Breakfast this morning: yoghurt with stewed plums. Bliss. The plums were slightly past their best, but fully revived with a little muscovado sugar. So much flavour there's no need for spice. 20 minutes, covered, in a moderate oven.
Mushrooms, like aubergines, soak up oil if you give them the chance. Here's a way of locking in taste without using any fat at all.
Put equal quantities of wine* and stock** in the pan - just enough to stop your mushroom slices burning. Add a few drops of Worcester sauce, or soy sauce, or balsamic vinegar. Put the pan on a medium heat. Watch and stir. The mushrooms will exude their juices after a few minutes; turn up the heat and boil off all the liquid. Watch them carefully; they are ready when the last of the liquid evaporates. Delicious.
* red or white is fine; I sometimes use Marsala, which gives a strong flavour to the mushrooms (not great at breakfast)
** I've always got stock in the fridge, either chicken stock, or Fergus Henderson's fabulous trotter gear. If you don't go in for this sort of thing, just use bouillon
Related links
Foolproof recipe for fuss-free chicken stock
Jellied pork stock - easy to make, keeps for months in the fridge, adds depth to everything it touches
Delicious, with a hint of cinnamon. Eat warm from the oven as pud, or cold for breakfast/elevenses. Much nicer than the appley-cinnamony pastry I had in Selfridge's yesterday. There's a strong taste of almonds, even though they're cut 50:50 with flour (so economical).
It's from Hugh FW's new book, Every Day; he made it with pears on his show last week (you may need to be in the UK for this link to work).
Apple and almond cake
150g butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
75g wholemeal self-raising flour
75g ground almonds
for the apples
4-5 eating apples
25g butter
1 heaped tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
20cm springform cake tin
pre-heat the oven to 170C
Peel and core the apples, cut them into wedges and fry gently in the butter and sugar. When they are nearly tender, add the cinnamon and take off the heat.
Beat the butter and sugar together; add the eggs, then the flour, then the almonds. Scrape into the tin, smooth over, arrange the apples on top, spoon over the juices from the frying pan.
Bake for 40-45 minutes (until a skewer comes out clean). Leave for a while before unclipping the tin (although this is probably going to fall apart anyway).
Notes:
* I made it on the spur of the moment to use up some apples that had been sitting around for a few days; there were six, not quite too many.
* I had only 140g butter in total; the apples were fine in 10g, and the cake was fine with 130g. So no need for the full 175g.
* My cake is a little stodgy ("but good stodgy", said Amy) because I used plain wholemeal and forget to put in baking powder.
* The apples sit nicely on top of this cake, but when HFW made it with pears, they sank down almost to the bottom.
Related posts
Apple tart - Alfred once ate half of this at one go
Hugh FW's wonderful ginger cake
Easy almond ring cake - another pudding-y cake, better served with a little fruit
This post is really for my children, who insist on eating salted/sugared packet cereals at breakfast.
Here are links to research originated at Yale: a list of the 10 most nutritionally empty commercial cereals, the 10 best manufactured cereals, and the 10 cereals most marketed to children. Some of the names are slightly different in the UK, but they're still recognisable.
Last night there was a programme I didn't see about the lack of value - both nutritional and financial - in manufactured cereals. I would provide a link to 4 on Demand, but Channel Four is showing the programme again in the early hours of Friday morning, so here's a link to the programme website: Dispatches, What's in Your Breakfast?
Better stick to porridge.
Very easy, very delicious, very fattening, very more-ish.
I used dark orange chocolate, and could have improved on this theme with some orange zest in the dough. Lettice said she'd like milk chocolate next time. They took little more than an hour and a half, and only five minutes of my time.
for 6 pains au chocolat
Put into the bread machine:
1/2 tsp yeast
250g strong white flour
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
2 tbsp butter
a pinch of salt
2 eggs beaten with 3 tbsp milk
Mix on the dough setting.
