from the tin, adding some vegetable water, pear jelly and more red wine. I mashed in some of the apples and onions, and served the rest as a side dish.

I hope you too enjoy harvesting fruit from your garden if you are lucky enough to have some. If not, you can always make friends with someone who has excess fruit in their garden and would be glad to pass it onto someone else! Please share your recipes if you have any particular favourites.

 



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My Food Diary Sunday 10th-Saturday 16th September




You may have spotted by now that I cook proper meals every day, and that I use a fair number of recipes from cookery books and magazines/newspapers, as well as devising my own recipes. I thought it would be interesting to sometimes write a diary for the week showing you what I have cooked for dinner. I am not including breakfasts, as my breakfast is usually the same each morning – Greek yoghurt with fresh fruit and honey. I have not photographed every meal, especially as sometimes we eat left-overs of a previous meal.  For lunch I usually make sandwiches or have left-overs of some dinner which needs eating up. I’ll include the lunches if they were particulary notable or if I made some bread from a recipe that I’d like to share. Sometimes I shall also include some home-bakes for afternoon tea or pudding.

Sunday 10th September

Dinner: Roast Chicken and Potatoes with Apple Stuffing, Carrots, Peas and Gravy

Although I have no photo of this meal, I’d just like to tell you about the stuffing. We have three apple trees in our garden, all of which produce reasonable crops each year. Having not had time to make an apple pudding, I decided to make an apple stuffing. For this I mixed 4oz breadcrumbs, 2oz melted butter (you could use suet instead), a handful of freshly chopped herbs such as parsley and thyme, a beaten egg, two grated apples and a little lemon rind and juice. On this occasion I stuffed the body cavity of the chicken, but you could also make stuffing balls. To make this meal easier, as we were sitting in the living room having drinks and nibbles with relatives whilst it was cooking, I put some unpeeled maincrop potato pieces in the tin with the chicken whilst roasting it.

Later on I cooked fresh carrots and peas together in a pan with a small amount of water, rosemary, vanilla extract, a knob of butter and a teaspoon of sugar. I cooked the carrots for about 10 minutes before adding the fresh peas and then cooking them together for another five minutes. I always make my gravy by adding some vegetable water, wine, dijon mustard and a spoon of home-made jelly to the juices in the roasting tin.

Monday 11th September

I unexpectedly went out for an early dinner/meeting, so made pizzas for Paul and Jess.  My dinner is pictured below. We went to the Black Boy pub in Shinfield:  https://www.baronspubs.com/blackboy/

Fish Tortillas at The Black Boy in Shinfield

The meal was excellent, and the staff were really helpful and available with accurate information for a colleague who is gluten intolerant.

Tuesday 12th September

Pork Osso Buco with Aubergines, Apples and Chickpeas, served with mash

Okay, confession time! This recipe was not one of my best! I wanted to leave something for Paul to put in the oven whilst I was out at yet another meeting. I could then make the mashed potato on my return. The dish would have been perfect without the aubergine, but it was in the oven too long and was of too soft a texture to go with the other ingredients, particularly serving it with mash. I cooked the meat in some lovely cider which we bought on holiday in Spain this year: http://www.agroturismoarratzain.com/

So in future, I’d leave out the aubergine and use some fennel instead for a crunchier texture.

Wednesday 13th September

Ratatouille and Melting Mozarella Crumble from Sainsburys Magazine September Issue

This dish was a real winner! We eat vegetarian food at least a couple of times a week, and this dish fitted the bill and satisfied Paul, who misses the solid taste of flesh more than I do! It is a fairly standard ratatouille recipe with the addition of spinach. It is piled into a baking dish and has mozarella torn over the top before adding a crumble topping made with breadcrumbs, rosemary and toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds. You then bake it until it is crisp and bubbling. I think that my breadcrumb mixture was particularly tasty, as I was using up some mini bruschetta topped with tomatoes and olive oil. They had gone soft, but were perfect blitzed into crumbs, tomatoes included.

Thursday 14th September

Indian-spiced Celeriac Rosti with herb yoghurt from Sainsburys Magazine September Issue

Indian-spiced Celeriac Rosti with Herb Yoghurt and Left-over Aubergine Sauce

In the picture you will see that I did also eat up the remains of the aubergine sauce left-over from the pork casserole, so for me this was not quite a vegetarian dish. Rosti are a fun dish to make and to give a different texture to vegetables. Apparently celeriac is also very low in calories. The suggestion was to serve the rosti with mango chutney, and I just happened to have made a couple of jars of that recently – so much better home-made!

Friday 15th September – Fish Pie made according to a Jamie Oliver recipe (The Return of the Naked Chef 2000)

Fantastic Fish Pie from The Return of the Naked Chef

I have made this wonderful pie many times, and have adapted the recipe to suit my tastes and preferences. The best tip I learnt from Jamie by making this pie was that it is not necessary to cook fish before putting it into a pie. This means that you use fewer pans, and that the fish holds its shape better. Jamie includes spinach and carrot in his recipe. I have always used more carrot than he suggests, and I also add fennel and celery. Originally this was a way of bribing my daughter Jess into eating more vegetables, as she has always loved fish pie. I continue to make the pie with these additions even if I am not trying to deceive children.

