A Collection of Oddities

Guess what we're having for dinner tonight?  Yep. 

Since this is a repeat recipe (the shame of it!), here are some other things to keep you entertained.  Ever wonder what happened to our chilli plants?

B made chilli oil.

Probably enough to last us through the next five years.

Any idea what this is?

It's a PERSIMMON!  I know, I'd never tried one either.  But they were on sale in Tesco so I took a gamble.  It turns out you can eat them like an apple, skin and all.  They have a soft-ish texture and a mild flavour, kind of similar to melon.  Yum!

And that's your lot today folks...proper service will resume tomorrow!

Roast Chicken & Gravy-Boat Squash

Hurray!  Finally, part two of the November Squash Challenge!  I just know you're on the edge of your seats waiting for the next installment...but you can relax, for lo, it is finally here!

Probably the easiest way to prepare squash is to roast it - no fiddly peeling, or much chopping involved.  Just hack the squash into quarters, scoop out the seeds, baste liberally with olive oil, and you're away.  A word of advice - it always takes longer than you think for the squash to get properly soft and delicious the whole way through.  Reckon on 45 minutes to an hour to get the perfect texture.

If you're so inclined, you could serve the squash with a whole roast chicken.  Why not?

B made up an onion and garlic gravy to go with the chicken, and we found that the squash quarters were the perfect little vessels in which to transport it.   Serve with a crisp green salad and plenty of wine.

Build Your Own Potatoes

Oooh, I do love a good baked potato.  (True fact: a couple of years ago when B went on a week's business trip, I had a baked potato for dinner nearly every night).  And I've perfected the cooking technique: ten minutes or so in the microwave to soften up, before being rolled in olive oil and put in a hottish oven for half an hour, until the insides are fluffy and the skin is just so. 

Oh dear, I've made myself hungry.  I might have a baked potato for my lunch.

I'm open to all kinds of topping for my potatoes, too.  Coleslaw?  Yummy.   Tuna mayonnaise?  Why not!  That old classic, beans and cheese?  Definitely.   So when we opened the fridge and decided to throw all the slightly tired-looking bits and bobs we found there into a pan and call it a potato topping, I was all kinds of on board.

So we stir-fried a leek, some sundried tomatoes, and a chorizo sausage until soft.  Oh, and grated a massive bowl of cheese, of course.

Nom. 

London For Less: Dinner at The Montagu

Apologies for the delay in getting this post up  - it's actually taken me fifteen years to take the photos off my phone, because I fail at technology.  But I finally managed it, so here we are!

What's the second best way to brighten up a dreary November evening?  A fancy dinner.  What's the best, best way?  A fancy dinner ON THE CHEAP.  Or so my friends and I think.  So we had a good hunt on the net to see what goodies were out there for us, and discovered a TopTable deal for The Montagu restaurant in the Hyatt Regency hotel on Portman Square.  Three courses and a pre-dinner bellini for £25?  Sold.

As we arrived at the restaurant and handed in our coats, we clocked the most amazing feature of the restaurant: a live pianist at a grand piano in the corner.  We wondered if she took  requests, and what our fellow diners might think of an acoustic version of Bad Romance. 

The restaurant itself has wide windows looking out over the square, and is set slightly apart from the main bustle of the hotel lobby.  We were given our complimentary cocktails and the menus (titled "Last Minute Menu"...they'd clearly pegged us as voucher vultures from the moment we walked in, but they weren't too snobby about it).  I chose the smoked duck breast to start with:

This was a generous portion of tender duck, served with a sweet/savoury plum compote and a tangle of finely-shredded, crispy-fried onion.

The main courses caused a fair bit of ditheration, as there were delicious-sounding beef and lamb options on the menu, as well as an intriguing leek hotpot number.  But in the end I plumped for the salmon, which came with beurre blanc and chanteray carrots:

The salmon was cooked beautifully and the light sauce kept it moist without detracting from the overall flavour.  We ordered a side dish of potatoes for the table, since the meals were sort of carb-light. 

So far, so lovely - but then came the dessert.  Now, I am a pudding fiend, and dessert is always my favourite part of any dinner.  So I had high hopes of an apple and almond tart with chocolate sorbet, which sounded right up my alley.  But when it came, the pastry case was thick and dry, and the chocolate sorbet had been plonked on top which made it impossible to tell where the pastry finished and the filling began.  I had severe menu envy with the other girls' choice of a white chocolate mousse with cherries. 

We had a glass of wine each, plus the additional potatoes, and the bill for the three of us came in at under £100 - not too shabby for a fancy dinner and the live pianist (yes, I'm still impressed by that).  An excellent beginning to the London for Less series...where will we be road-testing next?

Romanesco & Pinenut Pasta

Yay!  It's the crazy space-age vegetable again!  It makes me so happy when I see its spiky little face in our vegetable box.  I don't know why, but there's just something about it that makes me smile.  (Feel free to now call me the crazy vegetable lady). 

