A week in my kitchen: Beautiful beetroot, rich venison and a second attempt at a spicy soup

It’s been an interesting week in my kitchen this last seven days, so I thought I just blog with a few snippets of the meals I’ve been eating. I started and ended the week with a similar dish mainly because it didn’t go well the first time, but I remained determined and gave it another go – second time lucky and my spicy Asian prawn soup was a triumph.

My first attempt at Asian prawn soup looked great but tasted bland

It was based on a recipe I saw on Nigel Slater’s latest series on BBC, which just finished, called Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers. Anyone who didn’t catch it missed out, I don’t know about anyone else but I thought it was fantastic and have already had a go with some of his ideas – I even had a long chat with a lady in the library about it whilst I was booking out a copy of Nigel’s old book Appetite.

Anyway the recipe involved making a paste with various aromatics then cooking with stock and coconut milk, adding prawns, fish sauce and fresh herbs. As you can see the result was visually wonderful and smelt very good, but unfortunately I think I watered down the flavours too much with an over enthusiastic amount of coconut milk, which meant it smelt much better than it tasted.

But last night I half-followed a similar recipe from Nigel’s book Appetite and it was a winner.

Brief recipe with approx amounts is: In a small food processor whiz together three cloves of garlic, roughly the same volume of fresh ginger, a stick of lemongrass chopped, good handful of fresh coriander, one red chilli, half teaspoon of coriander seeds, half a teaspoon of turmeric and some vegetable oil. Fry in a wok until fragrant then add 250ml chicken stock and 200ml or just less of coconut milk, simmer for five minutes. Add some shredded pak choi and let it wilt. Then add some plump, juicy raw prawns and cook until just pink (minute or two) season with half a teaspoon of sugar, good few glugs of fish sauce (at a guess 2-3 teaspoons) and the juice of half a lime, stir in some fresh coriander and mint then serve on top of some cooked rice noodles and slurp it from a deep bowl.

Venison steak with sweet potato mash and swiss chard

Given we are well into autumn I thought it was high time I bought some venison, and we have a lovely local supply nearby from Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The deer roams in their beautiful deer park and makes lovely meat. I have to say if you’re not an experienced cook – just like me – don’t be put off trying to cook venison, it is just as easy to do as steak. You must make sure it is cooked pink though because venison is a lean meat (popular with athletes in fact) so over cook it and it will be dry. I fried it quickly in a pan. Then set aside to rest and added some red wine to the pan, reduced it and added some meat stock and some redcurrant jelly to sweeten it to make a sauce. It is delicious served with sweet potato mash and a rich irony vegetable such as chard, spinach or kale.

And lastly I end on a light and healthy note. This isn’t really a recipe, but it is really tasty. For lunch the last two days I have eaten a salad made up of beetroot that I baked in foil and cooled, chopped into chunks and threw into mixed lettuce and rocket. I then added some sliced cucumber and crumbled over some strong goat’s cheese. I drizzled it with a dressing made of extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper and finished with lots of toasted mixed seeds. It was so delicious, the idea really is sweet beetroot against salty cheese and feta works just as well.

Beautiful beetroot salad

Hobgoblin curry

I know Halloween was yesterday, but I was too busy handing out sweets to eager trick-or-treaters to blog. Anyway the main point of this post is to offer a recipe to anyone with a mound of left-over pumpkin flesh in the fridge or a squash languishing in the larder. There are lots of things I could do with a pumpkin (and when I say pumpkin read any kind of squash big or small), but I always end up making this curry.

This is mainly because it is tasty, simple – thanks to the cheats curry paste – and healthy enough for me to feel virtuous.

I can’t give you specific quantities here because each time I have a different sized squash. Also, I say it is for two because it isn’t quite enough for four but I usually end up with an extra portion that I stash in the fridge for Will to heat up at work the next day.

I serve this with plain boiled brown rice, but a naan bread would be good and last night I had some poppadoms with some shop bought mango chutney and a very make-shift raita made by mixing natural yogurt with a good shaking of dried mint, a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt (surprisingly tasty and refreshing).

Squash Curry for two – sort of!

