Category Archives: Recipes

The Big Breakfast Dinner

Posted on by

The Big Breakfast Dinner
So the man who lives upstairs is coming to dinner…. (this isn’t as creepy as it sounds, there is actually a flat that is adjacent to ours).  The young man who lives upstairs frequently pops over clutching a bottle of red wine, for good food and conversation. The state of the fridge is as sorry as ever and the torrents of rain are encouraging me not to leave the house. On top of that I really need to tackle the bombsite that I have called my room for the past 3 years in an attempt to pack for my final year. There is little in the fridge aside from the chocolate making ingredients for birthday presents, at least there is some peanut butter ganache (150g Bourneville chocolate, 2 dollops of peanut butter, a pinch of cayenne melted together) that I can pass as sauce for ice cream for dessert. There is even a little pine nut brittle left over from the Dean’s dinner that would compliment this perfectly and I might even throw in a few frozen raspberries for colour, so dessert is under control.
            There is always the salmon. I feel bad that I seem to never give my parents any meat. I constantly construct my meals around fish and leftovers, and this is no exception. I spotted some mashed potato in the back and had the idea that to make things a little different I would make breakfast for dinner. I’ve never made potato pancakes before but I thought I would have a go. Potato pancakes, confit salmon, horseradish crème fraiche and green beans with almonds. So I begun by putting a good 3 inches of oil into a deep frying pan with a dash of truffle oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, peppercorns, a bay leaf and some salt. Then I whisked 2 eggs, 125ml milk, salt, pepper, lemon juice, vanilla extract and the mash together before adding a dash of baking powder and 75g flour to create my pancake batter. Then I mixed a large spoonful of horseradish into two spoonful’s of crème fraiche with black pepper and then I dry toasted some flaked almonds. Then I went to the gym, as you do.
            Feeling incredibly, virtuous, sweaty and fired up to the soundtrack of Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’, I set about finishing off the supper. It was quite a simple assembly job at this point. I set the oil to a low simmer and put the salmon in and covered it.

Meanwhile I heated a large frying pan with a knob of butter in it till melted then placed a few dollops of pancake mix in and cooked each for about 2-3mins on the bottom and 1min after flipping them. For the salmon I turned the salmon about 4mins in and cooked for a further 4mins before turning off the heat and leaving them to sit in the oil for a little. Then I steamed the green beans, drained and mixed them with the almonds and a grating of parmesan. It was quite tasty, but the pancakes could possibly have done with a drizzle of the salmon oil. Not quite breakfast but I think it’s time pancakes branched out to other meals. Is it awful to say I’m seeing the flip side of pancakes…..

                                          

Everybody needs good neighbours

Posted on by

Everybody needs good neighbours
            It is always an exciting moment when the neighbours come to dinner. I’d been asking my parents to throw a dinner party for ages and as an added bonus the neighbour is a fellow foodie! So since the Great British Menu website had been so successful for the Dean’s dinner I decided to replicate that success. They turned up for dinner with the man who lives upstairs thrown in for good measure and I started my cooking following a couple of glasses of champagne and a little conversation.
            My opening dilemma was that of the plates. I didn’t have enough for both starter and pudding of the square variety and my mothers suggestion that I just ‘wash them up’ led to a lecture from me that I wasn’t Cinderella and was in fact doing this party for them out of the goodness of my heart. (Who am I kidding, its more fun for me than them!) After this she kindly conjured up some extra plates from somewhere and preparation could begin. I pretty much prepped everything before(the biggest secret of my dinner parties). For the starter I had decided on goats cheese, beetroot and olive tuile. http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/goats-cheese-recipe-beetroot-black-oliveI made the mousse (filling my beloved piping bags) and chopped the beetroot with ease and the balsamic glaze was easy too. The tuile I approached with difficulty. My hands may be somewhat numbed thanks to years of thinking I was too good for oven gloves but it is still a challenge to shape tuiles when they are incredibly hot but harden as soon as they cool. I think if I made tuiles again I would invest in a silicon mat, because the hardest part was making the mixture thin enough on the baking tray and a silicon mat would have helped this process as well as allowing me to shape it without leaving burns all over my fingers. After about 7 attempts I had enough misshapen tuiles to pass off in the starter and actually felt rather proud that I had been teaching myself more diverse techniques. Yes they looked like slightly odd pieces of bark but I decided that added to the charm of the plate. I designed the plate once again in what my sister calls my Modrian style. 