Last time around, we roasted our romanesco, so we wanted to try something different with it this time.  So we steamed it for about ten minutes, then decanted it to a big bowl and stirred in some sundried tomatoes, garlic, and a scattering of pinenuts.  Because we were lazy, we didn't toast the pinenuts, but you could do if you wanted a punchier flavour.

We heaped the vegetables on top of a big bowl of spaghetti and dived in.  The pinenuts provided a welcome crunch against the softness of the tomatoes, and the flavour of the romanesco really shone through, making it a perfect autumn supper.  

Parmesan-Crusted Plaice

Oh.My.Gosh. Hasn't this been the longest week ever?  There has been too much work and not enough play at Plum Towers this week.  But we've been powering ourselves through with some top-notch dinners.

I squeezed in a quick supermarket dash this week and managed to pick up some lovely-looking whole plaice (which, excuse the bragging, cost the princely sum of £1.80.  My bank balance thanks you, Mr Morrisons.)  I'm not sure I've ever cooked plaice before, and I wasn't feeling inventive, so I turned to Delia for help.

She suggested cooking the plaice with a Parmesan and parsley crust, and I wasn't about to argue. 

Delia also suggested serving the fish with a green salad and lemon dressing.  This, clearly, is ridiculous.

Homemade chips?  Much better.

Kale Pesto

My lovely mother gave us a huge bag of fresh kale over the weekend (I'm sure I saw my dad breathe a sigh of relief as we took it away).  We were thinking about maybe using it in a stirfry, or maybe an omelette - nothing too fancy.  But then I had a quiet ten minutes at work and thought I'd google some kale recipes, just for fun (because yes, I do spend all my free time thinking about food.  And indeed a lot of my non-free time too).  And guess what came up on the search?  This thoroughly awesome-sounding recipe.  I just couldn't resist. 

Of course we adapted it a little bit (the original recipe didn't contain any garlic, much to B's horror - he's militantly anti-vampire in his cooking).  But otherwise, we just put everything in a big bowl and went at it with a hand-mixer (see action shot below).

The resulting sauce was thick and incredibly, incredibly green - I felt healthier just looking at it!  It had a crunchier texture than basil pesto, and an earthier, more vegetable-y taste - delicious, and just the thing to brighten up a dull Tuesday  evening.

Old Reliable: Salmon With Wholewheat Noodles & Cabbage

What's your go-to dish? Is there one meal you always make when you're too tired to be inventive, or you can't face the supermarket and need something cupboard/freezer-based?  Ours is definitely the faithful old salmon-veg-noodles combo.  (See here for evidence).  We always have noodles in the cupboard (we're currently experimenting with wholewheat, which are surprisingly yummy) and we bulk-buy frozen salmon fillets whenever we can, since they're super-versatile and can form the basis of pretty much any meal you like. 

This time we marinated the salmon with soy sauce, tamarind paste, and some fresh dill.  Add that to a big pan of noodles, some stirfried cabbage and carrots, and people, you realise why the old reliable recipe is so reliable - because it's always delicious. 

Roasted Squash With Sausage Stuffing

Oh dear. I've been very neglectful of this blog over the last week or so. I've just been super-busy, and haven't had much of a chance to write.....but fear not, because I still made plenty of time to eat.  You know me!

November is the month of the squash.

We ordered a Riverford box of nothing but squashes, and when it arrived, it was a beautiful thing to behold - cute, fat-bellied butternuts, an alien-looking, pale greeny-blue crown prince, a stripey harlequin.  We've set ourselves a challenge to make a different recipe with each squash, so here is effort number one.

Roasted Squash With Sausage Stuffing

First, prepare your squash.  Split in two and scoop out all the seeds and weird stringy bits, so you're left with a good big receptacle for your stuffing.

For the stuffing, we emptied three Lincolnshire sausages out of their skin into a big mixing bowl, and added one chopped onion and a couple of cloves of finely-diced garlic.  Also into the mix went two teaspoons of dried sage, and two of English mustard, plus a good grinding of black pepper (no salt - you'll have enough from the sausage meat).  Mix well.

We then packed the stuffing into the hollowed-out squash, and put them into a low oven (about 160 degrees). 

Give the squash a good hour-and-a-half in the oven - they need to cook right through until soft and delectable, and that can't be rushed.  Pour yourself a large glass of wine and stick on the X Factor while you're waiting. 

Check that the squash is cooked through by testing the flesh with a sharp knife - it should be super-soft.   Serve with a leafy green salad.

Full disclosure:  the squash itself, especially near to the skin, was a bit dry and crumbly.  You could probably get around this by drizzling the squash with olive oil before putting it in the oven, or by making a couple of slits in the sides and popping in a slice of butter.  This should keep the squash lovely and moist, which would be perfect against the savoury juiciness of the stuffing.  

So that's recipe one from the November Squash Challenge!  Keep your eyes peeled for the second installment next week.   You know, just in case you also have a surfeit of bizarre yet beautiful squashes on top of your fridge!  We can't be the only ones!

