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.

Cheese and olive puffs - and Evelyn Waugh's letter about Ld Glasgow's trees

Last night at supper, talk turned to the topic of thank you letters. I have just received a particularly effusive one from a friend of Horatio's: a real pleasure ... incredibly kind of you to provide such a feast both for supper and for breakfast ... no better place to be ... etc etc. This was regarded as both a very good letter to send to a mummy AND as a little over the top (but probably because it was written several weeks after the event.

Lucius was having none of it: Not interesting ... no point in writing a letter if it didn't say something ... bah humbug.

Here's his idea of a letter worth writing (mine too, although I don't think it would do as a bread and butter letter):

No.3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion.

So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree?. Yes, sir, 75lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir.

And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir.

Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.

So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole young plantation.

And the subaltern said Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7½ not 75. Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.

So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotions in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.

This is quite true.

Letter from Evelyn Waugh to his wife, 31 May 1942

My nephews, who are staying, now face the prospect of writing two letters each, so that they please us both.


These not cheese puffs are what we ate with pre-dinner drinks, very good. It's from a recipe in yesterday's Guardian mag by the baker Dan Lepard; he calls them black olive gougères

175g drained Kalamata olives
1 large clove of garlic
1 tbsp chopped thyme (rosemary would do too)
50ml olive oil
150g strong white flour
3 eggs
75g grated parmesan, plus more when reheating

Blitz the olives, but stop before they turn to a mushy paste. Meanwhile, bash the garlic to a paste. Put this with the herbs and oil into a saucepan, add 125ml water and bring to the boil (no time at all). Tip in the flour, beat until it forms a ball, then add the eggs one by one, beating thoroughly each time. Lastly beat in the cheese (I used very strong Cheddar in the mix, parmesan to finish).

Using two teaspoons, scoop balls of the mixture onto a non-stick baking sheet and bake in a hot oven 200C (180C fan) for 15-20 minutes. Cool on a rack. Plate them and sprinkle with a little finely grated parmesan and leave until you are ready to put in the oven to warm through. (I found 120C wasn't quite warm enough to melt the grated cheese, so turned the oven up a little.)

Cold beef with lemon and thyme

When families gather together in the summer, the most convenient way to picnic is for everyone to bring a plate of food ... and even if there's no-one co-ordinating, there's rarely much duplication. Yesterday 11 families brought a picnic lunch to share at the lunchtime break of the school cricket XI v the old boys. First to go were the onion bhajis, made by the mother of the captain, who also made vegetable samosas. Quiche, crostini, dips, sausages, raw veggies, smoked salmon - all easily transportable summer favourites.

I made cold beef strips using rump steak, a really good standby when you need something that won't take long and will travel well. The trick is to marinade the meat after you cook it to give it flavour. Quick and delicious - it's just as good hot, too.

Steak strips with lemon and thyme

Choose a thick piece of rump, and trim away the fat. When it's at room temperature, brush it with oil and cook it on a smoking hot griddle pan so that it is rare. A couple of minutes each side should be enough - it will "cook" a little more in the marinade, and if you're eating it cold, it will also carry on cooking as it cools.

For one or two pieces of rump, finely zest a lemon, then squeeze half the juice. Add a handful of finely chopped thyme, lots of pepper, some crushed garlic if you like. For a picnic, put everything in a plastic box. Take a board and a sharp knife, and slice the meat when you're ready to eat.

If you're eating this at hot and at home, put the meat in a shallow dish and pour on the marinade; leave it for about 10 minutes - you'll have to turn it, as there's not much liquid.


Other good things to take to a picnic

Travelling beef sandwich
Superquick noodles

A week in Devon

To Devon for my brother-in-law's week-long 60th birthday party: walks on the beach, a recital of the Goldberg Variations by the harpsichordist David Wright, lots of talk, a little bridge, knitting - and no cooking.

I missed the party on the first night (I was at Lord's), but sent Lucius with a pudding, Jennifer Paterson's Adult Chocolate Cake ... and, unusually, several people enjoyed it so much they took the trouble to find out who had made it and remember to say something a day or two later. I'm not taking the credit, that belongs to JP; it's a very easy pud for a special occasion, a good one to have up your sleeve (so to speak).

