Bacon and ricotta cake with roasted tomatoes

Forgive me father readers for I have sinned; it has been two months since my last post.  Oh dear.  Moving house in the middle of an already busy summer has left me with very little time for attempting new recipes, despite the fact that I have a very nice new kitchen that is crying out to be used.  However, I will soon be on enforced home stay thanks to the Olympics and the official* advice to stock up with water and canned goods, barricade the doors, and stay away from the streets and all forms of public transport for the next three weeks.

The upside of this is that it should give me more time for experimentation in the kitchen, so I will hopefully get back into a more consistent blogging routine soon.  To start off, here's a recipe I tried recently that I can tell will become part of my regular repertoire.  Easy, not too time intensive (10-15 minutes to prepare, 45 minutes to cook), and absolutely delicious both warm and reheated.  It works equally well as a side or a main dish, and could be adapted for vegetarians by omitting the bacon (although I must say, one of the two reasons I could never be a vegetarian is my love for bacon.  The other would be my love of a really good steak).  So without further ado:

Bacon and ricotta cake with roasted tomatoes
(adapted from Waitrose Recipes)

  
For the cake:

• 1 medium potato, peeled and quartered
• 225g bag baby spinach
• 1 or 2 40g packs crispy smoked bacon (the original recipe calls for 4 packs, but I only used one and that seemed to work just fine, so I would recommend reducing that)
• 4 tbsp Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
• 250g ricotta cheese (the recipe called for 500g, but again, I used half that with no adverse effects)
• 2 large (or 3 medium) eggs

For the tomatoes:

• 300g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• fresh thyme or oregano
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar  

Before you start, preheat the oven to 180°C (gas mark 4) and grease and line a 900g loaf tin with baking parchment.

Place the potatoes in a pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10-15 minutes until tender. Drain and allow to cool slightly, then grate coarsely.  While the potato is cooking, place the spinach in a pan, splash with a little water and cook over a medium heat for 1-2 minutes, or until just wilted (microwaving in the bag works equally well - just follow the instructions on the pack). Drain and cool in a colander, then squeeze out any excess liquid and chop roughly.  Crush the bacon into a bowl and mix in the spinach, potato, Parmigiano-Reggiano, ricotta and eggs. Season with pepper. Tip the mixture into the loaf tin. Cook for 25 minutes.

While the cake mixture is in the oven,  chop the cherry tomatoes in half and place in a roasting tin, cut side up. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with the sugar, thyme or oregano and season. After the cake has had 25 minutes, put the tomatoes on a lower oven shelf, beneath the cake, and continue to cook for about 10-15 minutes until the cake is just firm to the touch and the tomatoes are cooked.

Leave the cake to cool slightly in the tin, then turn out while still warm. Drizzle the tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and serve with slices of warm cake.  Et bon appetit!

*This may not have been the message that LOCOG and Transport for London have been trying to convey, but everything they have said thus far has had that effect!

Baked courgettes with leeks and blue cheese

Not a capital offence surely?

I'm talking about unpremeditated blogging here, the kind that happens spontaneously when one makes a new recipe just for fun, it turns out successfully and only then does one realise that one should have had the camera handy before the finish line.  I'm hoping that my punishment won't be eternity slaving over a hot stove for this one.

We're having a rare, make that unprecedented, week in our flat in town.  In the more than four years we've owned High Windows, I've only ever spent three consecutive nights here at a time.  We've planned, on several occasions, to take a week and play tourists in town but never managed to pull it off (perhaps because it's too close to home to really make it a proper holiday) and now, with the insane atmosphere in the capital, it's not the place to be playing anything except perhaps sports for one's country.

But we're here anyway and one of my intentions on this break was to make a new recipe every night.  We've been here for three so far and the first dinner had to be something last minute, easy and familiar.  The second night we went out as I'd been at work all day and didn't want to be getting my head around unfamiliar recipes at the end of it.  So it wasn't until last night that I hauled out what was to have been my kick-off on Night One and away I went.

