Supreme de poulet aux morilles

Last night's dinner was supreme de poulet aux morilles. Except that it wasn't, because there were "only" porcini in the larder. And although I was notionally following the recipe in Raymond Blanc's A Taste of My Life, I don't think he'd have given me the keys to a restaurant, because I couldn't help but disobey some of his orders.

The recipes in A Taste of My Life are fully explained; on top of that there are notes giving details of the science, the art, the prejudices of cheffing. Enough to intrigue.

Well, this was good, but we both agreed the sauce would have been better poured over a little pork. Lucius thought it should become part of my standard repertoire. That good. Also pretty simple, shorn of some of M Blanc's strictures.

I did, however, follow this guidance (given again and again): I like to boil wine before adding it to the dish. It intensifies the desirable flavours and removes the alcohol, which can leave an unpleasant flavour in the mouth. If you over-reduce the wine, however, you will lose the freshness and acidity.

Chicken breast with porcini & manzanilla sauce

30g dried porcini, soaked in 150g hot water
4 chicken breasts
a little butter
120g button mushrooms
120ml manzanilla, reduced a little
double cream (RB says 400ml, but I didn't use even half that)

Soak the mushrooms for as long as you can. RB says at least six hours for morels, but porcini rehydrate in less than half an hour. At the same time, bring the sherry to the boil in a small pan, and keep on the heat for a couple of minutes.

Brown the chicken on both sides in the butter - RB says two minutes each side. Put the meat onto a plate while you make the sauce in the same pan. Add the sliced fresh mushrooms and the drained porcini. After a few minutes, add the soaking water and the manzanilla, stir, then add the cream. Put the chicken breasts into the pan, cover and cook. RB says that 180g breasts will take six minutes; although I didn't weigh the chicken, I found this timing spot on.

Plate the chicken, then reduce the sauce a little further.

A lighter crumble mix

Traditional English crumble mixture uses equal quantities of butter and flour, and a bit more sugar (say, 4oz butter, 4oz flour, 6oz sugar). Last night I put a lighter crumble topping on some very sharp stewed plums ... using ground almonds meant I could use less butter, and gave the crumble a pleasing nubbly texture too.

These were the proportions I used:

125g plain flour
85g butter cubed
4 tablespoons caster sugar
100g ground almonds

Blitz the flour and butter to breadcrumb texture, stir in the sugar and almonds. Put on top of prepared fruit (or some pre-stewed fruit) and bake for half an hour at 180C if the fruit is already cooked, longer if not.

No pic, this post is mainly for my reference

Yet more roast potatoes

The boys made roast potatoes for dinner last night. The theme was (clue: stars and stripes in roasting tin) largely American, in honour of their cousins ... a Golden Gate bridge, a Grand Canyon, a few Bart Simpsons, a Micky Mouse, a fabulous hamburger. Alfred tried to make a tractor with moving parts, but it wouldn't reassemble after the potatoes were cooked. They did, however, manage a working chest of drawers. My father was given an Eiffel Tower - much better than the one Horatio made a couple of years ago, this one was edible all the way through (the dogs wouldn't eat the earlier effort).

Once again, I got a flower with a hole in it, and we all know that roast potatoes with holes in taste sweeter .... if you don't believe me, I urge you to conduct your own tasting





































































Related links

A couple of summers ago, the boys were adamant that my "girlie" roast potatoes didn't quite cut the mustard, and so we ate them three nights in a row, while everyone put their oar in ...

The roast potato taste test
That's enough roast potatoes


and then, a little later, disaster struck the water supply, and I was reduced to buying Frozen roast potatoes

This week's girlie potatoes that started them off last night ...

Imam biyaldi -ish

My sister and two of her sons are visiting from California, so we're at least eight for every meal - more often, though, into double figures, and fetching chairs from all over the house, even when we're eating in the garden.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are a tangle of good intentions thwarted, but even so, there is lots of fruit to pick if you can find it in the jungle of untied plants. And so our salads have been beautiful.

















With so many in the house, food needs to be simple to produce - but with so many young men, it also needs to be plentiful. Last night, we ate roast chicken, roast potatoes, courgettes, and a simple imam biyaldi, which I made by splitting aubergines lengthwise, baking them in a hot oven for 20 minutes before smearing them with a tomato sauce made by cooking down the remains of a tomato salad. They went back into the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

For pudding, we ate Tartuffo - my pa, who is in his late 80s and no longer eats much, had thirds, fourths, possibly even fifths. It's Willie Harcourt-Cooze's recipe, and I made it with his Peruvian Black chocolate and lovely yellow Guernsey cream from the Berkeley Farm dairy on the Marlborough Downs. The pudding was stirred while my sister and I caught up with a year's worth of family minutiae ... it doesn't get much better. Except that tonight, my sons are going to cook the roast potatoes, always a good moment, and my father has ordered one in the shape of the Eiffel Tower.

