Garlic paste

Here's a worthwhile time-saver: garlic paste on hand in the fridge, no need to fry off before adding to - well, anything you're cooking, really. You just need a food mill, unless you've got strong arms and a sieve. Keeps well.















8 heads of garlic
2-3 bay leaves
a bunch of thyme
peppercorns and salt
a little oil
water

Break the heads into cloves, but no need to peel them. Put in a single layer on a baking tray; add the peppercorns and herbs, a splash of oil and enough water to come not quite half way up. Cover the dish with foil. Bake for 90 minutes at 150C, until the garlic is completely soft.

Fish out the pepper and bay leaves, and some of the twiggier bits of thyme. Drain and push through a mill or sieve. Add a little sea salt and bottle. Keep in the fridge.

Note: These quantities make about 300ml.

Brussels sprouts with caramelised garlic and lemon

We're snowed in here, so it's been a day of quiet pleasures: a walk round the wood, a little photography, some bird watching, a game of croquet in the snow, and Horatio is building an igloo which he plans to sleep in (shades of his father, for those with long memories). I had time to make a complex three-stage recipe, which in the ordinary way I wouldn't have bothered with: the most delicious brussels sprouts with caramelised garlic and crystalised lemon peel. So good that they'll be made here again and again.

Actually, this is a recipe you can make ahead: two of the three stages could easily be made the day before. And if you don't like brussels sprouts, you could leave them out and just have the caramelised garlic.

The unusual combination of flavours is the brainchild of Yotam Ottolenghi, and his recipe appeared in the Guardian on Saturday.

















Best-ever brussels sprouts

4 heads garlic, cloves separated and peeled
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
caster sugar
water
1 lemon
600g sprouts (I used around 400g)
1 chilli, finely chopped (or a little chilli jam)

Put the garlic cloves in a pan of water and blanch for three minutes. Drain. Fry the garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil; put them on a high heat and keep turning them until they are golden. Then put in a few drops of balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of sugar, 90ml water and a pinch of salt. Simmer until there's virtually no liquid left (about five minutes).

Make julienne strips from the lemon peel (you can either use a potato peeler plus knife, or, if you've got it, one of those hole-y implements that make fine strips of zest). Put them in a small pan with a tablespoon of sugar, and the lemon juice made up to 100ml with a little water. Cook until the syrup is reduced to almost nothing (about 15 minutes).

Trim and halve the sprouts. Fry them in olive oil (in batches) at a high heat for about five minutes. Don't stir them more than once or twice, otherwise they won't char.

Stir everything together in a bowl (Ottolenghi specifies a chopped chilli, but I didn't have such a thing, so stirred in a couple of teaspoons of chilli jam). You may need to add more oil. Eat hot, or at room temperature.

PS Ottolenghi strew his dish with shaved parmesan and basil leaves, but I didn't; we don't have out-of-season basil leaves at this time of year, and the parmesan seemed to me to be over-egging the pudding. Unbelievably good without.

Little cheesy biscuits

These are seriously more-ish, so I've made them very small to avoid over-doing it. The recipe appears in various guises in virtually every recipe book that has a chapter on party food. I'm making them tonight for a community party on Saturday evening; there won't be another opportunity to make my plate of nibbles. These also have the advantage of being quick and easy.

You'll need equal quantities of:

• strong cheese
• white flour
• butter (at room temperature)
  

plus a little cayenne pepper, and whatever you decide to decorate the biscuits with ... fennel seeds, chopped pistachio nuts, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, etc etc

I used 100g each of cheese, flour and butter, and used a mixture of parmesan and cheddar. Put all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until a ball is formed. Roll the dough into a sausage and refridgerate for at least half an hour (you don't need to wrap it unless you're making this well ahead).

Slice the sausage to about the thickness of a £1 coin and place on a non-stick baking sheet (no need to grease). They don't spread much, so can be quite close. Decorate (or not). I used a few fennel seeds. Another time I might roll the whole sausage in poppy seeds before slicing.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for about 10 minutes. (My fan oven was set at 175C and they took 12 minutes.)

Cool on a rack. These can be made a couple of days ahead and put in an airtight box.

Spiced peaches (or prunes)

I recently made this delicious preserve with peaches ... I'm posting it now so that I don't forget, and because it can also be made with prunes for a winter alternative. It's from Picnics for Motorists published by Hilda Leyel in 1936.

We ate something pretty similar with ham at my goddaughter's wonderful 21st birthday party in Somerset at midsummer.

Spiced peaches

6-7 peaches (500g soaked prunes)
200g soft brown sugar
250 ml water
75 ml red wine vinegar
a stick of cinnamon
six cloves
four allspice
two blades of mace
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Cook everything together gently. When the fruit is tender, strain it into sterilized jars using a slotted spoon. Boil the syrup for 4-5 minutes until it has thickened slightly. Pour over the fruit. Seal and label the jars.

Shepherd's pie with horseradish mash

Tessa made the most delicious shepherd's pie for dinner - tasty mince with a horseradish-tinged mash. You don't need me to tell you how to make mince, except to say that it's lamb for a shepherd's pie, beef for a cottage pie. Tessa uses more flour than I do, which makes a good thick sauce.

Horseradish mash

This amount will cover about 1.5kg of mince made with plenty of vegetables and put into a large shallow dish (say, 35cm x 25 x 5). It's enough for 10.

