Potato and mushroom gratin

Here's an interesting twist to breathe new life into an old favourite ... a little white wine in a milky potato gratin. Gives the sweetness of the milk a sophisticated twist. Nigella's idea, unsurprisingly. Here's my version:

Potato and mushroom gratin

1kg thinly sliced floury potatoes
500 ml milk
100 ml white wine
a large handful of dried mushrooms
garlic, butter and oil

Turn the oven on to 200C.

Soak the mushrooms in a little boiling water. Put the sliced potatoes, milk and wine in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Melt a little butter with some oil in a frying pan. Finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic and add them to the pan. Drain the mushrooms (you can add the water to the potatoes if you like) and mix into the garlicky buttery oily mess. Keep on a very gentle heat for a few minutes, stopping before the garlic browns. Mix the mushrooms in with the potatoes, turn everything out into an oiled gratin dish and bake in a hot oven for 45-60 minutes.

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

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

10 ways with mashed potatoes

On a grey rainy day last week, I test drove a new-to-me car. I picked it up on another rainy day. The next morning, there was an inch of snow on it. None of this would matter, except that it's a convertible. Mad. I still haven't driven it with the roof down. And now we're into winter comfort food: lunch at the weekend was game stew and mash, just what was needed now the weather's closing in till spring.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall found 11 things to add to mash this weekend ... on top of the 100g of butter and 200ml of hot milk he adds per kilo of potatoes (or 100ml each of cream and milk).

Here, mashing is both favourite and least favourite way to cook potatoes. Some people like them better than any; others say it's a waste of a good potato. Sometimes I find myself making two types of potatoes. Who says I'm not an indulgent wife and mother?

Here are 5 ways I make mash:

1. When I'm mashing potatoes, I routinely add milk, nearly always skimmed
2. Sometimes, I add a good dollop of grainy mustard; good with ham
3. A spoonful of grated horseradish (from a jar, as I don't grow it) is delicious with roast beef
   
4. Olive oil added to mash instead of milk is particularly good with fish, or if you're going to use the potato as a pie topping
5. Or you can use a little cheese (and something from the onion family finely chopped) to perk up a pie of leftovers

HFW does all that and more:

1. Add some unpeeled cloves of garlic to the pot with the potatoes, then squeeze the puree out and beat into the mash
2. Add a few slices of caramelized shallot and some Bramley puree for a mash to go with roast pork
3. Infuse the milk with a bay leaf and grated lemon zest (to accompany fish)
4. Add Jerusalem artichokes and nutmeg (roast lamb)
5. Grated cheese and roasted chopped poblano chillies, to go with steak. Steak??? Is he mad? If steak, then chips, no question.

What do YOU do with mash? I'd love to know, it's my favourite

Some thoughts on pizza and authenticity

The idea of authenticity in cookery has become powerful, courtesy of research-heavy recipe books ... Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson etc. The writer visits archive / goes abroad, finds a recipe, preferably a peasant recipe, and sets it in stone. It becomes the grail to which the rest of us must aspire. This is followed by a trip to the supermarket for far-flung ingredients - a couple of decades ago, this was fraught with difficulty (you needed a back-up plan, because it was likely that even the biggest and best supermarkets didn't stock, say, Puy lentils, or coarsely-ground polenta). These days authenticity is less work, as we (in the west) expect to be able to buy what we want when we want, regardless of geography or nature.

The problem with authenticity is that life isn't like that. The peasant will make the dish with whatever comes to hand (or not make it because it is no longer possible/seasonal). It will change subtly over the course of a season: the ingredients are local because they are not flown in from the other side of the world, or trucked in from the other side of the continent. And when the recipe moves to another locality, it is altered to fit in with the new circumstances, sometimes resulting in a completely new dish. This approach is now, in the West at least, history (although there are plenty of people who think it's going to be forced on us soon by an energy crisis).

All this by way of introduction to a passage about pizza in Majorca: the pizza can be traced back to the Etruscans; at the Pizza Museum in Italy, historical research based on archaeological excatavtions refers specifically to the portada, a round savoury tart identical to (Majorcan) coca de verdures. What we have (in Majorca) is the authentic pizza which the Romans taught us to make when they settled on the island; we've carried on making it in exactly the same way. There are more than 400 recognized ways of making pizza, and 1,000 variants of each recipe; everyone has added his own particular stamp."

Two thoughts: authenticity here is understood to be a method rather than a recipe. And I bet the 400,000 recipes don't include pizza with ham and pineapple, or with vindaloo. Each - mystifyingly - much loved in their countries of origin (both far from the Mediterranean).


This post is prompted by Tomas Graves's book, Bread and Oil, Majorcan Culture's Last Stand. Too early to say exactly what I think of it, as I'm only on page 46, but so far it's interesting, if a little fierce.

The photograph is of a potato pizza I made recently. It seems such an odd combination, but it is one which works well (so long as you ignore the health police, who seem to have it in for potatoes, but that's a whole 'nother story for another day). Mine wasn't good enough to pass on the recipe, but if you're interested in making one, you should consult Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups.


Related links

White pizza with fennel seeds
Pizza bianca with rosemary
Pissaladière
Pizza for lunch
River Cafe pizza dough


Links to pizza on other blogs

Susan at Farmgirl Fare is a great baker, setting up her own bakery, and knows a thing or two about pizza ... there are lots on her site
Lemon pizza from the Wednesday Chef .. yes, I'm not sure about that one, either ;)
Gluten-free pizza from Karina's Kitchen

Onion, bacon and potato hotpot revisited

Supper. An hour to go, and no idea what to cook. There were some bacon pieces in the fridge that needed eating up, lots of potatoes and onions in the larder. Thyme in the garden. Plenty of milk. Just not the 15-minutes-to-prepare plus two-hours-to-cook for my delicious onion bacon and potato hotpot. So here it is again, speeded up: 20 minutes to prepare, but now half an hour max to cook, just heat the oven up as high as you dare for really fast food.

Quicker onion bacon and potato hotpot

Salad potatoes
Sliced onions (or you could use a can of Eazy onions)
Some chopped bacon
White sauce (flavour with nutmeg if you like)
Finely chopped thyme

You need to start several cooking processes at once. Put water on to boil in a saucepan big enough to take your potatoes. Start to make your bechamel sauce. Slice onions (you need a similar quantity of onions and potatoes for this), and put them in a large pan on a low heat to start cooking in a little oil. Add the bacon just before your potatoes are ready to drain. Put the whole potatoes into the boiling water, and cook until they are not quite ready.

Drain the potatoes, slice them, and layer with onions thyme and bacon. Pour the white sauce over the top, drizzle with a little oil, and put into a hot oven (200C) for half an hour. Or hotter if you want it quicker - but keep a sharp eye on it.

Good with a salad.

Very good cold the next day. Or reheated (then you can cut it into restaurant-y rings) - say, half an hour in a moderate oven (180C).

Related links

Potatoes with sweet onion, ginger and saffron
Duck and delicious potatoes
Onion bacon and potato hotpot

Lazy beef stew with Eazy onions

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.