Related links

A couple of summers ago, the boys were adamant that my "girlie" roast potatoes didn't quite cut the mustard, and so we ate them three nights in a row, while everyone put their oar in ...

The roast potato taste test
That's enough roast potatoes

and then, a little later, disaster struck the water supply, and I was reduced to buying Frozen roast potatoes


Things to do with tomatoes

Roasting tomatoes
Roasted tomato ketchup
Slow roasted tomatoes
Homemade tomato ketchup - and caponata-ish
Panzanilla
Chilli jam
Preserving tomatoes in brine

Tasty tomatoes to grow
Dry-bottled tomatoes

Links to tomatoes on other blogs

Fried green tomatoes - haven't you always wanted to know how to make these? Here's how, from the blog at the Whistlestop Cafe
David Lebovitz's take on an heirloom tomato salad
Gazpacho from Kalyn's Kitchen

Alfred's pancakes

Lettice and Charlotte made pancakes for lunch. Just because they could. I'm not sure what they did (apart from melt Mars bars to go on them), but this is Alfred's killer recipe:

Alfred's pancakes
for about 6

(please forgive the indecisive metric/imperial nature of what follows)

100g plain flour
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 pint of milk

Mix all these ingredients together until there are no lumps. Leave it to stand for half an hour. Just before you start cooking your pancakes, add a splash of fizzy water, enough to make the batter the consistency of single cream.

Fish or chicken in breadcrumbs, with seeds

Here's a quick tip for sprucing up fish or chicken cooked in egg and breadcrumbs/flour. Add a few poppy seeds and some sunflower seeds to the flour or breadcrumbs ... delicious.

I shamelessly pinched this idea from Marks and Spencer, who sell fillet of cod lightly dusted in seasoned flour with sunflower millet and poppy seeds. I just don't keep millet seeds in the larder - can anyone tell me if they're worth seeking out?

Other things to do with breadcrumbs

Quick mushroom tart
Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing
Baked scallops
Stuffed cabbage
Cauliflower gratin
Another cauliflower gratin

Toad in the hole with fried kale and stuffed mushrooms

So, after getting the boys to write down their favourite food, I didn't have any excuses: toad in the hole for lunch. But I couldn't resist trying kale on the side. Kale is not on anyone's mmmm, delicious list, but I thought I'd try it anyway - with garlic slivers and little bits of bacon, two things they actively like, and a little sugar. It tasted just like the so-called seaweed you get in a Chinese restaurant, and was very good, although Alfred didn't eat much. There were also stuffed mushrooms: Alfred ate one without comment, Horatio said he liked the stuffing but not the mushroom.

Last night we went to dinner with Dick and DD at the boathouse down by the river. We sat out on the verandah as the light faded, fed the ducks - and ourselves. DD made a wonderful potato salad in the morning: she boiled some potato chunks, dressed them with a lemony vinaigrette and ribbons of crisply fried onion, and left it all to marinade all day while she went out boating and read a thriller. And there was a lovely French bean salad, with chopped hard-boiled egg and slivers of fennel. Not something I could easily serve here. But just the thing for a jaded mother.


Quick fried kale

Fry some chopped bacon in oil; add slivers of garlic. Cook until the bacon is well browned. Add chopped kale and a spoonful of sugar. Cook for 10 minutes. Serve hot.



















Stuffed mushrooms

Easy peasy: remove the stalks from the mushrooms, put them in a food processor with a slice of bread, a de-seeded tomato, a spring onion, a little cheese. Blitz; stuff the mushrooms; cook in a hot oven for 20 minutes.

Horatio said it would have been better in a different vegetable, but he couldn't think which ... I suggest tomato or courgette.


Toad in the hole

Make a batter with three eggs, 1/2 a pint of milk, 4 oz of plain flour and a pinch of salt. Put the sausages into a baking tin and into a hot oven for 10-15 minutes until they start to brown. Pour on the batter (through a sieve if there are a lot of lumps), and bake for half an hour until the batter is well risen and browned.

(These quantities are for a large roasting tin, and did four of us with three sausages each; I would have used the same quantity of batter for six. The main thing is to give the batter plenty of room to rise.)


















Related posts

A list of what my boys will and won't eat
Rabbi Blue's meatballs

A teenage guide to eating

When both the boys said YEeeeuuuuuuch to all my suggestions for lunch, I asked them to write down the all food they actually like eating. They both have a tendency to be fussy eaters - at one stage, Alfred (aged about four) would only eat pizza, but not if it had anything other than tomato sauce and grated cheddar. Horatio's always been prepared to be adventurous: aged about seven, he ordered and ate a plate of moules in a busy Brussels restaurant, and they've been a favourite ever since.