This is an easy one.  It's vegetarian and would make a good side dish for grilled chicken or fish but it also works as a stand alone and we both agreed it worked well.

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 medium courgettes, halved lengthwise and then cut again into quarters

25g butter

2 leeks, washed and sliced
100g blue cheese, crumbled (David is not a fan of blue and goat's cheese works very well too)
50g walnut pieces (and for once, with Kit no longer living here, I went out on a limb and added these too)

Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the courgettes, in batches, cut side down.  Transfer to an oblong ovenproof dish. 

Melt butter in the same pan and fry the leeks gently for 4 to 5 minutes until they begin to soften.  Season then spoon on top of the courgettes.  Sprinkle the cheese and walnuts evenly on top.  I also added some grated cheddar which, in our opinion, improved the whole but it's not necessary.

Bake at 200ºC for about 20 minutes until walnuts are crisp, vegetables are tender and cheese is melted.  Scatter a few halved cherry tomatoes over the top to add colour and a loaf of hot ciabatta wouldn't go amiss either.

Now of course I realise I could and should have done this on the first night as it's so easy.  But I was too tired to be chopping and slicing at that point, and I think we enjoyed it more as it was planned beforehand, unlike this blog entry!

Salmon and prawn pie

                                                                      WE WILL NOT STARVE

although if you were depending on this blog for your inspiration (until to our great delight, two of our wonderful and loyal followers put up some amazing carbs), you'd have keeled over and expired of starvation some time ago.  It's been a busy month for two of the major bloggers on the site.  One has been travelling and then moved, the other has been going in ever-decreasing circles as the family home became a warehouse and then a ghost town. 

Life changes:  life goes on.  We now need to reorient, refocus and redesignate the purposes of three of the rooms in the house.  Everything is in transition here and I realised one afternoon whilst all this was going on, that there were, at the time, only three places where I could sit, lie or relax until more is moved out and reorganised.  But on the plus side, I had my bedroom, the bath and, thankfully, the kitchen that remained unscathed after the exodus.

So to celebrate kitchen functionality, David and I decided to make a simple fish pie for  supper but the number of steps and exhortations in the given recipe made the whole thing much more complicated than necessary.  The finished product was a great success so our last 'family' meal, before Kit moved away was a memorable one.  The Vas Felix Chardonnay was an excellent accompaniment and encouraged us during the  preparation of the meal.

Here goes, and I'll cut out a lot of the direction guff and just streamline the method as much as I can.

Peel and slice 750g each potato and sweet potato and boil (separately is easier) for 15 minutes until tender.  Remove from the heat, combine and mash together coarsely with 25g butter or margarine.

Put 250 ml semi skimmed milk (skimmed works just as well), 200 ml hot fish or vegetable stock, 500g salmon fillet and 200g cooked and peeled prawns in a roasting tin, fish kettle or large frying pan and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until fish is cooked through and will flake easily.  Lift fish onto a plate, reserving liquid.  Skin the salmon and break into chunks.  Arrange with the prawns in the base of a 2L casserole dish.

Wash 250g baby leaf spinach and, leaving the water on the leaves, place in a pan on hob and 'wilt' for a few minutes until reduced slightly.  Spread spinach evenly among the pieces of fish and prawns.

In a medium pan (yes, this recipe uses a lot of cookware!) melt 50g margarine and add 50g flour, stirring constantly to make a roux.  Remove from heat and gradually add reserved fish liquid, stirring until smooth.  Return pan to heat and continue to stir on low until sauce has thickened.  Remove from heat, stir in 170g soured cream and a handful chopped, fresh basil.  Pour sauce over fish in casserole.






Top with the mashed potato and sweet potato mix and bake in a 200ºC oven for about 20 - 30 minutes until bubbling and browned on top.

Serve with a green vegetable such as broccoli, asparagus or beans.

Serves 6

Pitta rising

One of the main delights of reading a cook book is in how it demystifies cooking. Those dishes that seem so intimidating are made approachable with a recipe's few easy steps; just follow the instructions.

