Jaynie's Kitchen

Yotam Ottolenghi's Green Couscous

2011-05-15T11:45:00.016+02:00

I have to come out of the closet and own up to the world....
I am in love with someone other my lovely Sjoerd.....
His name is Yotam Ottolenghi....and it is his food which has stolen my hungry herb-loving heart.

We have been liasing with each other for the past year, introduced by a friend via my husband (kinky). Since that first recipe - love at first bite - we have been inseparable. I have introduced him to my initimate circle of friends, and have even tried him out on large groups of friends for special parties. He is always a winner and charms the socks off men and women alike.

There is something quite bewitching about watching people making their first contact with an Ottolenghi. The food looks colourfully attractive yet unassuming. Usually they are talking to somebody (that person might be me), and absently mindedly they put a forkful into their mouth. It usually takes a few seconds. You can see it in the eyes. They move back and forth (or sometimes roll), as the brain searches for an explanation of what is going on in their mouth. What usually follows is some derivation of 'What IS this??! This is gorgeous. Oh my godddddd!'

This springtime-going-on-summer Green Couscous is no exception. Even though I've been seeing Otto (as he is affectionately called in our house) for quite some time now, he still surprises me as I try out new recipes from his Plenty cookbook. The herb paste that gets mixed through the couscous may seem non too exciting - it is just parsley, coriander, mint, tarragon and dill after all - but there seems to be something alchemically addictive that happens when it hits the couscous, onion, cumin, salt and toasted pistachio nuts. It is THAT good.

Yotam Ottolenghi's Green Couscous
Serves 4

150g couscous
160ml boiling water or vegetable stock (I used 250ml of vegetable stock)
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 tbspn olive oil
1/4 tsp Maldon salt
1/4 tsp ground cumin
50g shelled, unsalted pistachio nuts, toasted in a dry frying pan, then roughly chopped
3 spring onions, finely sliced
1 fresh green chilli, finely sliced (I didn't use this: I'm not so hot on chilli!)
30g rocket, chopped

Herb paste:
20g parsley
20g coriander
2 tbspn chopped tarragon
2 tbspn chopped dill
2 tbspn chopped mint
90 ml olive oil

Place the couscous in a large bowl and ocver with the boiling water or stock. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave for 10 minutes (I left it for a good 30 mins, no problem).

Meanwhile, fry the onion in the olive oil on a medium heat until golden and completely soft. Add the salt and cumin, and mix well. Leave to cool slightly.

Next, make the herb paste. Place all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz until smooth.

Use a fork to fluff up the couscous then stir/fluff the herb paste into it. Add the cooked cooled onion, pistachio nuts, spring onions, green chilli (if using), rocket, and gently mix. Serve at room temperature.

We ate this with pan-fried sea bream and a dollop of homemade mayonnaise, the latter being added after the photo was taken!

Leon's Rainbow Superfood Salad

2011-05-05T18:14:00.011+02:00

The idea behind this salad according to Allegra McEvedy, co-founder of the Leon Restaurant chain in London, is that brightly coloured vegetables are better for you. Apparently, very orange pumpkin contains more beta-carotene, deep dark green broccoli has more sulphorane, and richly red tomatoes have more lycopene. No idea if this is actually true, but having made this salad, the cheerful colours are an immediate pick-me-up! I can imagine that when we head into autumn and fresh salad leaves start becoming a rareity, that this would be a pre-cold-weather-tonic.

There are a few steps necessary to cook the vegetables, so it is not an instant chuck-it-all-together meal. However, if you are up for some therapeutic pottering (as I was), then I did all the vegetable cooking one evening and served it up 'in no time' the next day for lunch. It gave the illusion that is was a quick simple lunch....but it is satisfying, cheering and uplifting. What more could you ask for for a Tuesday lunch? By the way, I made half the quantities listed below, and it was ample for two of us (with second servings) and some leftovers.

Leon's Rainbow Superfood Salad
Serves 6

3 medium raw beetroot (I used bought, pre-cooked beetroot: make sure not to get the ones pickled in vinegar), chooped into small wedges
6 large ripened tomatoes or 12-15 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
600g butternut squash, chopped in 3cm cubes
200g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 small head broccoli, chopped into bite-sized florets
3 tablespoons quinoa
150g red cabbage, finely shredded
60g fresh or frozen (and defrosted) peas
3 tablespoons toasted seeds (e.g. pumpkin and/or sunflower)
Salt & pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200°c.

2. Lay the cut side of the tomatoes upwards on a roasting tray. Sprinkle with salt, and drizzle liberally with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Put them into the oven for about 1 hour on the lowest shelf.

3. Put the cubes of butternut squash on another baking tray and roll them in a little olive oil. Season well with salt and pepper. Roast them in the oven on a higher shelf than the tomatoes for about 45 minutes, giving them an occasional turn so that they get roasted all over.

4. When these veggies are done leave them to cool.

5. Whilst they are cooking, put the quinoa into a pan, cover in generously with water, bring to the boil and simmer gently until the water is absorbed. The quinoa should look like it has sprouted little tails and it should be soft.

6. In another pan, bring some salted water to the boil, then drop the broccoli florets into it for 4 minutes. At the same time add the peas (fresh or frozen) for the same length of time. When the broccoli is cooked (bite tender) drain the peas and broccoli. Run them under cold water to cool (this helps them keep their bright colours).

7. As final prep work, put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a small frying pan and heat up. Once hot, throw in the sliced mushrooms, shake about a bit, then season wel with salt & pepper and add the lemon juice. They should cook sufficiently after about 4 minutes.

8. Then it time to assemble the Rainbow Superfood Salad. You could try to stick to the Rainbow colour order (red, orange, yellow, green....) but I came a bit unstuck for blue, indigo and violet ;=) The order I used was: red cabbage, beetroot, broccoli, peas, mushrooms, quinoa, butternut squash, tomatoes and toasted seeds.

Allegra McEvedy recommends serving this by 'seasoning from a height and dress sharply'.
The sharp dressing I used was my Nigel Slater old faithful: 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar and 5 tablespoons of olive oil, with Malson salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (or added from a height!).

Felicity Cloake's Perfect Hot Cross Buns

2011-04-25T18:21:00.009+02:00

There's something about baking something traditional that makes it incredibly seductive.

And especially when you no longer live in that country!

A heady scent of nostalgia grabbed me by the throat during the last two days and would not let me go until I'd made them: HOT CROSS BUNS. These are nostalgic, yester-year perfection for all you Brits out there no longer residing in Britain.

The Guardian Lifestyle section on there website had an excellent article by Felicity Cloake, who had tested her way through several buns recipes, and came up with this hybrid, under the title of Perfect Hot Cross Buns. I have to agree with her entirely. I sat yesterday afternoon with a pot of leaf tea, and a freshly made, toasted and buttered Hot Cross Bun, perfectly content and grinning like a Cheshire Cat. Simple pleasures that are deeply satisfying.

Felicity Cloake's Perfect Hot Cross Buns

Makes 16

200ml milk, plus a little more for glazing 

3 cardamom pods, bruised 

1 cinnamon stick 

2 cloves 

¼ tsp grated nutmeg 

Pinch of saffron 

20g fresh yeast 

50g golden caster sugar, plus extra to glaze 

450g strong white flour 

100g butter 

½ tsp salt 

½ tsp ground ginger 

3 eggs 

150g currants 

50g mixed peel 

3 tbsp plain flour

1. Heat 200ml milk gently in a pan along with the cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and saffron until just boiling, and then turn off the heat and leave to infuse for 1 hour. Bring back up to blood temperature and then mix the strained milk with the yeast and 1 tsp sugar.

2. Tip the flour into a large mixing bowl and grate over the butter. Rub in with your fingertips, or in a food mixer, until well mixed, and then add the rest of the sugar and the salt and ginger. Beat together 2 of the eggs.

3. Make a well in the middle, and add the beaten eggs and the yeast mixture. Stir in, adding enough milk to make a soft dough – it shouldn't look at all dry or tough. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic, then lightly grease another bowl, and put the dough into it. Cover and leave in a warm place until it has doubled in size – this will probably take a couple of hours.

4. Tip it out on to a lightly greased work surface and knead for a minute or so, then flatten it out and scatter over the fruit and peel. Knead again to spread the fruit around evenly, then divide into 16 equal pieces and roll these into bun shapes. Put on lined baking trays and score a cross into the top of each, then cover and put in a warm place to prove until doubled in size.

5. Pre-heat the oven to 200C and beat together the last egg with a little milk. Mix the plain flour with a pinch of salt and enough cold water to make a stiff paste. Paint the top of each bun with egg wash, and then, using a piping bag or teaspoon, draw a thick cross on the top of each. Put into the oven and bake for about 25 minutes until golden.

6. Meanwhile, mix 1 tbsp caster sugar with 1 tbsp boiling water. When the buns come out of the oven, brush them with this before transferring to a rack to cool. Eat with lots of butter.

Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten's Apple Crostata

2010-03-28T18:51:00.007+02:00

Here I am in Paris, City of Chic Elegant Pâtisserie, and I am making an homely apple concoction from American celebrity chef Ina Garten.

My (delicious) husband, Sjoerd (well I think he is), is here doing the final part (superieur cuisine) of his Cordon Bleu diploma, and I am visiting for a few days. It is a tough life, but somebody has to do it :=) Since he is here for 3 months, he has rented a great apartment with a very well-equipped kitchen. We'd invited a fellow blogging student, Anthony, over for Sunday Lunch, and somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered an Apple Crostata recipe. Thank goodness for internet and my laptop, because a quick search brought me to the Food Network website - and rave reviews.

I have to be honest, that the finished pictures here do make it look more elegant than it turned out. 'Homely' or 'rustic' is being too polite....I am not sure what went wrong (if anything!)...because it looked quite floppy (thanks Anthony for the 'real' photo).

However it certainly did taste good.
It is a cross between an apple pie and apple crumble, buttery, flaky and fragranced with cinnamon and allspice It was especially good served slightly warm with crème fraîche.

I quote here the American quantities from the Food Network, rather than the conversion that I attempted, just in case that this is what went awry in translation.

Barefoot Contessa Apple Crostata
Serves 6-8

For the pastry:
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 pound (1 stick) very cold unsalted butter, diced
2 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:
1.5 pounds cooking apples (3 large)
1/4 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

For the pastry, place the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pulse a few times to combine. Add the butter and pulse 12 to 15 times, or until the butter is the size of peas. With the motor running, add the ice water all at once through the feed tube. Keep hitting the pulse button to combine, but stop the machine just before the dough becomes a solid mass. Turn the dough onto a well-floured board and form into a disk. Wrap with plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 230 degC.

3. Flour a rolling pin and roll the pastry into an 11-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Transfer it to a baking sheet.

4. For the filling, peel, core, and cut the apples into 8ths. Cut each wedge into 3 chunks. Toss the chunks with the orange zest. Cover the tart dough with the apple chunks leaving a 1 1/2-inch border.

5. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and allspice in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Pour into a bowl and rub it with your fingers until it starts holding together. Sprinkle evenly on the apples. Gently fold the border over the apples to enclose the dough, pleating it to make a circle.

6. Bake the crostata for 20 to 25 minutes, until the crust is golden and the apples are tender. Allow to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Lucious Lemon Curd

2010-03-22T20:02:00.006+01:00

After having posted a couple of days ago about Proper English Muffins, I thought you might like to make something quintessentially English to spread onto them. So, I give you, my Lucious Lemon Curd recipe. No fuss, simple, and ready in a (lemon) jiffy.

Lucious Lemon Curd
Makes enough to fill a one-pound (450g) jam jar

2 lemons, finely grated zest and squeezed juice
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
150g sugar
100g butter

1. Beat the eggs, egg yolks and sugar together.

2. Melt the butter over a low heat in a heavy-based pan, and when melted stir in the eggy-sugar mixture and the finely grated lemon zest. Keep cooking gently, stirring constantly, until the mixture has thickened.

3. Take the pan off the heat, stir in the lemon juice until well amalgamated.

4. Pour into a clean jam jar, and screw on the lid immediately. As the lemon curd cools down it will create a vacuum which will help to preserve it (until it is opened). Once cooled to room temperature, store in the fridge and smear to face regularly.

Proper English Muffins

2010-03-20T20:35:00.013+01:00

Sometimes nostalgia just hits me just square between the eyes....and all I can do is to act on it.
This bout of nostalgia started with my flicking through Nigella's Feast and finding a recipe for Welsh Rarebit.

Welsh Rarebit!!

It has been years since I had that cheesey paste spread on a muffin at Betty's in Ilkley. Betty's - that Yorkshire institution of high teas and ladies who lunch.

So in the quest for Welsh Rarebit then I had to make Muffins first. This is the result of that search. And Muffins can be yours too in about 90 minutes from start to finish.

Proper English Muffins
Makes 6 lovely thick ones

450g flour
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 tablespoon dried yeast (=1 x 7g packet)
1 teaspoon salt
250ml warm water
Cornmeal

1. Mix the warm water, sunflower oil and yeast together in a large bowl.

2. Add in the flour and salt, mix well and bring together in a ball.

3. Oil the top, cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for 30-40 minutes to rise.
In my case, I have found the top of our coffee machine to be the perfect rising place.

4. Pre-heat oven to 175°C.

5. Knead until soft (5-10 minutes) and roll out to a thickness of about 2cm. Cut into 6 rounds (or more, depending on the size of your cutter). Roll in cornmeal.

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the tops are golden brown and the muffins sound hollow when tapped.
7. Leave to cool for as long as you can.....then spread with butter, or make Welsh Rarebit

Thomasina Myer's Vacherin Victorious

2009-11-16T20:30:00.001+01:00

"What on earth is Vacherin?!' I hear you cry from behind my computer screen.

Well, think fondue, and then think French chic.

But before we get into the finer details, let me impress upon you that this is one of those dishes that just BEGS - and I mean B-E-G-G-G-S to be eaten with friends. So if you fancy a night of dunking, dipping, slupring and sipping, then this might be something to put on your list for this weekend.

Vacherin is an undeniably simple dish, and what gives it that certain je ne sais quoi is that it has limited availability. It is made from the milk of cows that graze on summer grasses in the Savoie region in France, and it comes in a signature round wooden box (see picture at top of this entry). The cheeses are then left to mature for 6 months before hitting the shops, and then only for a short while: from November to mid-February, which makes it quite a rare, seasonal cheese. (See, I'm not only sharing a delicious recipe with you today but some trivia to dazzle your guests with too).