Knead the dough into a cylinder shape, then cut into six equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rectangle, put a square of chocolate in the centre, then fold the two sides over (as if you were folding a sheet of A4 into a long envelope). Place in a mini loaf pan (mine are 11cmx6 and 3cm deep). Leave in a warm place to rest and rise*, then bake for 10-12 minutes in a hot oven (220C).
Eat while warm. Mmmmm
* Mine had hardly risen at all when I put them in the oven after about 20 minutes' rest ... they were still light and airy, oven spring gave them their lovely final loaf shape
Other enriched doughs
Hot uncrossed buns
Fabulous cinnamon rolls
Anti-oxidant teabread
Homemade marzipan - an alternative filling for brioche dough
These celebration pastries are achievable by cooks at any level, and easy for experienced bakers. The basis is a white dough, enriched with sugar, eggs and butter. This is then smeared with more butter, and topped with a sugar and cinnamon mix, then rolled and cut. Not for dieters, obviously.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of making the rolls, then use the enriched dough as it is to make brioche.
If you're an incorrigible tinkerer with recipes, you could enrich your own favourite dough. It's what I did.
This is enough to fill one pan (mine's approx 30x25 cm). Or you could make it in 2 medium foil dishes so that you could freeze half for another day. Don't be tempted to use the small size, because it doesn't work (I used the not-very-good result to make a delicious bread-and-no-need-for-butter pudding*).
It sounds like a lot of trouble, but the work, such as it is, breaks down into three distinct parts, each of which takes only a few minutes. This is good make-ahead celebration food, whether you use the fridge or the freezer.
Brioche dough
5g instant yeast (or a sachet)
450g strong white bread flour
good pinch of salt
1 tbsp sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
125g melted butter, cooled
4 eggs
warm water
I mix this in my bread machine, but it works just as well if you stir everything together in a bowl and knead/stretch til smooth.
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the cooled butter. Break the eggs into a measuring jug, and make up the volume with warm water to 100ml. Add to the bowl. Once the dough is smooth, leave it to double. (This will take about an hour in a warm room. Or you could put the dough into the fridge overnight and take it out for two hours in the morning.)
Cinnamon rolls
for 16
30g melted butter
70g muscovado sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
Glaze: 250g icing sugar mixed with 5-6 tbsp water (sieve the sugar, or you'll end up with little lumps, like those pictured)
On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough into a rectangle 30x45cm. Smear on the melted butter, then add the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Use your fingers to get this mess right to the edges - it's just like playing mud pies, so this is a good place to get young children involved.
When the dough is completely covered, roll it up along the long edge. Then cut the rolls and arrange in your tin/s. Leave in a warm place while you heat up the oven, to 190C.
Bake for 25 minutes, but start checking after 20. As soon as you get them out of the oven, pour on the glaze, making sure you cover them well.
Mmmm ... these are Lettice's new favourite breakfast-on-the-move when she's up and out of the house early. Better than a bought croissant, any day. Cheaper, too.
*PS bread-and-no-need-for-butter pudding: slice brioche into a buttered dish, pour on a custard mix made with 3/4 pint of milk and two eggs, a little sugar (you'd need more if this was for plain bread), and a drop of vanilla essence. Leave this to soak for half an hour or more, then cook in a low oven for about an hour. Cover with greaseproof paper if it looks like burning.
This time last year: we were at Eleanor's graduation ceremony and making parsnip puree. In 2006 I was making a spicy squid stew with chorizo - easy and memorable.
According to the back of the tin of baked beans I've just eaten for breakfast, the British eat more baked beans than any other nation at an average of 15lb per head per year. And most of them, judging by supermarket shelf space, are either Heinz or own-brand. Both of which are, to my taste, too salty. Now, at 57p a can, I've discovered the most delicious alternative: open the can and you can smell the cinnamon, the cloves, the nutmeg - you don't get that with Heinz (65p).
