Spiced plum sauce for roast pork

Back from Scotland to find a HUGE glut of plums, despite thinning the tree when the fruit set. The Victoria plums are good to eat, but can't begin to compete with the greengages on a neighbouring tree, which taste as sweet as any fruit I've ever eaten. So the gages are all being eaten where they grew, only the purple plums are getting as far as the kitchen.

I made this very good sauce to go with roast belly of pork (which I smeared with olive oil and chopped thyme, sprinkled with a little Maldon salt, then roasted for half an hour at 220C and an hour at 180 - great crackling, or, if not, then a quick blast at the highest temperature your oven will crank up to).

Plum sauce

15-20 plums
2 medium onions
2 dssp runny honey
1 tsp Chinese five-spice
3 cloves of garlic, smashed
1-2 tbsp chilli jam
a sprinkle of wine vinegar

Halve and stone the plums. Chop the onions. Place in a roasting tray with all the other ingredients. This needs about an hour at 180C, so it went into the oven with the pork when I turned down the heat.

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

Weed sauce

These are the leaves I used to make a salsa verde for lunch. The dandelions came from the lawn, just before its first cut of the year; the nettles came from a newly-sprung patch just outside the greenhouse; the rocket had self-seeded in the greenhouse; the sorrel has seeded itself all over the path - my fault for not picking it hard enough last year. In other words, this is the lazy gardener's sauce. Tastes good.

This variation on my basic salsa verde recipe went as follows:

Blitz:

• a small basket of mixed green leaves
• a little red wine vinegar
• two or three anchovies
• some mustard
• olive oil

PS if you are using nettles, you need to blanch them briefly, to defuse the sting:











Related links

Nettle pesto
Nettle soup
Nettle tea
Nettle beer

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

Anchovy sauce for broccoli

This is seriously good, seriously unphotogenic, a wonderful winter alternative to salsa verde. We've eaten it every night this week.

It's particularly good with broccoli, goes well with roast lamb, with lentils. If you make a stiff mix with only a little olive oil, then you can use it to spread on toast (a sort of homemade Gentleman's Relish without the butter). If you make it with plenty of olive oil, then you can use it as a salad dressing for bitter winter leaves. It's also good as a dip with carrot and celery sticks.

For years I've bought Waitrose own-brand anchovies in little tins which come in a black cardboard box. Last summer there was a supply problem, so I began to buy Connétable - lovely silvery fish with a much milder flavour.









This recipe is enough for two or three evenings - it keeps for ages in the fridge, although you may want to stir in a little more oil second/third time round. The very last scrapings from the bowl are good added to gravy or a stew.

Anchovy sauce

5-6 cloves of garlic, peeled
a tin of anchovies
a splash of red wine vinegar
olive oil

Put the garlic and fish into a food processor - I use my Magimix, but a mortar would do. When they're smooth, add the vinegar, blitz, and then add olive oil glug by glug until you get the consistency you're after.

Spoon the warm-ish sauce over broccoli as soon as it's drained and serve hot.

Inspiration for this came from Fergus Henderson of St John.



This time last year, I was blogging about Lady Westmoreland's Soup - possibly the most frugal soup in the world. See what you think!

Curry sauce and a korma

I'm chucking out recipe books at the moment, ones I'm never ever going to use again. Tricky, though, because there's often one dish lurking in there. These two books are a case in point, Brit Spice by Manju Malhi ... good, but I don't use it at all any more, and Real Fast Indian Food by Mridula Baljekar. Horatio and I bought them when he first got keen on curry, and we cooked quite a few curries. H is sharing a student house now (in Buckingham Street, so known - inevitably - as Buckingham Palace). He lives with an acknowledged curry master, so he doesn't want the books. Off they go to Sue Ryder. But first ...

Madras Curry Sauce

We used to make vats of this together, so that Horatio could use it to simmer chicken with his friend Christian. It sounds more complicated than it is, but that's only because the ingredients list is so long. Promise.