 

Saturday 16th September Chicken with Chorizo, Chick Peas  and Kale from Davina’s 5 Weeks to Sugar Free

I was not particularly looking for sugar-free recipes, but I spotted this book in my mother’s house and noted a few really good recipes in it. Chorizo and chick peas are two of my favourite ingredients and I could happily just make a meal out of these ingredients. This went really well with a jacket potato and butter.

During the week I also made Portuguese Custard Tarts using this recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/portuguese-egg-custard-tarts 

Apple and Rosemary Loaf, using an Alice Hart recipe in the Waitrose Magazine September Issue, and Jaffa Cakes using one of Felicity Cloake’s Guardian recipes: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/27/how-to-make-the-perfect-jaffa-cakes

These are more like cakes than the commerically made variety, and have to be consumed fairly quickly! See my photos of the home-baking below:

Jaffa Cakes

Apple and Rosemary Loaf from Waitrose September by Alice Hart

Pasteis de Nata or Portuguese Custard Tarts

 

 



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Cooking the Nigella way: a review of ‘Nigella Bites’

 


I have a whole bookcase dedicated to cookery books, and I do actually use them. Apparently this is not always the case; I am told that many people own cookery books and do not cook any recipes from them. This is not to say that I do not sometimes change and adapt recipes or invent my own recipes. You may be thinking that I spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen, and you would be right! I am going to share some of my favourites with you, and am starting by reviewing a selection by specific writers.

Nigella Bites was published in 2001, although I am not sure how long I have owned it. A quick skim through the book and I can count at least 21 recipes I have cooked from this book, many of them on numerous occasions. I love Nigella’s chatty, descriptive style and her suggestions for changing, adapting and even (dare I say it?!) improving the recipes. She is also one of the chefs I enjoy watching on television. My one rule for watching chefs on television is that the content of the programme has to be the pure pleasure of food with no competitiveness. Thus I am not a fan of Masterchef or The Great British Bake Off. Anyway, I digress.

I know that not everyone enjoys Nigella’s style. She is very sexy and attractive and enjoys her food very much. I must admit that I do love gazing at other peoples’ kitchens. I have a very small kitchen, and sometimes try to do too much in it.

The format of Nigella’s recipe books is to organise by themes and menus rather than conventionally grouping together all the starters, main courses, puddings and so on. Some of the chapters in Nigella Bites are: All-Day Breakfast, Comfort Food, Trashy, Suppertime and Slow-Cook Weekend.

There are some recipes in this book which I shall probably never try. I am not a fan of pomegranate seeds: I have tried them and find them completely bitter and indigestible. Pomegranate molasses is a different matter – I love it and use it frequently. I am also not keen on the Jewish way of making chicken soup, so I’ll not be trying the version in this book. Another recipe I am not tempted to try is the Ham in Cocoa Cola, however much it might be recommended! Some of my favourite recipes are:

Welsh-Rarebit Muffins – cake-style savoury muffins which are wonderful for breakfast.

Double Potato and Halloumi Bake – a really excellent vegetarian dish which is good for everyday as well as being special enough for a party dish.

Chocolate Fudge Cake – one of many chocolate cake recipes by Nigella; this one has a lovely squidgy chocolate icing made with plain chocolate. At this point I need to show you the evidence that I have made this cake on many occasions. See the state that this page is in, in my book!

Chocolate Fudge Cake Recipe

Thai Yellow Pumpkin and Seafood Curry – this is one recipe I turn to again and again. I sometimes serve it with basmati rice, or I have made it more soupy and just served it in big bowls.

Bitter Orange Ice-cream – again I have made this on many occasions. It is the easiest orange ice-cream ever to make, being completely made from cream rather than from a custard base. Nigella also helpfully has instructions for making either with seville oranges (only available for a short time in the winter) or with sweet oranges and limes.

Soft and Sharp Involtini – this is a wonderful Italian vegetarian dish of stuffed aubergine slices. It is easy enough to make for a mid-week meal, although some may dispute this (I spend a reasonable amount of time preparing evening meals and am also very quick at putting meals together once I know a recipe well).

Bream with Anchovies and Thyme, served with the following recipe of Chick Peas with Chilli, Garlic and Thyme. Nigella uses two of my favourite ingredients in this medley – anchovies and chick peas.

Chocolate Pots – I show you below the photo of my pages, which have been stuck together with chocolate. A good thing I more or less know the ingredients! This is the easiest of cold chocolate pots to make and can easily be adapted for larger quantities.

Chocolate Pots recipe

I hope that you enjoy this cookery book as much as I do. It really is worth having a look at, and none of the recipes contain ingredients which are difficult to get hold of. Simplicity is the key in this book.