Suzie's buckwheat pancakes

I say Suzie's because she made these delicious pancakes on New Year's Eve - a steady stream of them came out of the kitchen, loaded with salmon and sour cream, spritzed with lemon juice. But actually, they're from Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite ... writing the note I've had in my jacket pocket ever since was my first culinary act of 2009.

Buckwheat pancakes
for 10-12 blini pan sized, or lots of tiny ones

85g buckwheat flour
85g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
200ml semi-skimmed milk
1 1/2 tsp melted butter OR olive oil
2 large egg whites

a small knob of butter for cooking

Mix together the dry ingredients. Make a well in the centre, then add the milk and fat. Mix until you have a smooth batter. Leave to stand for "a few minutes".

When you're ready to cook, whisk the egg whites to firm peaks, and fold them into the batter.

Fry over a medium heat for 60-90 seconds, until they are brown underneath, then flip and cook for a further minute.

Gordon Ramsay suggests serving with smoked salmon, sour cream, capers and salad leaves. Drizzle with olive oil and black pepper.

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.

Sticky pears with gorgonzola

Here's a delicious autumn recipe for those hard pears you find everywhere at this time of year - and a way to make a little piece of cheese stretch further. No photograph, I'm afraid, because we ate it so fast - I made it in seconds as we were all sitting down for soup. It's very quick, and it brings the age-old combination of pears and blue cheese to new heights.

These flowers from the garden were on the table at the weekend - there won't be many more, as the nights are getting colder and colder.

Sticky pears with gorgonzola
for six

three pears
honey*
Marsala**
walnut halves
gorgonzola

Cut three pears into eight slices each. Fry them gently in olive oil until they start to brown. Meanwhile, mix 2 tablespoons of honey with 3 of Marsala. Coat the pears with this mixture in the frying pan, then lift them out with a slotted spoon and arrange on a large flat dish. Throw a handful of walnut halves into the pan and stir fry for a minute or so, until they are completely coated in the sticky sauce. Put them on the dish, then add the cheese. Drizzle everything with the remaining sauce.


* I used the last of some chestnut honey for this, and the taste shone through, so I would say it was worth using good honey here, if you have some

**I think this would work with other flavours ... next time, I'll use the Armagnac I use for Agen prune tarts

As you may have guessed, this is Nigella (Express)

Caramel-salt nuts

These are SO good ...

Put 275g of nuts, 200g sugar and 75ml water into a wide pan, apply heat until you've got sticky nuts (turn the heat down towards the end). Sprinkle salt on them when they're ready but before you've turned them out onto a lightly oiled baking sheet to cool.

This recipe comes from David Lebovitz, who gives more detailed instructions in case you're nervous of caramelising sugar. He suggests using smooth nuts such as almonds or peanuts. So I used hazelnuts, as they were all I had. And David's also got lots of suggestions for ways of using these nuts - other than just eating them as they are.

Thanks, David, I needed something quick to make for my friend DD who is giving us dinner this evening.

Easter roast lamb with ginger rub

This is the piece of meat that is about to come out of my oven ... a 4.25k boned saddle of lamb, enough for 16 - and, I hope, for some leftovers tonight and tomorrow.

It has been pierced with slivers of garlic and little twigs of rosemary, then rubbed with a mixture of grainy mustard, soy sauce, olive oil and ground ginger. We then consulted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat for cooking times: 40 minutes at 230C, then 15 minutes per 500g, then 15 minutes' rest. Actually, it's resting for longer, because otherwise the roast potatoes won't crisp.

With it: roasted onions, kale, cauliflower with anchovy breadcrumbs, carrots, Pugliese broad beans, roast potatoes and parsley mashed potatoes. Also fabulous gravy - the roasted bones, a mirepoix under the meat, water from the vegetables, some rather good Rioja leftover from dinner last night, a little balsamic vinegar. Mmm

Related posts

Roast potatoes: a question
The roast potato taste test
Quick crushed roast potatoes
Simplifying a roast dinner
Very easy lamb with olive paste

Foolproof and easy fruit cake

Years ago, long before I was married, I decided to make a Simnel cake for Easter. I spent ages looking for the recipe, which I never found. I can't remember now whether or not I made the cake, but I clearly remember the frustrating search. I was too idiotic to realise that Simnel cake can be any fruit cake recipe you want - it's all in the decoration, the 11 balls of marzipan signifying the 11 true disciples, a Scripture lesson of a cake, the betrayal of Judas plain for all to see.

