Pasta With Ricotta, Broad Beans, and Mint

I always get excited when broad beans turn up in our weekly veg box, because they're one of the best flavours of summer for me.  I'm a recent convert to the joy of the humble broad bean, and because of that I'm quite evangelical about them.  They're so yummy!  They key is all in the peeling.  You absolutely have to pod them and then denude the beans of their strange, rubbery outer skin.  That's what makes them chewy and horrible, and it also makes them prone to over-cooking, because it's harder to tell when they're perfectly al dente within that greyish bubble of skin.  I agree, it is a ridiculous amount of labour for one small vegetable, but it's quite therapeutic to sit in front of the television and pod away.  Try it once and you'll be an evangelical convert too, I promise.

Last night we consulted the oracle that is Nigel Slater and cooked the beans very quickly in boiling water.  They only need about 2-3 minutes if you've podded them (which we've agreed, you will have. Yay!)  They then got folded into some sliced garlic, which had been pan-fried until soft, a couple of good handfuls of torn fresh mint, and a pot of ricotta.  This in turn got added to a panful of pasta, everything stirred through and seasoned energetically.  You might find you need a fair bit of salt, to play against the bland creaminess of the ricotta.   You know what else would be good?  BACON.  Bacon is a good addition to any pasta meal. 

We finished the meal with some homemade peppermint tea, because we'd picked more than the pasta recipe needed.  You just need to bash the leaves and let them steep as long as you can.  Pretty perfect for a summer's evening.

Imaginative Crispy Duck Pancakes

Oh my gosh, hasn't it been hot over the past couple of days? 

One of our household does not approve of the summer.

G&T anyone?

The other two of us really do!

Because the duck from Saturday night was so huge, it will no doubt be turning up in every meal this week.  On Monday, we decided to use some of the cold meat to make our own version of crispy duck pancakes.  I call them imaginative since they weren't like any pancake you may ever have had before.  But they were still good!

We dry-fried the duck in a small pan until heated through and turning crisp.  We served it alongside a big bowl of sliced spring onions, cucumber, and lettuce.  We had wraps instead of pancakes (the closest thing I could find in Sainsburys), and some plum sauce to be more authentic, like.

Really this post should have been called Just Another Wrap Recipe but I'm trying to appear adventurous.

Flatbreads and Falafels at The Menier

Hi! How were your weekends?  Did you enjoy the sunshine?  I was working (boo), but on Sunday night B and I went out for a fancy date (yay!).  We went to the Menier to see the Stephen Sondheim musical Roadshow, which has just opened in London.  We'd been to the Menier once before, but didn't have the chance to eat there. They have a lovely little restaurant, all exposed brickwork and metal beams, so we were keen to try it on our next visit.

We ordered the two sharing plates (one carnivore, one vegetarian), which were massive - heaps and heaps of thinly-sliced flatbreads, pots of different dips, salad leaves, cold meats, olives, and falafels.  Mmm, falafels.  I could eat you all day.

Vegetarian

 Look at the lovely colour of that beetroot dip - isn't it gorgeous?  Beetroot, you're pretty.  The vibrant orange dip was sweet potato.

Carnivorous

The meat plate had some lovely little sausages that were flavoured with cumin - they were spicy and delicious.  The pressed ham was a bit under-seasoned, and would have been nice with some cornichons or something to perk up its blandness, but it's hard to get everything right in a huge plateful of goodies like this. 

We made such a dent in the plates that the waiter congratulated us on our efforts.  A proud moment.

Roast Duck And Potatoes

Whole Gressingham ducks are on offer in our local supermarket, which combines B's love of game meats and my love of a bargain.   I had to work on Saturday, so B busied himself in the kitchen and had a roast dinner waiting for me when I got home.  I know, right?  Good husbanding.

He reliably informs me that he cooked the duck the Elizabeth David way, by first making a stock with the giblets and then poaching the duck for about an hour.  The duck is then rescued from its savoury bath and popped into a hot oven for a couple of hours, to crisp up the skin deliciously.  Some of the stock, a dash of wine, and a squeeze of orange juice made the gravy. 