A small pumpkin/squash – you know, one that kinda looks like it is for two, peeled and chopped into big chunks

1 white onion, sliced

1 garlic clove, finely chopped, minced or grated

Small knob of fresh ginger, grated

*If you like it hot a green chilli finely chopped or a sprinkle of dried chilli flakes

2-3 tablespoons of Pataks Balti paste

Half can of chopped tomatoes

Half a can of coconut milk (I use half-fat, it’s totally up to you)

Three big handfuls of spinach

Fresh coriander, chopped

Lime juice to taste

1. Gently fry the onion until it starts to soften. Add ginger, chilli and garlic and cook for a few more minutes. Add curry paste and fry off until it becomes fragrant.

2. Add canned tomatoes and coconut milk – if you have quite a lot of squash you might need to add a little bit more tomato and coconut milk, just add in equal quantities. *Freeze remaining coconut milk in ice-cube trays then transfer into a bag to keep until next time you make the curry.

3. Put the lid on and simmer for about 20 minutes, until you can easily put a knife through one of the squash cubes – at the same time don’t be too relaxed and over cook it because the squash can become mushy.

4. Add the spinach and cook until it wilts into the sauce. Taste and season with some salt, a good squeeze of lime juice and some fresh coriander.

Blackberry jam for a novice

Victoria sponge with homemade blackberry jam

I’m moving into my new house on Friday! Can’t wait, there lots of work to do on it but it has a great garden (I’ve already sketched designs for the veg plot, chicken coup, compost bin, water butt and outdoor eating area) and a reasonably big kitchen which I can’t wait to get my hands on.

In preparation for moving I’m doing the ‘run the fridge down’ exercise where you use up everything in the fridge and freezer before it gets switched off and transported.

It’s been quite fun actually. Pizzas tonight with defrosted pizza sauce made last month, topped with the last of the parmesan, some goats cheese I had, the last few sundried tomatoes and assorted bits and pieces. Then tomorrow homely chicken and sweet potato curry with some spinach thrown in (because it needs eating) made with some left-over curry paste and coconut milk from the freezer.

But the difficult thing has been to get through the mountains of blackberries I picked and froze last month. Felt extremely happy with myself at the time, thinking I am all set up for winter now with this little lot. Now I need to use them all in the space of a week.

Slice of blackberry Victoria sponge

So I used a whole bag for a make-shift jam of sorts, to fill a Victoria sponge. I’ve never made jam before and don’t have any jam making equipment. I just used same weights of sugar to blackberries (250g) a few splashes of water and some lemon peel.

It isn’t completely set like a jam as I didn’t use jam sugar (which has added pectin to make it set) but it’s fine for spreading between sponge cakes with a bit of butter cream. Delicious for afternoon tea, or morning snack break…..or before bed nibble.

For a full-proof Victorian sponge recipe click on the baking category in recipes.

A petty pan-full of risotto

The alien looking petty pan

May I introduce you to the petty pan. Yes this strange, yellow, alien-like thing is a vegetable – a summer squash to be exact and a member of the same family as courgettes, butternut squash and pumpkins. My first reaction upon seeing it in my veg box a few weeks ago was – has a flying sauce crash-landed into my cardboard box?

Much research told me it could be cooked in a similar way to many of the squash family but was more like a courgette in taste.

I have to tell you now it was neither unctuous and sweet like a squash nor refreshing and tasty like a courgette – I found it a bit boring to be honest. So what is the point of this post? Well out of this research came quite a delicious meal.

I concluded the best way to cook it would be to stuff it and for filling I plumped for a risotto with some of the scooped out petty pan and some of its cousin the courgette.

The baked petty pan was ok, but the risotto was a triumph. So much so that I cooked it again for Will (who doesn’t usually like risotto) minus the petty pan casing and it went down very well indeed.

Petty pan stuffed with delicious courgette risotto

Note: I don’t use white wine, as many do, in a risotto as one: I don’t personally like the flavour it gives the dish that much and two: as red wine drinkers we don’t ever have any in the house. If you do like to add some wine before adding the first ladle full of stock go ahead.

 

Courgette risotto (serves 2)

200g Arborio rice

1 litre of chicken stock (you might need a little more water depending on the brand of rice you use)

One large or two small courgettes, sliced into rounds then each rounds into quarters.