This particular fruit cake was the first recipe my mother-in-law ever gave me, the first or second time I met her. It's in my ancient manuscript cookery book as Lady C's easy fruit cake.

It's well named: no beating the butter and sugar, wondering if you've got enough air into the mixture; no fear of sunken fruit. You just lob the fruit, sugar and butter into a saucepan, heat it up with some water, add flour, eggs and spice - and you're done. I'm giving it as I wrote it down, the instructions and ingredient list in one.

Oh, I'm afraid it's in a curious mixture of imperial and British teacups, but this is a forgiving recipe, and where it says cup, feel free to use a slightly smaller US cookery cup measure. If you're nervous, let me know, and I'll translate it into metric.

Another thing - this is a quick and easy, make-it-at-the-last-minute sort of fruit cake - delicious, but not one to make ahead or keep until your granddaughter's christening. Good enough to dress up for a party, easy enough to make for cricket teas.

Boiled fruit cake

I use a 9" round tin for this; otherwise I double it and put it into three large loaf tins (it freezes well).

Boil:
6 oz Flora
1 cup of sugar
1 lb dried fruit
1 cup water

Add:
spice (2 tsp mixed spice is what I generally use, unless I forget)

Cool (I never have, but then it needs less time in the oven)

Beat in (in this order):
1 cup self-raising flour
1 egg
1 cup self-raising flour
1 egg

Bake at 150C / 300F for 2 hours. Start testing after an hour if you didn't cool the mixture.


Over the years, I've made this in many many different combinations. I like to make it plain with sultanas. This time, it's a superfood health mix of cranberries, blueberries, blackberries and Goji berries. It's in the oven now, and tomorrow I'll decorate it with the pistachio marzipan I made a couple of days ago.

Related posts

Extra-fruity golden cake

Links to other blogs

Sunshine fruit cake
David Lebovitz's Chocolate cherry fruitcake
A more elaborate Simnel cake

Make your steak go further

I've blogged this way of cooking steak before ... it's delicious, it's easy, it's good for a party. And it's also a really good way to make a bit of expensive meat go further - one steak cut into ribbons will do for two or even three people. It's got those lemony-thyme flavours I love so much.

There were just the two of us for supper last night, the last time for a while, as full term at Oxford ended yesterday so Horatio will be home later today, and Easter is upon us. So this was a little treat, with cauliflower gratin.

Related links

Fillet of beef
Steak with lemon and thyme
Cauliflower gratin

Crispy duck

I'm a little embarrassed by the size of the EASY tag in my Technorati tag cloud ... it's almost as if I don't like cooking. No, the truth is that I don't like food that's too mucked about, I don't care to muck about with food, and I'm not into prissy presentation. I do a lot of cooking, I love it, but there are other things to do too.

This one's easy. Delicious. It's from Nigella Express, but you need to mess with it a little, because some of her instructions don't work. No need for fancy presentation - just put it on your largest serving dish, and plonk it on the table. Mmm

You can tell Nigella had trouble with this recipe: she gives two versions - the first takes five and a half hours in a slow oven, the second is speeded up a little. Nice to know that even tv cooks get their timings wrong. But actually, it only needs four hours. Apart from thinking ahead, the cook has nothing to do other than put the duck in the oven.

Duck is a fatty meat. This slow-cooking renders the fat out of the bird, taking with it some of the richness. You need the fruitiness of the plum sauce (Europeans use orange for a similar effect), the crunch of cucumber, and the tang of onions. All the spring onions in the shops at the moment are grown in places like Egypt and Morocco, and I can only imagine that they are air-freighted as they don't have a long shelf-life. So I used the greens sprouting from a couple of onions at the bottom of my allium basket. Finely chopped shallot would probably do just as well.

The rendered fat went to the dogs and cats, spread over several days. I made a strong stock with the giblets, so we had a very good risotto last night - and the dogs got the cooked giblets.