I only have four words to describe the potatoes:  roasted in duck fat.  That tells you all you need to know.

Enjoy with a glass of gutsy red wine and plenty of salt for your potatoes.  Nom nom nom.

Friday Night Repeat Night

I worked late tonight, and when I came home, the fridge it was bare. Our combined resources only came to £11.50, so even a cheeky takeaway was out of the question. What to do?

Leftover pesto with odds and ends of dried pasta. Pesto improves with age, I think this has been scientifically proven. 

Then we drank whisky and watched Glastonbury highlights and laughed at all the people in the rain. Happy days.

Aubergine & Lentil Curry

No! Stop! Please come back. I know it's not the most appetising-sounding dish (I will agree it sounds like something you'd be served in a 1970's hippy commune), but please believe me - it's brilliant.

It's brilliant for several reasons:-

1.) It's a great use for aubergines. I'm meh about aubergines. I think it's their texture.  They're just a bit too soft. Anyway, this recipe takes that weird texture and melts it. Yay!

2.) It takes minimal effort. This is one of those accidentally-forget-about-it-on-the-hob recipes that tastes better the less you do to it.

3.) Cheapie McCheaples. Yep, when it's that long dark stretch of immeasurable time known as the week before payday, there's nothing easier on the pocket.

Here's how to do it:-

Ingredients: (serves 2)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 cup lentils
Spices - feel free to use anything in your cupboard, but we used 1 tsp measures of fenugreek, ground coriander, ground cumin, turmeric, and a pinch of chili flakes
1 aubergine, chopped
1 can tomatoes
1/2 pt vegetable stock

Gently fry your onion, garlic, and carrot in some olive oil or butter until soft. Add the lentils and spices, and stir until everything is coated evenly. Add the tin of tomatoes, stock, and chopped aubergine. Put a lid on the pan and leave to cook on a low heat for an hour, allowing you plenty of time to watch some How I Met Your Mother re-runs on Channel 4. You may want to check the pan during the ad breaks, and top up with a little water if it looks too dry.

After an hour's gentle cooking, your curry is ready to serve. You don't need anything else with this, although you could halve the quantity of lentils and make some rice if you feel like it. That sounds a bit labour-intensive to me, though.

Cuddle up on the sofa and enjoy with a nice glass of red. Not a hemp sandal in sight.

Pea & Goat's Cheese Omelette

We're growing peas in our garden. 

Aren't they adorable?  We've mostly been eating them raw, but here decided to try them in a simple omelette with soft, creamy goat's cheese and a few sliced tomatoes.

We didn't add potatoes or anything else bulky to the omelette, so it cooked in minutes to a delicious golden colour.  The peas were little pops of sweetness amongst the softness of the cheese.

For pudding we had another crop from the garden: strawberries! 

They weren't particularly big, but they were a beautiful rosy colour with a lovely, intense flavour.  I promise that's a bowl of yogurt, not cream, that they're being dipped into.  Honest!

Perfect Pasta & Pesto

Our flight home from Mallorca was delayed by three hours, and we landed in London to thundery skies and drizzly rain.  We were starving, but there wasn't time to do much shopping or much cooking.  Step forward one of my favourite summer recipes - pasta with pesto.

One summer in our old flat, B grew so many basil plants on the sun-trap balcony that we had fresh pesto pretty much every week, and we got making it down to a fine art.  We follow the Jamie Oliver recipe, and it makes a fantastic, vibrant green sauce that is streets better than the oily stuff you can get in jars from the supermarket.

We had ours with fresh spaghetti, and put the leftovers in a jar for another day.

The Holiday Part Three - The Epic Food Adventure of 2011

Before we went on holiday, B and I spent a couple of idle hours roaming the internet for things to do in Mallorca.  We scouted out beach recommendations, markets....and of course, places to eat.  One restaurant, Zaranda, kept coming up on our searches, and when we saw that it wasn't far from where we were staying, we decided that we had to check it out.