1.5kg floury potatoes, peeled and chunked
50g butter
3/4 jar creamed horseradish (around 120ml)
a little milk
100g grated Cheddar sprinkle over the top of the pie

When the potatoes are cooked, mash them with the butter until they're smooth (Tessa used a ricer to be sure there were no lumps). Beat in the horseradish and enough milk to give the mash a soft consistency for spreading.


When the pie is assembled, it needs about half an hour in a hot oven (180C). It's a great dish to make ahead when there are lots of people to feed ... and the horseradish really gives it an extra edge. Thanks Tessa

Lamb with dates and chocolate - an Easter feast

Years ago, I was in Delphi on Easter Sunday. It was in the 1960s, before the days of mass tourism. The main street was closed off, because the road was being used by villagers who set up their fires to spit-roast whole lambs with herbs from the surrounding maquis. The smell was wonderful - and so was the hospitality: we were all invited to join in the eating, dancing and singing. There was a real sense of a Christian festival, of joy, of release from the privations of Lent. And so my Easter menu is always roast lamb. Until this year.

For the past few years, our daughter Lettice has played a huge part in making the Easter feast - she lays the table beautifully with flowers and chocolates; she helps prepare vegetable dishes; and, crucially, she makes the last-minute gravy. She's in South Africa, teaching in a township school, the first time she has been away for Easter. So a new plan, new traditions. The boys laid the table: an austere arrangement of cutlery and glasses, nothing more. And I made a gently spiced lamb stew, with cinnamon and saffron, chocolate and dates. Seriously delicious. Alfred insisted on roast potatoes (some things are not allowed to change), but this would be better with couscous, rice, or even mashed potato.

The recipe is adapted from Willie Harcourt Cooze's excellent book Willie's Chocolate Factory, in which all sorts of surprising foods are given the cacao treatment. Once you've got over the initial shock, you realise that good cacao is a fabulous flavour enhancer, up there with balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. Willie's cylindrical bars of cacao are, without question, a must-have in my kitchen - and, although they are expensive, as with good balsamic, a little goes a very long way.

Lamb with dates and chocolate
Enough for 4-6 people (I'll add notes at the end about scaling this up for a crowd).

1 kg lamb leg slices
2 chopped onions
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp saffron threads
3 cloves garlic, chopped
25g finely grated cacao
200g tomatoes, skinned and chopped
stock to cover
100g pitted dates

Put everything apart from the dates into a casserole dish, cover with stock, and simmer with the lid on for an hour and a half. Add the dates and simmer for half an hour with the lid off, so that the sauce can thicken.


NOTES: this simple recipe lends itself well to scaling up. I used tinned whole tomatoes (if you use their juice, you'll hardly need any stock), one can per 1.5kg lamb. I also used tinned Spanish onion, which I often do when I'm mass catering, at the same rate. Saffron is an essential element to the success of this dish: mine was highly scented & from Iran - anything less pungent, and you'll need more. AND, this is better made a day ahead: I put the dates in at the end of the first cooking stage, cooled the pan, and then reheated slowly the next day without the lid.



















Related links

Willie's quick chocolate pud
Easter roast lamb with ginger rub
Very easy lamb with olive paste
Lamb shanks

Very quick, very delicious chocolate pudding

Fabulous Easter pud - make it with the best chocolate you can find. I make it with Willie Harcourt-Cooze's Peruvian or Venezuelan, but anything darkly delicious will do. It's (more or less) his recipe, too - they come on the inside of the wrappers.

I've got one sitting in the fridge for dinner tonight. I may make another for lunch tomorrow ... it's the work of moments, only you'd never guess.

Tartuffo
for 8-12 (it's v rich)

180g cacao, grated
300ml double cream
150g icing sugar

Melt the chocolate. Whip the double cream to soft peaks, add the sugar. Let the chocolate cool a little, then beat it into the cream. Pour this mixture into a mould lined with cling film - this is enough for a small loaf tin. Chill.


Related links

Jennifer Paterson's adult chocolate cake - particularly good with Willie's cacao
Nigella's fudge icing for chocolate cakes
Rich chocolate refrigerator cake
Dense chocolate loaf

Nettle pesto

A couple of days ago, I noticed the nettles bursting through in the garden - a real sign of spring. A weed, but welcome, because the butterflies love them. And because they taste so good, at least while they are young.

Here's a quick recipe for a homemade convenience food that will sit happily in your fridge for most of the week. This nettle mess works both as an green sauce / salsa verde AND as a pesto. It's a thrifty recipe, as it uses breadcrumbs to cut down on the nuts and cheese. It's delicious too. We ate it with vegetables at the beginning of the week, and finished it today on pasta, thinned down with a little of the cooking water.

Nettle pesto

Nettles
Mint (if you've got it, or other herbs, or none)
Garlic
Wholemeal bread
Cheddar
Oil

Pick a colander full of young nettle tops (you'll need gloves). Rinse them, then plunge them into boiling water for one minute to blanch them and take the sting out of them. As soon as the minute's up, tip them back into the colander (keep the water, it's full of goodness and can be drunk like a tisane) and run under the cold tap to stop them cooking. When they're cold, squeeze out the water.