Here's the complete list of ingredients for Whole Earth Organic Baked Beans:
organic haricot beans (49%), water, organic tomatoes (13%), organic apple juice, organic rice flour, sea salt, organic cider vinegar, organic onion powder, organic ground cinnamon, organic dill, organic garlic powder, ocean kelp, organic nutmeg, organic cloves, organic cayenne pepper, organic tamari soya sauce (water, organic soya beans, sea salt).
Doesn't that sound good? A bargain, too.
PS re-reading this, I'm amazed at that average figure: I eat the most baked beans in this household, at about four tins a year - there must be people on a tin a day.
Instant beans on toast ...
This is what a 16-year-old chooses for his breakfast. With orange juice.
I took this(on my phone) a couple of days ago in Doncaster, before our drive more or less the length of England. Blazing hot sunshine all the way, until we reached the Lizard, the southernmost point of the British mainland - since then, we've been living in a cloud.
Here is the view from our bedroom window: WHERE IS THE SEA??? However, the consolation is that I am making an elaborate loaf of bread using Gilchester Farm flour bought in Northumberland, the Andrew Whitley recipe on the back of the packet, and the fresh yeast I bought in the health food shop in Helston.
We do breakfast in this house. I'm not sure what the difference between breakfast and brunch is, but, no matter what time we get up, it's breakfast all the way here. And looking at the entries this month, it seems to me that brunch is misnamed, because it seems to be interpreted as a cross between breakfast and elevenses. Brevenses, anyone? Elefast?
At Lucullian Delights, co-founder Ilva's OVEN ROASTED PROSCIUTTO WRAPPED ASPARAGUS is fantastic ... I've found that if you want to eat at least five-a-day, you've got to make a good start first thing. Here, the asparagus season is just beginning, so I think this is going to become a favourite.
Chris at Mele Cotte has made a Buckwheat Groats Scramble, and includes loads of useful information about buckwheat (aka kasha), and heart-healthy hazelnut oil.
Ann at Redacted Recipes has made something that is sure to become a favourite with my funghi-loving daughter: Roasted Mushroom Breakfast Bruschetta. Ann's also included lots of nutritional information (I had no idea mushrooms were so good for you!), and a link to a site with help for those of us who can't poach an egg (I leave that to Horatio, who has been brilliant at egg-poaching since he was about six).
Aagje at Labelga gives us a new take on an old favourite: Porridge with millet flakes, dried fruit and nuts ... it's too easy to think that porridge can only be made with oats, and this makes a great change.
Lisa at Little Bits gives us an original creation: Polenta, Tofu & Veggie Bake ... the silken tofu lightens the polenta, and there are loads of vegetables too. And for those of us afraid of tofu, Lisa gives some good tips for using the silken sort in everyday cooking.
Lore's healthy brunch is open sandwiches and a fruit salad. She makes a little cheese go a long way - which is one of the secrets of heart-healthy eating - and makes sure of plenty of fruit and veg to start the day. 
French Toast with Fruit is on the menu at Green Gourmet Giraffe. It's a vegan version, and well worth checking out .. rhubarb to go with it, too. Mmm
Jeanne at Cook Sister has made Oat and cherry muffins using a recipe from a muffin cookery book she bought on impulse the other day. I never have much luck with muffins, but these look worth a try - lots of oats, and nutty wholemeal flour.
At Food for Laughter I found Something Light and Lovely - Artichoke Frittata, which I would never have thought of eating in the morning (see what I mean about breakfast and brunch?), but which I'm going to try. Lore uses bottled artichokes, and we'd have to, too, if we made it this weekend, but pretty soon there will be masses of fresh artichokes from the garden, and then this recipe will come into its own for me.
Nearly forgot ... here's my post about making porridge the slow way, using oatmeal, rather than faster flakes, and a polenta-ish way with any leftovers.
Let me know if I've forgotten anyone ... thank you all for taking part, there are lots of good ideas here for me to try for brunch in the garden on Monday, when we have a bank holiday. Michelle at Accidental Scientist will soon be making an announcement about next month's Heart of the Matter theme. You'll find this round-up, and all the previous ones too, on the Heart of the Matter website.