This is one of those precious recipes (though I hesitate to actually use that term because it is so easy) that when I made it for the first time last year, I could not wait to make it again this year. I had read the recipe in Thomasina's cookbook last year, and then when I was in Paris with Sjoerd for part of his Cordon Bleu Basic Cuisine course it happened to be Vacherin season. This year, he is back for the next level (Intermediate Cuisine) and, what do you know, it is that time of the year again....So last night, we invited some friends and fellow Cordon Bleu students over for a Vacherin Evening (I was going to write Soiree, but that sounded too pretentious for what was a delightful evening). And I got to make this recipe again. Oh, I do so like it when life throws me these opportunities, and yells 'take me, take me!':=)

And just to show you the power of the Vacherin: what other dish could unite four different nationalities (English, Dutch, American and Spanish) from 4 very different careers: Chemist, Anaesthetist, Therapist/Scientist and Pilot ? Over the fun and the laughter, everyone swapped stories about their Cordon Bleu Adventures until now. You can keep up with their Culinary Capers by clicking on the highlighted links above, and also on our Flying Pilot Chef's blog too.

Will you let me know about your Vacherin Adventures?

Thomasina Myers' Vacherin Victorious
(Serves 2-4)

1 Vacherin Mont D'Or (400g-500g)
1 fat garlic clove
Few sprigs fresh thyme
Few sprigs fresh rosemary
Splash of white wine

1. Preheat the oven to 180 deg C.

2. Remove the lid from the box of cheese and make a hole in the middle of the cheese with a teaspoon. Cram in the garlic and herbs. Next, making more space if necessary, pour in a splash of wine.

3. Replace the lid, or cover with foil, and whack it in the oven (to quote Jamie Oliver) for 15-30 minutes until it gets nice and warm...and the cheese goes all goey and runny....and then put it on the table.

4. I serve it with various different things to spoon the melted cheese over. This is last night's list:

Fresh, crusty French bread
Boiled small potatoes
Large plate of mixed salad leaves
Tomato slices
Cucumber
Carrots
Olives
Avocado
Endive
Pear
Apple

nigel Slater's Beetroot Seed Cake

2009-11-09T23:46:00.002+01:00

This is one of those unusual recipes that just screamed out at me to be made.
I mean, honestly, BEETROOT in a cake?!

However, despite the fact that the mixture becomes a worryingly shade of puce before it goes into the oven, it does all turn out well in the end. It becomes a normal cakey colour, so fear not.

And the taste?

Absolutely delicious. Cinnamony, moist, and utterly addictive.
A word of advice: Nigel suggests using lemon juice or orange flower water in the topping - use the orange flower water for something exotic, fragrant and completely memorable.

I had to pick the friends that I could safely try this on. The lucky winners were Dominik and Irina, with Irina expecting their 3rd child any minute now. As you can see Irina has found that her 'bump' can also double as a table

So go on...be daring...try this...you will be so glad you did.

NIGEL SLATER'S BEETROOT SEED CAKE
Enough for 8-10 people

225 g flour
2 1/2 (2.5) teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
180 ml sunflower oil
225 g light muscavado sugar
3 eggs, separated
150 g raw beetroot
Juice 1/2 lemon
75 g sultanas or raisins
75 g mixed seeds (e.g. sunflower, sesame, linseed, pumpkin)

For the icing:
8 tablespoons icing sugar
3 teaspoons lemon juice or orange flower water
Poppy seeds

Set oven to 180 deg C.

Lightly butter a rectangular loaf loaf tin of at least 20 x 9 cm and 7 cm deep, then line the base with baking parchment.

Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and cinnamon. Beat the oil and sugar in a mixer (I don't have one, so I used an electric whisk) until well creamed, then add the egg yolks one by one.

Grate the beetroot coarsely (I use Marigold gloves otherwise my hands look like I have murdered somebody) and fold it into the mixture.

Add the lemon juice, sultanas or raisins, and the assorted seeds.

Fold the flour mixture into the eggy mixture and beat well.

Beat the egg whites till light and almost stiff. Fold gently but thoroughly into the mixture, using a large metal spoon.

Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for 50-55 minutes, covering the top with a piece of foil after 30 minutes. Test with a skewer (or blade of a knife) for doneness. The cake should be moist inside but not sticky. Leave the cake to settle for a good 20 minutes bfore turning it out of its tin to cool.

To make the icing: sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add enough lemon juice or orange flower water to achieve a consistency where the icing will run over the top of the cake a nd drizzle gently down the sides. This will be about 3 teaspoons. Stir well to get rid of any lumps.
Drizzle over the cake and scatter with poppy seeds. Leave to set before eating.

Scotch Pancakes

2009-11-01T20:55:00.002+01:00

What a great way to start a Sunday - SCOTCH PANCAKES!

For me this is a real trip down memory lane. I used to have them when I was little - from Marks & Spencers as a treat. They came, 8 nestled in a packet, and I'd either eat them as they were, or put some butter on them. In later years, Marks & Sparks also came to do a sultana & lemon version. I didn't stretch quite that far this morning. I wanted to renew my acquaintance with their soft rubbery-ness first before I start doing anything too fanciful with them.

When Sjoerd stumbled sleepy-eyed into the kitchen, I was already glowing with excitement. I could not wait to get started on making breakfast. I started telling him about when I was eight or nine years old that I would go to the pictures with Jane Thompson on a Saturday afternoon . The Lounge Cinema in Headingley. There was a childrens' matinee every week with some feature film, and then a weekly soap-type of adventure series where the children always won over the evil villains...or parents. Then it would be off to either my house or Jane's and we would have Soctch Pancakes, or toast with butter and golden syrup, before heading outside to play. She had some woods near her place, so we'd try to shin trees. Neither us were very lady-like....and one of us still isn't (and I haven't seen Jane for years, so no prizes for guessing who I am referring to!).

But I digress.

These Scotch Pancakes come from my source of all baking Female & Solace-full: Nigella. It is Nigella I turn to when I want some nostalgia. These little bundles of memories caught my eye when I made the Chocolate Chocolate-Chip muffins the other day. They too were located in the Kiddie Feast section of my entertaining Bible of 'Feast'. It is Sunday after all so I can be excused for this form of Biblical Worship :=)

Nigella Lawson's Scotch Pancakes
Made about 16

150ml milk
1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
110g plain white flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon golden syrup or honey

1. Put the vinegar into the milk and place to one side whilst you measure out the other ingredients. This is just to make the milk sour. It will become a bit thick and lumpy.

2. Put the flour into a large bowl and add the bicarbonate of soda.

3. In another bowl add the egg, oil and with the oily spoon measure the golden syrup (or honey) in and whisk everything together. Add the vinegary milk and give all the liquids a good stir.

4. Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry, and mix thoroughly. Try to get it smooth; this is not muffin batter lumps we are after here.

5. Heat a heavy non-stick frying pan (or flat griddle if you are lucky enough to have one) on a medium heat with no oil. Add 1 tablespoon of the batter to make each Scotch pancake. They will spread out a little, so resist the temptation to cram too many in a pan. When the surface becomes full of bubbles, which rise up from underneath, then turn the pancakes over using a wide flat utensil. This makes it much easier to get under the whole pancake than just a spatula.

6. Let this side now cook for a few minutes until golden brown. The first side will be an even brown colour, the second side will be more flecked and speckled. Very rewarding in their prettiness.

7. Pile on a plate. Eat with butter, jam, golden syrup, plain.....or as we did this morning with fruit and yogurt. What a start to the day.

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins

2009-11-01T09:47:00.005+01:00

You really must try these!

They are simple, quick, delicious and are so more-ish you will have problems in not gobbling up the whole lot....

I'd made these in a flick-of-a-wrist on Thursday morning when Sjoerd was going out for the day with brother, Maarten, and two nephews Nick and Max. I was quite surprised to hear that they had arrived, uneaten, at Opa Ed's....I felt like an old fashioned aunt (minus the flowery apron) making cakes for the kids. The house not only smelled great, but it stayed in my hair all day too. If someone had said that I smelled good enough to eat then I would have whole-heartedly agreed with them ;=)

I didn't have any chocolate-chips, but I did have a few bits of chocolate hanging around in the fridge (Milka milk hazelnut, some organic praline milk chocolate, and some squares of dark chocolate). So I chopped those up into small chunks and chucked them into the mix. Delicious.

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins
Makes 12

250g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
175g sugar
150g chocolate chips (or chopped chunks), plus some extra for sprinkling on top at end
250ml milk
90ml vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

METHOD
1. Preaheat the oven to 200 deg C.
2. Fill a muffin tin with 12 paper cases
3. Measure out the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
4. Pour all the liquid ingredients into a measuring jug.
5. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and mix both together. Remember that it is a lumpy batter you are after not a smooth lump-free mixture. It is lumpy batters that make the best muffins for some reason.
6. Spoon the mixture into the 12 muffin cases.
7. Sprinkle the extra chocolate chips (or chunks) on top and bake at 20 minutes until the muffins are dark, risen and springy.

Salade Composée

2009-05-24T21:25:00.012+02:00

Salade Composée is just a posh way of saying a big salad, nicely presented.
This splendid affair shows just what you can do with leftovers, and yet create a restaurant-worthy main course salad.

I love these sort of 'clean up the fridge' meals (or in Dutch: opruimkast maaltijden) where you use all sorts of leftovers that are hanging around in the fridge.

This is what we had ready to be used from the meals and leftovers from the last couple of days:

salad leaves
old bread
half an aubergine
cooked green beans
sugar snaps
fried mushrooms
cold beetroot risotto
pea purée
sun-dried tomatoes
black olives
endive leaves
cheese

We have been growing rucola over the last month and so a handful of this went in as well

All you need to do is to arrange it in a pile on a plate.
I filled leaves of endive with the beetroot risotto and pea purée and arranged those round the outside.

Then it is just a question of putting some dressing over it or a dollop of mayonnaise....and eating it up with relish.
I would have happily paid €15 for this in a restaurant :=)

Cordon Bleu Courgette Bread

2008-08-10T21:28:00.016+02:00

Simple pleasures and simple recipes.
This one will cost you very little time or effort, and you will be rewarded with a sweetish bread that you can eat at breakfast (toasted to accompany fruit and yogurt), at lunch (spread with a variety of delicious edibles), or for dinner (with salads or topped with pate etc as a nibble with drinks). I think the next time I shall make it with less sugar because I do not have such a sweet tooth; but you decide for yourself.

Simple pleasures, simple recipe, no further explanation needed, so time to get on with it!

Cordon Bleu Courgette Bread
Makes 2 1lb loaves

375 g courgettes, grated (not necessary to peel first)
3 eggs, beaten
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
125 ml vegetable oil
375 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
100 g sugar
75 g pine nuts

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C

2. Combine the courgettes, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice and oil in a large bowl.

3. Into another bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in the sugar.

4. Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the courgette mixture, then the nuts.

5. Mix everything together until well mixed.

6. Spoon into 2 x 1 lb greased and floured loaf tins.

7. Bake for 60-65 minutes until a knife inserted into the loaf comes out clean.

8. Cool for 5 minutes in the tins before turning out and allowing to cool as long as possible before you can resist the temptation to slice and try......For me it wasn't that long.....

Roasted Pumpkin with Blue Cheese, Walnuts & Honey

2008-08-05T21:46:00.013+02:00

Thank you Carol (my friend from of the 'childbirth was like shelling peas' fame in the last blog) for this delicious idea! It apparently originates from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whose cookbooks I do not own (at the moment).

The original recipe used a butternut squash, but all I had to hand was a two week old round, orange pumpkin....If you use a bigger pumpkin then you will need to scale this up accordingly.

This is a delectable mixture of soft roasted pumpkin mixed in with crunchy walnut pieces, melting blue cheese, and drizzled with honey. Yummy. And then some.

Roasted Pumpkin with Blue Cheese, Walnuts & Honey
Serves 1-2

1 small pumpkin
25g walnuts, shelled
30g blue cheese, chopped into small chunks
2 sprigs thyme, leaves stripped
Honey, to taste
Salt & pepper

1. Pre-heat to 200 deg C

2. Cut pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds. Place a knob of butter in the hollow of each half, along with a small clove of garlic, salt & pepper. Drizzle with olive oil, and place in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the pumpkin flesh is tender.

3. While the pumpkin is getting a roasting, put the walnuts in the oven along with it. But do keep an eye on them. After about 7 minutes they will start to turn from golden brown to cremated. It is a fine line between good and disastrous ;=) When toasted, allow them to cool, then chop roughly.

4. When tender, scoop the pumpkin flesh out into a bowl, making sure that you leave a thick enough lining so that the pumpkin is sturdy enough to support the coming filling. Depending on how much flesh there is you may have enough to fill both halves; if not (as in my case) just use one half.

5. Mash the flesh up with the cloves of garlic and thyme. Add most of the walnuts and most of the blue cheese chunks. Keep a few over to sprinkle over in a few moment's time. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then pile this mixture into the pumpkin shell.

6. Sprinkle over the reserved walnuts and blue cheese. Drizzle with honey and place back in the oven for 10-15 minutes until everything is warmed through and temptingly melting.

7. Then all you need to do is to serve and eat.....not that difficult....but remember that you don't have to eat the skin as well!

Jayne Jubb's Portabello Mushrooms Stuffed with Kapucijner Puree

2008-08-04T20:51:00.020+02:00

I've discovered that here in The Netherlands we have a vegetable that is rarely found fresh anywhere else.

The 'kapucijner'.

The English translation is marrowfat peas. Doesn't sound very appetising, does it? This is a pity because these peas are such gorgeous looking vegetables with a deep reddish purple pod. There must be some outstanding recipe worthy of these little beauties..... but a quick search of the internet wasn't really of much help in providing any inspirational recipes. So I decided to go it alone.

Being a Northern Lass, I was brought up with mushy peas. From a tin, or the chip shop. But the puree in this recipe is far from the processed mushy peas of my youth. And with this blog post today, I have given myself the credit in the title for this surprising and tasty mealtime morsel.

In these days of fast living, there is something quite therapeutic about sitting in the garden early in the evening to liberate the peas from their pods. I felt somehow connected to generations of mothers and grandmothers sitting knitting by open fires and on winter evenings shelling peas. I was also contemplating what my friend, Carol, who had just been to visit for a few days had told me that giving birth to her 4 kids was like shelling peas. But all this aside, there is something rather satisfying about ending up with a pan full of round, green peas and a pile of purple-skinned pods.

Jayne Jubb's Portabello Mushrooms Stuffed with Kapucijner Puree
Serves 2-4

4 medium Portabello mushrooms
500-750g kapucijners (marrowfat peas): gives 300-400g shelled peas
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 spring onion
15g Parmesan, finely grated
1 tsp truffle oil (or olive oil would also be fine)
1 tbspn chopped mint
Salt & pepper, to taste

To serve:
Finely grated Parmesan
Finely grated lemon zest
Whole mint leaves

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 deg C.

2. Place the shelled kapucijners in a pan of salted boiling water with the garlic and spring onion. Cook for 15 minutes until the peas are tender.

3. Place the Portabello mushrooms on a baking tray. Season with salt, pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and place a knob of butter in each mushroom. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the mushrooms are cooked.

4. With a slotted spoon, fish out all the cooked peas, garlic and the spring onion and transfer to a food processor. Puree to a very coarse mixture, before adding the grated Parmesan, truffle oil, chopped mint. Then process again until you have a knobbly puree. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

5. Once the mushrooms are cooked, divide the kapucijner puree over the mushrooms, and place back in the oven for 5 minutes to warm through.

