Frozen roast potatoes

We're having a bit of a water crisis here - multiple leaks. Thankfully in the garden, but water pouring out of various pipes. We think Thames Water must have changed the pressure, otherwise why would so many taps and pipes spring leaks simultaneously?

Lucius is hard at work mending them ... it's a struggle, because he's had to work out where the pipes go (we hired a machine which was a 21st century take on a water diviner - our mains water comes in diagonally under the house, and there's a leak in the pipe) ... then dig deep holes, then pump out the water, and only then start sorting out the problems. And so the water is often switched off at weekends. Which makes life tricky in the kitchen.

Roast lamb for lunch today. Couldn't make roast potatoes - you need water to wash off the grainy red earth which locates them as lovely Devon produce. Panic. Rushed out to the supermarket and bought - frozen roast potatoes. I couldn't bring myself to look at the ingredients until I'd got them home and into the oven.


Potato 88%, vegetable oil, batter (wheat flour; modified potato starch; modified tapioca starch; rice flour; salt; skimmed milk powder; dextrose; Colours: curcumin, capsanthin), hydrogenated vegetable oil.

CONTAINS: WHEAT, GLUTEN, MILK.
MADE FROM REAL POTATOES

Not very inspiring, somehow.

I didn't tell the others what I'd done. I asked them what they thought. Good golden colour (although Horatio thought it was suspiciously uniform). Fake. Despite being made from real potatoes (what other kind are there?). Not as nice as yours (phew!). Funny texture. A little like that story Nigel Slater tells in Toast about how he came home from school looking forward to mash for dinner, and found that he was eating a form of wallpaper paste - his stepmother had bought Smash for the first time.

So we won't be doing that again. Next weekend, I'll make sure I've prepared the potatoes before the water goes off - you can peel potatoes a couple of days in advance and keep them covered in water in the fridge, although it's a good idea to change the water after 24 hours. Useful if you've got a huge crowd coming.

Having said all that, I was intrigued by the idea of coating roasties with batter. It reminded me of recipes where the parboiled potatoes are rolled in semolina to give them extra crunch. So I'll try that next time we have roast potatoes ... although if anyone has tried it, I'd be pleased to hear their thoughts.

Lentil soup with ruby chard

Lentil soup for lunch ... which needs careful cooking, because Lucius thinks he doesn't like lentils. He liked this soup, though. It's the autumn version of something I make quite often for a quick, cheap lunch - bosky with mushrooms and vibrant with chard.

Lentil soup with ruby chard

2 medium onions
5 handfuls of red lentils
splash of Marsala or other alcohol
dried mushrooms
good stock
chard

Chop the onions and fry gently in olive oil until golden. Soak a few dried mushrooms in boiling water. Add red lentils - about the same quantity as onions. Stir. Add a splash of Marsala (or wine, or brandy, or whatever you've got - but don't worry if you haven't got anything suitable, it's not essential, but it does add a layer of complexity to the end result).

Drain the mushrooms and add them. Then pour in stock to cover all this, enough to fill two bowls. Measure it in your serving bowls if you like - this works because some of the liquid will evaporate as the soup simmers and cooks. I used chicken stock, which I make virtually every week, an effortless chore which produces something cheaper, better and tastier than anything you can buy. But this is not a competition, it's lunch, so use whatever you've got - homemade, cube/powder, water (and I'd use water in preference to powder/cube).

It takes around 15 minutes for the lentils to cook. During this time, shred some chard or other greens. Add them to the soup when it's ready, they only need to be wilted.

We ate this with a little rosemary citrus salt. Lucius remarked on the complexity of flavours, and barely appeared to notice that he was enjoying lentil soup.

Sorry, once again no photograph. This time because of incompetence: I forgot to switch off the camera yesterday, so the battery was flat, and I don't have a spare. Shame, because the ruby chard made it look so pretty, not that boring brown that is the look of so many lentil dishes.

Smoked haddock for breakfast

There weren't any kippers left by the time I got to Waitrose yesterday evening. They're our favourite Saturday breakfast. What to do? Then I spotted some lovely white smoked haddock ... a little piece cost pennies. Delicious baked with some slow-roasted tomatoes fished out of their oil and a poached egg on top.