Related posts
Kippers - without stinking out the house
Smoked haddock
More things for breakfast
Kedgeree (my very first blog post)
Frying pan bread - a quick fix for the disorganised
Baked pears with pinenuts
In this house, as you see, the most enthusiasm is reserved for a full English breakfast (although only the children eat sausages). We don't really do brunch, if that means a collision between breakfast and lunch - no matter how late we eat breakfast, they all always want some lunch. On the other hand, we do often have a leisurely weekend breakfast. No-one eats muffins here - and, anyway, over the years they've been amongst my worst culinary disasters.
Lucius and I often eat kippers, and another favourite is porridge. I've made this in a variety of ways over the years, and this is the nicest, although not instant. You need medium and/or coarse oatmeal, not the rolled oats that are easy to buy in a supermarket, nor pinhead oats, which are too coarse to cook in real time (overnight in an Aga is the usual method for pinhead oats, but I have never been a fan, they often taste overdone, reminiscent of school food). I have to go to the health food shop for oatmeal, which is about £1 for 500g.
The porridge you make with rolled oats is fine, it's just that this is better. Perfect for weekends, perfect for brunch, perhaps with a little blueberry compote for extra heart health.
Porridge
for each person:
50g medium oatmeal (or a mixture of medium and coarse)
300ml water
Use a sturdy pan with a thick bottom. You can start by toasting the oatmeal gently for two or three minutes, I'm not sure if it really makes a difference, and it's by no means essential.
Add the water to the meal, heat until it comes to the boil, then turn right down to simmer gently for 15-20 minutes, giving it an occasional stir. I use a wooden spoon, which is what my grandmother in Scotland used, and I have never met a Scot who uses a spirtle, I think they are just for tourists.
I don't put salt in my porridge, it can be added to the bowl - my Scots grandfather, a farmer who grew oats in Fife, used to eat his porridge with salt and not much else. I use skimmed milk and a dollop of lovely brown muscovado sugar.
If there's any left over, you can fry it up like polenta, and eat it with fruit compote. That's what I had for breakfast this morning - reheated slices of porridge and a little stewed apple. My grandmother used to give her leftover porridge to the dogs - in fact, I rather think she made extra specially.
What do YOU do for a heart-healthy breakfast or brunch? The Heart of the Matter website is a resource I often consult, so I'd love it if you'd take part this month.
The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Sunday 27 April , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up on the Monday or Tuesday on both sites.
Related posts
Kippers - without stinking out the house
Smoked haddock
More things for breakfast
Kedgeree (my very first blog post)
Frying pan bread - a quick fix for the disorganised
Baked pears with pinenuts
HotM: brunch
Yesterday, we ate breakfast and lunch outside. Last night, as the sun was going down, there were fluffy pink clouds in the sky, and I thought we could have a huge open-air breakfast this morning when all the visiting teenagers finally got up.
No chance!
Lettice is grilling bacon; Lucius is poaching an egg. We need some ideas for a healthy brunch - please!
This - as so often for me with Heart of the Matter - is an appeal for fresh ideas. Brunch ideas. Heart-healthy dishes that will appeal to a family that would much rather be eating bacon and eggs for breakfast.
I'm feeling a bit jaded all round, and I'm especially stuck for weekend breakfast: if it's porridge the young complain. If it's kippers, only the adults eat them. If it's too whacky, everyone asks why we don't have it for lunch. I'm often ridiculed for having eaten curry for breakfast every day when I was in Sri Lanka a few years ago.
The other day I put some puffed quinoa into the home-made muesli - not much - and Lucius stopped eating muesli. He said it tasted nasty; he also said it tasted of nothing. I said he couldn't have it both ways. After a few days of stand-off, I sieved the whole lot out, and he went straight back to eating muesli every day for breakfast.
As you see, they're a conservative bunch, so I need your help ... you've all been so generous with your recipes in the past, the Heart of the Matter website is a resource I often consult.