6. Serve with finely grated Parmesan and lemon zest sprinkled over, and a couple of mint leaves to make it look pretty.

Thomasina Mier's Roast Aubergine with Feta & Mint

2008-05-01T14:12:00.012+02:00

This is truly delicious.

Imagine: smooth velvety aubergine with a light undertone of cumin, topped with tangy feta cheese with an interlude of fresh mint.

The last little while I seem to be going back to my vegetarian roots. I've just not being fancying fish, which I have grown to love over the last 4 years. As a result, I've been exploring old veggie cookbooks that I haven't looked in for ages (hence, Nadine Abensur will be making a few guest appearances, as she already did in the Dafina recipe a few days ago). This aubergine recipe does not come from that category but who cares - it's delicious. This comes from the stable of Thomasina Myers, BBC Masterchef winner from 2005, who has a talent for combining flavours that you would not normally think could - or would - go together.

Thomasina Mier's Roast Aubergine with Feta & Mint
Serves 4-6

1 garlic clove
Juice 1/2 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
250 g feta cheese, cubed
Large handful fresh mint, chopped
1 large fresh red chilli, deeseeded and finely copped (I didn't use this)
4 aubergines, halved lengthwways
2 tsp cumin seed, warmed and crushed (or 1 tsp ground cumin)
Sea salt & black pepper

1. To make the marinated feta: Use a mortar & pestle to crush the garlic to a paste with a good few pinches of sea salt. Add the lemon juice and a good glug of olive oil (1-2 tblspn). Toss the feta lightly in the dressing together with the mint and chilli (if using). Season with black pepper and cover with more olive oil. Leave to marinate in the 'fridge for at least a few hours, but it can also be overnight.

2. To prepare the aubergine: pre-heat oven to 200 deg C. Make diagonal crisscross slashes on the cut side of the aubergines and season with salt and pepper.

3. Heat 2 tblspn olive oil in a frying pan and fry the aubergine in batches that fit the pan, cut-side down, for 5-10 minutes until beautifully golden.
It may be necessary to add more olive oil.

4. Place the aubergine, cut-side up, on a shallow baking tray and sprinkle with the cumin. Place in the oven for 25 minutes until the flesh is soft.

5. When you are ready to eat, arrange the aubergine on a large serving plate or platter. Sprinkle the marinated feta over the still warm aubergine and serve. Thomasina also suggests adding pomegranate seeds or sunblush tomatoes for an extra blast of colour.

Nadine Abensur's Dafina

2008-04-26T10:54:00.011+02:00

What's a dafina I hear you asking?
It is a pot full of tradition containing three courses in one pan.

Rarely have I read a recipe that got me so intrigued that I wanted to make it just to feel like I was taking part in tradition. It so grabbed me by the male vegetables (if I had them!) that I could not wait to try it out.

A dafina is a Moroccan stew-like dish cooked by Jewish people in anticipation of the Sabbath. It used to be cooked overnight in huge, walk-in communal ovens. The doors were sealed when everyone who had booked his or her place had delivered a pot and tipped handsomely to guarantee the best and hottest spot for their own dish in the oven. Each family's pot was marked appropriately so that there could be no confusion when collecting it on the way back from the Synagogue. Nowadays we can imitate this by cooking the whole 'stew' at a lowish heat in an oven for anything from 8-18 hours (overnight thus, and then some more).

What really fascinated me in this recipe was the fact that there are three courses in one pan. What are those foil objects? They are hiding and protecting the most delicious stuffing and rice, which are cooked along with the rest of the ingredients - how quirky and ingenious can something get? There's even an egg in its shell that has been boiled in there too. The dafina would not win any beauty competitions for being the prettiest dish to look at (see photo), but my word, the experience more than compensates.

HOW TO EAT DAFINA
First the potatoes and the peeled eggs are served with a little of the broth.
I must be honest here and say that I didn't like the egg- it reminded me of something mummified that may have been found alongside King Tut.
Second, you eat the rice and the stuffing

Lastly, the chickpeas in plenty of the soupy broth are devoured.

The recipe below is Nadine's original recipe for 4 people and you'll need a 3 litre casserole dish to cook it in (that is large). I scaled it down for just one person (me!) and used a 1.25 litre Le Creuset pan. I assembled mine (it takes about 20 minutes) in the morning and let it fester in the oven all day until 8pm that evening. Plese don't be put off by the long list of ingredients - they are lots of 'bits' which make it sound longer than it actually is.

Nadine Abensur's Dafina
Serves 4

1 cup dried chickpeas
1 good-sized onion
5 tbsp olive oil
2 carrots, peeled
1 leek, trimmed
5-6 plump garlic cloves
1.5-2 litres water
4 large eggs
8 potatoes, each about the size of a small child's fist
1 vegetable stock cube
1.5 tsp Marmite (yes, honestly - it gives a salty, tangy depth)
1 pinch saffron, plus 1 extra pinch for the rice and 1 generous pinch for the stock
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp bouillon powder
Couple dashes Tabasco
2 bay leaves
Few dried porcini mushrooms
1 small date or dried prune
1 cup pudding rice or risotto rice
Salt & pepper

Dafina Stuffing
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove
3 tbspn matzo meal or breadcrumbs
3 tbspn ground almonds
Few strands saffron
Pinch nutmeg
1 small carrot, grated
Few raisins
1 tbspn parsely, finely chopped
1 egg, beaten
Salt & pepper

1. Begin the day before you want to cook this by soaking the chickpeas in plenty of water overnight.

2. The next day, pre-heat the oven to 200 deg C and roughly chop the onion and fry until brown in just 1.5 tblspns oil, placed in your casserole dish.

3. Add the carrots, cut into long quarters as well as the leek, cut into 3 stumpier pieces. They should begin to brown a little before you add the garlic and (drained) chickpeas, covered with at least 1.5 litres water. Remove the casserole dish from the heat while you continue to assemble.

4. Next add the eggs, rinsed under cold water and dried carefully. Then add the potatoes followed by the rest of the seasonings - the vegetable stock cube, Marmite, stirred in, saffron, nutmeg, bouillon and Tabasco. The dish is not meant to be spicy, so go easy on the Tabasco, since it is only used to round off the taste. Finally, add the bay leaves, dried porcini, date or prune and you will see how the natural sugars seep into the broth and add to its deep intensity.

5. Place the rice in a bowl and moisten it with 1 tbspn oil. Stir in 1 tbspn boiling water, into which you have crumbled a pinch of bouillon, a pinch of saffron strands, sea salt and a dash of Tabasco.

6. Tear off a generous piece of foil, about 20 x 25cm, and place the rice in the middle. Traditionally, this would have been muslin, though foil works well despite its apparently inpenetrability.

7. Roll the foil around the rice tightly folding the edges together over and over, so that the rice has room to swell as it cooks.

8. For the dafina stuffing, fry the chopped onion until very soft and brown. Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Oil a large piece of foil, add the stuffing to the middle of it and fold it up tightly - just like above for the rice.

9. Put the foil packages of rice and stuffing in the casserole dish on top of the chickpeas, topping up with water so that it is immersed. Add the remaining oil. Cover with a heavy lid and place in the oven for 2 hours at 200 deg C.

10. After 2 hours, turn the heat right down to 100 deg C and leave for anything from 8-18 hours. Check it occasionally to make sure that it isn't drying out too much, and if it seems to be getting a little dry, then add some boiling water.

11. All that remains to be done now is to eat it...and enjoy the tradition, mystique and uniqueness ;=)

Marvellous Meringues

2008-04-24T18:30:00.010+02:00

These meringues are so gay that you would not be surprised to read that they went down a treat with a group of gay male friends a few weeks ago. I was invited to dinner ('please bring dessert'), and of the nine of us present I was the only genuine XX there. The others were all female 'wannabees' :=) The photo here on the right is obviously not of my friends (it's from 2007 Gay Pride) because I wanted to protect their internet innocence, I mean, privacy. They may be crazy but they are not so crazy that they'd walk around Amsterdam, half-naked like this. in winter/spring...well...

These meringues are a scaled down version of Nigella Lawson 's Wedding Meringues. It is just a simple meringue recipe which could have come from Delia Smith or Mrs. Beeton, but Nigella always brings to mind something so much more sinful & sexy. I scaled it down from 12 egg whites to a mere 4, and it made 12 whoppers.

People are always so impressed with meringues, as though they are something hallowed in culinary dexterity. But they are not difficult to make by any stretch of the imagination and use just 2 ingredients. However if people want to gaze at my meringues in silent awe then that's fine with me :=)

The great thing about meringues is that you can freeze them and then whip them out for quick desserts. You can drizzle chocolate over them, dollop on cream or thick Greek yogurt, add jam, fruit, berries. I even have got quite 'retro' and sprinkled over crumbled Aero bars and Cadbury's Flake. The possibilities are large - from chic to crass - a flexibility to be appreciated and exploited!

Marvellous Meringues
Makes 10-12

4 egg whites
175 g sugar

1. Pre-heat the oven to 140 deg C

2. Whisk the egg whites with an electric mixer/beater until firm and beginning to hold their peaks. Then gradually whisk in the sugar 1 tablespoon at a time, patiently whipping until you have a stiff shiny meringue.

3. Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper (or those silicon re-useable sheets I'm so fond of). Spoon dollops of the meringue mixture - about 2 dessertspoonfuls per meringue - onto the sheets and spread out to make 8-10cm diameter blobs. Make sure you leave some space between the meringues because they will puff up as they cook.

4. Rough up the top of the meringues using a spoon to make rough peaks so that become textured and frilly.

5. Cook for 45-60 minutes. When ready they should be dry on the outside and still feel a little marshmallowy on the inside. Once out of the oven, let them become completely cold before you try to move them because they are fragile and may shatter.

6. Decorate and serve with whatever you fancy. Here in the picture I used some defrosted frozen berries and a little double cream poured over.

Joanna Weinberg's Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2008-03-03T14:11:00.013+01:00

As readers of this blog will know, I am not a big chocolate fan even though I do love makes cakes & biscuits. I'd already written a blog about the Best Chocolate Chips Cookies last year, but now this needs updating. The crown has definitely been transferred to Joanna Weinberg for featuring these moorishly biscuits in her book 'How to Feed Your Friends with Relish'.

My Mum & Dad were just over from Leeds for us to have 'Christmas'. Yes you did read correctly! Christmas. When it was Christmas-proper we were just back from our travels in Vietnam, so we decided to have it later. And as part of our Christmas time together I decided one evening to try these out. They had been calling me from the picnic chapter of the book for quite a while.

They were extremely successful, as you can see from the smile on my Dad's face. So much so that I had to hide them because otherwise 'Santa' would have scoffed the lot during the night and us reindeers would not have had anything for the next day.

Joanna Weinberg's Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Makes about 12

125g butter
75g light brown sugar
40g white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
140g plain flour
40g good cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
75g milk chocolate, roughly chopped into small, gravelly chunks
75g dark chocolate, roughly chopped into small, gravelly chunks
60g salted macadamia nuts

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C

2. Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, either with a mixer or with just a wooden spoon (and lots of upper arm strength). Beat in the vanilla and egg, and combine well.

3. Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Add it gradually to the butter mixture. The dough will be thick and quite heavy work now. When everything is thoroughly mixed, fold in the chocolate and nuts.

4. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment (or use a non-stick silicon sheet), and drop the dough onto it in soup-spoon sized balls, flattening the dough slightly to give the cookie shape.

5. Bake for 12-15 minutes. They will seem underdone, but fear not, you want them chewy.

6. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool slightly on the baking sheet, before removing carefully to cool completely.

7. Remember to hide any that may not get eaten that first sitting because if you leave them out then gremlins & mice in the form of family members will eat them....

Apricot, almond & lemon cake

2008-02-08T17:43:00.001+01:00

You would be forgiven for thinking that I have fallen off the edge of the earth - but believe me, I haven't. I am still here, alive and kicking, and cooking. I just have cut back on my time behind the computer since coming back from holiday....Things got a bit frantic work-wise before we left and I vowed (New Years' Resolutions that are still being upheld!) that I would spend more time doing other things than sitting behind the computer. As such life has become a whole less stressful, and I've been doing more cooking too. I just haven't been documenting it on line...

But now, I am trying to find a happy medium, since I hear from family & friends 'will this recipe be on your blog?'. What more inspiration and motivation can a girl get....so here I go....

This load of deliciousness is Nigel Slater's 'a simple fruit cake to serve with summer fruit'. Nigel of the very long and descriptive titles. My translation of this is 'Apricot, almond and lemon cake'. You may be fooled into thinking that we eat lots of cake here at home, but this is a misnomer. I like MAKING cakes, but I then tend to make them FOR people, give them away, or have them when we've cooked dinner for friends. Any images you may have of English High Teas at my place are way off the mark :=)

Nigel's description of this cake is:
Moist and fragrant, this is one of those endlessly useful cakes that can be eaten at tea or as a dessert. Shallow and pleasingly unfussy, it is perfect with poached fruit or with thick yoghurt. It is absurdly easy to make and keeps like a dream.

Yes, yes, and yes to all of the above. I made two smaller cakes instead of one larger one: one to give away to our secretary Betty (who'd helped me get lots of paperwork in on time), and one for after dinner with my father-in-law, Ed (when I was elsewhere). I wrapped the baked cakes in greaseproof paper and then aluminium foil, and they just got more moist and more lucious.

Apricot, Almond & Lemon Cake
Makes one large 23cm, or two smaller cakes

250g butter
250g sugar
1 lemon
75g ground almonds
100g plain flour
100g dried apricots
4 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C.

2. Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Grate the zest from the lemon and squeeze its juice. Mix the ground almonds and flour together.

3. Whiz in the apricots in a blender until they are finely chopped. They must be finer than candied peel, but not quite a puree.

4. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar, a little at a time, beating well in between. Add the lemon zest and a third of the almonds and flour, then mix well until incorporated. Add the second and then third portions of almonds-flour mixing well between each addition.

5. Mix the lemon juice and apricots into the mixture thoroughly. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased 23cm tin (or two smaller ones).

6. Bake for about 35 minutes until a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.

7. You can let it go cold before removing from the tin and eating, or you can remove it and serve it slightly warm. Leftover do keep well...if they get the chance....

Nigel Slater's Chocolate & Hazelnut Cake

2008-01-13T12:15:00.000+01:00

I'm baaaaaaaccckkkkk!

Happy New Year to you all, and now that we are back in Amsterdam and back to work, I am back to cooking.

On the way back from Vietnam and Hong Kong, we flew via Gatwick. And Gatwick Airport has a great bookshop....So to avoid the thronging masses who had delays and were taking up every square centimetre anywhere in sight, we headed to the bookshop. An oasis of peace and hardly anybody in there. What does this say about the Great British Public I wonder?

I spent the best part of an hour pilfering through the cookery books and came away with Nigel Slater's "Appetite" and Gorden Ramsay's "Sunday Lunches".

