rose petal jam

For Janice

This is for Janice who read my facebook status the other day when I made this and requested it for the blog.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup

I know that this soup doesn't LOOK exciting, but it really does taste great! Anyhow, I am a fan of 'white' food, pasta, mashed potato, risotto, need I say more? Colour in food is all well and good, but pale and soothing food can be wonderful.

Cauliflower cheese is lovely but I am trying to shift a few pounds, pre Christmas so that I can wear this dress and look super girly lovely! So, I have invented this soup that has all of the taste and a fraction of the fat and calories. Losing weight was never so much fun!

Serves 4

One medium cauliflower cut into florets
Two shallots, chopped fairly small
About a litre or so of vegetable stock
Two medium potatoes, diced into chunks
A matchbox sized piece of parmesan, finely grated

Put shallots into a pan and add enough stock to cover. Simmer for 10 mins until softened
Add the potatoes and add enough stock to cover. Cook for 8 mins
Then add the florets of cauliflower and more stock and cook for a further 6 mins.
Remove from heat and blitz with a handblender so that soup is a fairly liquidised but still has texture
Stir in the grated cheese.

If the soup is too thick for your taste, just thin out with more hot stock.

Lovely with some granary bread and a feeling of smug virtuosity :-)

the witching hour is upon us...

Look at this wee chap! isn't he lovely? Admittedly not very scary but that was the brief given to Dominic, a pumpkin that I could smile with! Unfortunately we have no windowsill deep enough to display him in, so he sits, smiling away at me from the hearth. Aww!

And not to let his insides go to waste (heaven forbid), here is a lovely autumn soup, with a bit of a kick...

Pumpkin, Sage, Pancetta and Chilli soup

Ok, I know, too much sage and pancetta recently! But I LOVE the combination, so really I am not making any apology for it. And I'll stop soon I promise :-) And if you are with me on this one, please check out the latest entry from the gorgeous Cherry Menlove

Serves 4

The inside of a medium pumpkin, diced
a red onion, chopped
15 (or so!) sage leaves
1/2 tsp chillli flakes
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
500ml vegetable or chicken stock
3 slices of pancetta, snipped up into smallish strips

Fry off over a gentle heat the pancetta, onion, sage, chilli and garlic in some olive oil for about 5 mins untl soften and frangrant.

Add the pumpkin and cook over a slow heat for about 2-3 mins.

Add the stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 mins.

Blitz with a hand blender until smooth but with some texture.

Serve with a smile.

small beauties

Note: the title of this entry is stolen from the very lovely and sadly departed Julia Darling Read her poem of the same title via this link.

Just look at them!! I should have put this post up weeks ago as that is when the berries were picked, but it just never happened. I wondered whether it was now past bramble season and I shouldn't blog this, but the bushes on the country walk path at the weekend said no, so here we go.

Blackberries, or brambles are a childhood thing for me. We used to go along the banks of the Leeds - Liverpool canal, carrying empty margarine tubs and collecting as many of these as possible. God the scratches we used to get! By the end of the afternoon we all looked like we had had a cat fight with a vicious moggy! Also, our lips and hands were stained purple as I think Helen and I ate as many as made it into the tubs.

Afterwards they were transformed into jam, puddings and even wine (strictly for the grown ups though!).

And in honour of all of this I created a new and unbelievably easy pud, which would even cut the mustard at a casual dinner party I reckon.

Bramble and Ginger Mess

ok, so it's not even a recipe!!

Put together brambles, creme fraiche and smashed up ginger biscuits and serve in pretty/ attractive glasses. I used Tescos organic ginger biccies which are very oaty so it gives a nice wholesome edge to the dessert. If your berries are very tart, as they can be, then sprinkle them with sugar about 5 mins before combining with the rest. Ooh! and a slug of ginger wine at this point also adds a lovely booziness to the proceedings. It's just lovely and takes 2 mins to assemble and serve and as you can see looks very sweet.

How do you like your eggs in the morning?