The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Sunday 27 April , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up on the Monday or Tuesday on both sites.
We eat kippers for breakfast every Saturday morning, without stinking out the house, which it seems is a major factor in putting people off these delicious fish. This morning my father told me he was banned from cooking them because of the smell. So he occasionally goes to the Loch Fyne Restaurant a few doors down from his house, specifically to eat kippers.
For years and years, cooking kippers was easy for me, as an Aga-user: all the cooking smells go up the flue - which means that you can burn food to a crisp black cinder without realising until you go into the garden. But now my Aga isn't working, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have it taken out (in favour of a wood-fired oven), so I've had to solve the odourless kipper-cooking problem. It turns out to be the original, traditional & popular method in the north east of England, which is where kippers were invented (by John Woodger of Seahouses in Northumberland, in 1840). The most difficult thing about it is finding a jug which is tall enough but not too wide (otherwise you'll need two kettles-full of water), and I keep thinking that there must be a pottery, perhaps in Craster, where they make the perfect kippering jug.
Jugged kippers
Put good kippers (ie undyed, preferably from Craster, Uig, Loch Fyne) into a jug, heads down, and pour boiling water over them. Leave for at least six minutes and no more than 10. Pull them out, shake off the drips, and serve on hot plates. Pepper, a little well-strained yoghurt, some finely chopped onion (probably not at breakfast), lemon juice are all good accompaniments, and a little toast and marmalade to follow is utter bliss.
This works well, but only if you use a jug (or similar) rather than a flat dish. If you do that, the water cools too fast and you need to heat it up - which produces a smell, as well as perfectly edible kippers.
The other difficulty people have with kippers is the bones. WC Hodgson explains in The Herring and its Fishery (quoted by Jane Grigson in her Fish Book):
"Eating a kipper is quite simple if it is laid correctly on the plate to start with, that is, with the skin uppermost. With the head twoards you, lift up the skin from half of the kipper by running the point of the knife along the edge and fold the skin back. This exposes the flesh on top of the bones, and it is quite easy to remove it in fillets, leaving the bones untouched. When this side has been eaten, turn the kipper round on the plate so that the tail is towards you and repeat the process on the other side."
Jane Grigson comments: This works. It's true, it does, because we both tried it a couple of weekends ago. But it's more of a palaver than what I normally do, but, unlike Mr Hodgson (somehow, I feel he must be a man), I am not equal to the task of describing it. But it works too.
If making my daily soda bread is a pleasurable chore, this yeasted corn bread with fresh kernels is the fun side of baking. And, besides, it's another recipe from my friend Tanna, who baked the bread for the crew while crossing the Atlantic in a small yacht. More than once.
This is an enriched bread, light and golden, speckled with corn kernels. Unlike most enriched bread, not a hint of butter - instead, eggs and honey, as well as the kernels. So not an everyday bread ... a special, autumnal treat.
It takes all day, though the yeast does all the work. Tanna started at 10pm and was taking the bread out of the oven at 5am. I am not an early-morning person, so I started at 11.30am with the idea of eating the bread for supper, but got side-tracked in the early evening, so it came out of the oven at 10pm ... we've just eaten some for breakfast, and it'll be brilliant with the soup we're having for lunch. But like all bread, you can adapt the timings to suit your life ... & actually, if you start the first step at 10pm, you could leave the mixture in the fridge, and do the second step at breakfast, rather than at midnight. (And I could have baked my loaves in the morning, again by putting them to rise overnight in the fridge.) Yeast cookery is very forgiving.
I'm giving a link to Tanna's posts about this bread, because they are very inspiring, and because they've got photographs of all the steps, which are useful for anyone who hasn't made much bread. I'm just going to give outine instructions and notes on the changes I made to the original recipe, mainly for my own benefit, because I will want to do this again. The method is just like any other yeast bread. I don't know if you could do this in a breadmaker, I'm afraid, because I've never used one.