I have now tested Nigel Slater's Chocolate & Hazelnut Cake, which is my abbreviated title for what he calls 'A great chocolate cake for family, friends, dessert, tea, birthdays....' Too long a title for me, but it is certainly a good cake. This try out was a welcome home cake for our neighbours returning from their skiing holiday last weekend. Thank goodness I made a couple of little ones for us to try too :=) The hazelnuts were from our own tree - nice to be able to use some late summer memories in the chill of the winter.

Nigel Slater's Chocolate & Hazelnut Cake
Makes one 20-23 cm round cake

250g butter
250g light or dark brown sugar
4 eggs
Small espresso coffee (or about 3 tblspns)
250g plain flour
2 rounded tsp baking powder
200g hazelnuts, coarsely ground
250g dark plain chocolate, chopped roughly so it looks like gravel

1. Grease a 20-23 cm loose bottomed cake tin and line it with greaseproof paper, unless you have on of those super dooper silicon non-stick rubbery-type cake tins (I do; thanks Mum).

2. Pre-heat oven to 180℃

3. Beat the butter and sugar with an electric beater until they are pale and fluffy.

4. Add the eggs one at a time and beat between each addition. Don't worry if the whole thing starts to curdle (see right), it will all work out fine in the end, honest :=)

5. Stir in the espresso, and if there is a bit left over then have a swig yourself.

6. Fold in the flour and baking powder with a metal spoon. Then add in most of the hazelnuts and chocolate - keep back a little of both for the top of the cake. The mixture should be quite firm.

7. Pour & scrape the cake mixture into the tin and scatter over the hazelnuts and chocolate you just saved.

8. Bake in the oven for 80 minutes or until the cake is springy. You can test if it is really done by spearing the centre with a skewer or knife: it should come out clean with no raw cake mixture sticking to it.

9. Leave for half an hour before cutting, and it is delicious when still slightly warm. Now you will need another espresso just to try the smallest smidgin of a piece....

Breakfast in Amsterdam, dinner in Hong Kong

2007-11-30T10:49:00.000+01:00

Everything is packed.

In a very unusual turn of events the backpack was ready in just 45 minutes, and by 6pm last night we were done. No midnight just-must-do's and no waking up at 3 am to add something vitally important. We have one rugsack between the two of us (it always astonishes people that we take so little with us for so long), and we still have probably taken too much :=)

With such a hectic couple of weeks leading up to this, is now feels strange to not be dashing around like a headless chicken. Just peace, and a sense that I'm heading off to the Far East doesn't feel any different to my heading out for vegetables!

We have just had breakfast. Croissants of course, my normal weekend and preferred celebratory breakfast, with fruit. And it is a celebration: not just a holiday, but I've blogged every day for a whole month as part of NaBloPoMo. That's quite a feat I reckon :=)

Time for another few sips of Sjoerd's dark, velvet espresso that he does so well....and then it's off for a shower before leaving.

See you again round Christmas :=)

Fridge Cleanup Dinner

2007-11-29T18:25:00.000+01:00

It's the eve of our holiday, so it is time to clean up the fridge and use up anything that will not keep for a few weeks. Hence tonight the culinary heights are reached from the depths of my fridge: broccoli almandine and Chinese-influenced vegetables.

Tomorrow also is the last day of the NaBloPoMo challenge in which I have blogged every day for a month. As I look back at the amount that accumulates for just doing a bit each day I am encouraged and inspired that life is also the same. simply by moving forward a few steps at a time we end up covering a large distance before we know it.

Broccoli Almandine

I head of broccoli, stems chopped, then head cut into small florets
Large knob of butter
Handful of peeled, whole almonds, chopped in half

1. Cook broccoli in a pan of salted, boiling water in a large wide pot, for about 3 minutes. Drain, cover with lid and keep warm.

2. Heat butter in a small frying pan until foam subsides, then add almonds, stirring, until butter and nuts are golden and have a nutty aroma, 2 to 3 minutes. Add broccoli, toss and serve.

Chinese-influenced Vegetables
10 carrots, peeled then each carrot sliced lengthways (up to 3 'lengths' per carrot)
Handful of spring onions, coarsely chopped
1 yellow pepper, de-seeded and sliced in wide strips lengthways
Olive oil
Handful sesame seeds
Few drops of sesame oil

1. Heat a glug of olive oil in a frying pan, and when hot and the carrots. Toss for a few minutes then cover and leave for 5 minutes to 'steam'.

2. Add thick slices of yellow pepper and toss for a few minutes.

3. Add the sliced spring onions and toss for a few minutes.

4. Add the handful of sesame seeds, toss again, and add a few drops of sesame oil before serving.

Linguine with Anchovies & Thyme

2007-11-28T20:40:00.000+01:00

This is a Nigella-inspired dish, that is simple to make (as are many of my recipes), quick and oh so very tasty. This may look pale, but it packs a savoury punch.

Please don't let the thought of anchovies put you off. The result is a salty, slightly fishy and sherry amalgamated loveliness. I broke an Italian Law of Cooking, and served this with some Parmesan grated over the top (never serves cheese with fish, they say). Rules were broken, and it was delicious. I am an experimenter; I do not care!

Linguine with Anchovies & Thyme
Serves 2, plentifully

150 g linguine
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 anchovy fillets, with some of their oil
Leaves from several sprigs of thyme
8 tablespoons sherry
1 fat knob butter

1. Put a large pan of salted water on and bring to the boil. Add the linguine, give it a good stir, and leave to cook for the amount of time recommended on the packet (mine was 12 minutes).

2. About 5 minutes before the end of the cooking time, warm the olive oil, anchovy fillets and some dribbles of their oil together in a small frying pan.

3. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon because as the oil warms the anchovies will 'melt' into a sauce.

4. Add most of the thyme, the sherry and let bubble away for a minute or so. Then add a fat knob of butter and stir well (or whisk with a mini-whisk). This becomes a thickish sauce.

5. When the pasta is cooked, drain it well and add a few drops of olive oil to keep it from sticking together. You can then either add the sauce in one go and mix it well through the pasta, or spoon some of it over the pile of linguine on your plate (as I did).

6. Serve with the remaining thyme to garnish, and for the truly blasphemous, grated Parmesan.

Holiday Almost Here!

2007-11-27T19:13:00.000+01:00

At the end of this week, Sjoerd & I are finally going on our 'summer holiday' to Hong Kong & Vietnam. It just took us a bit longer to get round to it this year....and it will be nice to have some warm weather too ;=)

So to get us in the mood for this, this is what we created: Nigella Lawson's Sesame Noodles served with sushi. By the way, I didn't make the sushi, I bought them (100 Hail Mary's now needed, and I'm not even Catholic). Everything was delicious, and I'm now getting into the Asian Mood big time. Roll on Friday.

Nigella Lawson's Roasted Monkfish with Pumpkin & Mixed Mushrooms

2007-11-26T18:23:00.001+01:00

Just a bit of tastebud tantalising going on here. This is the meal I have been promising you for a few days now: Nigella's Monkfish with Pumpkin and Mixed Mushrooms. I am salivating just looking at the pictures as my mouth memory remembers the tastes and textures of just a mere few days ago...

Delia Smith's Salmon & Caper Fish Cakes

2007-11-25T19:29:00.000+01:00

Another blinder from my foray through my old cookbooks...again from Delia Smith's 'One is Fun' in which I re-discovered last week her Provencale Crusted Cod.

These are also delightfully simple to make, just needing a simple mashing & squashing down of all the ingredients in a small bowl. Sjoerd decided to make something with hare (yuk!) tonight, so I am definitely on the One is Fun stuff trail tonight ;=)

I remember tinned salmon sarnies as a kid at parties in white bread. I've not touched the stuff for years, so it was quite an adventure to hunt down the tins in the supermarket. I was actually flabbergasted that the price for a small (ca. 100 g) tin of red salmon was more than 3 euros...has somebody pulled a muscle in their brain or has the world really gone mad?! That's much more expensive than the lovely fresh stuff. Anyway, I plumped for the pink salmon rather than the red...there are some things that even I can't bring myself to do for an experiment. And the good news is that I used just half the tin, which means that I can use the other half in the next couple of days to re-live kiddie parties. Just wait until I start making jellies to throw. Maybe Sjoerd & I can do something festive with whipped cream to almost herald in December....

How do these little round cakes of fishiness taste?

Well, I found the capers to bit a bit too overwhelming, and they didn't really get crispy (but I don't know if they were supposed to....the recipe didn't say 'crispy' anywhere which is always a giveaway!). They weren't bad, but they weren't fabulous. And not anywhere near the culinary ecstasies of the Provencale Cod, or the Monkfish from last night...the recipe of which I still owe you (I haven't forgotten!).

Delia Smith's Salmon & Caper Fish Cakes
Makes 3-4; serves 1

100 g (small tin) red salmon (or pink, like I used)
approx. 100-125 g mashed potato
1/2 teaspoon fresh dill or a 1/4 teaspoon dried
1 tablespoon lemon juice
salt & pepper
cayenne pepper
freshly grated nutmeg
1 egg, hardboiled, chopped small
1 tablespoon capers, drained and chopped a bit
wholemeal flour, seasoned with salt & pepper
2 tablespoons oil for frying

1. Mix all the ingredients together, apart from the flour and oil, and mash everything down . Season to taste with the salt pepper, cayenne pepper and grated nutmeg. Keep tasting, but no too much or you won't have any mixture left ;=)

2. Take about one-third of the mixture and shape into a round cake using your hands. Do the same with the remaining mixture so that you end up with 3 to 4 cakes.

3. Sprinkle some wholemeal flour on to a board or plate, and add a good grinding of salt & pepper. Dip the fish cakes into this seasoned flour until thoroughly coated.

4. Heat the oil in a frying pan, and fry the cakes for a few minutes on both sides until they are golden brown. Serve while still hot.

Sarah Brown's Brown Bread

2007-11-24T21:02:00.000+01:00

This is all Nigella Lawson's fault!

I have obviously got much better because this afternoon after breakfast (no croissants, boo hoo, because I couldn't gt out for them yesterday) I was thumbing through cookery books looking for a recipe to make tonight with Sjoerd. The one we decided on was for monkfish with pumpkin puree and mushrooms (that recipe will come tomorrow). And at the end of the recipe was the comment which catalysed this all: 'don't serve this with salad or anything else, only some bread to soak up the juices.' Well that was it! All last week, before the flu struck, I had been wanting to make some bread....what more excuse did I need. I do so like Nigella :=)

The particular bread I felt I kneaded to make (sorry about that pun...blame it on the flu still...) was Sarah Brown's Brown Bread (what's in a name). This is not any old brown bread but it has the added extras of linseed and sesame seeds which do give it a special edge. I decided not to make this completely with wholemeal flour - my intestines have felt like they've seen enough scouring pad action this week - but with half wholemeal and half white. This makes enough for 2 large loaves, and if my memory serves me rightly, this bread freezes really well.

Sarah Brown's Brown Bread
Makes 2 large loaves

750 g flour (wholemeal only, or a mixture with white flour)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 sachet dried yeast
80g seeds (e.g. 40 g linseeds and 40 g sesame seeds)
450 ml warm water
1 tablespoon oil

1. Mix together the flour, salt, yeast and seeds in a large bowl.

2. Pour on the warm water and oil, and stir to make a soft dough. Then place on a surface and start to knead. Don't worry if it looks like there is far too much flour or the mixture is too dry - it will all get incorporated after you've kneaded it (honest).

3. Knead well for several minutes, and it will (honest!) become more smooth and elastic as shown in the picture on the right here.

4. Put into a clean bowl, cover with cling film and then leave to rise in a warm place for an hour. I usually put mine in front of the radiator in the bathroom, or in a sunny place (not today, no sun!)

5. Knock back and knead again for a few minutes. ('Knock back' is nothing strange: all it means is that you punch the dough so that it sinks).

6. Divide into two and form rough loaf-shapes. Place in the tins, then leave to rise in a warm place for 40 minutes. You see them here, left, on top of the radiator in our kitchen.

7. Whilst the loaves are rising, pre-heat the oven to 220 deg C.

8. Then bake the loaves for 30-40 minutes until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

9. Allow to cool (slightly!), then serve....We ate ours with the Homemade Butter I made a couple of weeks ago...heaven, I'm in heaven :=)

Omelette on the Road to Wellness

2007-11-23T20:46:00.000+01:00

I'm still not totally recovered from my run in with the 'flu' but I did get round to making an omelette tonight...

Very simple, just cooked gently on the stove, then put under a hot grill to fluff up and grill the cheese until brown & bubbling.

My appetite is obviously coming back. With a good night's sleep tonight, I shall be up & fettling tomorrow...the Saturday market and lots of fresh food to choose from. and more importantly, some new recipes to test out :=)

Just plain rice today....

2007-11-22T20:15:00.000+01:00

Today I am on just plain rice....I've got 'flu' and so I certainly don't feel like eating much or even cooking. Help I must be ill! I could tell you about the food I've seen pass through me today but I think that that would be a case of too much information ;=) Normally I would not post a blog but since I'm doing the NaBloPoMo I feel obliged too....so today my culinary masterpiece consists of a bowl of plain rice because that's about all I can stomach!

See you tomorrow, when I hope that I'll be back on form again.

Lovely Luscious Leftovers

2007-11-21T20:34:00.000+01:00

I love leftovers sometimes even more than I love the original recipes.

Many things seem to taste so much better the following day after having had the benefit of standing overnight in the fridge. Since I mostly work from home, I am extremely fortunate in that I can eat at my kitchen table at lunchtime between clients.

I so look forward to the warmed up remains of the night before. It isn't rocket science by the way - I put most of them on top of a crispy beschuit (Dutch crispbake, I believe they are called in English), put it under the grill and let everything get warm. Usually I eat it with left over salad, and a dollop of good organic mayonnaise, as shown above.

The other week, when I'd excelled myself with the Grain Dance Bakery's Eggless Bagels, then several lunch leftovers were piled up on top of the bagels before going under the grill. And Nadine Abensur's Irish Soda Bread ended paired up with Nigella's Buttermilk & Pecan Coleslaw

Albert Heijn Celeriac Soup with Mushrooms

2007-11-20T18:26:00.000+01:00

For all you non-Dutch readers, Albert Heijn is not a celebrity chef ;=)
Albert Heijn is a national supermarket chain, and each month they produce a magazine (Aller Hande) to promote their products, and there are many recipes in it too. This is one I stumbled across in an old magazine dating from 2004.

It is very easy to make (as are the majority of my recipes), and puree-ing it gives a creamy texture without the cream. Warming, welcoming and definitely continuing my autumn theme. And a good way to use that big chunk of celeriac that has been sitting in the fridge for 2 weeks...