Small knob of unsalted butter

1/2 small red onion, finely chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Zest of one lemon

Handful of fresh basil

Small amount of freshly grated parmesan

 

1. Fry the onion slowly in the butter, with a splash of olive oil to stop it burning. Then add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more.
2. Add the rice to the pan and stir around in the flavoured oil, then add you first ladle of hot stock.
3. Continue as you usually would with a risotto gradually add the hot stock and the rice absorbs it and stirring regularly to release the starches (thus making the risotto nice and creamy). It will take at least 20 minutes.
4. After about 15 minutes put a separate pan or griddle on, drizzle the courgette pieces in olive oil, salt and pepper and fry quickly until they go brown but still retaining some bite.
5. Add the courgettes to the risotto. Taste to check the rice is soft. Once it is soft enough add lemon zest, the roughly chopped basil and parmesan. Stir and serve.

What’s your family heirloom recipe?

A recent surveyed revealed that more than half of us value family recipes as highly as we do material family heirlooms.

The survey, based on 1,000 respondents in the UK and carried out by allaboutyou.com, found 58 per cent of people value family recipes as much as material heirlooms, a further 17 per cent value them more.

On pondering this I thought family recipes are a part of our history, whether your mother whipped up delightful and elaborate cakes of her own devising, or if you were given strange concoctions with no name that became a family favourite, food stays in our memories.

My mum was very much of the latter category of strange concoctions. She wonders why I became so interested in cooking as she wasn’t exactly a passionate chef herself. That’s not to say she didn’t care and that we didn’t eat well – we did because she had a wonderful vegetable patch. She was also careful to make sure she passed on basic cooking skills to me and we spent most weekend whipping up copious batches of chocolate chip fairy cakes for my dad’s and two brother’s lunch boxes.

One of our strange family favourite recipes I remember well was a very curious ‘shepherds pie’. I put it in speech marks as it is questionably a shepherds pie. In fact I believe it came from my mum’s mum and she called it a goulash – it is really neither. It was ground up lamb from yesterdays roast (yes sounding like a shepherds pie at the moment) mixed with a can of plum tomatoes, chopped up, a can of baked beans and then topped with mashed potato and baked. We loved it as children, but its not really the height of gastronomy. The rest of the meals I remember from my childhood follow a similar tact, they were strange versions of original recipes such as a curry made with curry powder, mango chutney and stock, canned mushrooms, leftover chicken and raisins?!!

So I guess I hanker after some wonderful family heirloom recipes to call my own, I suppose I’ll have to create my own to pass onto my children. I’d love to here what your family heirloom recipes are, whether they are delicious or rather odd like mine.

The taste of Greece in a rural village

Eleon Olive Oil

Cottage industries are popping up everywhere these days. Lots of people are bottling their own chutneys, packaging their own cakes and selling their home grown produce. I live north of Bristol, but work in Gloucestershire where you are surrounded by the beautiful Cotswolds. Here there is no shortage of great food, lots of it being produced and sold on a small scale. But I was surprised to find out about a small company in the quaint village of North Nibley that sold Greek olive oil and honey.

Couple Jacqueline and Tassos Stamatopoulos run the business called Eleon Fine Foods – Eleon meaning olive grove in Greek – from a beautifully converted hay barn on the outskirts of the village.

It is still a small business, just four years old, so Tassos continues to work in the day as a teacher while Jacqueline, a mother-of-two, works on it full time at home.

At present they just have two products, which can only be bought at Stroud market, Bristol Slow Food Market and a few local farm shops. But the two products are so fantastic I predict they will grow quickly and they should certainly make the items available on the internet.

The two products were given a Great Taste Gold award this year and it is thoroughly well-deserved. Their fresh, 100 per cent extra virgin olive oil, comes from Tassos’ parents olive groves in a small village in the Peloponnese region of Greece. It is cold-pressed and unfiltered and for several months of the year it is consider “fresh”.

It is bursting with olive flavour but has a mild and subtle to taste, delicious for dipping bread, but also great for cooking with, Jacqueline told me.

Jacqueline Stamatopoulos with her products from Greece

I was under the impression that extra-virgin oils were not great to cook with but she told me that in Greece they use it for absolutely everything – they even fry their chips in it! Yes it does have a low smoke point, which means it gets hot quickly, but Jacqueline said as long as you keep an eye on it you can use it for just about anything and it will give everything a delicious Mediterranean flavour – plus it’s a healthy choice.