Crispy duck
for 4-6

1 duck
cucumber sticks
spring onions, slivered
Hoisin sauce in a jar
Chinese pancakes - allow 3 or 4 each


Preheat the oven to 170C

Cut off the fatty flap which hangs over the cavity. Put the bird on a rack in a deep roasting tin. Roast for four hours. That's it.

There's no need to give it a half-hour burst of heat at the end, as Nigella suggests in the speeded-up version, nor is there any need to roast the bird at the low heat for five and a half hours. It was definitely ready after four hours, but didn't look as if it would have spoilt with another hour in the oven.

Shred the duck with a fork onto a large hot serving dish, and put on the table alongside pancakes, saladings and Hoisin, letting everyone roll their own. Fabulous for a party ... just add another bird or two.

Related posts

Duck and delicious potatoes
Chairman Mao's braised red pork
Chairman Mao's braised red pork revisited
Char sui and noodles

Pink fish

Jean's Pink Fish is the most wonderful retro recipe, a real throwback to the 1950s and 1960s ... we may think it old-fashioned, but everyone fell on it at lunch on Sunday, even those who, like me, had never eaten Jean's version. Anna was amazed, it's not her normal thing at all - she made it to honour her grandmother, and was slightly embarrassed that it didn't go with the rest of lunch.

It's a tinned salmon mousse, with rice. I've had plenty of salmon mousse, but never with rice - surprisingly, a good addition; thrifty, too.

In the '60s, everyone used to have a ring mould; setting sweet and savoury dishes with gelatine was all the rage. By the 1980s, it was a forgotten art, and, soon after I married, both my mother-in-law and my stepmother passed me on their no-longer-needed ring moulds. I've used them intermittently, mostly for cakes .... but so intermittently that yesterday, where was the small one when I needed it??? I just hope I haven't given it to Sue Ryder or Oxfam! So I made my pink fish in a small loaf tin instead - not so pretty, but just as effective. I used to have a fish mould, but I can't find that, either - and you try buying one of those now: teddy bears, numbers, stars, hearts - but no fish!

Fish mousse became fish pate (I remember making one with a lot of lemon, and stuffing it back into the hollowed-out lemons), as we all discovered how fiddly it was to use powdered gelatine. These days you can buy sheet gelatine in just about every supermarket, so suddenly it's got easy again ... you just soak the leaves in cold water for a few minutes, and then, when you're ready, squeeze out the water, and slide them into your warm ingredients, whereupon they dissolve instantly.

Pink fish is a very useful starter, because you can make it a couple of days ahead, and it's a doddle, too (I did most of it one-handed while chatting to Menna on the phone). The basic ingredients are likely to be in your kitchen - tinned salmon, rice, yoghurt, tomato ketchup, Worcester sauce, tabasco. You use the tin to measure all the other ingredients, another plus.

Jean's version is delicious, and very much of its time - lashings of cream, mayo from a bottle (it had just been invented). I've updated it to make it lighter, and find that the finished dish tastes sharper, not so sickly sweet (all that cream). Next time I make it, I'll update it again, using fresh salmon rather than tinned, and fresh chilli rather than tabasco. It could also be made with lemony-herby flavourings rather than the chilli.

Jean's Pink Fish

1 tin red salmon
1 tin cooked rice
1/2 tin mayo
1/2 tin double cream
1/2 tin milk
enough gelatine to make it set (2 leaves for a small tin, 4 for a big tin)
tomato ketchup
Worcester sauce
tabasco
salt and pepper

Soak the gelatine in a little cold water. Meanwhile, drain the salmon and mash it in a little bowl. Put cooked rice into the tin and add it to the salmon. Pour the cream and mayo into the tin, then add this to the bowl. Mix well. Season with sauces. The tk will make it pink which is good, but will also add sweetness, which may become too much in this creamy version, so go carefully.

Now measure half a tin of milk, and heat this gently in a small pan (don't let it boil). When it's a little more than blood temperature, take it off the heat, squeeze out the gelantine leaves and add them. Stir, and when you're sure they're dissolved, add them to your paste. Pour it into your prepared mould (either grease it, or line it with clingfilm). This will take a couple of hours in the fridge to set, and will keep, well wrapped, for at least a couple of days.