Put a slice of wholemeal bread into the food processor. Add a chunk of cheese, a peeled clove of garlic and the nettles and a little mint. Blitz, then add oil in a stream. I used rapeseed oil. Keep tasting, adjusting the amounts. Hard to say how much oil, as it depends on what you are going to do with the sauce.


Links to related posts

Nettle soup
Nettle tea
Nettle beer
Ground elder salad

Seafood party dish served at inaugural lunch

How about this? The complete menu, with recipes, for yesterday's inaugural lunch. I'm slightly appalled at the "winter vegetables" selection - asparagus, carrots, baby Brussels sprouts, wax beans - half of which probably had jet lag. But this seafood starter sounds like a good dish to make ahead when you're having a dinner party. (Although I suspect some of the seafood will need substituting for better sustainability.)

Seafood Stew

for 10 servings

6 (1 Lb) Maine lobsters
20 medium size Sea scallops
36 large shrimp, peel, cleaned and tail removed, approx. 2 lbs.
10 (1 oz) pieces of black cod
½ cup small dice carrots
½ cup small dice celery
½ cup small dice leek
½ cup small dice Idaho potato
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground white pepper or black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 quart heavy cream
1 cup dry vermouth (can be made without)
10 (5 inch) puff pastry rounds

Equipment

10 (3 ½ inch) terrines/ramekins or serving dish of your choice

Directions

1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil; poach lobsters, then shrimp, then black cod and last scallops. After seafood is cooked, remove from water; reserve water and bring to boil.
2. Cook all vegetables in liquid that was used for the seafood, remove vegetables when tender. Allow the liquid to continue to boil until only 1qt of liquid remains. This will be the base for the sauce.
3. Bring seafood liquid back to a boil and add the vermouth and heavy cream and reduce by half,
season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg to taste. You have reached your desired thickness when the sauce will cover the back of a wooden spoon. Set aside to cool.
4. Cut Maine lobster, shrimp and scallops into bite size pieces.
5. Pre-heat oven at 400 degrees.
6. Fold seafood and vegetables into cool sauce, being careful not to mix too much as this will break up the seafood. Scoop mixture into terrines or ovenproof baking dish of your choice.
7. Cover terrines with puff pastry rounds, brush them with egg wash and bake them until golden
brown about 8-10 minutes, allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving. You can cook this 2-3 hours ahead of time and keep warm at 150 F degrees.

*All seafood can be substituted with other favourite options of your choice and availability.


Here's the link to the whole inaugural meal, with recipes - there's a rather good cherry chutney for duck breasts, and a lovely recipe for cooking sweet potato with molasses. Thanks to Lifehacker for showing me the way in the first place.

In praise of stock

Not sure why making stock is such a problem for so many people. It takes moments of your time, and makes everything taste better. So much better, that I got one of my children to eat lentil soup AND ENJOY IT.

There's no doubt that making stock satisfies my inner 40s housewife: when there's no stock in the fridge, I arrange the shopping and eating so that I can make some straightaway. I never freeze it: if there's a glut, then we eat risotto or soup, the two biggest consumers of stock.

Recently, I've been making Fergus Henderson's highly flavoured "trotter gear", a stock made of pork, garlic and wine, very good and cheap to make. But my mainstay is chicken stock, made with the carcass of a roasted chicken, although I sometimes use raw chicken wings. Either way, I use a lot of vegetables, and lots of different ones to give a depth of flavour: peppercorns, herbs from the garden, mushroom stalks - whatever there is.

There's no real recipe - you need to make it a few times to feel your way to the stock you like. But here are some of the things I wish I'd known when I first started to make stock, three decades ago.

1. Put in plenty of halved onions, but don't peel them - the skins will colour the stock
2. Use stalks and peelings - my stockpot generally contains parsley and mushroom stalks, carrot peelings, celery leaves. DON'T put in potato in any form, as the starch will cloud the stock
3. Use loads of vegetables - three or four onions, three or four carrots. Their flavour will shine through, saving you time later when you're making soup or risotto
4. Put in a handful of whole peppercorns, they add depth of flavour without heat. I'm currently using a mixture of pink, white and black peppercorns.
5. DON'T put in anything with a very strong flavour, unless you need it in the dish you will make with the stock - I'm thinking of cabbage, cloves, chilli
6. Don't cover the carcass with water - the stock is always better, always more like to jell if the water comes 2/3rd of the way up.
7. No need to boil it to death - a gentle simmer for no more than two hours gives you great flavour. Strain it when it's hot, and get it into the fridge as soon as you can. A conical sieve is the best tool here, but I used an ordinary colander for 25 years.
8. If you've got no stock, use water instead

The more flavours you put into your stockpot, the more flavour there will be in your stock - the less flavour you need to put into your weekday cooking. Frugal food that makes your life easier. The lentil soup I made yesterday was cooked in very strong stock, and tasted of carrots and chicken. Utterly delicious, utterly unsuitable for a vegetarian. But there's a good link below if you'd like to make vegetarian stock.

Things I've made with stock in the past year or so ... apart from dozens of risottos, soups, gravies

Stuffed cabbage
Gravy - try this one with Delia's spiced orange chutney
Stewed broad beans
Braised lettuce
Chicken nosh
Rabbi Blue's meatballs
Braised mixed lentils
Poached barley with herbs

Links to stock on other blogs

How to make stock from chicken's feet
If you don't make your own stock, use water instead
How to make vegetable stocks

Pumpkin in chilli oil

I hesitate to write about something so simple, but this week I read that American recipes for pumpkin all start open a can of pumpkin .... and so I decided to blog this very easy but delicious dish. Good on its own for a light lunch, or as a side dish.