Tanna's corn bread
strong white flour
dried yeast
instant polenta
one corn on the cob
two large eggs
honey
olive oil
salt
chili powder
1. Make a poolish by mixing together:
190g strong white bread flour
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
190g water at room temperature
Leave for two hours. When you return to it, it will be bubbling full of life. I put water straight from the cold tap, because I knew it would be three hours before I got back to it.
2. Add 160g water at room temperature to the poolish.
3. Then mix the dough. Put the following ingredients into the bowl of your mixer:
375g white bread flour
140g polenta (I used the instant sort which is all you can easily buy in a British supermarket)
the kernels cut from one cob
two large eggs
40g honey (2 tbsp)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
Add the poolish. Mix with the dough hook for about five minutes until you get a smooth, soft/sticky dough. Tanna says she had to add 2 tbsp of bread flour to get the dough to be manageable, but I found it was fine. But don't start adding flour until you've kneaded it (by machine) for at least four minutes, and then add it a teaspoon at a time, because you don't want this mixture to get too dry (then you'll get hard bread).
At this point Tanna added 2 tbsp salt and 1/8 tbsp Chilpotle Chili powder. I didn't do either. Partly by choice, but also because next time I'd put them in at the same time as the poolish for a better mix. We like to keep salt out of our diet if possible, so I was keen to see how this would turn out without it ... the answer is that it's fine, but another time I'd probably put a pinch of salt. And I'd also put in finely diced fresh red chili.
4. Leave to double. Tanna has a glass bucket with volume markings that she uses, so she knows exactly when the dough has doubled. I'm less scientific, although if I see a similar bucket on sale, I am sure that I will sleepwalk my way to the checkout.
5. Knock the dough back, divide it in two, shape it and put it into two large loaf tins. Let it rise to the top. Brush with beaten egg (I didn't do this, and it was a mistake ... the top caught slightly after 40 minutes in the oven - but, by then, it was cooked anyway).
6. Bake in the oven at 180C for 50-60 minutes, but start checking after 40 minutes.
Thank you Tanna .... this is lovely, a lovely project for a beautiful and delicious autumn treat. And another bread which reminds me of a great day in London filled with laughter and fun.
There weren't any kippers left by the time I got to Waitrose yesterday evening. They're our favourite Saturday breakfast. What to do? Then I spotted some lovely white smoked haddock ... a little piece cost pennies. Delicious baked with some slow-roasted tomatoes fished out of their oil and a poached egg on top.
Too sleepy to take a photograph. Sorry.
The quick oat loaf I made the other day was finished up at breakfast this morning, and is particularly good toasted. However, it was a little too yeasty ... I specified 2 tsp dried yeast, when one would have done. All because I couldn't find the little bit of paper that floats around my kitchen and study with the yeast conversion amounts. Here it is:
10g fresh yeast = 5g dried yeast = 3g fast yeast (the sort that comes in 7g packets)
Finger food. I'm well out of my comfort zone here ... cooking for my family and plonking it down on the table, yes; producing something wholesome-but-pretty-much-undecorated for 100 at a party, yes (although I have to sit down for a week afterwards!) .. but making it all look lovely - tricky. In this house, finger food means a plate of smoked salmon on brown bread squares (use fromage frais flavoured with lemon zest or horseradish instead of butter - MUCH nicer, much healthier). But the idea of The Heart of the Matter was that we all pool our ideas for healthy heart food so that we would all have a bank of new ideas to call on. This morning I'm climbing the learning curve as fast as I can!
Finger food is an important one to crack, because most of it is pretty unhealthy - salted peanuts, crisps cooked in who-knows-what?, little bits of nonsense on pastry, sausages on sticks. Years ago I went to an elegant party where delicious finger food was handed round - crudites, little bites of fish, oysters - and it was all so elegantly served that it was only on the way home that I realised my hostess was almost certainly on a diet. So, yes, I know that presentation is all-important here, and I'm going to do my best (!).