The other morning, I think it was Sunday, I wanted to make scrambled eggs for brekkie. However, Dom wanted to go for a run and by the time he got back, got showered it was more like brunch time. Sundays can be like this, it’s probably the only day of the week where it seems OK to have two meals rather than three. Probably because there is often the promise of a big roast dinner later on!

So, scrambled egg didn’t sound enough. Not in quantity but in flavour. Now don’t get me wrong, I love scrambled eggs with their soft blandness and I rather immodestly think mine are some of the best I have ever had (after much practice, I used to make eggs like rubber!), but brunch needs more of a kick to it don’t you think?

So this is what I came up with, purely from bits and pieces that I had in the fridge and store cupboard. I decided to make something with a bit of a kick, mainly for Dom who embraced curry for breakfast when we travelled to Sri Lanka and loves all things spicy.

Spicy scrambled eggs

Two spring onions, finely sliced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
Half a courgette, diced
1 red chilli, deseeded and cut into little slices
1/2 teaspoon of cumin seeds
4 eggs
Wholemeal bread toast
Few leaves of basil (coriander or parsley would also be ok)
A little oil

Make the toast and keep warm (I find this easier than trying to make whilst trying to make the eggs which nearly always ends in burnt toast!)

Gently fry the onion, garlic, cumin, chilli and courgette until softened and aromatic

Beat the eggs in a bowl and then pour over the veggie mix

Add some chopped basil

Scramble the eggs by gently cooking the eggs over a low heat until they are a sloppy consistency. Don't over stir, just fold the set egg from the bottom of the pan into the liquid egg. At this point, when they are still a bit runny, be brave and remove from the heat. The heat of the pan and in the egg mixture will do the rest of the cooking. If you keep it on the hob until they look done they will end up over cooked.

Serve on top of the toast and garnish with the remaining basil.

You could put whatever you have and like into this, peppers would be good, cheese added at the end would be nice, maybe some parmesan? I think if I had had some I would have used coriander over the basil but in a way I was glad it was the only fresh herb I had as it was a nice contrast and not the obvious choice.

Make it your own, but make it. It’s dead easy, very quick and would make not only a great brunch but would be a fab quick tea before having to rush back out to meet friends etc.

Guilty of simplicity

Do you have a dish that you make where the effort that goes in is inversely proportionate to how amazing it tastes? I have a couple and this one in particular makes me feel quite guilty! When I cook it for people I get embarrassed if they ask for the recipe as it’s so simple and requires so few, easily available ingredients that I feel a bit of a fraud. I really MUST do something about my belief that for something to be good or worthwhile it must be hard to do or difficult to attain. Must be my puritanical upbringing (JOKE mother).

This dish is something I created a few years ago and was one of the first things that I made up entirely from nowhere but my own head and what I thought would taste good. It was just after I discovered that coriander was actually really nice, after a childhood of disliking it. It also uses fresh chilli and has a wee kick and so went down very well with Dominic.

And as if it couldn’t get any better (see how I am learning to blow my own trumpet Janice?) it is

a. Good for you – low fat, good lean protein, contains veggies and

b. You can make it in well under 30 minutes – I’d say you could do it in 15 mins to be honest if you concentrated, didn’t have to root around for the ingredients and weren’t listening to The Archers at the same time.

I haven’t really had a name for it until now so…err….

Spicy prawn pasta with lime & coriander

serves two

Enough prawns for 2 people, defrosted
150g linguine pasta
Punnet of cherry tomatoes
Handful of coriander leaf and stalks, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
A tray of sugar snap peas
The juice and zest of a lime
1 fat red chilli, deseeded and chopped
2 big dollops of half fat crème fraiche
1 dessertspoon of olive oil

Do all of the chopping and defrosting
Put the pasta on to boil according to packets instructions
Put oil, garlic and chilli into a saute pan and gently soften. Add the tomatoes and cook out for 3 mins
Add the prawns, coriander and lime to the pan and mix together. Cook for minute the turn off the heat so the prawns don't become rubbery.
When pasta has 4 mins to go add the peas to the water.
When al dente, drain pasta and peas and add to prawn mixture.
Add the crème fraiche and combine everything together.