This is THE time of year for squash - they're fresh off the vine - although they'll store all through the winter, and so we'll be eating them regularly until spring. Butternut seems to be the squash of choice for supermarkets and veg box growers alike, but, from a cook's point of view, they're pretty much interchangeable (although some have much more flavour than others*).

At least once a week at the moment, I roast pumpkin plain in a little oil, often with some sliced onion - the result is a sweet, caramel-y mix, even better when flavoured with finely chopped thyme.

This pumpkin in chilli oil is quite different: the bright contrast of red and orange gives a hint of the piquancy - the sweet blandness of the pumpkin soaks up the heat and means that this is a dish even chilli-haters can eat.

Roasted pumpkin in chilli oil

Slice some slivers of garlic into a mortar. Add a little salt, a splosh of olive oil. Then add as much chilli as you dare - start with a little, particularly if, like me, you are catering for people who think they don't like hot spice. Bash vigorously until it's all amalgamated. You can do this in a food processor, but I find mine has too big a bowl and, anyway, there's something therapeutic about wielding a pestle (although I once read that the words pestle and mortar put more people off cooking than any others - feel free to do this with a machine!) . Add more oil until you have enough to generously coat your pumpkin. (There's slightly too much oil in the photograph for a really smooth mixture ... stint at first, and then add what you need for a pouring consistency.)

Next, peel, core and cube your squash**. Put the cubes into a roasting tin, coat with the spiced oil and put into a hot oven for half an hour or so. The exact timing will depend on how hot the oven is (and if you are cooking other things, then just watch it carefully), and the size of the cubes. If you are in any doubt at all about your timings, put the squash in sooner rather than later, because it will retain the heat (or you can put it back into the oven at the end for a quick blast of heat). I find, increasingly, that we eat warm vegetables, rather than hot straight from the oven.

You can also cook this ahead and then reheat it. There'd be two reasons for this - the first would be to save on oven fuel; the second would be to get ahead when you had some spare time ... make your own convenience food, in other words.

This is my entry for this month's Heart of the Matter - Ilva's hosting this month, and she chose the colour orange ... perfect for autumn.

* In the past I've grown crown of thorns and Turk's turban - both beautiful, but neither very tasty. I'd only grow them again for their looks, although Turk's turban is a very good keeper. On the other hand, Little Gem is very tasty (and increasingly available in the supermarket) ... I'm cheating here slightly, as Little Gem is really a summer squash (more like courgette, in other words), whereas Cot, TT and butternut are all winter squash and will store well.

Related posts
Frugal, seasonal food ... all pretty simple to prepare, because I don't much like faffing around in the kitchen

Butternut squash with parsley and mint softly spiced with cinnamon, a really good addition to a vegetarian dinner
Stuffed butternut squash - this is one of my most-visited posts, and a good cheap supper dish
Roast squash bites with pumpkin seed pesto - fabulous finger food, full of goodness
Pumpkin risotto

Links to squash on other blogs

**If you're nervous about cutting a butternut, Kalyn gave good directions earlier in the week.
Butternut squash apple soup - can't decide if this sounds wonderful and worth trying, or utterly disgusting ;)

Sardoni in saor

These Venetian marinated sardines have been on my must-cook list since I read Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed. They're that sweet/sour taste which I love, and which is so typical of Venice, and of Sicily.

It's often difficult to get sardines here, and when they're available, they're usually pretty pricey. So I was cheered to find that Venetians used to make this dish with all sorts of fish - a fine fat sole if they were rich - and that it's only relatively recently that the dish has become something you always make with sardines.

Which is why mine - you've probably spotted - were made with mackerel fillets. Cheap anyway, and then on special offer. This method preserves the fish short-term, so that it will last for a week or so in the fridge. Needs to be made at least 24 hours ahead. Suits me - it meant there was something to eat when we got back from the cinema last night after seeing the electrifying Karita Mattila sing Salome on the Met relay.

Marinated oily fish

sardines / mackerel / whatever's available
flour
olive oil
onions
red wine vinegar
some pine kernels
sultanas
a piece of candied lemon peel, if you have it*

Dredge the fish in flour, and fry until browned. Lay in a flattish dish.

Slice the onions (say, two large ones to a kilo of fish) into rounds, then fry gently in the oil remaining in the pan. When they are transparent, add pine kernels (I dry roasted mine), sultanas (I soaked mine in a little hot water, as they were a little dry), chopped peel. Pour in wine vinegar - PG says to use half a litre for a kilo of fish, but after consulting other recipes, I used a wineglass-full. Bubble this for a minute or two, then pour it over the fish. The heat of the vinegar is key to the keeping qualities of the fish.

Leave them to marinade for at least a day, turning them from time to time if you think of it.


*Patience Gray says the candied lemon peel is essential; I'm not so sure, but I happened to have some, and it certainly gives the dish an extra something.

Stuffed cabbage

In the 50s and 60s, advertisers used to trumpet that their food had been untouched by human hand. My father always used to say - still does, actually - that he preferred food that had been well touched by human hand. He'd like this stuffed cabbage.