Albert Heijn Celeriac Soup with Mushrooms
Serves 4

Soup
1 large red onion, sliced
4 tablespoons oil
1/2 large celeriac, sliced into chunks
750 ml stock
Nutmeg, freshly grated
Salt & pepper

Mushrooms
2 tablespoons oil
Ginger, about 2 cm, chopped finely
Mushrooms, as many as you want, sliced
Salt & pepper
Coriander or parsley, chopped, to serve

1. Fry the onion in the oil in a large soup pan until softened and golden.

2. Add the celeriac, and cook together with the onion for 5 minutes.

3. Add the stock, bring to the boil, and simmer for 15 minutes until the celeriac is soft.

4. Puree the whole lot in a food processor or puree machine (you can stop at this point if you are making it advance, and store it in a covered pan or bowl).

5. Return to a clean pan, season well with salt & pepper, and add a good grating of nutmeg. Re-heat gently until you are ready to serve it.

6. In a frying pan, add the oil, and when hot fry the ginger for a few minutes. Then add the sliced mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until they have shrunk and given off most of their water. Add salt & pepper to taste.

7. Add big ladlefuls of celeriac soup into eagerly waiting bowls, placed a pile of mushrooms on top, and garnish with coriander or parsley before serving.

Delia Smith's Provencale Crusted Cod

2007-11-19T14:12:00.000+01:00

I seem to be going from one mouth ecstacy to the next.

It is as if each day, and each new recipe, is even better than the next, and I am in an ever new love affair of discovery of what emerges from my kitchen. I want to urge you each day to 'please try this one', but almost every day I want to write that, so I'm deliberately not adding those words.

Another discovery I have made is that I am really enjoying resurrecting my old cookery books. Today's recipe (tried and swooned over last night) is from Delia Smith's "One is Fun" which my Mum bought for me as a chemistry student back in 1985. I had even forgotten that Delia had signed it for me. I used to love this book, and what is great about it's re-discovery is that now that I eat fish again there is an entire chapter that 22 years ago I never even tried....the joys of a changing & developing life. On the subject of joys, I scaled the recipe up from 1 to 2 since I am no longer a single student, not that I ever remember actually being single for long....my cooking was too good! It's all about chemistry in the end ;=)

This herby breadcrumb mixture on top provides a gorgeous contrast to the meltingly white, creamy cod underneath. This was so light it was (almost) unbearable. It's easy peasy to make and if you are wanting to head towards severe mouth pleasure heights then, dare I actually write the words: please, please do try this one at home.

Delia Smith's Provencale Crusted Cod
Serves 2

2 cod fillets, each weighing anything from 120 - 225 g
4 tablespoons breadcrumbs (I used one of my bagels which I chucked in the puree mixer)
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 clove garlic, grated or crushed
1 lemon, zest and juice
4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt & pepper

1. Pre-heat the grill to almost it's highest setting.

2. In a bowl mix together the breadcrumbs, herbs, garlic, lemon zest, olive oil and 1/2 the lemon juice, and stir until thoroughly blended. Season well with salt and pepper.

3. Next oil either a small baking sheet or an ovenproof dish, and place the fish in it. Spread the breadcrumb mixture over the fish and press it well into the flesh.

4. Place the entire dish under the hot grill - at the position furthest away from the heat - and grill for 10-15 minutes until the fish is cooked and the crust is crisp.

5. Serve immediately, with the rest of the lemon juice sprinkled over if you need it....and then apply to mouth and wait for ecstatic smile to appear on face.

Blogging for November

2007-11-18T13:41:00.000+01:00

If you've been impressed by how prolific I have been with my recipes....then please don't be!

I am taking part in NaBloPoMo otherwise known as National Blog Posting Month. According to the rules it is: "Post every day for the month of November. That's all you have to do." Having only just started my blog in the middle of October, this seemed like a good idea to really get into blogging, and get used to how it all works. I'm now over the half way mark, and I am having a blast cooking up a storm every day :=)

So now you know!

Nigella's Thai Yellow Pumpkin & Seafood Curry

2007-11-17T16:32:00.000+01:00

Autumn is worth getting cold for when this kind of bolstering food awaits.

To be honest with you, this is not a new recipe tried out just for this blog as many have been. I've made this a few times before, but now the pumpkins are a-plenty on the market it's time to make it again. Oh what a tough life..... ;=) It is tangy, creamy, soothing, surprising and extremely moorish. The title doesn't do it's lusciousness justice because it leaves out mentioning that there is coconut milk in there too. It can be served with rice, bread or with a green salad to follow. There are no rules here, except to devour it with pleasure. Oh, and by the way, if you are lucky enough to have any leftovers then the following day they are divine......

Please do not be put off my what looks like a long list of ingredients. The most time intensive step is in peeling and chopping the pumpkin. This is such a great recipe if you have friends coming round - you can make it up to the point that the pumpkin is cooked, and then when you've had enough chat, just bring the deliciousness to the boil, chuck the fish and vegetables in
and a few minutes later you are done.

Nigella's original recipe was for 4-6 people so I have halved it here below for just the two of us. Neither of us like very spicy food, so I have cut down the red Thai curry paste to 1/4 tablespoon instead of 1/2 - 1 tablespoon. If you like your head blown off, then please, be my guest to go for the full monty. One bossy note of advice: please use raw gray prawns and do not use cooked (pink) prawns. They shrivel and the whole dish's taste is lost. If you can't get the raw prawns, then just use double the amount of salmon.

By the way, the Thai red curry paste and Fish Sauce (nuoc man) were bought in our normal supermarket produced by a label called 'Thai Kitchen'. So nothing difficult to get or extravagant, well, at least not here in Amsterdam. The lime leaves were bought at our local Surinam shop, a veritable treasure haven of shelves full of spices, different types of rice, lentils, flours and....hair-dyes :=)

Nigella Lawson's Thai Yellow Pumpkin & Seafood Curry
Serves 2-3

200 ml coconut milk (1/2 a 400 ml tin)
1/4 tablespooon red Thai curry paste (remember you can use up to 1 tablespoon)
175 ml stock (I use 1/3 veg stock cube to make up this quantity)
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce (nuoc man)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 stalks lemongrass, each cut into three and bruised with the flat of a knife
3 lime leaves, crumbled
1/4 teaspoon tumeric
500 g pumpkin, peeled and cut into large bite sized chunks
250 g salmon fillet, cut into large bite-sized chunks
250 g peeled raw prawns (grey tiger prawns)
Handful green vegetable of your choice (e.g. frozen peas, green beans, pak choi)
Juice of 1/2 - 1 lime, to taste
Coriander, to serve

1. Skim the thick creamy top off the tin of coconut milk and put it, over a medium heat, into a large saucepan or casserole with the curry paste. Let it sizzle, and using a fork, whisk or wooden spoon, beat the coconut milk and paste together until combined.

2. Still beating gently add the rest of the coconut milk, stock, fish sauce, sugar, lemon grass, lime leaves and tumeric.

3. Bring to the boil and add the pumpkin. Cook on a fast simmer until the pumpkin is tender (this can be 5-15 minutes depending on the type of pumpkin and how big or small you have cut it).

4. Add the salmon and prawns and leave to cook for about 3-4 minutes.

5. Stir in any green vegetable you might be using and stir in well. When the vegetable is cooked add the juice of the half a lime, and even more if you like the taste.

6. If you want to transfer the curry to a large bowl to serve it in, then now is the time. Just before serving add a large handful of chopped coriander over the top. Then.....dip in and devour.....

Teddie's Apple Cake

2007-11-16T18:42:00.000+01:00

I want to make an appley birthday cake for Erik.

Who is Erik?
He's our friendly Saturday wine-advisor at Chabrol here in Amsterdam.

It was his birthday....in June! I had promised to make him an apple cake (apparently his favourite), but it turned out that on his birthday he would be away, then we were away, then Sjoerd started buying wine during the week instead of Saturday. One thing led to another, and only at the beginning of November did we meet up with Erik again. Yeah, Erik is back! So, good to my promise, I wanted to come up with the goods.

Looking for an Apple Cake with a difference, I turned to Luisa Weiss (my cooking saviour of the moment!), and Luisa has delivered the goods.

This recipe dates originally from the New York Times from 1973 (no I've not been trawling that far back; this information comes from Luisa's website). Who the hell Teddie is in 'Teddie's Apple Cake' remains one of life's little intruiging mysteries, but to be honest, when apple cake looks like this who cares :=)

This recipe is slightly altered, with a bit less sugar (I'm not American), plus more apples (but I am almost Dutch). If you want to make the pure unadulterated recipe then here is the Original Resurrected Teddie; here, if you want Luisa's slightly tampered with version using cranberries instead of raisins; mine is here below. I did make 1.5 times the quantities listed below because I wanted to make a small one for us as well, just to celebrate the weekend......

Teddie's Apple Cake
Makes one 25 cm diameter Bundt tube cake
Butter for greasing the tin
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 cups (3 large apples), peeled, cored and thickly sliced
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup raisins

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 deg C.

2. Butter, and lightly sprinkle with flour, a 25 cm diameter Bundt tube tin.

3. Beat the oil and sugar together for about 5 minutes.

4. Add the eggs, then beat again until the mixture is creamy.

5. Add the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder. Mix in well.

6. Add the vanilla essences, apples, walnuts and raisins and mix well until everything is well combined.

7. Transfer the cake mix to the tin, and bake for 75 minutes, or until a sharp knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin before turning out.

Jamie Oliver's Potato Gnocchi

2007-11-15T20:05:00.000+01:00

I have a night in, alone.
Sjoerd has a dinner out with colleagues, which means I get to potter around in the kitchen.
Today my pottering has taken the form of gnocchi, and having pottered through several cookbook for a recipe, I came back to Jamie Oliver.

The last time I made gnocchi was a few years ago, and they ended up very soggy, watery and not very edible. That put me off again, until tonight. According to Jamie, the problem of soggy gnocchi lies in the fact that if you use boiled potatoes it is very difficult to get them dry. The trick is apparently bake them first - then the skins come out dry and crispy with fluffy insides. This leads to dry mash for the gnocchi....well I'm game to try, and I've got all night.

I thought it was going to be quite a long and drawn out procedure, but it wasn't. The longest part is baking the potatoes...so I put them in the oven, and went upstairs to do the ironing for the hour they were having their roast (I was in a domesticated mood!). And what's more, by the time you have scooped out their fluffy innerds this leaves potato skins...which provides me with ideas for tomorrow.

I just put Parmesan cheese over the top of these, and put it under the grill. The truth of the matter is, these looked so good that I want to save most of them to eat with Sjoerd tomorrow night!

Jamie Oliver's Potato Gnocchi
Makes a whole batch for 2-3 people

6 medium potatoes
Olive oil
Nutmeg, grated
1/2 - 1 teaspoon salt
Good grind of pepper
1 egg yolk
1-2 handfuls of plain flour
Cornmeal or semolina flour

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 deg C.

2. Rub the cleaned potatoes with olive oil, prick them all over with a fork and lay them on a roasting tray. Place in the oven for 1 hour until they are crispy on the outside and cooked (fluffy, soft) on the inside.

3. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then cut them in half, scoop out the fluffy inside and place it in a sieve (or a mouli or ricer if you have one of those - I don't!).

4. Press the potato through the sieve into a large bowl so that it looks like 'grated' potato. Don't be fooled -this is the start of wonderful dry mash ;=)

5. Add the nutmeg, salt, pepper and egg yolk to the sieved potato. Add enough flour to bind the mixture. Mix together and knead with your hands until you have a dry, doughy consistency. Add more flour if too wet, and water if too dry.

6. Divide the dough into three pieces and roll each piece out on a floured surface into long tubes the thickness of a sausage.

7. Cut each of the tubes into 2.5 cm pieces, then press the tines of a fork into both sides of the gnocchi to give the characteristic ribbed marking.

8. Place them on a a plate or tray sprinkled liberally with semolina or cornmeal, and allow to sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes to set.

9. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Drop the gnocchi into the water - how many you can fit in the pan depends on the size of the pan, because you don't want them sticking together. I used 10 in my pan.

10. The gnocchi are done when they rise to the surface of the boiling water.

11. Drain gently and carefully....otherwise they will end up as mashed potato! You can either use a slotted spoon, or gently drain in a colander.

12. Serve with whichever sauce you fancy - a tomato sauce, or grated cheese, or just tossed in butter and sage.

Tom Kime's Brussels Sprouts Braised with Ginger & Orange

2007-11-14T22:37:00.000+01:00

I have a pound bag of Brussels sprouts sitting in the bottom of my fridge for the past week now. Everytime I have opened the door I keep passing my hand over them and rejecting them in favour of something more enticing.

However, concerned that they might end up rather shrivelled and thus be en route for the compost heap, I decided to do something with them. And I needed something green to go with the delectable Sole with Chanterelles yesterday....

Enter Tom Kime of the Times. I was quickly searching the Times Online website and came across this recipe for Sprouts Braised with Ginger & Orange. They may not be the most attractive sprouts in the world - and maybe I overcooked mine a bit too much - but they are definitely tasty and different. And they did go very well with the Sole. So although I am not extolling their virtues to the high heavens, they aren't bad and I shall probably make them again. I made half the quantities listed in Tom's recipes, which was more than enough for two, and gave a few leftover lonely sprouts whom I can make very happy today on top of something else ;=)

Tom Kime's Brussels Sprouts Braised with Ginger & Orange
Serves 6-8

30 g butter
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
600 g Brussels Sprouts
Juice and zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon of red-wine vinegar
Salt & pepper

1. Peel the Brussels sprouts and, if you want, chop them in half.

2. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan over a medium heat. Add the garlic and ginger, and fry gently for 3-4 minutes until pale golden brown.

3. Add the Brussels sprouts and cook for 1 minute, stirring to coat them in the melted butter.
4. Add the orange juice, orange zest and the red-wine vinegar. Season with salt & pepper. Cover and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes until the sprouts are soft and the sauce is syrupy.

Nigella Lawson's Sole with Chanterelles

2007-11-13T14:57:00.000+01:00

This is a blinder of a recipe!

Since I have this Autumn Thing going on I have been seduced by the chanterelles (sounds painful!). In flicking through Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat" I noticed a recipe for Sole with Chanterelles, and well, what more prompting did I need. I'm such a pushover in the recipe department.

Nigella's recipe calls for Noilly Prat which I have never tasted let alone owned, until this afternoon. In the pouring Autumn rain I cycled to the off-licence and bought a bottle. I am glad I did, because it really makes the dish in a way that white wine would not. It makes it full, rich and somehow creamy. Absolutely luscious. The combination of this buttery winey-ness and the robust white sole is a marriage made in heaven and on my plate.

And if this isn't enough, this is dead easy to make and really quick. Need I say more? Only: get on down to your local market, buy those chanterelles and please try this :=)

Nigella Lawson's Sole with Chanterelles
Serves 2

250 g chanterelles, wiped to removed excess soil & dirt
60 g butter, plus a knob extra
2-3 soles fillets
Squeeze of lemon
60 ml (4 tablespoons) Noilly Prat

1. Place 2 plates to warm in the oven at 50 deg C.

2. Melt the 60 g butter in a large frying pan, then add the mushrooms along with salt & pepper. Cook over a medium heat until they have released their juices.