You get the full '60s flavour of the thing if you make it in a fish mould, and decorate the resulting mousse with overlapping scales made from finely sliced cucumber. But you may be saved from yourself by the lack of a fish mould. In Anna's case it was a tribute to her grandmother.


Joanna's pink fish

1 tin red salmon
1 tin cooked rice
1 tin 0% Greek yoghurt
1/2 tin skimmed milk
gelatine (see above for quantities)
tomato ketchup
Worcester sauce
tabasco
salt and pepper

Follow the method above. I used a mixture of white rice and wild rice, because that's what there was, but I think that white rice alone would be a better bet, as the wild rice was quite assertive. Brown rice would be worth trying.

I definitely preferred the taste of this one - sharper, tangy-er. I suspect it would be really good made with fresh salmon, and I know that you could have fun changing the flavourings.


A small tin of salmon made enough mousse to fill a small loaf tin, which would cut into eight slices.


Last week Anna made Jean's original sauce for this, but she said it was too disgusting to eat: cream, tk, tabasco ... more of the same, in other words. I think it would be worth trying a green sauce of some sort - capers, vinegar, herbs. That's what I'll do this evening, anyway.


PS if you're one of the many people who have asked for Anna's passionfruit tart recipe - I'm going to phone her tonight to get instructions - they'll be here before the weekend, fingers crossed

Lunch for Jean

We had a lovely lunch for about 60 friends and family yesterday as a memorial for Lucius's aunt, who died last month at a great age at her home in South Africa. The party was given by Lucius's cousin Bruce and his wife Menna, and the cooking was by their younger daughter Anna, who used to be a party designer (I think that's the right word) at the Admirable Crichton, and is now a freelance cook and party organiser.























We spent a merry morning preparing .... tidying, moving furniture, moving cars to make it easier for guests to park, cooking under instruction from Anna - and endlessly discussing how many potatoes and green beans would be required.























Here are my sons preparing smoked salmon which was sent down by courier from Uig Lodge on the west coast of Lewis in the Hebrides. It was, quite simply, the best smoked salmon I've ever tasted - smokey, and not a trace of the oil which often swamps even some of the better smoked salmon I've bought in the past.

We had a number of very delicious salads ... here's finely-sliced celeriac sitting in a bath of orange juice to stop it browning. Anna used orange juice because the salad had oranges in it - useful to know that it works just as well as lemon juice.


































One of the most popular dishes was Jean's famous pink fish ... which will be the subject of a separate post later in the week.














I failed to take a photograph of the main dish, a South African lamb and potato stew, or of the green bean salad which we dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and a huge quantity of toasted almond slivers - a delicious combination. This is my favourite photograph of the day: Robbie Honey, the florist, ladling stew from the pot into a dish, using a saucepan as the ladle:























And here are Robbie's beautiful flowers gracing the dining room table, surrounded by a sea of grey-green leaves:























This is Anna's passionfruit tart ... fabulous, isn't it? Also very delicious ... and she rustled up the last one in moments between sorting out salads, chopping vegetables and cheerfully (& with great charm) telling us all what to do next.

Haddock and prawn stew with saffron

This is chowder-ish ... and fabulous food for tired cooks in a hurry. 30 minutes start to finish (20 if you cheat / have prepared ahead). Fat free, yet deliciously creamy. I made it when I got back from a day in London - having bought the fish at Paddington Station on my way home, which is a bit last-minute if you plan to cook from scratch. I'm not giving amounts, this is a method ... you know how much you eat.

Lucius said it was the best fish stew I'd ever made. Partly the saffron, but also, I think, down to using fresh sweetcorn stripped from the cob with a knife - the work of seconds, as I am sure American cooks know, but British cooks may not. Much better than soggy out of a tin - if that was the only option, I think I'd leave it out.

Haddock and prawn stew with saffron

Chopped onions
Plain flour
Potatoes (I used salad potatoes)
Skimmed milk
White fish (I used haddock)
Prawns (if you like)
Saffron (use whole stamens, 4-5 at least)
Corn on the cob

Chop the onions and stew them gently in a little oil. Use a wide pan. When they are soft, stir in a little flour. Add chunks of potato and just cover with milk. Add several pinches of saffron (if you like, soak them first in warm water, in which case tip in the water too). Simmer gently until the potatoes are nearly cooked. Add chunks of fish and the kernels of sweetcorn. When the fish is nearly cooked, drop in the prawns (I'm talking about the little pink peeled and cooked ones here; this is a midweek supper, nothing too fancy or expensive). The prawns will only need warming through, so take the pan off the heat after a couple of minutes and leave it to stand for another couple of minutes before serving.