5 tbsp vegetable oil
55g root ginger, peeled and chopped
16 cloves of garlic, peeled
8-10 shallots, peeled
3 tbsp dried curry leaves (2 tbsp if fresh)
1 1/2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp ground turmeric
85g tomato puree
1.2 litres water
salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
15g fresh coriander leaves, chopped
3 tbsp lemon juice

Heat the oil and gently fry the ginger, garlic and shallots. After three or four minutes, add the curry leaves, cumin, chilli and turmeric. Fry for a couple of minutes, then stir in the tomato paste. When it's amalgamated, add the water, sugar and salt. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Add the coriander and lemon juice. Remove from the heat. Leave to cool. Blitz until smooth. Pack in airtight containers and store in the freezer or fridge. It will keep in the fridge for at least a week.

Chicken Korma with whole spices
for 4

This is a lovely aromatic curry ... but Horatio likes it better without the cloves.

55g ground almonds
150ml boiling water
3 tbsp oil
5cm stick of cinnamon
6 green cardamom pods, bruised
4 cloves
2 bay leaves
one small onion, finely chopped
3cm cube of peeled and chopped ginger
4 large cloves garlic
1 tsp crushed black peppercorns
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp mild chilli powder

700g boneless chicken pieces, cubed
85g plain yoghurt
2-3 tomatoes skinned (or half a tin)
salt (unless using tinned tomatoes)
2-3 tbsp chopped coriander

Soak the almonds. (The original recipe calls for blanched almonds, which you later process, but I could never get them smooth enough.) Gently fry the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and bay in the oil (if your cardamom is green, stop when the pods puff up; chances are, you'll be splitting dry old pods to use their fragrant sticky black seeds). Add the onion, and fry til golden. Then add the ginger, garlic and the rest of the spices.

Add the chicken cubes and brown all the surfaces. Then add the yoghurt, salt and tomatoes. Stir, cover the pan, and simmer gently for 10-12 minutes.

If you've used whole almonds, process them with their soaking water until you get a smooth paste. Either way, tip the resulting mess into the pan, stir well, and cook for another 10-12 minutes.

When the chicken is cooked through, add the coriander and serve.

Links to related posts

None of these are hot, unless you want to be heavy-handed with the chilli. They're all quick, easy, cheap and delicious.

Chickpea and spinach curry
Dahl
Aromatic prawns

PS the Indian recipe book I've kept is The Essential Madhur Jaffrey

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.

Spiced apricot and orange chutney

Looking for marmalade, I discovered a forgotten jar of this - made in 2005, matured to perfection. It's Delia, from her Christmas book. She also uses this to make a quick sauce for roast pork, so it's quite useful for cooking ahead if you've got some spare time. I made it as a Christmas present for 2005, with the sauce recipe attached.

Spiced apricot and orange chutney

400g no-soak dried apricots
1 tsp whole coriander seeds
225g soft brown sugar
425ml cider vinegar
1 chopped onion
50g sultanas
2 tbsp grated ginger
2 chopped cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
grated zest and juice of an orange

Cut the apricot into small pieces. Temper the coriander seeds in a dry frying pan, then bash them in a mortar. Put everything together into a large stainless steel saucepan & heat gently until the sugar has dissolved. Simmer half-covered for 45 minutes or so. You want soft onions and fruit, but you don't want it too thick, and it will carry on thickening as it cools.

Spoon into sterilised jars. I generally do this by putting them through a dishwasher cycle. Or you can put them into a hottish oven until they are too hot to handle.

Spiced apricot sauce for roast pork

You make this exactly as if you were making gravy: sprinkle a little flour onto the pan juices, mix to a paste, add white wine - enough to make the sauce - bubble and reduce, stirring all the time to keep smooth. Stir in a good quantity of the chutney, also some orange zest, and simmer for about 5 minutes, until the flour is cooked.

I think it would be just as good using a dash of wine and some stock.