3. Remove the mushrooms to one of the plates and keep them warm in the oven for the few remaining minutes.

4. Add the sole fillets to the buttery juices remaining in the pan. Cook for a few minutes on each side until the fish is cooked. You can check this by pulling apart a bit of the fillet with a knife to check to see that it is white & cooked.

5. Remove the fish from the pan and place on the second plate and place in the oven.

6. Add the mushrooms back to the pan and the juices. Add the Noilly Prat and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Allow the mushrooms to bubble up, add the knob of butter, and allow to bubble for a few moments until the 'sauce' thickens slightly.

7. Pour the mushrooms over the sole and serve immediately. We had this with rice and Brussel sprouts braised with orange & ginger. I am one happy bunny :=)

Mireille Guiliano's Salmon en Papillote

2007-11-12T18:02:00.000+01:00

I absolutely love salmon, but the stench that it leaves behind for a few days in the kitchen afterwards, as well as the pan it was cooked in, is enough to put even the most keen cook off.

Then I discovered this nifty little trick called Salmon en Papillote thanks to Mireille Guiliano (she of the French Women Don't Get Fat fame). I have extolled her virtues before in the French Women's Chestnuts with Honey, and I so like the way that whichever of her recipes you try they are clean and elegant. And this 'clean-ness' is such a virtue here.....it is a way of making delicious salmon that does not stink up your house. This woman deserves a medal.

All you have to do is to make little greaseproof paper bags (see below) to cook the salmon in either alone or with whatever vegetables you want, and stick them in the oven for 15 minutes. They look very impressive as you pull them out of the oven, cut them open at the table and then tip their contents out onto your plate. The salmon will be moist, tender, cooked in its own steam...and not at all smelly.

The recipe below I have given for two people, but it is very easy to adapt for however many you are cooking for - you simply make more packets and chop more vegetables. You can equally use it for many other types of fish too. Remember that thinner pieces (e.g hallibut fillets) will need less time.

Mireille Guiliano's Salmon en Papillote
Serves 2

Greaseproof paper
Olive oil
1 medium leek
2 salmon fillets, each weighing 120-150g
2 x 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
Salt & pepper

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C

2. Cut 4 pieces of greaseproof paper large enough to cover each fish and to leave a 5-7 cm border all the way round.

3. Brush 2 of the pieces of paper lightly with oil.

4. Slice the leek finely and place a mound in the centre of each paper sheet.

5. Place a salmon fillet on top of each leeky mound. Sprinkle the half-teaspoon of soy sauce of each one, then season with salt & pepper, and drizzle a little more olive oil over the top.

6. Place the remaining sheets of parchment on top of each of the salmon & leek mound. Fold the edges up and over twice on all four sides to make sealed parcels. You can leave them like this, but I never have, since I am convinced that they will unroll in the oven....so I staple them all round.

7. Put the papillotes onto a baking sheet and into the oven for 15 minutes.

8. To serve, cut the packages open away from you so that you don't get burned by any escaping steam. Not a good start to a meal....

9. I usually serve these delicious parcels with a well-filled salad, some boiled or pan-fried potatoes (as in the picture at the top of the blog), and a good dollop of mayonnaise. Yummmmmyyyyyy.

My Favourite Weekend Breafast

2007-11-11T18:17:00.000+01:00

This is it, my Favourite Weekend Breakfast and it has become quite a ritual.

Already on Friday evening I start looking forward to breakfast on Saturday morning. On Saturday evening I get a warm fuzzy feeling at the anticipation of the leisurely, lazy Sunday breakfast. These are the times memories are made of.

A buttery, crispy croissant warmed up in the oven, and served with some fruit (here above: banana, a few slices of mango, and some leftover poached pear). Then on the side I have a teaspoonful of smoky tahini and a dollop of thick plain yoghurt. I tear off bits of croissant and pile some fruit, a dob of tahini and top it off with a smidgin of smooth cold yogurt.... weekend heaven. With the occasionally sip of barrista Sjoerd's fresh strong and dark espresso coffee and I am well set up for the rest of the day...and that usually means the afternoon. By the way, if you decide to try this at home, then I recommend eating it whilst still wearing your pyjamas or nightshirt ;=)

Nigella Lawson's Buttermilk & Pecan Coleslaw

2007-11-10T10:02:00.000+01:00

I love salads in all shapes and sizes, no matter what the season.

Since summer has now definitely departed us for sunnier climes elsewhere, the leafy salads of al fresco eating have now made way for more robust fare. Of these, dishes such as coleslaw are gems in the chill of autumn.

Nigella Lawson has been presenting a new cooking series on BBC2 for the last 2 months, and on the episode about Picknicks she produced this Buttermilk & Pecan Coleslaw. I filed it in the 'to try' file in my head...and so now I have. The quantities she quoted were for quite a few children/teenagers, so below is my attenuated version.

One bit of advice: don't blindly put all the dressing in at once because it may then end up too sloppy and overpowering for you: add some, mix and taste. Any spare you can keep in the fridge and use it on other salads or with fish and meat. It will not go to waste! I've also deliberately not put in quantities & proportions of carrots and cabbage because you just use how much you want to.

The buttermilk (from my butter making forays yesterday) really gives the whole coleslaw a light freshness to it, while the maple syrup adds a smoky depth. In it's entirety this is just plain delicious! Serve it with chicken, fish or for a simple warming dinner just with roasted vegetables. Make sure you leave some for the following day because it makes great leftovers, as I have just discovered at lunch :=)

Nigella Lawson's Buttermilk & Pecan Coleslaw
Serves 2 generously, and gives leftovers

2 spring onions, chopped
Carrots, sliced into thin strips or batons (julienne)
Cabbage, sliced into thin strips

Dressing
50 g good mayonnaise (preferably organic)
1 tablespoon buttermilk
1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
1/2 - 1 teaspoon cider vinegar or white balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper
Large handful pecan nuts, most chopped, but keep a few whole for decoration.

1. Put the chopped spring onions, sliced cabbage and sliced carrots into a large mixing bowl, and mix with your hands until thoroughly combined.

2. Whisk together with a fork or hand whisk, the mayonnaise, buttermilk, maple syrup and vinegar until smooth and creamy. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss until everything is thoroughly combined. Add the chopped pecan nuts and mix everything once again so that the nuts are incorporated.

4. Transfer to your serving bowl, decorate with the whole pecans, and if you are feeling very artistic then a bit of parsley of coriander.

Homemade Butter

2007-11-09T15:36:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I was questioning my own sanity.
Today I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am mad. Why?

I have just made my own butter.

You can send the little men in white coats round now.

But my goodness, what an absolute treat this is to do. So rewarding, thrilling and a real kick-giver. I have been scared for years to overwhip cream. Those childhood threats of "be careful now not to overwhip the cream. Stop when it gets thick or else it will curdle.....". It put the fear of God in me. I still start to sweat when whipping cream for a dessert in case I go too far. This afternoon I got to do it legally. I took it beyond that point of no return. And I am still alive to tell the tale, and what a tale it is.

The truth of the matter is, dear Reader, that when you go too far you end up creating something even more wonderful. If I thought that making bagels yesterday was joyful, today I am feeling very smug. And surprised. I am now waiting for the chance to put homemade butter on homemade bagels. Ha, it's going to be a great weekend.

If this wasn't enough, then another myth has curdled along with the cream fable. In Holland there is a lot of buttermilk sold (karnemelk it is called here). Karnen means to churn, so karnemelk is the milky liquid leftover after churning the cream to make butter. The Dutch love it, and will often drink a glass of it at lunchtime, especially the older generations. I have attempted to drink some on a few occasions and all it has produced in me is a gagging reflex. The shop bought stuff is revolting. I'll spare you my more graphic details but suffice it to say that it ranks on a scale with phlegm and snot - one gulp and the rest follows. The traumas of this stuff for me rank up along with creme caramel and blancmange - down in one. Yuk. I am shuddering just at the contemplation of it. However.....goodness knows why I was feeling so brave....I decided to try sipping the buttermilk leftover from my churnings. It is creamy, smooth and delicious. You really taste the cream from which it has been made. This is pushing back the boundaries of my own self-development rapidly this afternoon!

The great thing about this recipe is that you can make it on whatever scale you like. I decided to buy a pot of cream and go for it. I just used normal, bog-standard supermarket stuff. I can only fantasise about the results if you use something like organic Jersey cream.

Homemade Butter
Makes about 80-90g

1 x 250 ml carton whipping cream
Salt, if required

1. Pour the cream into a large bowl, and start to whisk with an electric hand mixer on medium speed. The cream will start to thicken and go to the whipped stage. This is where you would normally stop for cream to serve with cakes, merinques and the like. But now you get to go further...

2. Keep on beating on medium speed and the colour will start to change from white to cream (of course!) and then will become more yellow. It will start to become very grainy and pebbly as shown in the photo on the left. I kept using a rubber spatula to occasionally scrape down the sides. Keep on beating.

3. The whole mixture will then start to split. In doing so the butter will separate out from the pale milky buttermilk.

4. At this point I put some cling film over the bowl to stop the buttermilk splashing over everywhere including me. Keep on beating because more and more butter will separate out. At this point you can turn the mixer off. You'll probably find yourself a bit proud now as what you have created already does actually look like butter.

5. Set a sieve over a bowl and pour the butter and buttermilk through it. Use the rubber spatula to get as much of it out of the bowl as possible.

6. With your hands, start to gently squeeze and knead the butter in order to get as much of the buttermilk out as possible. Spend a few minutes doing this, and you will notice that the butter changes texture and becomes more dense and creamy. Don't make mistake I did of pressing it with the spatula in the sieve, because all that happens is that you 'puree' it through into the buttermilk :=)

7. Flatten the butter mound out onto a plate and then blotch the excess moisture off with a paper towel. Turn the flattened butter cake over, dry the plate, and sandwich it between two pieces of paper towel.

8. If you want salted butter, then now is the time to add a few grinds of sea salt. Because the butter is so soft it will be easy to mix in. After this you may even want to dry it some more with kitchen paper roll.

9. Then all you have to do is to store it in an airtight container in the fridge, and use on whatever you want.

10. I went a bit old-fashioned and twee at this stage (blame it on the headiness of having made my own butter) because I decided to wrap it in greaseproof paper so that it looked even more homemade and countryfied. After that I put it in an airtight container in the fridge.

Well, almost all of it.....I had to try just a little bit....this could be my last home-produced delight if the little men in white coats arrive soon to take me away.

Grain Dance Bakery's Eggless Bagels

2007-11-08T18:02:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I wonder at my own sanity.

I decided to make bagels at 7:30 this morning. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it turned out that that was actually the case. What a lovely way to start the day.

I am not American, and so the whole bagel thing is not really something I'm in to. But I do love to try out things. I found a cookery book in my bookcase called 'Uprisings' that I bought donkeys' years ago on a visit to the States. It's full of recipes from the Wholegrain Cooperative, and features the bestsellers from different bakeries across the US. I just flicked through the book, chose a bagel recipe (there were quite a few...) and away I went. These were such a joy to make, and the first time I have ever made bagels. They took 2 hours to make from start to finish, so if you're not quite as mad & experimental as me, then you might want to save this for a weekend or holiday :=)

So, without further ado.....drum roll, drum roll....here they are...

Grain Dance Bakery's Eggless Bagels
Makes 8-10 American-sized bagels, or 12-14 smaller Jayne-sized ones.

1. SPONGE
1.5 cups lukewarm water
1/2 tablespoon dried yeast
1 tablespoon honey
1.5 cups flour (white or brown)

Whisk the honey and the yeast into the lukewarm water. Mix in the flour and beat until smooth.
Leave to rise for 15 minutes.

2. DOUGH
Add the following to the sponge and mix in:
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon salt
Then mix in 1.75 cups flour (white or wholemeal)

As you mix it the dough will come together, forming a ball and coming away from the sides of the bowl.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 200 deg C.
Turn the dough onto a floured board and knead for 15 minutes until smooth and elastic. The dough should be fairly stiff but still stretchy. Use as much extra flour as you need to keep the dough from sticking to the board.

4. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes. It does not have to rise as much as ordinary bread dough.

5. Pull the dough off into small chunks.
Roll each piece into a snake, then connect the ends, pressing them together well.

6. Drop the bagels into a pan of boiling water. Boil for 1 minute, then turn with a slotted spoon and boil for 1 minute on the other side. They will rise to the surface and get puffy.

7. Remove from the water with the slotted spoon and place on an oiled baking sheet (I use my non-stick sheets). Sprinkle with sesame seeds or poppy seeds at this stage if you want to decorate your bagels in this way.

8. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and delicious. By this time your kitchen will be filled with the most delicious home-made bready smells imaginable. All you have to do then is to decide what you want with your bagel or bagels......

French Women's Chestnuts & Honey

2007-11-07T11:34:00.001+01:00

Those pears have got a lot to answer for :=)

They have somehow pressed my 'in-synch-with-the-seasons' button and so there is no stopping me now. I am gravitating towards things autumnal. Yesterday afternoon I was teaching a Refresher Afternoon for the Heal! courses that I give here in Amsterdam, and so decided yesterday morning to make the Mongrel Autumnal Pear & Ginger Muffins to nurture and titillate the participants. I find myself at the market and in shops gazing longingly at orange-skinned pumpkins, the huge variety of wild mushrooms, and chestnuts. Autumn has grabbed me by my warm woolly scarf and is pulling me through its scrunchy leaves.

Sjoerd bought home a bag of chestnuts. 'I thought you'd know something to do with these,' he said as he produced them triumphantly from the shopping bag. I love this man :=)

I have never actually made anything before from chestnuts though. It has usually involved opening a can of chestnut puree, or eating them on pre-Christmas cold, wintery evenings on the streets in England or Italy. But I've never roasted or cooked chestnuts from scratch. Time for some research and a bit of a challenge.

I didn't have to look far. Mireille Giuliano of 'French Women Don't Get Fat' fame has simple, delicious and elegant recipes. This one is from 'French Women for All Seasons' could not be simpler: peel your chestnuts, boil 'em and then caramelise them slightly in honey. Mireille's recipe is for serving along with poultry such as turkey, pheasant or guinea fowl in which case you just need to season them with salt & pepper and serve along side the meat. I haven't done that: I just peeled and boiled the 500 g bag Sjoerd brought home, and have so far had them as a dessert with sour creme, and on top my breakfast fruit of banana & dates with yogurt. Just use however many you need at the time with as much honey as you want. Extremely simple, ultimately satisfying.

Below is Mireille's full recipe.

Mireille Guiliano's Chestnuts & Honey
Serves 4

500 g chestnuts
2 tablespoons runny honey (acacia, for example)

1. Peel the chestnuts (see left) and cook in boiling water until tender, which is about 20 minutes.

2. Drain and pat dry. You may need to peel any remaining softer skin off them, and this is easier to do when they are warm

2. Warm the honey in a large pan over a medium heat until it goes thinner and runnier. Add the chestnuts and stir to coat.