This works for the everyday items, too. Pitta bread, for instance; bought with a punnet of hummus, consumed with some haloumi cheese, available in food outlets high and low, so commonplace that one needn't try to make it oneself. Where would one start? Why would one bother?

First answer: looking in the Fabulous Baker Brothers book (again). Second answer: it's fun, quick and in my view the results are tastier than what's available in most stores.

Quick? Oh yes, surprisingly so. But first, the ingredients: mix a sachet of dried yeast in a jug with 20 millilitres of rapeseed oil and 300 millilitres of tepid water; add this combined liquid to 560 grams of strong white flour with 10 grams of sea salt in a large bowl. 

Mix and knead for 15 minutes by hand or for ten minutes by machine with a dough hook: any excess wetness from the liquid will soon disappear as you create a pliable bread dough. Cover with a tea towel and leave for an hour.

Pulling off the tea towel, the dough should have expanded up to twice its size. Now comes the cooking, so heat up your oven to 230º Celsius, or whatever your oven's maximum is (ours is a lowly 200ºC, but we love it so). Put a baking tray inside to heat up with the oven.

While the oven's warming up, pull off pieces of the dough of around 100 grams each. Shape each one into a ball and, on a well-floured work surface, roll the dough out into pittas, keeping both sides well-floured so they don't stick. Keep rolling until the pitta is as long as your arm, from knuckle to elbow.

Once ready, pull out the baking tray with oven gloves or the like and place the pitta onto it carefully. Now, place this in the oven. Within 30 seconds, the pitta bread will start rising... and in well under five minutes, the pitta bread will have not have just risen but ballooned, browned and baked.

Take this out and let dry on a rack; continue with the next ball of dough and then next and the next, until you've got a pile of warm pittas ready for eating or storing. Next? Buy some hummus or haloumi cheese or... actually, why not make some?

Inception Cookies

Today was definitely a comfort food kind of day. In this weather - or at least, the weather we'd been having until yesterday, which I didn't realise had changed until I eventually ventured outside wholly underdressed for the lovely cool breezy evening - I'd usually turn to ice cream, but there's this crazy, over-the-top baking indulgence that's been doing the rounds of various culinary blogs - in fact, basically the Internet at large - recently, and I wanted to give it a try: Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies.

Now pretty much the first thing you'd think is that it'd be too sweet. The blog I looked at - BeckyBakes - says that's not a problem, but in an effort to mitigate that ever so slightly, and also put my own personal twist on it, I added a smear of peanut butter (I'm a big fan of the Oreo/peanut butter combo, as explored in a different incarnation here).

And that's pretty much it. For my first attempt I focused on (and struggled with) construction, so I used pre-mixed cookie dough. I love the Betty Crocker just-add-water powder mix, but I found it a little bit sticky for my purposes, so consider going a little drier than usual with whatever your go-to cookie recipe is.

It's quite straightforward - dollop of dough, Oreo, peanut butter on top if you wish, and another dollop of dough.

Then I think the technical term is "smooshing".

Bake according to your usual cookie recipe (in this case, 10 minutes at 170 in a fan-assisted oven), and, if you can stand to, leave to cool.

Milk makes the perfect companion to this - as expected - very sweet but delightfully indulgent treat.

Enjoy! Oh, and if the name (Inception Cookies), means nothing to you, read this. 

Asia de Cuba

I am less than a week away from becoming a homeowner.   This is exciting for all number of reasons, particularly because I want to start throwing more dinner parties and will finally have some proper space to do so, including a balcony with lots of room for summer barbecues. But before any of that good stuff can happen, there are a lot of things to be done.  Including using up as much of the food in the house as possible.  Given the random collection of items in my freezer, this has led to some unusual dinners over the past few weeks.  Some more successful than others.  But this is one that I might actually try again: a Mexican-Chinese mash up that worked surprisingly well.  Also very quick and easy for nights when you don't feel like putting a lot of effort into cooking but don't necessarily want to buy takeout.