Related posts:

Braised mixed lentils
Chilli and pepper chutney
Red onion marmalade

Useful links:

Delia Smith Online
Pomiane's anti-Delia rant

Anchovy, Garlic and Caper Sauce

I said I'd cook one last recipe from each book I give away ... today's prize book is Jane Grigson's Fish Book. I'm only giving it away because I've got two copies. I use this book all the time, not just to cook from, but also to read.

This 18th-century recipe for Anchovy, Garlic and Caper Sauce is one I haven't tried before; it's perfect for today, when Lucius may or may not be coming home for lunch, and when there's lots of oddments in the fridge that need eating up. I'm going to serve it with vegetables, rather in the manner of a cold bagna cauda (the recipe for which is also given).


















I halved the quantities, left out the salt (lots in the capers), and made it with a pestle because I wanted a lumpy texture. It's a sort of winter, herb-less version of salsa verde, which we eat a lot in the summer. A good discovery. Thank heavens I've got two copies of Jane Grigson's Fish Book!


Anchovy, garlic and caper sauce

Serves 6

An 18th-century sauce that goes beautifully with hard-boiled eggs - halve them across, spread the sauce on a dish and put the eggs, cut side down, in neat rows on top. Allow 6-9 eggs. Serve it with cooked haricot beans, salt cod and grilled white fish, or tuna.

10-12 large garlic cloves, in their skins
8-10 anchovy fillets
2 tablespoons small capers
dash of wine vinegar
salt, pepper
about 12 tablespoons olive oil

Simmer the garlic in water to cover for 7 minutes. Cool under the tap, remove their skins and put them into a blender (better than a processor for this kind of sauce) with the anchovies, capers, vinegar and a little seasoning. Whizz to a puree, then slowly add the oil to make a sauce of mayonnaise consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings.

This is a strong sauce - you could use half sunflower or safflower oil and half olive oil to make it blander.


PS Fabulously easy, even in a mortar. Utterly delicious, especially with cold potatoes. Who needs hard-boiled eggs?

Roasted tomato ketchup

I made this earlier in the summer, it's from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Guardian column. Compared to Heinz it was a bit of a disappointment. Not very nice on the side of your plate, mainly because of the inevitable comparison with Heinz TK, which we all know and love. I wasn't going to bother to post it, but I am doing so now because I WILL make it again next year, as I've found it wonderfully useful to add to all sorts of cooking - gravy, soup, stew, etc etc. It really needs another name, to avoid invidious comparisons.

Roast tomato ketchup

1 litre of sieved roasted tomatoes
100g soft brown sugar
100 ml cider vinegar
1 tbps ground black pepper
pinch of ground mace
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
2 bay leaves

Put everything into a large saucepan on a low heat. Stir frequently - first to help the sugar dissolve, then to stop it sticking. After about 45 minutes at a gentle bubble, it should be thick enough to bottle.

You should keep this in the fridge; I imagine that it would freeze well, too, although then you might not want to put it into a glass bottle.


There's just time to make some of this with the last of the summer's tomatoes. I wonder what it would taste like made with green tomatoes?

Homemade tomato ketchup .. & caponata-ish

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall gave this recipe in his column in the Guardian a few weeks ago, and, as I've never made ketchup before, I followed the recipe exactly. Even before we tasted it, I thought you could simplify this without loss of taste. So when everyone was lukewarm about it as an accompaniment to fish and chips, I thought it might be hard to use it up.

Not a bit of it! I've now discovered that it makes the most fantastic five-minute caponata, and since aubergine is my favourite summer vegetable, that's a bonus. To make the caponata-ish, cube the aubergine, fry in olive oil till fairly soft, add some of the ketchup, a few sultanas and some capers. Simmer for a few minutes. Best eaten lukewarm, if you can wait that long.