Too sleepy to take a photograph. Sorry.

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!

Chilli and pepper chutney

I made this quickly a couple of weeks ago when I was using up the veg in the bottom of the fridge before the arrival of the new organic box. I gave a bottle to Dick, who loves home-made chutney, and kept the other one. I've only just opened it, so it's only now that I know it's good enough to blog. It is, and there's just time to make some before there are no more peppers for the year.

This recipe came from Jamie Oliver in the Telegraph Magazine a few weeks ago; I've got a feeling it's an extract from his new book. I've simplified the method, to make it quicker.

Chilli and pepper chutney

red chillis (I used 4, Jamie specifies 8-10)
8 red peppers
a splash of olive oil
2 chopped onions (mine weren't red, Jamie's were)
a sprig of chopped rosemary leaves
2 bay leaves
2 tsp cinnamon (couldn't find a stick)
salt and pepper
100g brown sugar
150 ml balsamic vinegar

Start by sweating the onion in oil with the seasonings. Do it slowly, it should take at least 20 minutes until they are soft and golden.

If you want to skin your chilli and peppers, do so; I didn't bother. I took out the seeds and cores, then blitzed them all together in the Magimix (I left a few small lumps, but I was concerned not to leave great big bits of chilli, so it ended up quite finely chopped).

Add the pepper and chilli mush, together with the sugar and vinegar. Cook slowly until there's no more liquid. You should keep an eye on it, but you don't need to hang over it all the time; a little stir every so often will stop it sticking. I don't remember how long it took to cook, but allow an hour. It will be dark and thick when it is ready. Pour into sterilised jars (either run them through the dishwasher, or put them in a warm oven for half an hour or so).

You can use this straight away, but all chutneys improve with a bit of keeping.

Roasting tomatoes

I've roasted a lot of tomatoes this year, because that way we'll have some summer sunshine in the depths of winter. About this time last year I decided that we would never again eat anything out of season, nor would we eat any more air-freighted food. I didn't then realise how boring we would find our winter diet, because I had made no preparations. By spring, everyone was longing for salad leaves, and, above all, for tomatoes (they're just not the same out of a tin, useful though those are).

This year, I am determined that we won't have such a restricted winter palate. One of the things I have been doing is roasting tomatoes for the winter. Some are stored in jars of oil in the fridge, but, this year, while the learning curve is still steep, most are in boxes in the freezer (some are frozen whole, others are already made into sauce).

I've tried several different ways with roasting, and have found that slower really is better. One problem with true slow-roasting is that taking 12 hours to cook a tomato isn't always convenient - you either have to be cutting up toms first thing when you're barely awake, or last thing at night when you'd much rather be brushing your teeth and going to bed. So I've experimented with faster/hotter.

For all these tomatoes, you prepare them the same way: cut them in half, put them cut side up in a roasting pan, sprinkle them with thyme and olive oil. If you like you can add some unpeeled garlic cloves, particularly if you're going to make tomato sauce at the end. If you like you can peel them when they're cooked, but I don't often bother.

Many many people leaving comments on my blog say that they'd like to cook from scratch but don't have time. This is an easy way to begin (and it's not too late to make a start this year, although there's probably only another week or so in southern England). When there's time and energy, a little effort - 10 minutes in two bursts - gives easy fuss-free ingredients for the days to come. You can re-heat them and use them as a vegetable (great on toast for breakfast), or snip them into salads, or onto pasta for an instant sauce.


I've written down the pros and cons of the various ways to roast tomatoes, mainly because I'll have forgotten by next summer, but also to help you with any end-of-season glut. I wonder if it would work with green tomatoes? Please let me know if you have any information on that.


Here's a list of findings:

1. Alanna's slow-roasted tomatoes are the best, the Rolls Royce of tomato roasting. Put them on at 100C max, and they'll take at least 12 hours, depending on their size.

2. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's method given in the Guardian on 18 August 2007, is to put them in a medium oven 180C for 45 minutes to an hour. This is fine if you are in a hurry, but doesn't bring out all the sweetness of the fruit, so makes a slightly uninteresting result (this is the counsel of perfection, they're fine, it's just that you can do better for no more real effort). Great for when you're going on to make ketchup or sauce.