3. Stir (or toss/shake) occasionally until they have caramelised slightly and have become a bit browned and crunchy.

4. Serve (with cream etc for dessert, or with salt & pepper for poultry accompaniment) and manga!

Pear and Blue Cheese Soup with Bagel Paprika Croutons

2007-11-06T08:09:00.001+01:00

This is the last of the pear recipes, I promise. Honest.

Yesterday evening Sjoerd was out to dinner with colleagues, and so that meant just one thing...something new and exotic for me to try. Pear and blue cheese soup sounded quite exotic. It turned out to be tantalising for the tastebuds: the sweetness of pear, plus the tanginess of the blue cheese all in a velvety, bolstering soup. Top this with the crunchiness of toasted bagel (or croutons) and you have a fabulous dinner, or start to dinner.

This is another Sarah Brown-inspired recipe. It's amazing how a blog can encourage you to plough through cookbooks you haven't opened in years.....

The recipe uses bread to make croutons from. I had made some bagels a few days ago (recipe to follow later this month when I make them again), so came up with the bright idea of making bagel croutons. They do look very impressive. All you have to do is to slice the bagel horizontally to make bagel 'rings' before putting them in the oven; if you want to use normal bread then just chop it into squares to make more conventional croutons. With these you can pile them up in a heap in the middle of the soup.

Pear Soup with Castello Blue and Paprika Bagel Croutons
Serves 2

1 tablespoon oil
2 spring onions, chopped
1 pear, peeled, cored and chopped
150 ml vegetable stock
1/4 teaspoon paprika powder
juice of 1/2 small lemon
75g castello blue cheese (or cashel blue, gorgonzola, or other creamy blue cheese)

For the croutons:
1 small bagel, sliced horizontally so that you get bagel slices
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon paprika powder

1. Pre-heat oven to 200 deg C

2. Heat the oil and gently fry the onion until soft. Add the pears and vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Cook until the pears are soft (this can be 5-1o minutes for a ripe eating pear, or 15-20 minutes for a cooking pear, both depending on how finely you chop the pear in the first place).

3. Puree the pear mixture in a food processor or blender with the paprika powder, lemon juice and blue cheese until smooth. Season to taste with salt & pepper.

4. In a wide bowl, pour in the olive oil, season with salt & pepper, and add the paprika powder. Put the bagel rings into this seasoned oil, and turn over a few times to coat the bagel slices.

5. Place the bagel slices on a baking sheet and bake for 5-10 minutes until them are as crisp and golden as you want them.

6. Reheat the soup gently, pour into a bowl and top with a bagel slice or slices.

Womens' Institute Spiced Pears in Raspberry Vinegar

2007-11-05T11:57:00.000+01:00

If you want to look for pickles, jams and chutneys where do you go?

The Womens' Institute that's where!

As you have probably realised by all the pear postings, I am searching through my cook books for pear recipes. I thought I would have been fed up to the back teeth with pears by now, but I'm not, which has surprised me no end. There is actually something immensely satisfying with plucking produce from your own garden. In spite of my very busy daily life, this act of working with what is in season and getting creative with what you've got is calming. Instead of buying strawberries in December, and skewing your taste buds for something that isn't in season, it feels very much like being in tune with the earth's rhythms. And in this day and age, I am all for that.

This recipe is very, very easy. My kitchen smelled wonderful as the spices and vinegar started perfusing the rest of our house. Unfortunately, I can't yet report how they taste because I've bottled them up and am keeping them to eat at Christmas. Well, if my curiosity can wait that long. I was planning on giving away some (it only made three jars.....), but it all smelled so good that I'm now having second thoughts.....

The recipe asks you to place in sterilised jars....this is not as daunting as it sounds. Honestly, it isn't. Just fill 3 clean jars completely full with boiling water, and let them sit for about 15 minutes. When the pear mixture is ready, empty the jars of the hot water (be careful) and dry them with a clean tea towel. Fill them then with the pears. By the way, the Killner jars are cheap to buy (the two larger jars on the outside in the photo) and come equipped with a rubber seal. They are specially for jams and chutneys, and they save messing around with jam jars and greaseproof paper, as the traditional ladies if the Womens' Institute did.

Spiced Pears in Raspberry Vinegar
Makes about 3 x 1 pound jars

900 g pears (cooking or normal eating), peeled, cored and q uartered
450 g sugar
450 ml raspberry vinegar
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon peppercorns

1. Place the pears in a pan and cover with boiling water. Simmer for 5 minutes.

2. Drain in a colander, saving 300 ml of the cooking water.

3. Mix the sugar, the reserved water and the vinegar in the pan. Heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add the spices and pears and simmer gently until the pears are translucent - about 20-30 minutes.

4. Drain the pears, reserving the cooking liquid, and place in cooled, sterilised jars. Pour the liquid, including spices, over the pears to cover. Close to seal, and store until you are ready to use them.

Jamie Oliver's Baked Pears with Wine and Walnut Cream

2007-11-04T17:58:00.000+01:00

This is the second of the Poached Pear Recipes, and whereas Sarah Brown's pears were light, these are much more robust. Does this symbolise the difference between a vegetarian and a hard core meat eater?!

This is autumn going on Christmas in one dessert. The warmth of the red wine and orange, contrasted with the cool velvety creaminess of the the walnut cream is the perfect antidote to anything stressful. Wine and cream all at once; mmmmm heaven on a plate. I mixed and matched both of these recipes. I loved Sarah's pears with Jamie's walnut cream; Sjoerd devoured Jamie's pears with Sarah's chocolate sauce. We had a Pear Splurge & Purge, and are already looking forward to the next time our tree is pregnant with pears.

Once again, you can use normal eating pears with this instead of cooking pears. If you do, then they will only need 20-30 mins in the oven.

Jamie Oliver's Baked Pears with Wine and Walnut Cream
Makes however many pears you can fit in your pan (mine was 7)

1 vanilla pod
Cooking pears (4-8, or however man fit in your pan)
50g dark brown sugar
2 large wineglasses of red or white wine
2 oranges
200g walnuts, shelled
255g mascarpone

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 deg C.

2. Peel the pears and leave the stalks on.

3. Cut down the length of the vanilla pod and remove the seeds by scraping down the inside of each half.

4. Put the pears into an ovenproof pan or pot, add the dark brown sugar, wine, vanilla pod and seeds. Add the zest and juice of 1 orange and bring to the boil. Sprinkle over 100g of the walnuts, cover with a lid, and put in the oven to bake for 45 minutes until tender.

5. Remove from the oven and remove the vanilla pod from the syrup. . Allow to cool while you get on roasting the remaining 100g walnuts. Simply place them on a baking tray in the oven for 5 mins. Please do keep an eye on them because they can go from roast nuts to burnt nuts in the blink of an eye, and you don't want burnt nuts.....(ooo er).

6. When the walnuts are done, whizz them in a food processor or blender until you have a thick paste.

7. Whip up the mascarpone and whisk it into the walnut paste. Add the zest and juice of the 2nd orange. Add a little brown sugar if you think it needs to be a bit sweeter.

8. Serve this cream with the baked pears, walnuts, some of the orange zest from the syrup, and some of the syrup drizzled over and around it all.

Sarah Brown's Vanilla Pears with Chocolate Sauce

2007-11-03T20:24:00.000+01:00

Sarah Brown. Now there's a blast from the past.

She was the first vegetarian chef to have her own cooking programme on the BBC back in the 8o's. Mum & I used to watch her smiling quite insipidly right into the camera (and our lounge) from over the top of a Veggie Lasagne or a Red Dragon Pie. We would dissolve into fits of giggles as we practiced the Sarah Smile. Celebrity Chefs have come a long way since then. Now we have Nigella. That prompts me to move on to pears....

This pear recipe, using the pears from our tree, is very light. Jamie Oliver's recipe is much robuster and heavier. The orange juice, vanilla and honey that they are bathed in gives a very elegant and refined taste. Add the chocolate sauce and you get a contrasting heaviness. I am not actually a chocolate fan, as I've said before, so I tend to eat mine au nature or with a creamier partnering sauce, such as Jamie Oliver's Walnut Marscapone (see right). Once cooked, they keep well in the fridge for a week covered in cling film. I like them even better cold for breakfast on top of my morning fruit salad.

If you have normal eating pears then these will be ready in 15-20 minutes on the stove top. With my cooking pears I put them in the oven at 220 deg C for 75 minutes so that I could potter and do other things whilst they were having their sauna.

Sarah Brown's Vanilla Pears with Chocolate Sauce
Makes 6-8, depending on how many you can fit in your pan

Pears
6-8 Pears
1-3 tablespoons honey (or maple syrup)
300 ml orange juice
150 ml water
1 vanilla pod, split open and the seeds scraped out with a sharp knife

Chocolate Sauce
50g butter
25g cocoa powder
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons maple syrup

1. Pre-heat oven to 220 deg C.

2. Peel the pears, leaving on the stalks.

3. Dissolve the honey in the orange juice and water over a low heat then add the vanilla seeds & pod.

4. Place pears in this liquid, bring to the boil, then place in the oven for 75 minutes until tender. If you do this on the stove top with cooking pears you will need the same amount of time. If you use ripe eating pears then it will only take 15-20 minutes.

5. Allow to cool completely in the syrup, then remove to a plate. You can keep the syrup to serve with it, or use with other fruity dishes.

6. To make the chocolate sauce: melt the butter, stir in the cocoa powder, whisk in the egg, vanilla essence and maple syrup.

7. Stir over a gentle heat for 10 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly and is smooth. You may need to add a little of the pear syrup to thin it down to the consistency you prefer. I like it rib stickingly thick.

Pears, Glorious Pears

2007-11-02T22:42:00.001+01:00

We have a pear tree in our garden that has been pregnant with pears for many weeks now.

When we bought our house 6 years ago, I was very excited to actually have real trees in our garden bearing plums, pears, hazelnuts and chestnuts. Now plums I knew what to do with, but the pears turned out to be cooking pears, and for those I was quite clueless. Apparently, cooking pears are very Dutch ('stoofperen') and when I tell Dutch friends that we have cooking pears in our garden their eyes go glassy, a fond smile spreads over their faces, and a sort of yester-year nostalgia starts to seep out. "Ah stoofperen...lekker!" (Mmmm, poached pears....delicious!")

The first autumn yielded only a handful (it wasn't a 'good year' for pears, I was told). I then learned that pears only come every two years. Each time we made my father-in-law's poached pear recipe, but I wasn't really inspired by it. Cooking usually grabs me and infuses me with enthusiasm, a sense of daring & discovery - and the sheer pleasure of creating something new. Our inherited recipe didn't do that for me. We ended up giving away more of the pears to neighbours, friends and colleagues than we ourselves used.

But this year, it has been all change!

This year we have had pears for two years in a row. Unheard of.
Time for me to search out some pear recipes that would put that zing in my repertoire.

And that has happened...and boy has it happened.
So in the coming few days get ready for your mouth to salivate at the following:

Jamie Oliver's Baked Pears with Wine & Scrumptious Walnut Cream

Sarah Brown's Vanilla Pears with Chocolate Sauce

The Womens' Institute's Spiced Pears in Raspberry Vinegar

Jamie Oliver's Cod, Potato and Spring Onion Stew

2007-11-01T08:39:00.001+01:00

This is the stuff that chilly autumnal evenings are made of!

It's already 1st November, the clocks have gone back onto winter time last weekend and 'summer' is officially over for another year. With the darker winter evenings starting to hover at the door, this recipe was a surprisingly uplifting light in the approaching duskiness. It is taken from Jamie Oliver's book 'Jamie's Kitchen' (sounds like the title of this blog!). He'd been inspired to make it after 'conversations with Icelandic and Danish friends who prize their cod.' Now the Icelanders know a bit about harsh winters and warming foods. I must admit that this doesn't taste like the delicious salted cod meals I savoured when we were in Iceland two years ago, but who cares, it's a darned good stew.

This is easy to make, so the recipe doesn't need any of my usual explanations. The smooth, creamy, nurturing warmth of it will find its way into any tense and unyielding crevices in your psyche. This is soul food to come home to, on all levels.

Jamie Oliver's Cod, Potato and Spring Onion Stew
Serves 2-3 very amply

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 leek, washed and finely sliced
Olive oil
1 medium courgette, halved lengthways
500g (a good 1lb) potatoes, peeled
1 anchovy
1 small glass (or 1/2 large glass) white wine
280 ml (1/2 pint) milk
280 ml (1/2 pint) stock
500 g (a good 1lb) cod fillet, skinned, boned and chopped into chunky chunks
Salt & pepper
1 handful flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
3-4 spring onions, finely sliced
Juice of 1/4 - 1/2 lemon
Orange zest, optional, to garnish

1. Fry the onion and leek with 2-3 tablespoons olive oil for 5 minutes until soft and tender.

2. With a teaspoon, remove the fluffy core from the centre of the courgette and grate the rest into the pan.

3. Chop the potatoes into rough 2cm dice and add to the pan. Give everything a good stir and then add the anchovy. Turn up the heat and add the white wine.

4. Allow to cook down by about half before adding the milk and stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

5. Add the cod and simmer for a further 15 minutes until the fish flakes away. Feel free to stir and break up the fish, but it is quite nice to leave some big chunks as well. Season carefully to taste.

6. Divide between your bowls or plates, and serve with a handful of parsley and spring onion dressed with a little olive oil and lemon juice.

A little orange zest grated over the whole thing really adds a little something extra......as if it wasn't already delicious enough :=)

Chicken on a Beer Can

2007-10-28T13:04:00.000+01:00

Sunday, two weeks ago, my Mum phones laughing so much that she was virtually incomprehensible.

"I've got just the recipe for you two to try out. Chicken with a beer can stuffed up it's bum!"
"What???? Mum, are you alright?"

It turns out that she'd been to a cookery demonstration earlier in the week and had seen this being made. It had obviously made an impression, and especially when the demonstrator had tried to extract the cans at the end. All the women started sharing birthing (horror) stories....

This is definitely a very impressive dinner trick. A roast chicken dinner for friends is always welcoming and festive. However, when you pull two birds from the oven squatting astride beer cans it takes your culinary impressiveness to different heights and your friendship to more dirty depths. There is nothing like extracting beer cans from the innermost cavity of a chicken to deepen a friendship.....Oscar Wilde once said "All of us are born in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Or as my lab assistants at Shell used to tell me "A dirty mind is a joy forever, and a terrible thing to waste." I have some great like-minded friends.

This was thus the birthday dinner we cooked for our friend Irina on Friday night. She's heavily pregnant so we thought that the chickens would get her sympathy vote. They certainly got ours.

Apart from the novelty value, this is exceptionally moist, succulent and tasty, and very easy to do. We had it with roast potatoes, parsnips and pumpkins with jerusalem artichokes. And Passion Cake to follow. That recipe will come another day - I don't want to get you all too wound up with beer cans in bums, and cakes full of passion ;=)

One thing to bear in mind when buying your chickens is to make sure that they will fit in your oven when standing upright. They will look like a couple of old ladies chatting away and exchanging knitting patterns (or cooking recipes, in the pre-blog era). The recipe which Mum cackled (or should I say chuck-led?) down the phone was one using a can of barley wine. Here in Amsterdam we don't have that, so what can I gal do? Heineken. "Refreshes the parts others beers can reach," went the old advertising slogan. Little did they know that one day it would end stuffed up a chicken's bum.