It's a great way to stretch a little mince twice as far. Thrifty, eco-friendly, heart-healthy. All in one little green parcel. Good to eat, too. In fact, both the people who turned up their noses at the idea of stuffed cabbage ate seconds (you know who you are).

And if you think this is a little fiddly, then split the work into two: cook the mince in one session, assemble the little packages in another. It doesn't take long, and is oddly soothing. It's also a dish that can be made ahead and kept in the fridge.

You could use any mince you happened to have left over, or you could cook some specially. Either way, it needs to be well flavoured, because you're going to add bread (or rice). I used fresh breadcrumbs, liberally mixed with chopped herbs, but if there had been some cooked rice in the fridge, I'd have used that.


















You also need a green cabbage which hasn't had all its outer leaves trimmed off before you get to it. The big leaves are much easier to fill, for one thing, and they are - in this dish - much tastier than the little yellow ones in the middle. Save those for a coleslaw.

You'll have gathered that what follows is not a recipe that needs to be followed to the letter; it's more of a method, one I hope you'll try, because this thrifty dish is delicious, and well worth reviving.

Stuffed cabbage
for 4

outer leaves of a large cabbage

350-500g minced meat
a little chopped bacon
1-2 chopped onions
2-3 slices of bread, blitzed into crumbs
2 handfuls of fresh herbs (I used parsley, basil, oregano)
1 tsp smoked paprika
an egg

a little stock/passata/wine and water etc

Gently sweat the onions. When they are soft, add the bacon and fry till cooked. Add the paprika and cook for a further couple of minutes. Tip into a large bowl. Brown the mince. Add to the bowl. Blitz the bread (it needs to be something better than cheap sliced white), then add the herbs. The exact amount of bread depends on how thrifty you are needing to be; just bear in mind that the more bread you add, the more flavouring you should use. Add to the bowl. Mix everything together, then stir in the egg to bind the mixture.

Meanwhile, blanch the cabbage leaves in a large saucepan of water. They need to be dropped into boiling water for a couple of minutes. Drain and cool in a colander. Cut out the inflexible part of the spine.

Wrap little dollops of the mixture in the leaves, fixing with a toothpick if necessary (and it only will be with the smaller inner leaves). Lay the parcels in a shallow baking dish. When it's full, put a little liquid into the base. This can be stock, a little wine and water, even plain water. Cover the dish, and bake in a medium oven for about an hour and a half.

I dotted last night's stuffed cabbage with little tomatoes, in the hope that they would cook down into a tomato sauce, but no such luck. All the same, they were a good, easy accompaniment. And another option for the liquid would be tomato passata.

Delia's spiced apricot chutney

I'm having a clear out, and in the larder I found a number of old packets of apricots. I also put Delia's Christmas book in the Oxfam pile. Then I remembered her recipe for spiced apricot chutney, utterly wonderful, the best thing in the book (the only thing I've cooked more than once). I've given it away for Christmas presents, and I often use it to liven up the leftovers which are my lunchtime staple. Delia recommends using it as the basis of a sauce to go with roast pork; that's good too. I'm posting the recipe because the book is definitely going to Oxfam. And because I'm down to my last half jar.

Spiced apricot and orange jam
enough to fill a 1-litre jar

400g no-soak apricots
1 tsp whole coriander seeds
225g soft light brown sugar
425ml cider vinegar
1 medium onion, chopped
50g sultanas
2 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger
2 chopped cloves garlic
grated zest and juice of one orange

Chop the apricots small. Dry fry the coriander seeds; when they are toasted bash them with a pestle. Put everything together in a stainless steel saucepan, bring up to the boil and simmer gently for up to an hour (it will take at least 45 minutes).

When it's good and thick, pour into sterilised jars and seal. (I sterilise my jars by putting them through a dishwasher cycle.)


Spiced apricot sauce for pork

Pork pan juices
15g plain flour
570ml white wine
3 tbsp chutney
grated zest of an orange

Blend the flour into the pan juices (I wouldn't weigh this, I'd do it by eye/feel, but you know what a stickler Delia is for detail). Gradually stir in the wine (I might well use stock, cider, or even water). When you've got a smooth sauce, cook it gently for a few minutes until the flour is cooked, then add the chutney and zest. Simmer for a little longer.

Caponatina

This caponatina is cobbled together from a quick look at Antonio Carluccio's Italia: recipes and customs of the regions of Italy whilst lunching at his restaurant ... it's a kind of caponata, which for some reason he has decided to call caponatina ("little caponata"), helpfully translating as "Sicilian aubergine relish". In another of his books, Complete Italian Food, he gives a more traditional recipe entitled (more traditionally) caponata.

The agro-dolce of the caponatina is heightened by the inclusion of pears. Really good. Whatever it's called.

Caponatina

2 aubergines, cubed
8 tbsp olive oil
2 x 400g tins tomatoes
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
60g capers
3 pears, peeled cored and sliced
1/2 tsp ground cinammon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
50g sugar
50ml white wine vinegar

Put all these ingredients into a large heavy pan and simmer gently for about 3/4 hour.

The original recipe also had 100g green olives and 100g slivered almonds (which I should think you put in at the end).

The ingredients for the caponata were:

1 large onion, chopped
3-4 celery sticks
5 tbsp olive oil
1 kg aubergines (probably 3)
1 tbsp capers
20 green olives
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
55g tomato paste
salt and pepper

If this is the recipe Carluccio uses in his restaurants, it's delicious!