The two things that make the difference here are fresh corn, and the saffron - the finished dish is a lovely golden colour, and the smokey musky taste of saffron gives the dish a lift out of the ordinary. It's a dish that's easy enough for midweek, special enough for a party, and versatile enough to cook for a crowd (you could prepare ahead up to putting in the potatoes, stopping after they'd cooked for a couple of minutes, because they'd carry on cooking as the liquid cooled).

Oh yes, remember I said you could cheat? Here's something worth knowing about ... a Spanish product which I've only recently noticed on supermarket shelves: Eazy fried onions. My rule is never to buy ready-prepared products containing ingredients I don't keep in my larder: here we have 90% finely selected onions, 9% olive oil, salt, and citric acid. I dare say the olive oil isn't as good as mine, and it's true that you can taste the citric acid, so this is no good for, say, pissaladiere where the onion is the main point of the dish. But as a short-cut when cooking for a crowd, or when you haven't got any prepared onions in the fridge (I nearly always cook double the amount I need to save time later) ... well, they're great.


This post is to celebrate two years of Weekend Herb Blogging, which comes from Kalyn's Kitchen. Kalyn is a most generous blogger - she was fantastically helpful to us when Ilva and I started Heart of the Matter. WHB has become a food blogger's institution, a great place to look for healthy recipes. Thanks Kalyn ... happy anniversary!

Stuffed quince with nohutlu pilav

This was our dinner on Monday night ... good, but in need of further tinkering to make it perfect; the quince lends sweetness to the mince, while the flesh which is left in the shells is surprisingly sharp.

It comes from Claudia Roden's Arabesque, a taste of Turkey, Morocco and Lebanon

Ayva dolmasi for 2

2 medium quinces
one chopped onion
olive oil
2 tablespoons pine nuts
100g lean mince (I used beef, but I think lamb would be better)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
less than 1/2 tsp ground allspice
salt and pepper

Bake the quinces whole in a moderate oven, 170C, until they are soft. This will take at least an hour.

Soften the onion in oil, the add the pine nuts and keep turning them until they are golden. Put the mince into a bowl with the spices, and work them to a paste with your hands. Add the onions when they are cool enough to handle, and work them in too.

Cut the quinces in half lengthways and remove the core. Spoon out most of the flesh, taking care not to tear the skins. Add this to the mince, and then press the mixture into the quince. Bake for half an hour at 180C.



Serve with pilau rice: I made nohutlu pilav, the chickpea and rice dish which was served by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror (who captured Constantinople in 1453) at the Topkapi Palace. A little gold ball in the shape of a chickpea was hidden in the rice, each guest hoping that they would be the one to find it. This version omits the gold.

Nohutlu pilav for 3-4

250g basmati rice
400ml homemade stock (better to use water than a cube, I think)
one small onion, chopped
half a tin (sorry!) of chickpeas, rinsed and drained

Bring the stock (or water) to the boil. Add the rice. Bring back to the boil, clamp on a lid and cook gently, undisturbed, for 15-20 minutes. Towards the end of the cooking time, you may need to check that there is enough liquid. You will know the rice is cooked when all the liquid has been absorbed and there are little holes all over the surface of the rice. Leave it to rest for a few minutes while you prepare the chickpeas. Gently fry the onion until soft and golden. Add the chickpeas and warm through. Stir this through the rice.


I love this taste of the middle east, although I think this particular recipe, again Claudia Roden, would be improved by the addition of saffron. Better than a gold nugget.

This autumnal, seasonal supper would be great for a party: you could prepare the quince ahead, giving it a little longer in the oven. The pilau could also be made beforehand, in which case it should be reheated, tightly covered, in a moderate oven for 15-20 minutes. Easy.