Back to the point, this is how you make the ketchup. It's a two part recipe, first you have to roast the tomatoes (I know a better way to do this), then sieve them. When you've recovered from this (does he have a machine? I just have a sieve, a wooden spoon, and aching arms), you simmer the passata with sugar and spice.

HFW's roast tomatoes

To make one litre, use about 2kg ripe tomatoes; the more flavour they have, the better the finished ketchup. Cut them in half, put them in a single layer on a roasting sheet, and sprinkle with finely chopped garlic (two or three cloves), some thyme, and olive oil. Roast for 45-60 minutes at 180C, until they are soft and beginning to blacken at the edges. Remove from the oven, and sieve to a pulp when they are cool enough to work.

HFW's tomato ketchup

one litre roast tomato sauce
100g soft brown sugar
100 ml cider vinegar
salt
one tbsp ground black pepper
pinch of mace
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
two bayleaves

Put all the ingredients into a stainless steel saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for about 45 minutes, stirring frequently so that it doesn't stick. It will gradually thicken, although it won't be as thick as Heinz TK. Check your seasonings, then bottle. It will keep for a month and more in the fridge.

Here's a link to Guardian Unlimited which has HFW's original piece, Reddy Steady Cook (there's an art to writing headlines that bad!)


Good, but not as good as Heinz TK; really useful to use as the base for a quick vegetable stew; really useful if you've got a glut of tomatoes, as a change from slow roasted tomatoes preserved in oil. Alfred said he'd like it to dress pasta, but I thought it might be a little too vinegary for that.


I've just bought an old government-issue book on food preserving, which gives timings for boiling pickles and preserves to give them a long shelf life and keep them out of the fridge. It may take a while to get the equipment together, but I'll post as soon as I've got something to report.

Rose petal jelly

I really felt as if I was bottling sunshine when I made this delicious jelly, because as soon as I had finished picking the roses, the sky turned grey and the heavens opened - yet more torrential rain, fierce enough, once again, to damage flowers.

I found the recipe this morning, lying in bed reading old Sunday supplements unread from the weekend of our parties. It was extracted from a book which I see is due to be published tomorrow, Edible Wild Plants and Herbs: A Compendium of Recipes and Remedies, by Pamela Michael. Looks good enough to buy. As ever, I've adapted the recipe a little.

Rose petal jelly

1 litre rose petals
1 litre water
juice of two lemons
1 kilo sugar























Pick one litre of scented roses. The original recipe suggests dog roses, but as they're now over, mine was a mixture of the beautiful English rose Noble Antony (David Austen), Tuscany Superb, Gloire de Dijon, a pretty little unnamed pale pink rambler by the front door, and Compassion. I don't spray my roses (or anything, come to that), so they're okay to eat. I had no idea what a litre of rose petals looks like, so I went out with a colander which I half filled. Too many, it turned out, but no matter, they'd have needed dead-heading soon anyway. You want them blousily open, but not over. Check for scent as you pick, because some roses become more scented as the flowers develop, other lose their scent quickly.



















Pull the petals off the stalk, and loosely fill a one-litre measuring jug. Check for insects - I put several earwigs back into the garden, as well as a couple of small grasshoppers. Put the petals in a stainless steel saucepan with a litre of water, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. They will completely lose their colour, and the water will turn a murky shade of reddish-brown, deliciously scented. Strain this into a glass bowl and cool.

Next you add the lemon juice, and a magical thing happens - the murky brown suddenly becomes a beautiful and bright pink. Pour this back into the pan, and add one kilo of sugar (I used preserving sugar because I happened to have it in the house, but ordinary sugar would do just as well, it would just take a little longer to dissolve). When the sugar has disappeared, turn up the heat a little and bring to the boil. It will take 10 minutes to reach setting point, or you can use a sugar thermometer.

Leave it to cool a little before bottling - if you do this, you'll find that much of the scum disappears. I never bother to skim the scum, because I don't enter my jellies in the produce show, and because it's perfectly edible - it disappears if you're heating up the jelly later (the main reason I make jellies is to liven up sauces).