            The main was my Achilles heel. The main course at the last party had been a little cold because I had taken too long plating up and here with my braised pork, wild mushroom and fondant potato it was going to be hard making the greyish meat look attractive. (I hasten to add here that apparently this was delicious, think pulled pork) http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/pork-neck-recipe-wild-mushrooms-wild-garlicThe other issue I had had earlier that week was the lack of wild garlic in early September. So I messed around a little with the recipe (apologies Christoffer Hruskova). Luckily there is a very good butcher and fruit and veg stall near where I live so I managed to get the pork neck (a lovely cheap meat by the way) and a lovely mix of wild mushrooms, dried. As a pitiful compromise for the lack of wild garlic I decided to use a mix of normal garlic and spinach. That and rehydrating the mushrooms overnight made up for the lack of ingredients plus the smell of the mushrooms was amazing as they rehydrated. I also substituted the berries with goji berries (apparently a superfood) and figured truffle was too expensive so used truffle oil instead. This was almost the most successful dish of the evening.
            However the real success was the mango millefeuille. For the main course my dad had opened the really good red wine and I was one glass down as I plated this up, I think it added to the overall rugged charm of the plate. An unusual dish, this veered away from my usual devotion to modern French style cooking. My dad was even keen on the caramelized chilli (I expect the gold leaf on top helped too, people are generally like magpies).  http://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/caramel-mille-feuille-recipe-mango-chilliAdmittedly the pastry sheets I made were on the more obese side than the ones in Frances Atkins’ picture, and there was slightly less gold leaf, but the neighbor sent a nice card over afterwards so I must have done something right. 
(their photo not mine)

Truffled Bacon Pasta

Posted on by

Truffled Bacon Pasta
It’s only a few days till I go to Uni and I’ve been to London all day, for once the last thing I feel like doing is cooking. But mum and I have to eat. Because we have realised once I leave, virtually no-one is eating at home I decide that the only thing is to cook a simple pasta dish with what I can conceivably find in the freezer. The other problem is that my mum has headed out to help out at the schools ‘Boden evening’ – possibly the most middle class you can get – and I have no idea when she is back so a speedy dish is of the essence. The good news is dad is in France so we are allowed to have onions! There was a little cream and some bacon in the freezer – a carbonara would work rather well.
            When she finally walked in the door I was given my instructions with military precision, we had all of 15minutes before she returned to hoard the perfectly twee mums clothes that make up Boden. She was rather chuffed with her purchases, and at a discount. So I was looking for a very quick meal. I chopped up the half frozen bacon and fried it, simultaneously boiling pasta in another pan. I sprinkled a little salt on to the bacon and at this point spotted some dried mushrooms in the cupboard so I rehydrated them with a small amount of boiling water. When the bacon was crispy I added the whole lot of mushrooms and water to the pan, a little more salt, some chopped garlic and some dried herbs de provence. Thyme would be the best herb at this point but I had none. (pardon the pun) I let it bubble a little before adding a splash of sherry vinegar, some cream and a drizzle of truffle oil (my new favourite ingredient – lifts any dish). I added beans to the pasta’s last few minutes of cooking then poured a little pasta water into the sauce, drained the pasta and mixed the sauce in. Good thing there was enough leftover for lunch the next day – even better cold. 

Wot We Had in the Fridge

Posted on by

Wot We Had in the Fridge
            Yet again I return for one of my short visits home to an empty fridge, complaints from my father of ‘your mother cooked baked potato with tuna TWICE IN A ROW’ and ‘ but dinner in college is so easy, who needs to grocery shop?’ welcomed me. So I was forced to feel around in the fridge for something to cobble together for dinner. What I found was, new potatoes, some rather old preserved lemons, one last dollop of mayonnaise, butter, a few leftovers from the Neighbours dinner and some dodgy looking green beans. The green beans were quickly discarded as they smelt like wet fish. So instead I turned to the freezer and found mackerel fillets, a good start, and some frozen beans. I used the lemons as my sole inspiration for a Moroccan pan-fried mackerel with rose infused crushed potatoes.
            Firstly I boiled the potatoes with salt, pepper, a bay leaf, garlic, parsley and the mint. Meanwhile I toasted some blanched almonds, added the chopped lemons a good 150g or so of butter, salt, pepper, ras al hanout, parsley and a little vanilla extract and cooked till golden. When the potatoes were boiled I simply crushed them with mayonnaise and a dash of rose extract. Finally I dusted the mackerel fillets with flour, pan fried them (1 min on top 4min skin side down) and poured the sauce over, add some green beans and you have a dish.
            I even managed to provide dessert which was eagerly devoured by my father who had been surviving on the afore mentioned potatoes grudgingly. I simply used the salted caramel and caramel mousse left over from the Neighbour’s dinner, white chocolate I found in the cupboard, vanilla ice cream and cherries I had actually originally bought for my breakfast. Oh well needs….must.