Serve, guiltily but defiantly!

For Rebecca

Dedication: This new soup recipe is for lovely Rebecca, who is vegetarian. As an ex vegetarian I know only too well that many food magazines, programmes and blogs have far too little on offer for those who don't eat meat. (Although now I am back on the meaty stuff I have to say I think you're all slightly bonkers but there you go, nowt worse than an ex veggie!)

Anyone who knows me knows that soup is one of my things. I tend to make it much more in autumn and winter as it makes such a great lunch to take to work etc or for weekend lunches and keeps you nice and warm inside on cold wet days. Bizarrely, I never usually make soup when having friends over for dinner. In fact I can’t remember the last time I made soup as a starter. And I never order it in restaurants as a starter, but will happily order it for lunch. Hmmm…

There is a great new café in Newcastle called Supe which does really excellent fresh soups using seasonal and local ingredients. Unfortunately they seem not to have a website but if you are in the area, it’s on Pilgrim Street, near the Tyneside Cinema and is run by two nice young chaps who have lots of energy and passion for food and for offering healthy and delicious alternatives to the usual café stuff you find.

Anyhow, I digress. I am writing today to introduce my latest soup recipe, which is a summer soup for a change. And so nice, I might even do it as a starter at my next dinner party.

We are getting a lot of courgettes at the moment from Mark & Helen's allotment – delicious and tender, they are perfect for this recipe. I’m really into mint at the moment so that had to go in too and it makes it extra summery. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present…

Courgette, Feta & Mint Soup

Serves two, generously

4 medium sized courgettes or equivalent
1/3 supermarket sized pack of feta cheese
1 medium potato
1 pint vegetable stock (fresh or cubes)
20or so mint leaves
2 small cloves of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
Pinch of salt

Chop the vegetables up into 2 cm chunks and dice the garlic into little bits. Fry off on a medium heat for about 5 mins until the courgettes are softened and the veggies have a little colour (golden rather than brown).

Add the stock and the salt and cook until the potato seems tender, about 15 mins. Add the feta, crumbled up and the mint leaves. Cook for a further 30 seconds then remove from the heat.

Using a hand blender whiz until smooth (or use a jug blender if you have one). It turns a really lovely light yellowish green and has a soft, silky texture.

Serve with a small sprig of fresh mint. If you were doing for a dinner party and trying to be posh, and if you knew a way of procuring them, a deep-fried courgette flower would look fantastic. (Can you tell I have been watching Jamie again?!)

I am really pleased with this soup; it is so simple, with just 5 main ingredients and takes just 20 minutes from chopping board to bowl.

the joys of garlic

My sisters lovely boyfriend/ partner (never sure what the current description is) has an allotment and is always popping round with stuff for us to eat. His lettuce is phenomenal, so thick and tasty and totally unlike that which you buy in the supermarkets and greengrocers. Anyhow, his latest offering was his first bulb of garlic of the season. We had never seen garlic with its whole stem – all 60cms or so of it, and the sight of the fat little bulb with its pretty purplish skin and white underneath makes a very pretty picture as you can see.

We decided straight away that we should honour it by making garlic bread with it, a big favourite with me and a fab accompaniment to the mussel dish described earlier.

Dom took charge of the making of the butter and having whizzed the garlic and the parsley in our wet and dry grinder, made an amazing, vibrant green butter to smear into the slices of the fine baguette we’d bought that morning. It looked almost unreal it was so green and again, makes a very pretty picture.

In hindsight we used too much butter (yes, it IS possible) but it was utterly delicious and lost none of it’s vibrancy in cooking. It went so well with the mussels, especially to help mop up all the lovely juices.