Bottling isn't too much of a palaver, although you need to sterilise the jars. This is easily achieved in one of three ways (I am assuming that they are already clean): 1) put them in the sink and pour boiling water on them; 2) run them through a hot dishwasher cycle; 3) put them in a low oven for half an hour.

People get very worked up about making jellies, and Nigella even said in one of her books that making jelly was more trouble than jam ... but Nigella's wrong, and the whole process is quick and easy. Jelly is easier on the cook than jam, because you don't need to peel and core, top and tail, you let the sieve or jelly bag do all the work. And the key thing is never to make more than 3-4 jars at once ... in other words, never use more than one kilo of sugar - scale the recipe down if necessary (it's also true for jam). This rose petal jelly took under an hour from start to finish, in three short bursts of activity.

Incidentally, you can see from the photos below just how much colour is extracted from the petals when they're simmered. The original recipe suggests putting the petals back into the syrup when you've dissolved the sugar, but I didn't want to spoil the look of the jelly, and, besides, thought I'd probably have to sieve it before using it in a sauce.

My favourite presents

I don't know about you, but the presents I like best are almost always homemade. And here are two of the nicest things I was given at the weekend - a loaf of bread made by Isabel, aged seven, and a pot of pesto made by her sister Pippa, aged six. Also 10/10 for packing, Is - pink tissue, pink tulle, and a pink spotted ribbon which I wore in my buttonhole for the rest of the day. Thanks, girls!

Horatio's bolognaise sauce with milk

Lucius and I went out to supper on Monday night, so Horatio was left to his own cooking devices. He bought mince for a bolognaise, something he often makes with Alfred. They usually follow a Mary Berry recipe in the Aga Cookbook (you can tell, because of all the tomato and grease on the pages!). I don't know whether he couldn't find the book or whether he wanted a change, but this time he used a different recipe, something more authentically Italian, which specifies using milk. Lettice couldn't believe it: "bizarre" she said. I've never made a ragu with milk, although I've often thought I should - but it's so easy to keep on doing the same old thing. Now I think I will always use milk, because it was delicious - sweet (too sweet, said Horatio), thick, rich, smooth.

The book he used was Pasta, by Eric Treuille and Anna del Conte, but he simplified the recipe according to his taste, and what he didn't find in the fridge. Bacon? Nah. Bay leaf? Don't need one of them. Garlic? Of course. Nutmeg? He didn't bother to answer, just gave me one of those "are you mad?" looks that teenagers do so well. Full fat milk? Is there any other kind?

Obviously this is a recipe I'd have to adapt further - take out the butter, use lower fat milk, make sure the mince was extra lean. And I would use the flavourings - nutmeg is particularly good with red meats, although I'm never quite sure whether I can taste bayleaf unless it's in a fish pie.

Horatio's slightly simplified classic ragu bolognese

Fry a couple of onions in a mixture of butter and olive oil (60g & 2 tablespoons). When they're nearly cooked, add a finely chopped garlic clove. Tip in 500g mince, and brown it. Here Horatio, a cook after my own heart, added his own embellishment, some chopped chorizo (he had left out the 60g bacon specified in the original recipe). Then add 2 tbsp tomato puree, 150ml red wine, 150 ml stock. Bring to the boil, and simmer gently for two hours. While it cooks, add milk. You need to add 150 ml in total, two tablespoons at a time at 20-30 minute intervals. You'll know when it's ready - it's a lovely thick, rich sauce.

He ate this with pasta shells. I'd serve it with spaghetti. Delicious. I know because we ate the leftovers for lunch.

Kohl slaw

Well, we ate the kohlrabi last night. After a week of slightly dreading it, I can't now think what all the fuss was about: the taste is utterly familiar - like a cross between white cabbage and the stem of broccoli. Quite nice, really. It just looks as if it would taste disgusting.