Anyway, I've just made it to get ahead for a lunch on Friday, when there'll be open house for my family, as my sister is arriving for a lightning visit from California YIPPPEE, and my father (80-something) no longer eats meat as he no longer likes the taste.

Pistachio marzipan

Hannah, that extraordinary baker, gave me the idea for pistachio marzipan this morning, and it's been nagging away at me all day. I've just made a batch (five minutes, including photography), and it's wonderful - a lovely speckled green, outstandingly better than any marzipan you can buy (but, then, that's also true of the usual almond marzipan).

I'm going to use it to make a traditional Easter treat, Simnel cake - a fruit cake plainly decorated with a marzipan covering and 11 balls of marzipan to symbolise the 11 true disciples. I'll use my mother-in-law's foolproof boiled fruit cake recipe, which was the first she ever gave me, something she made often. I'll post the recipe in the next couple of days, when I make it ... you don't need to make this cake in advance, it's quick and easy, and the Simnel decoration is a cinch.

I just hope that my sister-in-law's Labrador doesn't spot the cake before we all get a chance to eat it - that's what happened the last time I made a Simnel cake two years ago. Somehow, we managed to keep the awful truth from her, and ate hot cross buns instead. But last year, we all forgot that she didn't know .... and she was mortified, both that her dog had eaten most of the cake, and that we'd kept the truth from her.

Pistachio marzipan

250g shelled pistachios
250g icing sugar
the white of one medium egg

In a food processor, grind the pistachios until smooth. Add the icing sugar and egg white. Mix until it forms a clump.

This keeps well in the fridge, but should be brought back to room temperature before rolling out to cover the cake.

I'm entering this - rather late, so I hope Ilva will forgive me - for this month's Heart of the Matter, party food for Easter - and to celebrate HotM's first birthday ... so many wonderful recipes and ideas for heart-healthy food.


PS I had a query a couple of days ago from an American reader about British terms for sugar. Another helpful reader mentioned that US icing sugar contains cornstarch ... here in the UK, Tate and Lyle icing sugar is pure, apart from a little anti-caking agent which doesn't appear to be cornstarch.

Related posts

Marzipan
Extra fruity golden cake

Links from other blogs

Hannah's Easter tree cookies with marzipan
Simnel cake photograph at The Fresh Loaf
Simnel cake recipe at Apple and Spice

Another cauliflower gratin

I've been trying to have at least one completely vegetarian day a week here. This is easier when Horatio is away at uni, and very hard when he's at home - a 19-year-old late-growing carnivore is apt to make a fuss if there's no meat. For a whole day.

I managed yesterday.

The eat-less-meat idea has several sources: there seems to be some real proof that less meat more veg and fruit is a healthier diet; it's cheaper; it's more environmentally-friendly (meat production is notoriously heavy on agricultural resources); there are lots of good vegetarian dishes to cook and eat.

Eating less meat and dairy produce has implicit in the changes to our diet since my husband had a heart attack two and a half years ago. If you are eating more vegetables, more beans, more fruit, then clearly there's going to be less meat, less cheese, less eggs. There are some basic ideas in a post I wrote two years ago when we began to get serious about our post-heart-attack diet. (Although it's fair to say we don't stick rigidly to it ... see my 80:20 post.)

All the same, it's only this year that I've started made a conscious effort to cut out meat altogether, if only for one day a week - and you may well think that is pretty feeble. I'd happily cut meat out altogether, but I have to tread gently in a house full of carnivores ... and, so far, they aren't complaining.

This cauliflower gratin is not for vegetarians, however, because of the anchovies. They are there to give that savoury something that we used to get from cheese. But anchovies are better in a heart-healthy diet than a cheese sauce on cauliflower that constitutes the what-on-earth-shall-I-give-them-for-dinner type of cooking that is the daily grind for most family cooks. That's if you can persuade your young to eat cauliflower at all.

We ate this with baked potatoes and roasted onions, but I sometimes make it as a side dish, in which case you can cook it ahead (let it come to room temperature before putting it in the oven, otherwise you'll crack your dish).

Cauliflower gratin

One head of cauliflower
White sauce

breadcrumbs
a tin of anchovies
lemon zest
parsley

Break the cauliflower into pieces and cook covered in a minimum of water. Drain. Meanwhile make white sauce - I use olive oil and skimmed milk, which makes a wonderfully sweet scented sauce, infinitely more delicious than one made with butter. Put the cauliflower into an ovenproof dish - you want it to be a tight squeeze. Pour the sauce all over it.

Blitz a couple of slices of stale bread (this doesn't work well with supermarket slimy sliced). Add anchovies - just try a couple if you think you don't like them, I'm such an addict that I use a whole tin - and the parsley. Blitz again. Finely grate the zest of half a lemon into the mixture, which will be sticky with oil (and if it isn't, add some). Sprinkle over the dish, and bake in a hot oven, 200C for 20 minutes.


Related links

Cauliflower gratin
One veggie day a week will save the earth

Great big veg challenge on cauliflower
The Guardian "Meat-free March" links

Simplifying a roast beef dinner

For all my married life and longer, I have read The Spectator every week. The political articles are good, the book pages are better, and the home life columns used to be the best, but, alas, some of the columnists are no longer with us, and, recently, editors seem to have deemed home life to be of little interest. One of my favourites was Jennifer Paterson, the Spectator's cook, who wrote a cookery column like no other, and later became a TV cook, one of the Two Fat Ladies (the one with the motorcycle).