3. Skye Gyngell says that she slow-roasts tomatoes at 100C for 3-4 hours. I haven't tried this, because I can't believe you'd get a good result after so short a time at that low temperature.

4. Nigella Lawson has something she calls moonblush tomatoes. Here, you put them into a very hot oven, 220C, and switch it off straight away. You then leave them for 12 hours. This is best done overnight, because it is really important that you don't disturb them until everything has come right down to room temperature. I did it with small tomatoes, as specified, and had to give them a bit of a blitz in a warm oven at the end. I think you'd need to use cherry tomatoes for a decent result. That said, it's a useful way of using residual heat from the oven if you've been cooking in the evening.

5. When Sarah Raven roasts cherry tomatoes for pasta (with balsamic vinegar and honey added to the usual ingredients specified above), she pricks them all so that she can skin them easily when they're cooked, and she puts them in at 180C for 20 minutes. Hmm. But in her defence, she's not actually cooking these to conserve.

6. Mary Berry's Aga-Dried Tomatoes specify six hours in the simmering oven, which should be 120C. I have done this, and it works. Not so long as Alanna's recipe, so easier to fit into your life. A good compromise.

7. 2-3 hours at 150-160C is even easier to fit into your life, and much better than one hour at 180C.



All of these can be stored completely covered in oil in a sealed jar kept in the fridge. They should last 3-4 months. The tomato-y flavoured oil can be used for cooking. They can also be stored in boxes in the freezer. You can make them into sauce and ketchup before freezing if you like.

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?

Home-made vanilla extract

Lovely, easy-peasy recipe, the sort you just have to try straight away. Christmas presents (if you start this week). Once you've started, it can go on forever with the smallest effort. Melissa, at The Traveller's Lunchbox, whose idea it was in the first place, says this dark fragrant liquid gets more complex as time goes on. Lovely for baking.

This is what you do:

Get a one-litre jar. Put in all the pure vanilla extract you've got (I had 1/3rd of a bottle). DO NOT use that chemical vanilla essence; if you don't have any extract, leave out this step, it will just take a little longer to brew. Add cheap vodka, or any other spirits (rum? gin?). Chuck in all the vanilla pods in the house (at least six). Seal. Put somewhere cool and dark. Forget it. Add used vanilla pods when you think about it (rinse off the custard first!).

After at least six weeks, but the longer the better, strain off a little of the liquid into a tiny bottle. Add more spirit and more beans. (You can take out some old ones at this point if you like.) Seal. Put somewhere cool and dark. Forget it. Add used vanilla pods when you think about it (rinse off the custard first!). And so on, and so on, and so on.

If you think you might get into large-scale production, here's a link for buying vanilla in bulk in the UK. For the moment, I'm going to stick to buying it in Waitrose.











I'm including this in Heart of the Matter 8: Baking, which I'm hosting this month, because it occurs to me that this strongly-flavoured essence of vanilla would be wonderful for adding complex flavour to baking with little or no fat ... it's a sad fact of life that a lot of the flavour in all cooking comes from fat, particularly saturated fats - which means that, if you take those out of your cooking, you need to work hard on bringing in flavours from elsewhere.

Thanks, Melissa!

Spaghetti con funghi

Sometimes the simplest really is the best. This was Lettice's order of spaghetti con funghi at the little cafe in Valvona and Crolla in Edinburgh in August. Pasta, good olive oil, mushrooms quickly fried in oil, parsley. What more could you want?

Now, of course, is THE mushroom moment - except that it isn't. Normally at this time of year our garden is full of wild mushrooms to pick and eat (especially the puffballs, which appear the size of footballs overnight, and which you can slice thick and fry in oil and eat like a vegetarian sirloin steak). But this year, so far, not a one, and I've looked in all the places we normally find funghi.

My mother-in-law had a novel approach to identifying fungus when she lived here: she had a little pamphlet called Poisonous Mushrooms of Great Britain. If it wasn't in the book, she ate it.