It was EPIC.  There honestly isn't another word for it.   We both chose the restaurant's tasting menu, which promised six different courses, using seasonal ingredients.

We started the meal with little nibbly bits and bobs - spicy toasted macadamia nuts, sweet potato crisps, olives.  They came in incredibly cute white cups, the size of large shot-glasses, which I had to resist dropping into my handbag.   We also had a little pot of duck liver pate, and crunchy Melba toasts.  So far, so yummy.

Then came the bread.  There were four different kinds, all home-baked that day.   Then the waitress lined up three bottles of olive oil on our table and solemnly talked us through their different qualities.  It was a bit like being told the specials when you arrive at a restaurant - the waitress is talking, you're smiling, but a second later you can't remember what she said.  I panic chose the last oil because that was all I could remember.  

Lovely!  Nibbles, bread.  Starters next?  Oh no, my friends - we were then brought some "little tapas" - a couple of fresh mussels, crusted to look as if they were still in their shells, and some cute present-shaped bits of beef tartare. 

I'm not going to lie - I was pretty full by this point.  I'd also used about four sets of cutlery.   The poor kitchen staff.

Our starters came next (thank goodness.  I'd begun to lose hope of ever seeing them).   Looking back, these were definitely my least favourite part of the meal.  We had a dish of asparagus, nuggets of ham, and hazelnuts.  All the flavours worked very nicely together - the perky freshness of the asparagus versus the smokiness of the nuts and ham - but my problem was this: foam.  It was a foam of asparagus.  Now, foam isn't a food.  I like food I can chew.  Foam can't be chewed.  It's really a bit like eating some highly-flavoured air.  Or spit.  I know why it was used - it was the first dish on a long tasting menu, so had to be light, not filling, and packing a punch - but still.  I could happily have eaten a spear or two of asparagus.  Just saying.

It looked super-pretty on the plate, though:

Next came a black poached egg with cuttlefish caviar.  This was too extreme for me.  On the plate, the jet-black egg wobbled like a sac from which a ginormous insect was about to be born.  And the caviar had a faint bitterness which made it unpleasant.

ALIEN INSECT SAC!!

The main courses were up next, and this was where everything came together for me.  They were  perfectly judged, perfectly cooked dishes focusing on a couple of striking flavours, with much less of the hoopla we saw in the starters.

First up was a piece of monkfish, served with a strip of pork belly and a little parcel of cabbage and parsnip.  The monkfish was tender but firm, and stood up well to the flavour of the pork.  I think it had just been poached in a thin, savoury liquid, so that it was pearly and flaky on my fork.

As a nice contrast, the next dish was squab, with roasted onions and endive.  Game is something I've only recently started eating, but I really like the dark meatiness of it.  It worked very well after the delicate fish.

More clean cutlery, and then it was the cheese course.  I was almost levitating with excitement, because I'd seen the cheese trolley on the way to our table.  Let me repeat that, with appropriate capitalisation:  The. Cheese. Trolley.

Your eyes do not deceive you.  That really is a trolley of about twelve different cheeses, which were all described to us by our very diligent and enthusiastic waitress.   Luckily, she offered to make us up a plate of Mallorcan specialities, so I was saved the agony of choosing (I was flashing back to my panic over the olive oil). 

Sigh.  There is nothing I like more than cheese, and these four were divine - creamy and fresh-tasting.  Notice the lack of crackers, or bread.  I approve.  Nothing should distract from The Cheese.

The waitress re-appeared, and smilingly offered us a "pre-dessert".  I shot a bewildered look at B.  A pre-dessert?  What is this madness?

It turns out, a pre-dessert is pretty much a whole dessert.  Yep.  Before your other dessert, you know, the proper one.

Here it is: banoffee trifle.  I had the feeling Zaranda was playing with us now.  Testing how much two humans could physically eat.

Well, I still managed the dessert dessert.