Chicken on a Beer Can
Serves 4 very grateful eaters

2 chickens (I used 2 x 1.2 kg)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground paprika
Oil
2 beer cans (330 ml each)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C

2. Open the beer cans by pulling off the ring pull. Pour the beer out into a glass (all of it....you get to drink some later). With a sharp knife , or a can opener, cut off the top of the can so that you are left with an open cylinder. Pour half the beer back into each can. You can drink the rest. You'll need the Dutch courage shortly when you have to 'insert' the can.

3. Mix together the brown sugar and paprika. Rub about half of this all over the skin of the chickens. Sprinkle some inside the cavity, and put the rest into the beer in the can.

4. Open the chicken flaps wide and push the chickens onto the cans so that it goes almost all the way in (see picture above). Place the chickens in a large ovenproof dish or roasting tray. Do make sure that they are stable because you don't want them falling over in the oven....

5. Drizzle over oil.

6. Roast in the oven for 75 minutes until done. You will probably need to put the shelf very low in the oven so that they can stand fully upright.

7. Let stand, covered with foil, for at least 15 minutes. Then remove the beer cans carefully with oven gloves or a tea towel. Be careful because the cans are hot! Place chickens in a different dish or on a large serving plate. Not being able to carve meat with any finesse at all, we split the chickens down the middle and then ripped off their legs...

By the way, there is enough food here that you will feel pleasantly stuffed.....ENJOY!!!

Holy Shit Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2007-10-20T18:47:00.000+02:00

Any recipe that ends with 'Holy Fucking Shit, these are good' gets my attention immediately!

I caught sight of these on my favourite foodblog of the moment, The Wednesday Chef and followed the recipe back to it's origins from Debbie at Words to Eat By. Being English, I am not from the North American Cookies & Milk Culture. We call cookies biscuits. And to be honest I'm also not that fond of chocolate either (is this woman for real, you ask yourself?). But I do love baking. So I had absolutely no qualms about trying these out. Add to that the fact that we are going round to dinner at some friends tonight, and I wanted to make something to take with us, and you get the perfect recipe for a potter in the kitchen. So Holey Moley, let's give this recipe a whirl....

Unusually, this recipe requires that you beat all the ingredients together with a hand mixer, or a standing mixer (Kitchen Aid machine). I've been used to creaming butter & sugar together, adding eggs and then folding in the flour in order to make biscuits. But, what the hell, I'm a scientist and I'm game to try anything. And it does works wonderfully well (phew).

Debbie's Unbelievably Good Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Makes 23 biscuits 8 cm diameter (45 if 2-3 cm diameter).

225g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
110g cold butter, cut into 1 cm pieces
100g sugar
120g light brown sugar (I used 45g white and 75g muscovado sugar)
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
160g dark chocolate, cut into 1 cm chunks

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

2. Using a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a hand mixer (I used my hand mixer), cream the butter and sugars on low speed until it is smooth and lump free (see picture!), about 3 minutes.

3. Add the vanilla and egg and beat on low speed until fully incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

4. On low speed, add the flour mixture. Beat until just incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Stir the chocolate chunks in with a wooden spoon.

5. Refrigerate dough for at least an hour. (I didn't need to make it into a ball as with pastry, but just left it in the mixing bowl, and covered the top with cling film).

6. Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Line two baking sheets with baking paper or non-stick sheets. Spoon the dough using a cookie scooper 2 inches apart onto the prepared baking sheets (makes about 23 3-inch round biscuits). I didn't have a 'cookie scooper' and I wanted to have small biscuits that are not so intimidating for after dinner, so I pinched off small 1 cm chunks. These I flattened slightly, and it made 45 biscuits, which were after cooking 2-3 cm in diameter.

7. Bake for 11-13 minutes for the large ones, 10 minutes for the small ones, or until golden brown around the edges. You made need to swap the shelves over during cooking so that everything gets a fair turn in your oven.

8. Remove the sheet from the oven and carefully slide the parchment or non-stick sheets directly onto a work surface. When biscuits are set, remove them to a cooling rack. Wait at least 5 minutes before serving or 20 minutes before storing in an airtight container for up to 3 days at room temperature.

Now, I'm not an authority on chocolate chip cookies, but holy whatsits, these are excellent!!!
Time to go buy a tin to put them in so that they make an edible present......

Florence Fabricant's Mushroom Ragu

2007-10-19T08:22:00.001+02:00

This may not look like the most attractive dish you'll ever see here, but please do not be fooled.

Sjoerd, my very forthright (Dutch) husband, took one look at and pronounced:
'Looks like shit'
He proceeded to have second helpings, and then asked me to take it away from the table because otherwise he'd scoff the lot....it can't have been that shitty :=)

This recipe is from Florence Fabricant, featured on The We d nesday Chef. She made it for fettuccine. But taking a great dollop of artistic licence, I used it on it's own with green beans, rice, and for carnivorous Dutchman, a grilled steak.

I seem to have a bit of an Autumn Thing going this week, what with pear muffins and now this mushroom ragu. There is something quite earthy, dank and woody about this delectable mixture that will definitely have you licking the spoon as it starts to go cold. Talking of cold, if you do miraculously manage to have any left, it makes wonderful the next day...as I discovered at lunch time today.

So without further ado, here's the ragu.
(I am a poet, and I didn't know it!)

Mushroom Ragù
Serves 4 with fettucine, but 2 if the main feature

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, slivered
1 large red onion, chopped
450g mushrooms, very finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon black olive paste (tapenade)
80 ml dry red wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large deep frying pan. Add garlic and onion and sauté until soft. Add mushrooms and cook over medium heat until they wilt and give up their juices. Do not let juices evaporate. Stir in tomato paste and tapenade. Add wine, cook briefly, then season with oregano, salt and, generously, with pepper. Remove from heat, until ready to serve with other accompaniments.

2. When other vegetables/meat/pasta/rice is ready, re-heat mushroom ragu gently.

Mongrel Autumnal Pear Muffins

2007-10-16T14:28:00.000+02:00

Ah, Autumn is definitely here.

There is that crisp, sharp chill in the air on a morning. I know winter is on the way when I need to wear my scarf to cycle through the cobbled streets of Amsterdam...and now I do. So these Mongrel Autumnal Pear Muffins are the perfect friend to great you when you come in from the cold because they 'personify' (are muffins people?) the warmth of home.

Why are they called 'Mongrels' ? Well, I didn't use one particular recipe but put a few together and swapped ingredients (for example, sour cream for yogurt). But the result is light, scrummy and totally delicious. And before you think that I spent hours in the kitchen, I didn't. They took just 35 minutes from start to finish, and that was including making my own muffin cases (see below). It takes me much longer to write the blog and download the photos than it did to make the muffins.

I make the muffin bun-cases myself. Now this is not because of some perverted, masochistic drive to create more work for myself, really it isn't :=) Here in The Netherlands the only muffin-type cases I can find in the supermarket are far too shallow, rather than the deep, lucious ones. I suppose that I could order them on-line, or stock up on them when I go back to England, but since I don't make muffins that often, I have so far not bothered. I started making them myself a while ago, and haven't looked back since. They certainly add an extra dimension of homemade quirkiness.
All you need to do is to mark out 12 squares of baking parchment 12 x 12cm, and then cut them up with scissors.

The squares start to transform themselves into muffin cases as soon as you put a dollop of mixture on them. The weight of the batter helps the whole 'muffin' sink into the hollow of the muffin tin with only a little human guidance necessary.

Mongrel Autumnal Pear Muffins
Makes 12

250g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
150g sugar
75g muscovado (dark brown) sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
140g plain yogurt
125ml vegetable oil
1 tablespoon honey
2 eggs
1 large pear, peeled, cored and cut into 1/2 cm chunks

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6 and line a 12-bun muffin tin with muffin papers.

2. Measure into a bowl the flour, baking powder, sugar, muscovado (dark brown) sugar and the ground ginger.

3. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, oil, honey and eggs and then fold into the dry ingredients.

4. Lastly, mix in the diced pear. If you are wondering what the reddish pile is on the right of the chopping board, it is a poached pear that I had left over that I decided to add to the fresh pear. Artistic licence!

5. Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cases.

6. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack. Best eaten while still a little warm.

Our Daily Bread: Blog Action Environment Day

2007-10-15T08:28:00.000+02:00

Have you ever wondered why supermarkets have the smell of freshly baked bread filling your nostrils as you enter the premises?
You may have noticed that it isn't because the bakery department is located there....

Marketing psychologists apparently found that this entices customers into the shop. And how right they are! There is nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread to start to trigger a host of reactions in people: it's inviting, wholesome, homey, comforting, caring, nurturing, gets you feeling hungry, and so the list goes on. It makes the customer part with their 'dough' and means the supermarket directors earn more 'bread'.

For me, baking and cooking are ways of getting back in tune with life's rhythm. We live such fast-paced lives today. People look for quick fixes, meals-in-a-minute, the one-pill-cure-all and everything seems to be going quicker and quicker. Taking time to cook - and it doesn't even have to be huge amount of time - is a way of re-uniting us with where food comes from. In doing so we start to appreciate more, instead of the grab-and-go syndrome. Sadly, we have forgotten how to cook. It just doesn't seem to be something we learn nowadays and more is the pity. When children were recently asked where milk comes from they replied: "From a pack". The link with Nature doesn't get made, and that seems like a crime to me. I'm all for progress and technology, but seems that the balance has really got skewed. You don't need me to tell you that there has been a consistent increase in obesity, a rise in deaths from diabetes, an increase in coronary deaths and cancer. Medical advances are terrific, but the responsibility for our own health and well-being lies where it always has - with each individual. Our environment and lifestyles play such an important role in our health and happiness. And all of them need to be cherished.

Our 'Daily Bread' is one such thing. It is the most basic staple of life, one of the oldest foods known to man. Seeing as 15th October is 'Blog Action Day for the Environment' I thought I'd share this recipe for Irish Soda Bread from Nadine Abensur's Crank's Bible. Because it is soda bread it means you don't have to do more time-intensive kneading and rising that normal bread requires. It takes just a couple of minutes to mix together, and then it sits in the oven for about 45 minutes, rewarding you by permeating your house with homey, bready smells that we now associate more with supermarket entrances than home cooking ;=) I wish I could have 'smelly internet' at this moment because the soda bread in my oven is smelling very, very delicious.

I am convinced that if we took more time to cook and bake that we would take more care and interest in our environment. It restores our connection to a more natural rhythm, and we develop an appreciation for what we eat. Maybe I should start up new slogans: 'Spread Bread Not Pollution' or 'Make Muffins Not War' !!

And with that, I'm off to have lunch now.....Soda Bread, of course!

Nadine Abensur's Irish Soda Bread
450g flour (can be wholemeal, white, or a mixture)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
30g butter, chilled
285ml buttermilk
1 teaspoon honey (optional)
Oil for greasing

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 deg.

2. Place the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl.

3. Add the buttermilk and honey, and mix gently with a fork into a dough.

4. You can shape the dough into one large loaf, or try making two smaller sausage-shaped loaves. Set immediately onto a lightly greased baking tray.

5. Make a cross in the top of the larger loaf, if making that one, so that by the time it is baked it has the characteristic four-section look to it.

6. Place in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. Transfer to a cooling rack, and serve whilst still slightly warm.

This bread will keep for ages, wrapped in aluminium foil. And if after several days it has gone a bit harder than its fresh-baked self, then it makes the most delicious toast. It also freezes really well: I cut it into quarters before packing it in freezer bags.

Nigella's Breakfast Biscotti Step-by-Step

2007-10-14T02:16:00.000+02:00

I've always found cooking to be extremely relaxing and therapeutic, and these Biscotti have a place in my heart because of that. Earlier this year I was extremely stressed out whilst following a very demanding neuropharmacology course. It was so intense that I hardly had time to cook and try out new recipes - which is my cure all for everything - and so I was getting very crabby. Picture the Bitch From Hell and then some :=) One Sunday afternoon I chucked the study books in the corner and decided to embark on a bit of pottering about in the kitchen. 'Music soothes the savage beast,' they say. Well Nigella's Breakfast Biscotti soothed the Bitch From Hell and converted her into into a Purring Angel.

The great thing about these Biscotti is that they take about an hour to make from start to finish, and they fill up your house with such a delicious smell of chocolate and biscuits that you will feel happy for the rest of the day. Whenever I make these the smell somehow seems to get into my hair, probably because I keep opening the oven door and sticking my head in to check how they are doing! Consequently it follows me around all day and laying in bed on an evening I am surrounded by Biscotti. It's quite the way to fall asleep....

These gorgeous life savers and mood lifters have been lifted themselves from Nigella Lawson's "Feast", which is the most wonderful book to dip into in times when you require solace or just plain inspiration. And on the subject of dipping in...these are wonderful dipped into espresso coffee.

I do use good dark chocolate here (70% or more, such as Green & Blacks, but often whatever the local Lidl or supermarket has) and chop it up into rough chunks rather than use chocolate chips. Nigella's recipe below calls for 125g plain flour, but I think my eggs must be much bigger because I usually end up using 180g or more. I've expanded on Nige's method explanation because whenever I've given the photocopied recipe to friends they have declared it too difficult....so I hopefully this expanded explanation with photos will help.

Breakfast Biscotti
Makes about 20, depending on how big you want to make them :=)
1 egg
100g sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
few drops of almond essence
125g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50g shelled almonds (unsalted)
75g dark chocolate chips (or chocolate cut up into chunks the size of chips)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C.

2. Place the egg and sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric whisk for several minutes on its highest speed. You will see the colour change from deep eggy yellow to a pale lemon, and the mixture will become moussily thick. Beat in the vanilla essence and a few drops of almond essence.

3. Fold in the plain flour, baking powder and salt with a metal spoon. Remember that you will probably need more flour - especially if you are using large eggs. The result should be soft dough that isn't sticky - otherwise it will be hellish to roll out in a few minutes' time...

4. Fold in the almonds and chocolate chunks/chips. Put the dough onto a floured board (this is when you'll realise if it is too sticky or not!) and shape into a long sausage shaped log about 25 x 5 cm.

5. Lay the log onto a sheet of greaseproof paper (or I have those non-stick baking she ets that you just wash and re-use). I usually have to lay mine diagonally across the sheet....

6. Cook for 25 minutes. The biscotti log will have risen and spread quite a bit, and it will be a pale brown colour. Leave for 5 minutes to harden slightly. Then, on the diagonal, cut into the familiar biscotti shapes each about 1cm wide.

7. Put these back onto the baking sheet, laying them down flat, and cook for a further 10 minutes. Turn them over and cook for a remaining 5 minutes. By this time they should be golden brown and crunchy. Let them cool and then store in an airtight container (I use a 1-litre icecream container).

Eh voila! Buon appetito :=)