Pea Pesto and Billionaire’s Shortbread

Posted on by

The main issue with starting to have a reputation among your friends as a chef is that they tend to expect a lot from you when you cook for them. Earlier this summer I was staying with friends while working at a catering and events company. There were often up to 10 of us staying in the house all out working during the day, so the obvious solution to getting everybody fed at the end of the day was a food rota. When it came to my turn I was faced with the task of cooking not only for 10 people, but also a vegetarian. While I was perfectly happy cooking chicken for the majority, cooking a vegetarian dish (especially one that excluded quite a lot of cheese that I found out is in fact not vegetarian) pushed me out of my comfort zone. At this point I came across a golden recipe that I have used many times now to a great reception. It’s good with pasta, on toast and even just on it’s own.
Pea Pesto
180g Peas, defrosted
35g Pine Nuts, toasted
2 cloves garlic, crushed
handful mint
handful parsley
80ml olive oil
2 pinches sea salt
pepper
1.     Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and blitz till smooth
While working at my internship I relished in being incredibly busy all day, like my mother and sister I find it hard to stop once I’ve started moving around. So on my days off I usually had no idea what to do. Alone in someone else’s house is a bit disconcerting anyway but with the nearest town a train ride away I tended to get a little bored. So I decided to bake. However my baking was limited to the ingredients of the corner shop 20mins down the road. I decided in the end the best idea would be to combine some of my favourite flavours, shortbread, peanuts and chocolate and hope that it turned out alright. This time it worked and one of my hosts nicknamed it the Billionaire’s Shortbread.
Billionaires Shortbread
For the base
230g unsalted butter, softened
140g brown sugar
340g plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
For the topping
115g unsalted butter
200g brown sugar
115g honey
2 tablespoons heavy cream
140g salted roasted peanuts
60g unsalted cashews

100g milk chocolate chips

1.     Preheat the oven to 180oC and line a 9×13-inch pan with foil, leaving enough for a 2-inch overhang on all sides.
2.     Cream butter and sugar together till smooth. Add in flour and salt to make a crumbly dough.
3.     Press the dough into the tin, then prick the top with a fork.
4.     Bake for 20mins till golden brown
5.     Meanwhile combine the butter, sugar, honey and cream over a low heat and stir. Bring to a simmer and simmer for 1 minute.
6.     Take it off the heat and stir in the nuts.
7.     Remove the base from the oven and immediately pour the topping over.
8.     Return to the oven and bake for 20mins.
9.     As soon as you take it out of the oven sprinkle over the chocolate chips and leave to cool.
10.When cool chop into squares. 


The Daily Experiment

Posted on by

The Daily Experiment
Bacon care of business
Opened the fridge once again today to a hopeless mismatch of assorted leftovers and random ingredients. Spotting the pancetta pieces I had bought earlier for one of these sorts of occasions my first thought was a cassoulet. This was quickly discarded due to the lack of sausages or beans… So instead I decided on a lentil hotpot; potatoes, lentils and bacon – I could go from there. First I pan fried the bacon pieces till golden. While waiting for this I got bored so opened the spice cupboard, added a few juniper berries, coriander seeds, pinch of mixed spice, salt and pepper.

When brown, I added a spoonful of honey, the lentils, found some red wine, a beef stock cube and hot water, thyme I found in the fridge and a bay leaf. It smelt pretty good by this point so I poured it straight into an ovenproof dish. To finish I sliced up some potatoes thinly, layered them up on top of the dish, drizzled over walnut oil, salt and pepper and put in the oven at 140oC for about an hour.

           

At this point I turned the soundtrack of Matilda loud was singing somewhat un-tunefully when my mum came in with a bowl of apples she’d just picked from outside the house, the only thing our pathetic excuse for a garden comes up with….. (Although to be honest the hopscotch and climbing wall sometimes makes up for this). Just because I never like to see food go to waste (and she told me to use them) I decided to experiment with baked apples. I cored them, placed them on foil and filled the centres with what I found in the cupboard. This turned out to be honey, vanilla extract, cinnamon, sultanas, pumpkin seeds, pinch of salt and the last dregs of a bottle of amaretto that looked like it had been around before I was born. I wrapped them up, cooked them on high for about 20mins and they came up quite mushy, but delicious nonetheless with a bit of vanilla ice cream.