I always thought I'd like to adopt the same cavalier attitude until our friend Richard Fortey came to inspect our garden one warm October. He's a naturalist with many interests, and his advanced knowledge of fungi makes him one of the Oxfordshire county mushroom specialists - for example, the police might turn to him in a case of serious suspected mushroom poisoning. He found something like 17 different types of small fungi on the croquet lawn alone: he laid them out on a plate, some of them so similar it was hard to tell them apart. Two were looked to my untrained eyes virtually identical - well, one was edible, the other highly poisonous. Since then, I've stuck to the ones I know are fine, which we eat every year.

It's pouring with rain here now, for the first time in weeks. Fingers crossed for a couple of warm days once it stops ... and then I'll be out looking for field mushrooms and puffballs - but not on the croquet lawn!

Low-fat blueberry muffins

Help! I've never made a muffin before, and they didn't turn out as well as they should have done: they weren't particularly well cooked through after 25 minutes in a hot oven, and they didn't rise much. However, they were extremely tasty, and with a pretty good texture (on the outside parts that were cooked). So I'll make them again ... if someone can tell me how to cook them better - longer? hotter oven? or just a bit more baking powder? I'd really appreciate some advice ...

Low-fat blueberry muffins










150g plain flour
50g granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs
50 ml sunflower oil
175 ml skimmed milk
finely grated lemon zest

150g blueberries

Sift together the dry ingredients. Whisk together the wet ingredients, and fold this into the flour mixture. Add the blueberries, and spoon into a 12-cup muffin tin (preferably lined with papers, otherwise well oiled).

Bake at 200C for 20-25 minutes.


What could I do better to make these muffins rise higher and cook through?



This post is for Heart of the Matter 8: Baking, which I am hosting this month. I'm sure many of you know the "rules" by now, but here's a recap: all you have to do is to send me the link to your entry at joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk before 23 October, make a link to Joanna's Food and to the HotM blog as well if you like. I'll post the round up on both blogs. In order to keep the focus on heart health we ask you to consider this as a one-entry event, i.e. we prefer that you don't use your post for other events as well.

I'm really looking forward to reading all your recipes and tips ...

PS you CAN include bread in this if you want, but I think we might save that for another time ....

Spiced chicken livers

These are quick, easy, delicious, low-fat, a treat ... and something you should try even if you think you don't like liver (like my pasta con sarde for sardine haters). The gentle spicing emphasises the creamy sweetness of the meat. I can't tell you what a treat this is, at £1.59p for 400g organic chicken liver in Waitrose (and I think organic is probably a given for liver).

This recipe is from Good Tempered Food by Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Spiced chicken livers

400g chicken livers
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp Maldon salt
1 tsp peppercorns
2 dssp flour

Dry fry the cumin and coriander seeds until they start to brown. Tip them into a bowl and bash them with a pestle or the end of a rolling pin. Add the flour and the rest of the spices. Coat the livers in this mixture, and fry in hot olive oil for a couple of minutes each side.

Serve on a bed of mixed leaves with the juices poured over.

This will do two for a light lunch, or 4-5 as a starter.


PS Some of you may be surprised to see a recipe for chicken liver on this blog, because it is high in dietary cholesterol. This is disputed stuff, but my understanding is that dietary cholesterol is not on the banned list, as it does not translate into the kind of cholesterol that clogs up arteries. Here's up-to-date information on dietary cholesterol from Harvard, where a lot of the research has been carried out.

Meme: change begins at home

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke

Melanie at Bean Sprouts has very kindly nominated me for her new Change Begins at Home award. Those who live with me know full well how little I deserve this ... I have long thought that my blog makes me sound a lot further down the road than I really am. Smug, even (at breakfast this morning I read in a newspaper someone describe baking bread as a smug activity ... now I am fretting, but I suspect I should really be giving up reading newspapers).

I nominate Riana at Garlic Breath, whose year of no shopping has evolved into a slow food life ... find the post about the melons she scrumped, it's very funny ... and the one about the death of her father-in-law, no longer at the head of the table, which I found moving because it was so understated.

The award rules are:

1. Nominate three bloggers who epitomise "Change begins at home"

2. Link back to the person who nominated you, and link back to Melanie's original explanation of Change begins at home

3. When you receive the award, you may display the "Change begins at home" button on your blog.

Thanks, Melanie!