I've racked my brains for something I could do which I haven't already written about, and which I would actually want to do again. And for something which I could make look nice. I'm afraid I've gone with Ilva's idea for heart-shaped biscuits, because, as I've already said, presentation isn't my forte, so all ideas are gratefully received - thanks Ilva!
My biscuits are oatcakes. I've chosen them because one of the biggest surprises of our new diet was discovering that bought oatcakes are full of saturated fat, as they are nearly always made with lard. It seems such a pity, since oats are a terrific food in any healthy diet. It reinforces the point that reading the labels is hugely important when you're trying to eat a healthy diet. So I was pleased to find that they're very quick & easy to make, and making them with oil doesn't affect the taste. I suppose that they were originally made with lard because that was what was to hand; now, it's just cheap fat for the food industry.
Today's topping is a basic one: smoked trout pate. There are two more to follow before the deadline for Heart of the Matter expires on Wednesday. I'm aiming for something a little more sophisticated then, but it's also important to have something quick and easy up your sleeve for parties, the moment when my kitchen is most likely to go into meltdown!
Oatcakes - enough for 20 hearts
175g medium oatmeal (NOT rolled oats)
a pinch of bicarb
two pinches of salt
1 tbsp oil
4 tbsp water
Stir the salt and bicarb into the oats, then add the oil and water. Mix to a moist dough, and turn out onto a work surface strewn with oatmeal. Knead to a smooth ball. In practice, this means adding more oatmeal until the dough is quite dry. Roll it out as thinly as you can, and then cut out your shapes (the traditional shape is a circle cut into eight sections called farls). Place on a greased baking sheet sprinkled with oatmeal. Bake in a low oven (120-150C) for about an hour. Cool on the sheet.
Fish pate
This is easy and delicious. I am not going to give you exact quantities, because you do it by eye, and you make however much you need. I like this kind of cooking. Take roughly equal quantities of 0% fat Greek yoghurt (or 0% fromage frais) and smoked trout (or any other cold smoked fish ... mackerel, cooked kipper, salmon, etc etc), and mash with a fork in a small bowl. Add lemon zest and pepper to taste (you won't need salt). Top your oatcakes with the mixture, and decorate with more lemon zest and some finely chopped chives. Squeeze lemon juice over them before serving. (I expect you already know that you shouldn't assemble these too far in advance, because the crisp oatcakes will go soggy.)
Great at parties, and delicious at breakfast, too!
More toppings tomorrow.
It's a problem, breakfast, because Lucius is so keen on a traditional fry-up (weekends only), and of course we don't do that any more. Two eggs a week, no sausages, not much bacon. But actually, there's lots of other things you can eat which are much better all round. Tomatoes on toast (wholemeal, unless we've run out, in which case there's generally the children's nasty white sliced); mushrooms on toast (much more delicious cooked with a bit of stock, some sherry or wine, and a little Worcester sauce); scrambled eggs with smoked salmon (that's my favourite); kippers.
I like fruit and yoghurt. At the moment, I'm eating a lot of rhubarb, cooked in orange juice/zest (so from a fruit, not a box), with a little honey stirred in. Later in the summer, I'll go back to my autumn and winter staple, plums halved and baked in grape juice with cinammon and cloves. For a change, I also do dried fruit, which I cook in lots of different liquids, and flavour on a whim with various different spices. Cardamom features regularly, as does China tea. When the gooseberries are ready to pick, I will cook them with elderflower (and if it's over by then, I'll stir a little elderflower cordial into the fruit after it's cooled). None of this takes very long, and I generally do it while I'm cooking anyway. Then I don't have to think in the morning. Stewed apple is an autumn breakfast, but that's more trouble - none of the others needs much preparation. Having said that, it's worthwhile trouble, because you can't buy cooked apples with the delicious sharpness of apples stewed at home (even when you're finishing up the wizened ones at the bottom of the fruit bowl, even when they're all eating apples rather than cookers).