Green garlic bread

You will need:

A large handful of parsley, more than you think necessary
1/3 of a pack of butter
A whole head of garlic
A medium baguette (about 30cm long or so)
salt

Finely chop the parsley and the garlic, in a blender if possible to get really fine pulp/ paste.
Mash into the butter and season with salt.
Cut slits almost all the way down the bread, about 2cm apart. Smear the butter into the cracks making sure both sides of bread have some butter on.
Wrap tightly in foil and bake in the oven at about 200 degrees c for 10 mins.
Open the foil and bake open for another 5 mins.
Serve. With a napkin.
Don’t go out, breath on strangers or kiss anyone else who hasn’t eaten it with you.

the ultimate steak sandwich

Let me start by saying the title is a slight untruth as for me, the ultimate steak sandwich is one with venison. However, we have been so hectic recently that we haven’t had the chance to visit our game butcher. This beef sirloin in the sandwich pictured is from Radford’s in Sleights, best butcher we know and their meat is fabulous. If you are ever in North Yorkshire, check them out, well worth the visit.

Dominic and I have experimented with what makes up the ultimate steak sandwich. Different marinades and rubs, different bread, selection of leaves, accompaniments. We now think we have it perfected. Here goes.

Firstly, prepare a rub for the steak. We put about a handful of fresh thyme and about 20 peppercorns in our spice grinder with one clove of garlic. You could use pestle and mortar but frankly we are lazy and have the grinder so… add some oil too to loosen.

Rub this over the steak. We reckon you need about 300g of steak for 2 decent sized sarnies. We generally get one big one and beat it out a little so is about 10mm thick. It gets chopped up into slices anyway. Just use knuckles to press and squidge it a bit thinner, no need for a meat tenderiser. It’s important that the steak has been out of the fridge for a couple of hours so that it is room temperature. Once the rub is on, just leave it.

And so to the onions. I think it’s important to use red onions as they give a better flavour. I use 2 medium sized ones as they cook down so much. Peel and cut in half and then into thin strips or half moons, whatever you prefer. Add a splash of olive oil to a large frying/ sauté pan and bring to heat. Add the onions, stir and coat and then turn the heat down so the onions cook down slowly. When at the stage of darker stickiness add either a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar or about 100ml of red wine. Raise the heat and reduce the liquid so the onions absorb and coat. Add 1/2 a teaspoon of unrefined granulated sugar too. Set aside in a bowl. Don’t chill.

For bread, it was tricky to decide. I prefer oven crisp baguettes, either something very fresh from a bakers, like ficelle or the ones you bake yourself in the oven are acceptable substitute (I’m sure somewhere a bread snob is about to shoot me down in flames, but I like them, so sue me). Dominic prefers the allure of a ciabatta. So you decide! The bread must be oven warm though so refresh in the oven if necessary.

And now for the secret ingredient. We cannot have a steak sarnie without this. It’s impossible. Tesco’s (sorry, I know, the evil empire) Finest range smoked garlic mayonnaise. God it’s good. And a perfect accompaniment to the steak and the onions.

When cooking the steak, well, it depends how you like it. Since throwing off my 25 year mantle of vegetarianism (WHAT was I thinking!!) I have embraced the rarest of meats and love my steak between blue and rare. Dom is a rare man (in many ways) so we work together well on steak sharing. Those with less compatible partners or friends will have to divide the steak before cooking. We cook the steak for 45-50 seconds each side. Resting is important, between two hot dinner plates, one overturned on the other.

Meanwhile assemble the sandwich. Slather the mayo on the bread, add the onions. Have the salad at the ready (rocket leaves only please). Cut the meat against the grain into 5mm thick slices. Arrange on top of the onions. We tried putting the onions on top of the steak but it’s tricky and frankly it makes no difference to the taste. Then add a generous amount of rocket, close the sandwich, stand back and admire. There really are only two acceptable drinks, a large glass of red (a gutsy shiraz or a fruity Italian) or an ice-cold beer. Ahhh!!

The pepperiness of the steak, the sweet and mellow onions, freshness of the rocket, the smoky, richness of the mayo and finally the crisp yet soft texture of the bread. Can it get any better than this?

Sit facing each other to share the joy and eat greedily. Make sure you have a napkin. Smile and sigh.