I decided to keep it simple, partly because there were some middle-aged carrots which needed eating up besides the slightly-past-its-best kohlrabi. So kohl slaw. I wanted to keep the texture of the kohlrabi, so I cut it into matchsticks, then mixed it with fine chunks of carrot grated on the largest blade (more k than c).


















I made a breakthrough with coleslaws some years ago when I realised you don't have to dress them with mayonnaise. They taste much much better with some kind of vinaigrette - it's not just a heart-health thing. The dressing I made yesterday had lemon juice (and a little of the finely grated zest, too), grainy mustard, a speck of salt and a smaller speck of honey, all mixed up with some olive oil.

Next time there's a kohlrabi in the veg box, I'm going to make a gratin. I'd be happy to see one in the box, but, I have to say, I wouldn't go out of my way to buy one. And I probably wouldn't buy one in a shop if there was some other member of the cabbage family nearby. Do you think the reason they always turn up in a veg box is because they are easy to grow? I'm not sure I want to know the answer to that question!


PS Thank you Holler, Shauna, The Cottage Smallholder, Ian, Amanda, Freya and Paul for all your suggestions about what to do with the cabbage monster!

Pesto mash

We get through a lot of potatoes in this house. When we were engaged, several members of the family took me aside to tell me that Lucius didn't consider a meal to be a proper meal unless there were hot potatoes. This makes for a lot of last-minute work at a buffet party.

The problem is that everyone likes them done differently. Lucius likes plain boiled best, and roast potatoes. The boys also like them roasted. So do the girls, but they like little new potatoes in their skins cooked in olive oil with a couple of anchovies chucked in. I like those too. Eleanor likes mashed potato best, which makes Lucius pull a face, as he thinks it's a waste of a good potato. Lettice likes mash, too, but she likes it to have some sort of flavouring - olive oil, or grainy mustard, or pesto. I'd happily do without potatoes, although I do like the occasional bit of mash.

This week, Eleanor finished her final piece of work for her degree (drama and education), and came home to flop. So dinner was roast chicken with mash ("What, no roast potatoes?" said Alfred, indignantly). Plain mash. I make it with a good lot of skimmed milk, and the result is creamy, if that doesn't sound like a contradiction in terms.

I always make too much. On purpose. It's so useful to have cold mash in the fridge - to top a pie, to make farls of potato cake to eat for breakfast with bacon, or just to reheat. It can be a little forlorn, reheated mashed potato. But not if you mix it with pesto ... a great dollop of it, so that the mash is a lovely pea green. Then cover the dish, and put it in a hot oven for 20-30 minutes. Bliss.























I've posted this as an entry for Heart of the Matter 4, this time on the theme of vegetables. Also because a couple of people asked me what to do with pesto sauce once you'd made it. And because I wanted to say that the pesto I made this week is the most delicious I've ever tasted - because I've only ever eaten bought stuff before. Never again, if I can help it!

Pesto

Look, I know you all know how to make pesto, but when I began this blog, it was so that I could easily find the recipes I use all the time - so this post is for me. Except there's one thing - can those of you that have been making pesto longer than I have tell me whether it freezes well?

I ordered a 200g bag of basil from my organic box this week, and it came yesterday - a huge bag of fragrant leaves. The recipe was on the bag ... only what blogger do you know follows a recipe exactly? This is not quite what was on the bag - quick, delicious, and in my fridge, because I don't want to waste it if it doesn't freeze well.

6 cloves garlic
200g pine kernels
200g freshly grated parmesan
200g basil
olive oil - a good lot
salt and pepper (at the end)

Whizz everything except the salt, adding the oil in a drizzle until you get a smooth creamy liquid. Add the salt and pepper when you've got the consistency you want.

You could do this in a mortar, if you wanted to spend a little time pounding ... a job for sitting in the sun, I think.

Mine's in a lovely jar, and I covered it with a little oil to stop it discolouring.