This week I bought a juicer in a sale, because a friend who came to supper gave us a huge quantity of grapes, more than we were able to eat. The grape juice was nicer than any I've ever bought, so it was quite inspiring. My heart sinks at the thought of "healthy" things like carrot juice and spinach juice (both suggested on the box the juicer came in), but I'd quite like to experimeent with tomato juice. I've never been able to understand why commercial tomato juice has so much salt ...
So what happens is, you decide to eat healthy heart food, you read some of the British Heart Foundation booklets they gave you in the hospital, you go to the supermarket full good resolutions, you read a few labels and discover everything is full of fat and salt and sugar, and if it's not it's got transfats, and you don't really know what they are but you know you shouldn't be eating them. And you think, well okay, he's on statins, it'll be okay, diet doesn't matter very much, the statins will take care of it. So then I thought about the 20 or so minutes before we reached the hospital when I really thought he might die, and thought that my genes are probably just as dodgy as his - and our children are too young to be orphaned.
When I came back from that shopping trip, I felt I had lost my culinary bearings - just how much saturated fat was there in parmesan? In Somerset goat's cheese? In a lamb chop? In a coconut? I bought piles of books, but they mostly seemed to be full of bland food utterly unlike what we were used to. Sue Kreitzman's books were the most useful, full of tips and useful recipes, but, even so, the whole thing felt rather staid, and not the kind of thing you could imagine Nigel Slater or Nigella getting the saucepans out for. So I read them, put them away, and got out my "proper" cookbooks. And started cooking again, adapting, discarding, picking up on new tastes.
And that's the key: as you eat more vegetables, less saturated fat, your tastebuds change, and you have to be receptive to this, start cooking things you might not have tried before. As you take out the saturated fat, you realise how much we have traditionally relied on this highly unsuitable food as a flavouring. And so you add herbs, spices. You learn that nuts are good to eat so long as they're not roasted and salted, and that not only are they not fattening, but they'll help you lose weight. You find that if you eat porridge or home-made muesli with lots of dried fruit at breakfast, you don't really want anything to eat until lunchtime. And then, if you eat - say - vegetable soup, some wholemeal bread and a salad, you probably won't get a chocolate craving in the afternoon. And if you do, well then dried fruit is good, and dried pineapple works the very best. And after a while, without ever trying or limiting the amount you eat or being faddy, you find you have more energy than before, and that you are two dress sizes smaller than you used to be.
Muesli
This is well worth the very little trouble it takes.
When you read the ingredients list on shop muesli, it's rather surprising to find sugar and milk powder, and coconut (saturated fat problem) - and you thought this was a health food. Luckily it only takes a few minutes to make, and you don't have to make it very often. Get a really big bowl. Put in a packet of rolled oats. Stir in as many packets of dried fruit and nuts as you like - I like it to be at least half fruit and nuts, because it's almost the only way to get Lucius to eat them. At first I used to chop them up, but now I don't bother. If you've got a sweet tooth, then put in lots of fruit (dried cranberries and cherries, as well as raisins, apricots, pineapple, dates, although I draw the line at freeze-dried strawberries). I also always put in various seeds - sunflower, poppy, pumpkin, whatever there is. Mix it all together, and then store it in a big jar. It needs an occasional stir because the smaller things tend to sink to the bottom, and sometimes you need to add a few more bits before it's all finished up.
You can eat this in a variety of ways. Mostly, we just pour milk on it and eat it straight away. Often I eat it with 0% fat Greek yoghurt. Sometimes I grate an apple into it and cover it with apple juice. Even more rarely, I do this the night before, and then it's like a sort of uncooked porridge. At this point I have been known to add blueberries.
It is much more delicious than any muesli I have ever bought. My sister in law toasts the oatmeal, and that is very delicious, but too much trouble for me - the only time I tried, the first batch was undercooked, the second was burnt. The main thing is not to worry too much about the ingredients, just accept that it will taste slightly different every time you make it.
Joanna
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