This was a rich pool of creamed goat's cheese (like a thick yogurt), swirled round with basil syrup, and topped with strawberry sorbet.  This was awesome.  So sweet and summery-tasting - like a picnic condensed into a bowl.

We congratulated ourselves on a job well done.  We'd made it through all one million courses!  Then the petit fours arrived.  And then we cried.

They looked so tantalising, arranged on their own little spoons, but we literally couldn't eat another thing.  I was disappointed in myself. 

We were at our table for more than three hours, but time felt like it had flashed by.  While I didn't like some of the dishes, they were all so imaginative and amazing to look at that the whole meal was like a long adventure ride - where you weren't sure what was coming next, but you knew it was going to be fun.

We drove home, and all the way we discussed how we should have eaten the petit fours.

The Holiday Files Part Two - Home Cooking

We were lucky enough to be renting a small apartment for our holiday, which meant we had a kitchen at our disposal when we didn't want to go out to eat.  There was a fantastic food market in Palma and the local supermarket had all kinds of lovely local produce that we really wanted to try, so we jumped at the chance to cook a couple of meals for ourselves.

Oooh, pie.

For some reason, pie has become our go-to holiday food - we once found the chilled, ready-made and ready-shaped pastry on sale in France and since then it's become a bit of a tradition.   You don't need to do anything to the pastry at all, which is perfect when you don't want to faff about in the kitchen for too long.  We didn't have a proper pan, so B fashioned one from tin foil.  Intrepid, no?  The pastry case got filled with a combination of  mashed avocados, local goat's cheese, tomatoes, and olives, and then the whole thing went straight into the oven.  We fell asleep while it was cooking, so perhaps it was a little overdone, but let's call it caramelised. 

The spontaneous napping may or may not have been caused by some cheap and potent sangria.  I can neither confirm nor deny.  

Another night, we had sausages from the butcher's counter of the supermarket, which cost us all of 2 euros.   They were spicy with paprika and cooked in minutes.

We roasted some vegetables to have alongside - aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes and onions - and mopped up the juices with lots of chunky bread.

 For our last home-cooked meal, we chose some thin cuts of lamb (as it turned out - we only knew what it was when we took it home and I looked up the words on the label in our phrasebook.  Luckily we both love lamb!) and pan fried them with some chorizo, before deglazing the pan with a splash of wine to make a lovely gravy.  We had roast potatoes and salad alongside. 

Sneaky midnight feast....delicious, locally-made orange sorbet.

And possibly more wine.  Oh dear.

The Holiday Files Part One - Seafood

Hola!  Apologies for the recent blog silence - I've been on a lovely holiday to Mallorca, with lots of sun, sea and sangria (woop!)  And there are many, many holiday munchables to share with you.  Yippee!

We stayed about ten minutes' drive from the southern coast of Mallorca, which meant we had access to some wonderful-looking seafood restaurants.   On our first night, we headed out to a little harbour-side place in Colonia Sant Jordi called La Marisol.

MMMMM PAELLA. 

We ordered the restaurant's own paella, which basically meant it came stuffed full of all the seafood you can imagine, plus chunks of unidentifiable meat.  It came to our table in an enormous round pan - the rice was really soft and spiced with lemon and turmeric, while the prawns and langoustines were spanking fresh and the size of small children.

Another evening, we went down the road to Sa Rapita to try a restaurant recommended in our guidebook, called Ca'n Pep.  Ca'n Pep!  Doesn't that make you happy just by saying it?  Ca'n PEP!  Ahem.

The guidebook said that the restaurant was famed for its seafood, and as soon as we got served we saw why.

Here's my dinner - it's a whole bream, which has just been seasoned and pan fried.  The fish just fell off the bones as soon as you looked at it, and the simplicity of the cooking really brought out all its delicate flavour. 

We went back on our last night, because we'd  had such a nice dinner the first time round.  We had pretty much the exact same meal again, because we are boring, except I had amberjack instead of bream.   Amberjack?  Yeah, I'd never heard of it either.  It's a white fish, but a bit chunkier and meatier than the bream.  It was also awesome. 