The product I was absolutely seduced by was their Greek honey, which this time is made by Tassos’ cousin, who looks after bees in the Taygetros mountains, where they feed mainly off of pine with a little orange and lemon blossom. The pine diet, which is quite unusual, gives the honey a sublime toffee texture and rich, but not overly sweet, taste. This honey is nothing like the honey you get in the clear squeezy bottles from the supermarket. It would be delicious spread on toast, served with Greek yogurt or drizzled on ice-cream.

I also think there is something to be said for knowing exactly where your food comes from, right down to the tiny village where the olive growers live. It’s not a local product, but no olive oils are, so this is the second best option and I would rather my hard-earned money went towards a small-family business rather than ploughed into a faceless supermarket chain.

(Photos by Steve Richards)

My favourite sweet potato wedges

I adore sweet potatoes. They are so versatile and yet so healthy and nutritious – double bonus points. I always add them to vegetable curries and often to meat curries as well to bulk them out. I also regularly make an Italian style shepherds pie that has a sweet potato and parmesan topping, which is delicious (I’ll have to remember to post that recipe soon). But by far and away my favourite way to eat them are my sweet potato wedges, which are beyond simple and always taste great.

My sweet potato wedges

They go with lots of things like chicken or steak. In fact I serve them with anything you might serve chips or potatoes with. I think they would go down a storm with children as well, although I haven’t tried that theory. Let me know if you do.

There isn’t really any need for a recipe just wash and dry the sweet potatoes then chop them into wedges or chip shapes (leaving the skin on). Put them on a baking tray with a good few slugs of olive oil. Then sprinkle on some mild chilli powder (the blended kind that has garlic, cumin and seasoning added, you get it in all supermarkets) a good dusting of paprika and a bit of salt and pepper. You want the spices to cover all the wedges. Now get you hands in and mix it all around so the spicy oil covers everything.

Then put the tray in a preheated 200 degree oven for 25-30 minutes until they look a bit crispy. One thing to say though is that sweet potato won’t go crispy like regular potatoes do – not unless you deep fat fried them. They will be more chewing with crispy ends, but that’s just as good.

They are really tasty with either barbecue sauce or a sour cream dip.

Apricot cake mistake

My apricot cake mistake

So you might be thinking, this cake doesn’t look too bad, quite tasty even. But you would be wrong, this cake wasn’t as sweet and fruity as it should have been, and it wasn’t because I used salt instead of sugar.

Weirdly enough it was because the apricots were incredibly sour. It is strange because I ate some raw before putting them in the cake and they were mild and tasty, just as you would expect an apricot to be.

I had received a tub of them in my veg box and couldn’t decide what I was going to do with them. Recently I had great success with a recipe from BBC Good Food Magazine called Bakewell Cake, which was made with ground almonds, fresh raspberries and flaked almonds on top. Will took it to work and it was apparently scoffed in minutes.

So I thought ‘apricots and almond, that works’, so I used the same recipe but instead of raspberries I in put in apricots. It came out of the oven, it smelled delicious, it looked golden and tasty. But strangely the apricots had turned very tart and sour – can anyone explain this? I would love to hear from you if you have any answers.

Raspberry bakewell cake

Anyway don’t let this put you off the original recipe (click on the photo for the link), which is delicious – just make sure you make it with raspberries.

Oh well, you win some you lose some.

A table full of tapas

Question: What is better than a delicious plate full of food? Answer: Several delicious plates of food of course. The reason we love Spanish tapas so much is that we get to experience a whole range of tastes and textures in one sitting – a nibble of prawn and a spoonful of pork stew, a bite of omelette and loads of crusty bread to mop up all the juices.

Our table full of tapas, for just two people!

Tapas, served as a meal, also has a relaxed feel to it that is perfect for entertaining. You can slowly graze, picking at some food then pausing to drink and chat before moving on to a different taste.

Having said that Will and me enjoyed this mini feast to ourselves with a bottle of Vino Tinto and we also had a starter and dessert – the word pigs springs to mind.

The starter was a favourite of Wills, roasted red peppers stuffed with cream cheese (although this time I stuffed them with a mix of ricotta and feta, which was what I had in the house, it is nice with cream cheese and chopped herbs). I placed them on a plate with rocket and some jamon Serrano. A great nibbly starter that doesn’t fill you up too much.