Chinese-style tacos

4 taco shells/soft tacos
1 red onion
1 green pepper
500g diced beef steak
4 tbsp black bean stir fry sauce
sour cream
handful of grated cheddar cheese, to serve
guacamole, to serve (if desired)




In a large saucepan or wok, heat a splash of oil and fry the onion in until it starts to turn golden.  Add the diced beef (you could substitute with other types of meat here) and then cook until there is no pink showing.  Drain the fat from the pan, and then return to the heat and throw in any other vegetables you like.  I used a green pepper for colour contrast and texture, but you can definitely be creative with alternatives here.

Here's where I deviated from a more traditional taco - by adding a few tablespoons of garlic black bean sauce to the mixture.  Cook for a few minutes, during which time you can heat the tacos, if desired.  I would recommend doing it in an oven if possible - I warmed mine up in the microwave and they went a bit soggy.

To serve, scoop a few spoons of the beef mixture onto one side of the taco, and either serve plain, or with condiments.  I had sour cream, grated cheese and guacamole, so I used a little of each.  Slight overkill perhaps, but it was delicious.  I also chopped up a few cherry tomatoes and threw them on for good measure.  Et voila, a slightly unusual but still very good fusion taco!

Suggestions welcome on what to do with the remainder of my freezer: a fillet of lemon sole, half a ciabbata loaf, frozen vegetables galore, and some frozen bananas. Preferably not all in the same recipe!

p.s. Apologies if a half finished version of this post showed up in your inbox last week.  I had it saved to post later, but Blogger decided to publish the draft on its own schedule!

Prawn and orzo stew

We have a hung jury.

I recently discovered orzo.  Well, I'd heard the word but never bothered to find out exactly what it was, imagining it, in my ignorance, to be either a soft and niffy cheese or perhaps the entrails of an animal.  As neither concept appealed, I simply skipped the page without learning more.  I see you knowledgeable orzo fans all smiling condescendingly, as well you might.

That all changed when I started seeing orzo combined with many ingredients that I do like to cook with and we are now firm friends. I wish I could say the same for my entire family - with orzo, not with me!  I've used it in two completely different recipes in the past month, both of which I've judged successes and my youngest (not so young, anymore) was most complimentary.  David, however, finds this  ingredient troublesome, as he says it's pasta trying to be rice and it fails on both counts.  Sigh.

Orzo's hybrid nature is precisely what appeals to me.  It doesn't have long stringy bits to get tangled around the other ingredients, it's neither grainy nor gluey nor desiccated as rice, improperly cooked, can be.  I like orzo  because it's effective in a soup, stew or casseroles and marries up successfully with fish, chicken, seafood, vegetables, in fact any savoury ingredient.  Ergo, I'm not about to give up in my quest to get that last all-important orzo vote and so proclaim it not guilty as charged.

We've debated the merits, in this blog, of altering and amending original recipes and this one as it came, had a couple of flaws from the get-go so I changed it slightly and, I think, improved the whole.

650 ml chicken broth
500g broccoli florets
400g tin tomatoes
275ml uncooked orzo
400g uncooked prawns, peeled and deveined
400g ratatouille (either tinned or home made if you're fortunate to have some you made earlier)
½ tsp salt
good grinding of black pepper
pinch ground red chilies (my own addition)
handful fresh basil, roughly chopped
15g butter



Bring the broth to a boil in large pan.  Stir in the tomatoes and orzo and simmer for about 6 or 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add  broccoli, prawns, ratatouille and seasonings and cover, continuing to cook for a further 5 to 7 minutes until prawns turn pink and broccoli is cooked but not mushy (be careful here as the broccoli is the litmus test of doneness).  Stir in basil and butter and serve over crusty bread.



The ratatouille (my own addition) thickens the stew to a good consistency .  Kit and I truly enjoyed our Friday night supper but David still needs convincing that orzo isn't pasta in rice's clothing.