She lived for the moment, and didn't go in for journalistic tricks, so she didn't bother to anticipate an occasion which would crop up in the lifetime of the magazine (thus no dinky ideas for Valentine dinners), and she certainly didn't give Delia-ish instructions for Christmas cookery. She cooked no-nonsense food, and made it clear that, although decent food was important to her, she had other interests - for instance, she was very hot on obscure saints. This is a typical example of the sort of writing you'd get:

I am so unnerved by the announcement that a bird-eating tarantula has given birth to 700 babies in London Zoo that my mind has glazed over and I can think of nothing else. What about next year when all those babies do the same thing? They are bound to get out or be let out by anti-something or other people, and life will be far more dangerous than having attacks of lysteria hysteria. Any spider that can eat a bird is worthy of a lot of terror. However, on we must go.

JP's novel method for roasting beef first surfaced in the Spectator in 1987, and I remember thinking it was an interesting idea, although I never did anything about it. Years later, I bought a copy of her collected Spectator columns, and there it was. Again, I did nothing about it. Now that I have - for Lucius's birthday celebration last night - I cannot think why I let all that time ... TWO DECADES ... go by without roasting beef in this markedly effective and simple way.

Here is help for anyone unnerved by the last-minute titivation required for a roast dinner; for those with one oven; for those who like a simple life; for those who wish to talk to their dinner guests; for those who like to prepare ahead.

What is this wonderful recipe? You cook the beef up to 24 hours in advance, keep it out of the fridge, and serve it on the hottest of hot plates with the hottest of hot gravy (which you can now also make ahead). Astonishingly, it is just as if you had cooked and rested it in the more usual manner. She says it also works with lamb.

Yesterday was busy: visit to the butcher, young to fetch from the station at various times, tea for a neighbour, a four-course dinner to prepare, an early-evening real tennis match to watch. The perfect opportunity to use this method. I cooked the beef at tea-time. While Lucius and I were out watching Horatio play his semi-final match (he won, although he nearly threw it away), Lettice made gravy and roasted potatoes. We have only one oven, and this method meant that it could be at the perfect temperature for both meat and potatoes (normally it's a bit of a fudge).

I can do no better than let the lady herself explain the details:

I have discovered that if you are going to have some roast beef or lamb for some meal there is no need to do it just in time. I do it the night before, thus obviating all that last-minute sweating over the oven and leaving nasty greasy oven pans in the sink when you need them most. It doesn't matter whether you are serving the meat as a hot repast or a cold one, the meat will taste much better, having saved all its juices within rather than pouring them out on the carving board. It will be easier to carve and the leftovers will be as good as the original. There is nothing more depressing than the sight of an old joint that has been carved when hot then left to grow sad and grey in the larder. If you are intending to serve it cold, well and good. If hot just pretend it is. Served on hot plates with the accompanying hot vegetables and gravy made from the deglazing of the oven pan (also done the night before and kept up your sleeve) no one will notice. When you consider that a hot joint should have 'rested' 20 minutes before serving and then all the time taken in carving and serving, the actual meat is never all that hot anyway.

These are the instructions for roasting the beef (although you can perfectly well use your own usual method):

Put the meat on a grid over a pan. Smear with oil if you like (I don't bother). 250C for 15 minutes. Turn the oven down to 185C, and roast for 15 minutes per pound. I no longer cook in imperial, so my 2.3kg (ie 5lb) sirloin got 15 minutes at the higher temperature, then one hour at the lower. Perfect, pink.

If you are roasting lamb: Use the above instructions, and add a further 15 minutes at the end (ie at the lower temperature), for a rosy finish.

Really really worth a go. So long as your plates are very hot (and therefore not made of pottery, which will crackle). Amazingly, it works. Just don't put it in the fridge once you've cooked it.

The full menu, decided by the birthday boy (our family tradition):

avocado
one baked scallop (each!)
roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, peas, and gravy
apple crumble

Related links

Fillet of beef
Birthday celebrations last year (v similar menu)

Polenta with mushrooms

Here's something cheap and easy to make ... you just have to get organised and start early - but that's good for calming the household, especially the cook. This is peasant food made with ingredients with a long shelf life, so once you've got them in, you're not too far away from a delicious meal. Carnivores don't feel deprived (not even my rampant meat-eaters); if you were economising, or making this for vegans, I think you could flavour the polenta with sage or rosemary rather than parmesan.

I wish I had a photograph to show you, but ... I did have one problem with the polenta: when I grilled the slices, they stuck to the grill, rather than making photogenic black stripes. Was that because this is a very lightly set mixture (much less cornmeal to water than instructed by the packet)? The grill was certainly smoking hot, and would have made stripes on a piece of meat or fish? Any advice in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

The sauce was originally conceived with fresh mushrooms, but when I went to fetch them from my veg box, I found that the little box which I thought contained mushrooms was in fact full of lovely sweet grapes. So I used dried mushrooms instead. It meant that, instead of making the entire sauce in the morning, I only got as far as sweating the onions and soaking the mushrooms. But finishing the dish only took about 10 minutes.