Here was our view from the restaurant:

That's the veranda, and then the sea.   I pretty much love Mallorca for that reason alone.  Veranda - Sea!

Quick & Easy Fish & Chips

Oh dear.  It seems to be Sunday night and we're having fish and chips again.  I'm disappointed in myself.

And no, it isn't even virtuous fish and chips this time. 

So, here we have a petit filet de poisson, breaded and er...straight from the freezer.  Served alongside des pommes frites (McCain's finest), and an exotic mix of peas and edamame beans.  And ketchup.  And mayonnaise.  And a lemon wedge, to make the whole thing even more upmarket than it already is.

Pudding was a "trifle" (hmmm) made from some crumbled Soreen sultana loaf, plain yogurt, and strawberries.  I was too embarrassed to take a photo of that gastronomic masterpiece.  You'll have to take my word for it that it tasted much better than it sounds.

I promise to do better next week.

Simple Spaghetti Bolognese

When I mentioned at work yesterday that I was having spaghetti bolognese for my dinner, there was a collective sigh of approval.  It's one of those meals, isn't it?  A crowd-pleasing, carb-heavy, satisfying meal - and one that you can legitimately cover in cheese before eating.  Where's the downside?

We've made spaghetti bolognese in the past with lots of different vegetables chopped in (mostly to make the mince go further).  I don't mind a couple of mushrooms, I'll tolerate some small pieces of carrot - but my real favourite is just a chopped onion, lots of garlic, and meat.  And that's it. 

That was what B made me for me on Saturday night.  He always makes the tomato sauce from scratch, cooking it for as long as possible so that it gets really thick and covers the meat properly.

Meat, pasta, cheese.  Nothing to beat it.

Throw It Together Salad Nicoise

After the dinner party the night before, we went for a simpler, one-bowl meal on Friday night.  This was a proper use-up-the-leftovers meal:  eggs left over from making the blondies, the last of the salad leaves.  We also boiled some lovely new potatoes from the veg box, and threw in a tin of tuna from the cupboard.   We didn't have the traditional green beans for a salad nicoise, but we substituted lightly steamed shredded cabbage, and it worked surprisingly well.  B dressed it with balsamic vinegar and it turned into a big, gutsy, substantial salad - perfect for a Friday night on the sofa in front of How I Met Your Mother re-runs. 

Pudding was the last of the strawberries, smothered in Greek yogurt and sugar.  Hurray for leftovers!

Summer Dinner Party

Yesterday it was my turn to have my friends round for dinner.  We take it in turns to cook for each other, and it's a really nice excuse to try new recipes whilst also catching up all the gossip and drinking all of London's supply of fizzy wine. 

To start, we had roquamole with vegetable sticks and tortilla chips.  If you haven't tried roquamole yet, believe me when I say YOU NEED IT IN YOUR LIFE.  It contains avocado, blue cheese, and sour cream.  Could there be a better union of ingredients?  I think not. 

Look at the lovely colour of that dip.  Isn't it beautiful?  You can also see the first of many glasses of pink wine on the table there.

For the main course, I made Chicken Zorba.  It's a dish my housemate Abi used to make at uni whenever we had people over, and it was always a success.  I don't have the recipe, but I found it here.   I doubled the quantities of marinade, because I was using standard supermarket chicken and I thought it needed a bit of a boost.

I like having dinners where you assemble your own food - that way, there's no pressure to eat something you don't like, and you can have as much or as little as you want.  So, we had a basket of pittas, dishes of sliced peppers, cucumbers, and a big dish of chicken and another of hummus-yogurt sauce.  It used all the dishes I own, but what else is a dishwasher for.

For pudding, we had something I spotted in the Guardian over the weekend and knew I had to try:  blondies with macerated strawberries.   I know, right?

It reads like a strange recipe (soaking the coconut in orange juice? adding cardamon?), and it was fiddly, but oh my gosh it was worth it.  The variety of flavours actually worked very nicely and although the texture wasn't of a traditional brownie (more like a heavy sponge-cake), that meant they were fluffy and moreish.  We ate the whole tray.  Whilst drinking dessert wine. 