 

 

 

 

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Making Salmorejo Sarah’s Way

Salmorejo, as I am sure you know, is a Spanish recipe, but that is no reason for not making it when on holiday in Italy. I used to wonder what the difference is between this soup and the more commonly known Gazpacho. I have come to the conclusion that salmorejo includes bread, whereas gazpacho does not. They can both be smooth or chunky, and have essential ingredients of: tomatoes, olive oil, a bit of spice and some fresh herbs. They should also be served very cold with some toppings for extra texture. I give you below my latest version for Salmorejo. If you are making gazpacho, you can include other finely chopped salad ingredients such as cucumber and fennel. Some people may protest that this recipe is not authentic, but who cares?! It tasted good and used up some of the stale bread.
Recipe to Serve Two People
First cut up, or hack or tear your bread, depending on tools available. I used half of an average-sized crusty loaf. Blitz it in a blender or food processor, although large crumbs are best. If your loaf is not as stale as mine was, you could just tear it into small pieces.
Skin 6 large, juicy tomatoes by pouring boiled water over them and pulling off the skins with your hands. Add these to the blender with the bread still in. Add half a can of tomatoes, a glug of olive oil, half a handful of parsley and the same of basil, a teaspoon of hot, smoked paprika, some rosemary leaves and some tabasco if you have it. You could add a splash of any type of vinegar. Add a can of water and plenty of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Blend it all together until it is not too smooth. Put into a jug in the fridge and add a few ice cubes if you have them. Chill for at least an hour. Meanwhile hard-boil two eggs, fry some chopped bacon with some cubed bread and chop a few cherry tomatoes. Chop some more parsley and basil. Serve the soup in bowls with the chopped garnishes on the side for people to help themselves to.
You will have noticed that this soup contains a little meat. The good news is that if you remove the bacon, it becomes a vegetarian recipe! Furthermore if you remove the eggs it becomes a vegan recipe! So simple! Enjoy!


Slale Bread for making Salmorejo

Tomatoes to be blended for Salmorejo

Eggs and Tomatoes for Salmorejo Garnishes

Croutons and Bacon for Salmorejo Garnishes

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Getting Ready for our long summer holidays: don’t let those left-overs fester in the fridge!

Recently we left for our long jaunt to Sardinia and Corsica via Bilbao and Barcelona. Now, just be aware that this is not an announcement that our house is empty for a month! Sorry, but we don’t leave the house empty, as my daughter will be staying behind. We also have family and neighbours watering the garden and painting the house whilst we are away.

My daughter Jess is a chef, and like many chefs, has little time to cook at home. I therefore aimed to use up most of the food in the fridge, leaving a few bare necessities and, more importantly, some money for her to buy easier to cook food. As we ate up the food, every time I looked in the cupboards and the fridge, the chance of making just one more tasty meal seemed ever less and less likely. I surprised even myself with the amazing dinner I managed to rustle up on Saturday night. It started with a lamb bone I took out of the freezer. This was one of a few left over from a roast lamb feast the previous weekend. I catered for a party and cooked for my mother’s birthday all over two days, and basically did the same menu twice. Cutting lamb legs off the bone and butterflying them was hard work, but so worth it for the tasty bones left behind! I also found half a bag of raw prawns in the freezer – one of my stock items for the freezer.

The meal that resulted with these two basics was absolutely divine, and completely unplanned. I give you a vague recipe below, but the point of this kind of meal is that quantities and exact ingredients should be flexible.

Warm Lamb and Prawn Salad with Fresh Flowers and Herbs

Roast one lamb leg bone for about half an hour with olive oil, salt and pepper (both freshly milled), chunks of onion, fresh chillis and herbs – use them from the garden if you have them. I used rosemary, sage, marjoram, mint and lemon balm. Meanwhile cook some carrots and fresh sweetcorn (cut off the cob) in a pan with a small amount of water and butter. You could of course roast these with the lamb. Cook some puy lentils until just soft. Cook a handful of prawns in a pan in some olive oil.

When the lamb is cooked, cut it off the bone, and mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl. Toss with more olive oil and some balsamic vinegar, plus plenty more pepper. Mix in some chopped olives and, if you have them, a few snipped anchovies. For the fun bit, toss in a few edible flowers. Obviously you need to be sure that your flowers are edible and have not been sprayed. I used rose petals and nasturtiums. Day lilies are also edible and suitable. If you have some spinach or salad leaves, these would be great tossed in too.

This is the kind of salad which needs to be eaten warm and fresh. If you have to chill it to keep it fresh, it just will not taste as good! I would serve this in smaller portions as a first course, although it worked very well as a last supper at Vine Cottage! I am so pleased with this recipe that I want to share it with the world. See the picture below for how it looked on the night! Oh, and this recipe is meant to be flexible. If you want to give it a go and don’t have a lamb bone, you could try some lamb neck fillet instead. Or it would be great with pork too.

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