Polenta
enough for 4, with leftovers

140g quick-cook polenta
75g parmesan
salt and pepper
oil

Bring 1.5 litres of water to the boil in a large pan. Take it off the heat and swirl it with a wooden spoon, then slowly pour in the cornmeal, swirling all the while. Once it's smooth, put it back on the heat - gently, but even so it will bubble and spit at you (I don't generally bother to wear an apron, but for this it's not a bad idea). After about 4-5 minutes it should be thick and creamy. Add the grated parmesan (I blitzed it in the food processor, as it doesn't matter what it looks like), plenty of salt and some pepper.

Oil a large shallow dish, and pour the mixture onto it to cool. You can't do the next step until it's completely cold, so this needs to be done ahead - in the morning for supper, one evening for the following day. It's the sort of straightforward task that can be carried out alongside other cooking, and so easy to fit into a busy life.

When you are ready, cut the polenta into shapes: rounds, fingers, triangles, diamonds. Heat a grill pan if you have one, brush it with a little oil, cook the polenta for 4-5 minutes each side. If you are luckier than me, you will get black stripes. You don't need a grill to cook these: I heated some perfectly satisfactorily in a non-stick frying pan lightly sprayed with olive oil.

I've just heated up the trimmings and spread them out onto a plate; we'll have them for lunch tomorrow. And I gave some to the cats, as they were longing to try it!

Mushroom sauce

onions, one per person
dried mushrooms, a handful per person
flour
pepper and nutmeg
a little wine if you have it

Soak a couple of handfuls of dried mushrooms in boiling water. Recipe books say 10 minutes is enough, but I find the longer you soak them the better they are: best of all if you soak them until the water is completely cold (in other words, start in the morning if you're cooking in the evening; but it's the work of moments).

Finely chop the onions. I made rings, because they are so pretty, but any shape will do. Sweat them slowly in a little oil. (You can stop at this point if you like.) Add a little white flour, I used less than a dessertspoonful for 3 onions and two handfuls of mushrooms (you want a sauce which has some body, not too runny, but not stiff). Mix well. Season with pepper and nutmeg. Drain the mushrooms (reserving the water) and add them to the pan. Stir around for a bit, then add some wine if you have it, red for preference. If you don't, no worries, just start adding the soaking water. Either way, add enough water to make a loose sauce. Simmer for 5-10 minutes until the flour is cooked through.

Serve with polenta on the side, on hot plates if you remember.

And this is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging , started by Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen, and hosted this weekend by Ulrike, of Kuchenlatein

Moro monkfish with ginger and saffron

This delicious smokily-spiced fish and potato dish would be just as good without the fish, in fact, next time, I think that's how I'll make it. And any white fish would do, rather than overpriced monkfish, as what you're after is a contrast between the white flesh and the smoky-dark sauce - both in taste and in colour.

The recipe comes from Moro East, Sam and Sam Clark's book about cooking inspired by their allotment at Manor Gardens in Hackney, East London, now, shockingly, bulldozed to make way for an Olympic footpath from carpark to stadium.

In case you're wondering how an allotment book comes up with a fish dish, I should tell you that the inspiration for Moro East came mainly from the cultural diversity of fellow allotment holders - their produce and, most importantly, their ways of cooking. Thus Moro East broadens out from the Clark's original books on the Moorish cookery of Spain.

Introducing this dish, S&S write: shut your eyes, taste, and be transported to Morocco. For me, this food evokes Sicily (the sweet note of the sultanas in a savoury dish) and Cornwall - the taste of saffron takes me right to the Penzance bakery every single time.

One of the best things about this recipe is that it's a two-step process: I made the sauce on Thursday while I was cooking supper. It was hardly any extra trouble, and made preparing dinner last night much quicker ... a huge help as I didn't get home until nearly 7 o'clock after a busy day.

Monkfish with sweet onions, ginger and saffron
for 3

Monkfish (or not)
olive oil
3 onions
2 cloves of garlic
120g sultanas
1 tsp ground ginger
a big pinch of saffron (about 30 strands)
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp cinnamon
400 ml water
400g diced waxy potatoes

Slice the onions thinly into rounds, and fry gently in a lot of olive oil (S&S say 6 tbsp). Stir frequently. When the onions are just golden, add finely chopped garlic and sultanas. Cook these for about 5 minutes to give the sultanas a chance to swell up in the oil. Add the spices, warm through, then add the water. Simmer for five minutes. At this point you can stop. Or not.

Heat the oven to 230C. Pour the warmed sauce into a large roasting tin. Arrange the potatoes on top in a single layer. Cover with foil and put in the oven. Once the sauce is simmering, the potatoes will take half an hour. You therefore need to time the addition of the fish depending on its size. Here is the Moro East guide to cooking times: a large (1kg) monkfish tail will also take 30 minutes or so, and should be added as soon as the potatoes are hot; 2 smaller tails will take about 20 minutes ... portion-sized fillets or steaks will take only 10-15 minutes.

Smear your fish with oil, and a little salt if you like. Lay the fish on the potatoes, re-cover, and cook for most of its timing. About five minutes before the end, turn the fish over and finish baking uncovered.

I served this with plain couscous. S&S say that you can sprinkle the dish with orange blossom water ... which makes me think that another time, it would look and taste good with a scattering of orange zest.