Butter-less pastry - & a fruit tart

This pastry is a revelation ... and, for those of you who think pastry can only be made with butter: this is a French recipe, a proper recipe. There are egg yolks and oil, so it's still not something to eat every day, but this is a real breakthrough for those who can no longer eat butter. And for those people who think that our low-cholesterol way of eating is somehow second best - this is really delicious and worth a try in its own right. Also, if you're not a natural pastry chef - and I never was - this is quick and easy, a definite improvement on bought shortcrust. All the virtues, then.

The recipe was discovered by clever Anna, in Geraldene Holt's French Country Kitchen, one of my most favourite of all cookery books. I've cooked and cooked from this book (but stupidly failed to spot this pastry), more than any other I own, I should think, and I've never been able to understand why Geraldene Holt isn't better known: she's at least as good as Jane Grigson, and considerably better than a whole host of well-regarded food writers. She writes out of real experience - in this book, her many years of summer living in France.

This recipe for shaken hot-water pastry comes from Mme Chalendar, who, GH notes, sells earthenware and stoneware kitchen pots in Lamastre.

225g flour
1 tbsp caster sugar (leave it out if you're making something savoury)
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
4 tbsp mild salad oil
1/2 beaten egg
3 tbsp hot water

Put all the ingredients into a lidded plastic box and shake it for at least a minute. When you take off the lid, you will find a lumpy mixture; form it into a ball with your hands, and roll it out on a floured surface. GH says this is enough for a 24cm tin, but I have made this a number of times, and find that it is enough for a larger tin, and rather too much for a 24cm tin, because the pastry is better when it is very thin. You can use this straight away, no need to rest it.

Plum tart


















If you are making a fruit tart, here's another trick, and I'm not sure if it come from Mme Chalendar or GH: mix 20g flour with 20g sugar and sprinkle it over the pastry base. Then add the stoned fruit halves (raw). The flour and sugar mix will effortlessly thicken the fruit juices to make a delicious sauce.

This tart needs 30-35 minutes in a moderate oven, 190C. When it's done, glaze the fruit with a little melted jam - I used the rose petal jelly I made last month, but anything would do, even a little sugar syrup if there's no jam in the house (especially if you have vanilla- or lavender-flavoured sugar). The first time we made this, we forgot all about glazing it in our excitement - it's the one in the photographs, so you can judge for yourself whether it's worth the bother, because glazing is fundamentally a cosmetic exercise. We didn't bother with the flour and sugar that first time, which was a mistake, as I think you can see in the photograph.

We ate this tart by candlelight in the garden. It's quick and easy, the sort of food you can cook ahead, either for a party or just because you feel like it.

This is my entry for this month's Heart of the Matter ... fruit and berries is the theme for September ... and Ilva at Lucullian Delights is hosting. The idea is to build a bank of heart-friendly recipes on the Heart of the Matter website, a resource for everyone to use, and one which would have been very useful to me in the days after my husband's heart attack. There's more information about how to submit here, and some guidance for those of you worried about heart-healthy eating.

Very easy lamb with olive paste

This is DELICIOUS, and so easy it's almost cheating. But not in the sense of going out and buying some horrible supermarket sauce and calling it cooking. This is posh cheating, and no-one will guess if you don't tell them. So long as you mix it up before they come. Which I didn't. It tastes of the mediterranean, of sunshine and the south.

The recipe came from Tamasin Day Lewis's Kitchen Bible, which I bought last week, and which is worth a look (although Anna says she's very annoying on TV, but I didn't know she did telly). As soon as I saw it, I knew I'd cook it this weekend, when we have a crowd of dear friends (who are actually relations), all of whom are wonderful cooks and appreciate good food, and all of whom are people I'd rather be talking to. This really is good food for a crowd. Quick too, in the sense of how much of the cook's time it takes, although it's in the oven for a couple of hours.

To each kilo of lamb, you need 200g of black olive paste. TDL specifies shoulder of lamb, but the wonderful butchers at Gabriel Machin in Henley said that neck fillet would be just as good but better value. So that's what I used.

Tip the meat into a casserole. Pour on the olive paste. Mix everything well, clamp on the lid and cook for two hours at 150C.

You'll get a glossy black stew, plenty of wonderful salty sauce - very grown up, and no-one would ever guess how little effort went into it.

We ate it in the garden by candlelight, with little new potatoes and two salads ... one was chicory (very prettily sliced lengthwise, I've never done that, clever Anna, stupid me) and watercress, the other lettuce and tomatoes, some fresh, some slow roasted. Wonderful.