The breakfast club

In preparation for holding the first of what I hope will be many vintage tea parties, I bought a book to research precisely how to give one. The book, by Angel Adoree, is a delight: beautifully produced, with pictures of invitations, crockery, style tips... and recipes. Glancing through the brunch section, I found something I had to try.

What follows is something of a cautionary tale. In attempting a fairly simple Chocolate Coconut Granola, I got all a bit arrogant and changed quantities as well as following my own instructions. Don't do this. Miss Adoree's done this before and I will give her recipe verbatim (with one or two things I may have done differently, what I learned and how I'll cook it next time.)

What she advises you use is this: 240 grams of rolled oats; 175g of flaked almonds; 70g shredded unsweetened coconut; 70g dark brown sugar; 40g unsweetened cocoa powder; 90ml honey; 50 ml vegetable oil; 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.

What I did was to say, "oh, that'll hardly be enough," and promptly doubled the amounts. As I say, don't do this: you'll double some measures but forget to do others; after a while you'll think, "does it really need that much?" You. Will. Get. This. Recipe. Wrong. Just do as the lady says. Which is this:

In a large bowl, mix the oats, almonds, coconut and brown sugar. In another large bowl, mix the cocoa powder, honey, oil, cinnamon and salt. Switch your oven onto 120ºC / 100ºC fan assisted / gas mark 1/2. This may not seem too high, but trust the instructions.

Then combine the two mixtures. This is slightly difficult: you'll be mixing your oat cocktail with a chocolate sauce that has the consistency of crude oil. You'll need to mix and mix so that all the oats are covered. Use your fingers rather than a spoon and wash your hands regularly. Pour onto two baking trays.

Now place the trays in the oven and bake the granola for 1 1/4 hours, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even colour. So doing, you may find that the granola looks and feels quite soft. Again, trust the recipe. On taking it out, the granola will cool and harden, whereupon you could either use the granola to serve up to eight people right there and then, or store for some delicious breakfasts for yourself over the coming week. Just add milk.

Once made (properly), by all means, throw in what you like next time. When I make this again, I may add raisins or more seeds. Either way, now I have this granola recipe I may never buy it from a shop again.

So I can just make this stuff? At home?

For many years, I thought that Chicken Kiev came not only fully formed, but fully boxed with instructions attached from the chiller cabinets at Marks and Spencer. This illusion was maintained on reading an article in a newspaper some years ago on Good Bad Food; that is, food that is probably bad for you, but tastes so good that you couldn't care less. Chicken Kiev was mentioned, along with its Marks and Spencer grazing ground. I bought some immediately.

Roll forward to today and on a glance through my Fabulous Baker Brothers' cook book, I see a recipe for the very dish. So I can make this? At home? When I want? Does life ever get this good? It seems so. This dish probably is still very bad for you: maybe making it at home is slightly more virtuous than buying it in store, but I doubt that somehow.

Anyway, to make your own rather generously portioned Chicken Kiev for two, you need: two garlic cloves; 100 grams of butter (the recipe says 120g, but I think that's overdoing things); a small bunch of coarsely chopped parsley; one lemon; salt and pepper; 30 grams of flour; two skinless chicken breasts; two eggs; 50 millilitres of milk; and 100 grams of breadcrumbs.

Firstly, crush the garlic in a food processor. Add the butter and chopped parsley. Zest the lemon in (I used a potato peeler rather carefully over the lemon before chopping the peel slightly and adding that to the bowl). Add freshly milled salt and pepper. Continue blending until smooth. Put to one side.

Next, get surgical on your chicken. Turn the breast upside down and, lifting up the inner fillet, make a small incision into the thick part of the fillet, giving you two flaps. Season with salt and pepper then spoon in generous amounts of your garlic and herb butter. Close the flaps and put in the fridge for about an hour to firm up.