Update on yeast in quick oat loaf

The quick oat loaf I made the other day was finished up at breakfast this morning, and is particularly good toasted. However, it was a little too yeasty ... I specified 2 tsp dried yeast, when one would have done. All because I couldn't find the little bit of paper that floats around my kitchen and study with the yeast conversion amounts. Here it is:

10g fresh yeast = 5g dried yeast = 3g fast yeast (the sort that comes in 7g packets)

Free Burma

This post is in support of the peaceful and lawful protests which have been taking place in Burma, a day of action by bloggers lucky enough to live in the free world to highlight the part played by brave Burmese bloggers who have played such a crucial role in telling the world what is happening in Burma.





There's something clever you can do to turn the graphic into a hyperlink, but I'm not techie enough, so here's the link to Free Burma. Please follow it, and do what you can today to support the people of Burma.


Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke

Quick oat loaf

I've been making a lot of soda bread recently, in fact I can't remember when I last bought a loaf of bread - if there's no bread in the house, I can have one on the table in less than an hour. Easier than a trip to the shops. But I can't help feeling that making bread without using yeast is cheating.

So I'm making a starter (because the last one died of neglect), and I'm trying this lazy loaf ... it's proving in the oven as I write this.

Quick oat loaf

200g rolled oats
325g spelt flour
2 tsp dried yeast (see update on this)
1 tsp Maldon salt
250 ml skimmed milk
250 ml water

Mix the dry ingredients, add the liquids. Stir to a porridge. Leave to soak for 20 minutes to soften the oats (don't bother if you're in a hurry).










Dollop into a large loaf tin and put it into your cold oven. Switch it on to 110C. After 45 minutes, turn it up to 180C and cook for an hour.











The method comes from Nigella Express, but I've changed the ingredients around so that it's bread, rather than a tea loaf. The oats and spelt make it a healthy and tasty alternative to a wheat loaf.

Hokey pokey / cinder toffee / honeycomb

It's not exactly healthy, but it's certainly fat-free ... a low cholesterol treat. It's fun and easy to make, and you don't have to be exact with the quantities, because all the recipes you'll ever find for it vary a little.

Hokey pokey / cinder toffee / honeycomb

100-200g caster sugar
4 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

Grease a tin. Or use a piece of greased parchment/foil (that's what Nigella suggests). Stir the sugar and syrup together in a large saucepan, then bring to the boil. When it's a nice golden colour (a couple of minutes), take it off the heat and stir in the bicarb. It will whoosh up. Turn this golden cloud onto your greased surface and wait until it's set. Bash it up.

It's hard to find treats for people on low-cholesterol diets - another one worth trying is my pretend fudge - which many people prefer to the real deal!

PS: You could coat your hokey pokey / cinder toffee / honeycomb in chocolate for a do-it-yourself Crunchie (how ON EARTH do they get it so straight?).

Meme: Nice matters

Tanna, bless her, has nominated me a nice blogger. There was a time, in my teens and 20s, when I would have thought that nice was a bit of an insult, but now I regard it as a great compliment. Nice ... I'm not sure what I've done to deserve it, but THANKS Tanna.

This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you’ve been awarded, please pass it on to 7 others who you feel are deserving of this award.

Well, of course I'd really like to nominate Tanna for this one, but then we'd be going round in ever-decreasing circles. She's kind, she's fun, her oat bread is FANTASTIC ...

So instead: there's Melanie at Bean Sprouts, who writes about her allotment, her bees, recycling, green issues ... she's a busy lady, but she always finds time to answer questions and be helpful to those who are taking their first steps on a sustainable journey. Nice ..

Amanda at Figs Olives Wine is always there with a supportive comment, and finding a post on her beautiful blog always makes my day. Nice ...

I'm also going to nominate Susan Beth and Kevin at A Year in Bread, because the whole blog is such a nice thing to do: they're each posting a monthly discussion of a particular aspect of baking bread - it makes for fascinating reading, because three master bakers have such very different ideas about the same topic. Nice ...

Everything about Hannah's Country Kitchen is nice - her gentleness, the recipes, the cakes she decorates for her family.