Here's the list. It's a little book. It took them half an hour. The second edition is due out soon, because they said they couldn't be put on the spot if they were expected to remember everything.























The big ambition of the title page gives way to - well, I leave that to you to decide (it's just that I wish they wouldn't make the yeuch noise when we are eating legumes as a side dish)






















Meat is the thing they like to eat best, it's what they always request ... and they'd much rather not be fobbed off with fish, or vegetables. Pasta's okay, so long as it isn't too fancy. As you see, macaroni cheese is given honorary meat status.











































The list of vegetables they'll eat is surprisingly long (and includes tomatoes, only Horatio is too pedantic to put them in this list). But they don't like any of these veg mucked about - it's no use thinking you could make guacamole, or that you might strip the corn off the cob to make, say, cornbread. Just plain, thank you, and preferably covered in butter.























As for fruit: well, I've never known either of them to choose to eat fruit, although they will if cajoled. Interesting that neither of them mentions bananas - not sure if they've been forgotten, or whether they truly are disliked.
























I can (& frequently do) cook three meals a day for them, yet still come down in the morning to find the detritus of late-night cooking. This is a list of what they like. Microwave popcorn is never on my shopping list because of the horrible additives .... but they don't use their own money to buy it, they just complain that I won't (even though the kitchen is well supplied with old-fashioned popping corn).
























The last two pages are lists of individual favourites. Alfred won't eat anything spicy hot, unlike Horatio, but he's very keen on making toasted sandwiches in a press.










































I don't have any idea how typical this list is for teenage boys. What do your teenagers eat? Any tips for widening their palates? And lessening their dependency on processed foods and on meat?

HotM: brunch - porridge

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

Rabbi Blue's meatballs

These meatballs are a family favourite - easy, comforting food which all of us (apart from Lucius) can cook. We eat them regularly, perhaps once a month - if we haven't had them for a while, one of the children is sure to ask for them.

I haven't consulted the recipe in years, and, now that I look at it, I see that I haven't been putting in lemon juice for a very long time, if ever. That will be an improvement. We generally use French mustard, either grainy or not, depending on what's in the cupboard. I sometimes use other types of jelly (blackcurrant, quince), or even lumpy jam if there's no alternative. Its a long time since I've used tomato juice, as I generally use a tin of chopped tomatoes, perhaps a little stock to make extra sauce when there are lots of meatballs.

It's a very forgiving recipe, it takes moments to put together ... I'm blogging it now so that I don't lose sight of its origins, because I'm about to give away the book from which it came - it's the only recipe I ever use from that book, and I need the shelf space. I'm going to give the recipe and preamble in its entirety, because - well, Rabbi Lionel Blue is like no other.

Self-pity meatballs

These meatballs were refugees from Sweden. They journeyed across the Atlantic to the States, and then journeyed back to Europe, so although this recipe has a Scandinavian basis, when it reached me it had acquired an American kick, which I toned down because of my British understatement. It is very easy and very versatile. It is good both for solo cooking, and for party cooking when all the tribes of Israel descend on me. When I am on my own for too long, I get lachrymose. These balls sauce me up, and I decide that life is worth living, and I even get down to prayer - my first for some time - and I just say "Thank you!"

I give here the quantities for one large portion. It is enough for one self-pitying rabbi or two normal people. Multiply the quantity according to the number of your guests and their emotions.

1/2lb mince
4 fl oz tomato juice
4 fl oz tomato ketchup (1/2 a small bottle)
1 tbsp redcurrant jelly
1 dssp lemon juice
1/2 tsp made-up English mustard

Wet your hands, and roll the mince into balls, the size of small walnuts.

In a saucepan combine all the other ingredients except the lemon juice. Heat on the stove until it is just simmering.

Carefully put the balls in the simmering sauce, and cook very slowly over a low heat for a long time (40 minutes at least, but longer will be better).

Before serving add lemon juice to taste. This will moderate the sauce, which is very rich. You will not need any extra salt or pepper.

I like to eat the sauced balls with rye bread, especially the Jewish type, which is worth seeking out because it is flecked with caraway seeds, a taste I enjoy.

We always eat this with rice - it's the only way one or two of my children are prepared to eat rice (imagine refusing risotto!). I think next time I might try it with a little rye bread on the side.

Taken from Simply Divine, Recipes from the Cooking Canon and Rabbi Blue, by John Eley and Lionel Blue, BBC 1986