Next time, I'll add a branch of thyme. When I cook it in the winter, I'll add a long long strip of orange peel.

Fresh mackerel: gravad max

Yesterday morning, our host took four teenagers out on the boat to catch mackerel and set creels (in that order, because you need mackerel as bait to catch lobster). They also went to the beach, where they found mussels. So when they returned, just before supper, they had a large bucket of mussels (they'd scraped the barnacles and pulled the beards on the way back in the boat), and a huge basket of smallish mackerel.

Bridget made moules marinieres in a huge saucepan, using a whole bottle of white wine for the "soup". Delicious. We threw the shells into champagne buckets (the house in which we are staying used to be a hotel, and has a great deal of useful kit which is not found in most private houses). Roast chicken to follow.

Many of the mackerel will be used for lobster bait, straight from the freezer. A neighbour here on Mull is a particularly successful lobster fisherman, and this is his secret: he puts his bait in a large plastic tub, covers it in salt, then seals it and leaves it for a year to ripen ... the smell is appalling, but the lobsters like it!

Meanwhile, for the second year running, we made this delicious gravad max, from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Cookbook. This needs to be made at least a day in advance, but is better left for two or three days beforehand.

Gravad max
For 10 large or 20 small mackerel

Mix: 100g caster sugar, 75g coarse salt, and a handful of chopped fennel sprigs (HFW says dill, but that's not growing round here).

Fillet the fish. This can be done in one of two ways - either use a sharp knife to take a fillet off each side of an ungutted fish, or behead and gut the fish, slit them open, press them flat and then tease out the backbone.

Layer the cure and the fillets in a plastic box (DO NOT use metal). Start with cure, then fish skin side down, then cure, then fish skin side up &c. When you've finished, weight the whole thing down with a board and some bottles or tins (if you are using tins, then you must put them into another, smaller, plastic box). HFW has a third layer, because he puts the fish into a perforated (wooden) box, and therefore needs something to catch the drips. We've dispensed with this, because his instructions tell you to baste the fish with the drippings from the fish box, and I always like to simplify things to make life a little easier when possible.

After one, two or three days, your fish is ready to eat - cut it with a sharp knife at an angle towards the skin, as if you were cutting smoked salmon. Serve with lemon juice, a little green salad, and plenty of good bread. HFW makes a creme fraiche sauce flavoured with mustard vinegar and dill, but we may not bother with that (it will rather depend on what we find in the fridge).


Last year, Craig brought fish fresh from the sea, and filleted them for us in moments with his very sharp knife (and superior knife skills). This year, a work party gutted the fish, and we all then wished we'd filleted them, because teasing the backbones out of very fresh raw fish is time-consuming (Ola, pictured below, did the most). HFW says that filleting them whole is more wasteful - that may be, but it's certainly much quicker, and a great deal less trouble. If you're buying the fish, none of this need trouble you, just get the fishmonger to do it for you!

This is wonderfully good for you, free if you're lucky (or pretty cheap if you buy the fish), and a really good dish to make for a crowd or a party, because you do the bulk of the preparation well in advance. It's also a delicious treat.

PS I think you could do this with any oily fish, and when I get home, back to Oxfordshire, the English county furthest from the sea in every direction, I will try it with whatever oily fish I can buy.

A plate of nibbles for drinks

The night before my sister and her family left for home (California) via a week in Spain, she had a drinks party. It's been non-stop partying for nearly three weeks while she's been here, so no-one felt like making a huge effort. But, at the same time, drinks without nibbles - well, it's not really a party, is it?

I needed to reduce the croissant mountain (not many of the young felt like breakfast the morning after the night before), so that was my starting point. I halved them and stamped out rounds, using a biscuit cutter ("You mean a cookie cutter?" said my sister, who no longer speaks entirely the same language as I do, after 20 years in the US). Normally I'd use bread, then toast it in a hot oven, but the essence of this sort of cooking is to use what you have.

Next I spread a little light Phillie on them, and, finally, put tiny dabs of this and that on the top - chorizo, ham, chilli jam, pesto, olive. They went in seconds, despite fierce competition from the cocktail sausages my father insists on at every party.