PS We ate some for supper, the little bit I couldn't fit into the jar, neat, to accompany our vegetables. Alfred thought it was slightly too cheesy, Lucius and Lettice said it was perfect. I thought it was a beautiful shade of green, and that made Alfred laugh.

Lemon chicken

No picture, I'm afraid, but this was our delicious lunch (no point in waiting for other people to blow my trumpet for me!); you end up with chicken in a sharp, fresh lemon sauce:

In a wide pan, gently stew (in olive oil) sliced onions - so gently that they are just beginning to brown after half an hour. Push them to the side, and add chicken breast cut in half lengthways to make even-sized strips. Turn up the heat and brown the chicken on all sides (this will brown the onions a little, too). Then finely grate the zest of a lemon over the pan, and add the lemon juice. Turn the heat right down, cover, and cook for 15 minutes or so, until the chicken is cooked through. (For six, I used three or four onions, four chicken breasts, one lemon.)

Lettice made some mustard mash to go with this (potatoes mashed with milk and crunchy seedy mustard), and I stewed some chopped chard in olive oil. Lovely combination of flavours.

Char-sui and noodles

The recipe that follows is char sui-ishier than anything in Nigella's book, although that's what was open when I put the marinade together. A couple of pork tenderloins (aka pork fillet, why DO supermarkets like to re-name everything?) are sitting in their marinade in the fridge waiting to be cooked tomorrow night - when I'll be in a hurry and won't feel like starting from scratch.

In How to Eat, Nigella gives two recipes for char sui, one which is fairly Chinese, the other with what was in her fridge on the night. Well, what was in my fridge tonight didn't quite do her first recipe, so this is what I used for two fillets:

4 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
3 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp Madeira (no ginger wine or sweet sherry - EVER!)
2 tbsp runny honey
2 tbsp soft brown sugar

Tomorrow, I'll cook the meat (drained from its marinade) in a hot oven (220C) for 15 minutes, then turn it down to 160C until it's cooked (20-30 minutes, in my case both, because one is bigger than the other!). It needs basting with the sauce. When it's done, put the meat to one side, pour in the rest of the marinade, perhaps with a little water, and cook it through.

The resulting char sui is good hot or cold, cut into thin slices or little cubes (the meat you find in takeaway special fried rice). We're going to eat it with the noodles I made for lunch this week, and pak choi (from Riverford) dressed with oyster sauce.

Superquick noodles for lunch

Not even an attempt at authenticity, just a need for a quick, filling lunch that would involve vegetables and some of the leftover chicken sitting in my fridge.

Mix equal quantities (by eye, no need to obsess) of peanut butter, oil, soya sauce and chilli jam. This will take quite a long time if, like me, you've given up on ordinary peanut butter (full of palm oil, don't even think about it, it's the saturated fat as well as the orang utangs) and are finishing up a jar of the old-fashioned sort that separates like it used to when we were children. Boil the noodles. Mix. Add whatever you've got: today it was chopped chicken, spring onion and thin slices of red pepper. Next time it could easily involve cucumber. Or lightly cooked slices of pak choi. etc.

But some of you will have noticed from the paragraph above that I do obsess - it took me ages, and a lot of reading the small print on labels, to find a peanut butter that we can eat (in small quantities, it's still 50% fat, albeit mostly "good" ones): Organic Meridian Crunchy Peanut Butter.

If there was no chilli jam in the house, which sometimes happens, then I'd put in some ginger, garlic, perhaps a little nam pla. And it occurs to me that this sauce would be very good to pep up a bit of chicken, made in the morning and marinaded until it was time to start cooking supper.

I'm going to try the noodles out on the family at the weekend, with some home-made Char siu, along the lines Nigella calls char sui-ish ... in other words, I'm not going to consult a Chinese cookery book!


PS this is my entry for Heart of the Matter round three. It's pasta dishes this time - I didn't think Chinese noodles would count as pasta, but Ilva, who is hosting this round over at Lucullian Delights, says that it does ...