Rice Pudding

Sometimes you just have to give into the pudding monster. 

Enter - the rice pudding.  Made with full-cream milk (handily left over from the cauliflower cheese), and bucketloads of nutmeg and cinnamon.

I didn't butter the dish, which meant the rice stuck to it as it cooked.  Which was annoying, but it did create a deliciously chewy crust.  Yum.

Cauliflower Cheese

Let me begin this post by saying I hate cauliflower cheese.  Urgh.  Cauliflower!  A vegetable that tastes like feet.  And the sauce!  It's usually thin and milky and doesn't do anything to disguise the taste of cauliflower, which is surely the point!

But let me share a secret with you.  This is honestly the most awesome cauliflower cheese recipe ever.  It tastes of cheese and nothing else.  Thank you, Rick Stein, you are a god. 

(Recipe adapted from the one in this lovely book, which is a favourite on our kitchen shelf.  It's adapted only in the sense that I've tried to cut down on some of the cream usage.  Because I am a killjoy and care about things like cholesterol.)

You need (serves 2):

1 small cauliflower

1 small onion

4 cloves

3/4 pint full-cream milk

1 bay leaf

black peppercorns

1 oz butter

1 oz plain flour

3 oz extra mature cheddar, the strongest you can find, grated

2 tsps English mustard

Firstly, make up the white sauce.  Chop the onion in half, take off the outer layers of skin and stud with the cloves.  Put this in a pan, and pour in the milk.  Add the bayleaf and a handful of black peppercorns.  Warm the pan until the milk is at boiling point, then turn off the heat and allow the pan to sit quietly for the flavours to infuse.

Give the milk about 20 minutes, and then strain into a jug and throw away the onion, bayleaf and peppercorns.   In another pan, melt the butter, add the flour and stir vigorously for about a minute.  Then add the milk, and allow the mixture to come to the boil, stirring all the while to get a smooth, non-lumpy sauce.  Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Boil a big pan of water for the cauliflower.  Cut the vegetables into manageable chunks - use the leaves as well, they add a nice bit of colour to the dish.  Put the cauliflower in a colander above the boiling water and steam for 8-10 minutes, until the pieces are almost tender.   Tip the cooked pieces into an ovenproof dish.

Stir the grated cheese and mustard into the milk, then pour over the cauliflower  (you should have enough sauce to cover it all).  Pop the dish under the grill while you set the table and slice some fresh bread to have alongside.  Serve when the top is golden and bubbling.



Scandi Salmon With Cucumber

I've never been to Sweden, but this is what I imagine the Swedes would eat after a hard day's IKEA shopping (and other cultural stereotypes).

For the salmon:  Drizzle two good-sized fillets with lemon juice and olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Set aside for ten minutes before griddling for about five minutes per side, until the inside of the fish is bright pink and separates into lovely flakes when you prod it.

For the cucumber:  (adapted recipe from this book, one of the few in there that don't call for pigs' ears or marrow-bones)  Dissolve a teaspoonful of sugar in a glug of white wine vinegar.  Add a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard, and enough olive oil to make a thickish mixture.  Stir until thoroughly combined.  Add a sprinkling of salt and pepper, a handful of chopped dill, and a little less of chopped parsley.  Stir again, and slop over a bowlful of sliced cucumbers.  Use the lot - you'll think the cucumbers don't need it, but oh, they do. 

The dressing works beautifully against the coolness of the cucumbers - it's savoury and sweet at the same time, with a bit of a kick from the mustard.  Sooo good.

Smaklig maltid, everyone!  (Thank you, Google!  You make me look so multicultural!)

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Hello!  Happy November!  I know it's cold, dark and depressing, but at least we have delicious food and strong drink to get us through!   Whaddaya say Franklin?

Franklin says yes.

Anyway, it was B's birthday last week, and I was under strict instructions to make him a chocolate birthday cake (the only acceptable flavour of birthday cake, apparently).  Ordinarily I'd just throw together a Victoria sponge with a bit of cocoa powder added to the mix, but this cake was the take-along dessert for a dinner party and I thought a sponge might be a bit...boring. 

So I decided to attempt a Sachertorte.  I'm not sure what I was thinking.

(Recipe from here.)

It was all going so well - I was whisking up egg whites like Mary Berry herself, feeling very competent and in control.  The thick, gooey mixture got poured into the tin, the tin went in the oven, and off I went to the sofa for a bit of West Wing.  Forty-five minutes later, the top looked crunchy, a toothpick came out cleanly - so I took the cake out of the oven and turned it carefully out onto the cooling rack.

The middle fell out of the cake.

The middle fell out in great, uncooked, goopy lumps.

BIG.EPIC.BAKING.FAIL.

I screamed, B ran in, and together we scooped the batter back into the tin, levelled it, and slung it back in the oven.

Once I'd covered the top in icing sugar, you couldn't really tell.  Ahem.