After the meal, I believe there might have been some dancing around the kitchen to some classic Meatloaf tunes.   The sign of a successful dinner party, I would say.

Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

I know this sounds unseasonal - I usually make vats of butternut squash soup to last us through long dark autumn evenings - but a gigantic squash turned up in our veg box this week, so I decided to make the most of it.  I really love this soup, and it made a nice change to try it so early in the year.   It's not a recipe you can rush through, so make this on an evening when you've got time on your side. 

Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

Firstly, peel and chop your squash into biggish chunks.  Spread out on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil.  Roughly chop an onion and three cloves of garlic and add these to the baking tray.  Sprinkle over 1 tsp crushed coriander seeds, 1 tsp cumin, and 1/2 tsp dried chili flakes.   Give the tray a good shake to make sure everything is evenly coated, then stick in the oven on a low heat (about 140) for an hour, until the squash is soft and the onion has caramelised and your whole house smells delicious. 

Tip the vegetables into a big saucepan, and deglaze the pan with some hot stock - you want to get all the yummy sticky bits off the tray and into the soup.    Add in some more stock until the vegetables are well covered, plus a few fresh tomatoes if you have them, and bring to the boil.

Let everything cool, and then blitz until smooth.  Check the liquid, adding more stock if necessary.  Reheat when needed, and serve piping hot.

This time around, the soup turned out to so thick we're thinking of using the leftovers as a sauce for pasta.  It really is a whole meal in itself, but we have been known to have cheese on toast alongside.  Just saying.

Stir-Fried Prawns With Fennel & Broccoli

Yesterday we both got home from work late, so we wanted something quick and easy - and using store cupboard ingredients so we didn't have to run to the supermarket.  So, into the wok went a chopped onion and garlic, plus half a bulb of fennel we had kicking about.  We added in a packet of frozen prawns, plus a head of broccoli that had really seem better days.  All this got quickly stir-fried with the juice of a lime (another forgotten-in-the-fridge find) and some soy sauce, then tipped over some freeze-dried noodles. 

For a dinner that took fifteen minutes to make, it was delicious.  

The stirfry was lovely, but the pudding really made the whole meal.

CHERRIES!

I adore cherries.  I really do.  My heart jumps for joy when I see them for sale on the little fruit stand outside the tube.   I think they're the perfect fruit - bite-sized, no peeling required, and you can play counting games with the stones to work out what profession your future husband will have.  What could be better? 

Mushroom & Pea Risotto

In general, B and I share our cooking pretty equally.  The majority of our dinners are joint efforts, where we potter about together in the kitchen, each doing something towards the meal we're making.

Risotto is not a joint effort. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  I LOVE risotto.  It's so satisfying - simple, yet kind of luxurious.  But I just don't have the patience for it.  Within two minutes, my hand is aching from stirring and I'm stressing that all the rice is sticking to the pan.  Luckily, I'm married to a cooking maestro with endless patience, so my life isn't completely risotto deprived. 

My duties start at chopping....

...and end at eating. 

Virtuous Fish & Chips

After my enormous brunch blowout, I needed something simple and healthy for dinner.  We'd stopped in at the fishmongers after the butcher's yesterday, and picked up two spanking fresh mackerel.  OM.

Mackerel is great.  It's sustainable, it's good for you, it's easily available and it's cheap.  I know it's not the prettiest of fish when it's cooked, but it can taste delicious if you have the right recipe.  We pretty much always rely on Nigel Slater for this, because he is a god.  Soften a sliced onion in some olive oil, then add in chopped garlic, parsley, breadcrumbs and a good dose of smoked paprika (the mackerel has quite a robust flavour so it really can take all the paprika you like).  Spread this mixture onto your butterflied fish, then cook in the oven for about twenty minutes. 

Serve with crispy fried greens and homemade chips.  The perfect Sunday dinner.