It was nice to find an instant response to my plea for heart-healthy cake and biscuits. It came from Bee, her first comment on my blog. When I followed the link, I found a wonderful site, Dining Hall, dedicated to helping food bloggers with technical issues. Nice? I should say so.

And, of course, there's Ilva, my co-host at Heart of the Matter. Lucullian Delights is the nicest possible start to the day - a beautiful photograph, some thought-provoking words, a fresh-tasting recipe.

HotM 8: Baking

Baking, for those watching their cholesterol and seeking a heart-healthy diet, is a minefield. I am the sort of blogger who would enthusiastically join the Daring Bakers - but all that cooking we can't eat ... it seems a little crazy. All those eggs, all that butter. There's only so much bread you can eat.

In the three years since Lucius's heart attack, I've found delicious ways round lots of the problems - what to do instead of cheese, how to make delicious heart-healthy puds that feel indulgent - but I've never really cracked cake. Or biscuits. I bought by mail-order a book called Low-fat Baking by Linda Fraser. I've never cooked anything from it, or felt remotely tempted to do so. I nearly threw it out last month. Now, this October, I'm giving it one last chance. And I'm going to share the results with you.

You'll have realised by now that this post is a cry for help ... we're looking for heart-healthy baking recipes. That means NO butter and not much marge. Not many egg yolks. No cream. No cheese to speak of. Not a lot of oil, even if it is olive oil. You see the problem. Off the top of my head, we're down to meringues and macaroons. As we're all after a healthier lifestyle, and as SO many food bloggers like to bake, I feel sure that you've all got at least one delicious yet low-fat cake or biscuit recipe that you use in your kitchen ... you'd be doing me, and countless others, a huge favour if you'd share it.


I'm sure many of you know the "rules" by now, but here's a recap: all you have to do is to send me the link to your entry at joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk before 23 October, make a link to Joanna's Food and to the HotM blog as well if you like. I'll post the round up on both blogs. In order to keep the focus on heart health we ask you to consider this as a one-entry event, i.e. we prefer that you don't use your post for other events as well.

I'm really looking forward to reading all your recipes and tips ...

PS you CAN include bread in this if you want, but I think we might save that for another time ....

Polyunsaturated herb dumplings for stew

When we were in Edinburgh, I was talking to a Scots nationalist who said, irritatingly, that the English had no sense of their own identity. I thought - think - that he is wrong, but it is undoubtedly true that we are not assiduous cooks of our indiginous cuisine.

So yesterday, to go with an oxtail stew, I made dumplings. Nice, light, polyunsaturated dumplings. With parsley. Delicious. And very English. Better than haggis, no?

4 oz plain flour (it was a very ancient cookery book, this sort of cooking is deeply unfashionable, but that's to say 125g)
2 level tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 oz (30-40g) heart-healthy margerine (I used Flora)
1 egg (next time I'll use only the white)
a handful of chopped parsley
a little skimmed milk

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, then rub in the marge. I did this in a Magimix. Add the chopped parsley and egg, then a little milk to bind it all into a stiff dough. You won't need much, in fact, the less you use, the lighter the dumplings will be.

Flour your hands, then make little marble-sized balls of dough, and drop them into your piping hot stew 20 minutes before you want to eat. When you take the lid off, they'll be three or four times the size, light and airy.


A lovely old-fashioned treat, and particularly good when there are lots of people wanting to eat not much stew ... which I suppose is why they were invented in the first place. And not a hint of saturated fat (once you've removed the egg yolk, which is only there to add flavour, but you don't need that if there are plenty of herbs, and if your stew is tasty).

Steak with lemon and thyme

Delicious dinner last night for me and Horatio, while Lucius was out singing (Mozart Mass in C) - get the butcher to cut an extra-thick sirloin or rump steak (say, two inches). Grill it for four minutes on each side, then rest it for four minutes a side in a bath of olive oil, thyme, juice and zest of a lemon, salt and plenty of pepper. Cut it across in ribbons. Lovely rare meat, without the is-it? isn't-it? bother we always seem to have with individual steaks.

From Nigella Express. Good, but not that quick, by the time you've made a salad and - in this house - organised the potatoes. But it's easy, providing you've done the shopping well, at a butcher, rather than a supermarket, and would be particularly good to multiply up for a crowd.