Starter: roasted red peppers stuffed with cream cheese

The first tapas dish was patatas bravas. I follow a delicious recipe of Simon Rimmer’s which you can find on my post called ‘Tapas for two’ in the August 2008 archive – you really must try it, it is so delicious. Then for a lighter dish I sliced some courgettes lengthways griddled them until charred but not floppy then dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and a good grinding of salt and pepper.

A dish that was a real success was one I came up with while on holiday in Spain, and I have to admit it did taste better over there because they had deliciously soft cannellini beans, good quality chorizo and juicy tomatoes.

Tapas dish: chorizo and butter beans

To make it fry half a finely chopped white onion in some olive oil until it starts to soften, then add a finely chopped clove of garlic and fry for a few more minutes. Add some chorizo in large slices and cook until it releases it gorgeous red oils. If you like add one or two chopped juicy tomatoes at this stage and cooked for a few minutes. Throw in some cannellini beans or butter beans and warm through, then serve with crusty bread.

Lastly I did some garlic prawns, something you tend to find on most Spanish menus and which invariably tastes delicious with their fresh prawns, but didn’t taste so great with my slightly rubbery supermarket prawns. Just fry some slices of garlic in plenty of oil, then cook the raw prawns until they turn pink, squeeze in a little drop of lemon juice, season, then throw in some freshly chopped parsley and serve in a shallow dish – but definitely get good quality prawns!

Salad days

Hola! I’m back from a holiday in Spain. Completely forgot to post a blog before I went saying I wouldn’t be writing for a couple of weeks, sorry about that. On returning home I found summer had well and truly arrived – I think I brought the sun back with me.

And with the good weather has come some good crops of fruit and vegetables. In my first veg box after the holiday I had fresh broad beans, beautiful lurid pink radishes, sweet English cherry tomatoes and strawberries! Hurray, I had been excitedly waiting for them, and not only that I had some delectable English cherries, what a delight.

Summer pasta dish

I read an article by Jill Duplex (a fabulous Australian food writer) quite a while ago about how you can turn anything into a salad dish by eating it as a cooler temperature or changing a heavy sauce for a light dressing, and salad is all I want in summer. Words you associate with summer eating are fresh, light, crisp and juicy and a salad encompasses all of this.

In the article she gave a recipe, which I give you below, for a pasta dish which is distinctly salad-like. Banish the rich tomatoes sauces and thick creamy dishes and instead go for something lighter like this lemon, courgette and Parma ham pasta dish.

You can eat it luke warm to make even more summery and it is also quick to prepare which is just what you need on a hot day.

Summery lemon, courgette and Parma ham pasta

I don’t know if this is an accurate account of the recipe, but it is pretty close.

Serves 2 (of course!)

4-5 slices of Parma ham torn up roughly

Zest of ½ lemon and 2tbsp of the juice

1tsp of fresh thyme leaves, roughly chopped

Your usual amount of spaghetti for two

Good glug of quality olive oil

1 courgette in thin half-moons

Handful of rocket leaves

Freshly grated parmesan

Put the ham, lemon zest and juice, thyme leaves, a good glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper in a large bowl.

Cook your spaghetti until ready, but for the last 2-3 minutes add the courgette so they cook. Drain the pasta and courgettes and throw into the bowl with the other ingredients and mix it round thoroughly. Then throw in rocket leaves toss through and spoon onto serving plate. Top with grated parmesan.

A simple everyday summer salad

This is quite a posh looking salad dish. But something that I like equally is a simple plate of salad maybe with some cold cooked meat, hard boiled eggs, or nice cheese. I also have a strange affection for canned pilchards and salad from my childhood. Then just add a few steamed new potatoes tossed in butter and fresh mint or some nice fresh buttered bread and you have yourself a delicious meal. So simple and so tasty.

In the photo I made a massive salad with mixed leaves, peas, sweetcorn, tomatoes and toasted pine nuts. I served this with preserved artichokes, avocado, some strong cheese and some thick slices of homemade wholemeal bread.

I’ll probably eat something along these lines every week from June-September just mixing and changing the sides and accompaniments. Let me know what dishes make you think of summer.