Now it's time to breadcrumb. Dust the chicken in a bowl of flour, shaking gently to lose any excess. Move this chicken to another bowl with the whisked eggs and milk (with another pinch of salt and pepper) therein, dipping them top and bottom before moving onto the third bowl with the breadcrumbs. Again, dip them in; top, bottom and if you're feeling brave, on the sides too. Some cold butter may fall out of the chicken at any one of these stages, but don't worry: just squeeze it back in. Place them back in the fridge for another hour's firming up.

Heat your oven to 180º Celsius. While this is going on, heat a frying pan with a little olive oil and place your Kievs in carefully for a little browning. When golden, put into an oven dish inside a piece of foil. Make sure the foil is well-sealed, then bake for 20 minutes.

And there it is! Your very own Chicken Kiev. Serve with a little pasta and an enormous salad to assuage any guilt about eating a luscious, butter filled, melt in your mouth chicken dish, pouring any melted butter over the chicken. If you still feel guilty, drink a lot of water with it and go for a run after it's settled.

Porridge Cake

My mental rolodex has a few tried and true back-pocket recipes for occasions, and there are many in my life certainly, when I need to 'make' something from scratch but either lack time, creativity, patience or inspiration (or ingredients!).  In fact, I reach into that back pocket so often that I'm sure many of my last-minute meals have a thin covering of lint! Most are for main courses as, in a pinch, we can always get away with fruit, ice cream or a cream concoction of the two for pud.  Sometimes, however, one needs something baked and visibly homemade,  yet something on-the-spur either for dessert or to serve with coffee or tea when the biscuit tin is empty and tea alone seems a bit mean.

Here is one for just such an occasion.  It is quick, never fail and most of us have all the ingredients in the cupboard and fridge.  This one can be dressed up if it's for dessert.  It comes from my friend Lyn, the fantabulous cook, is great if you need something last minute and  it's so easy you can be gardening, wallpapering or making curtains and still produce this mini masterpiece.  Put simply:  if you can make breakfast, you can make porridge cake.

(Photographs again courtesy of dear Stevie.  Thanks so much!)

Cream together 4oz margarine and 3oz sugar (white or brown).  Beat in an egg.  Mix in 4oz self raising flour, 4oz porridge oats and 1 tsp cinnamon.  I imagine ginger or nutmeg would be good too.

Spread half mixture on bottom of greased and floured, round, shallow sponge tin (8" diameter).  Cover with a good layer of jam and here's where it gets fun as you can use whatever takes your fancy:  red jam, yellow jam, marmalade even, or we like Tiptree's rhubarb and vanilla jam.  Spread other half of batter mixture over jam and bake at 170ºC for about 25 minutes until browned on top and cooked through.

Serve with whipped cream, custard or ice cream.  It's lovely warm but makes nice squares to go in a packed lunch the next day - that's if there is any left and with Kit around, there never is!

Cherry tomato clafoutis

As predicted, following up my last post has been difficult.  The past month been busy, and I haven't had much time for anything more than everday cooking.  A few new things have been tried.  An easy stir fry of braised red cabbage, pancetta and peas that works equally well as a main course or a colorful side dish.  A delicious lemon curd layer cake that went over a treat with colleagues and family.  Nothing that seemed like a worthy successor to the pie chart pie, but I'll never blog again if I keep thinking that way, so I have decided to (re)start afresh with something simple that I made over the Easter weekend: a cherry tomato clafoutis.

A clafoutis is traditionally a sweet dessert, most commonly made with cherries.  However, a recent edition of Good Housekeeping included a recipe for a savoury version which looked good, so we decided to try this out to accompany our barbecued chicken.  It's incredibly simple, but works very well and is aesthetically appealing (at least until you serve it - then it collapses somewhat).


Cherry tomato clafoutis

 60g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 large eggs
100 ml milk
3 tbsp shredded fresh basil leaves, plus extra to garnish
150g cottage cheese
250g cherry tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste, if desired


Mix together the flour, baking powder, eggs, milk and seasoning.  Then whisk in the basil and the cottage cheese.

Pour the mixture into a shallow baking dish (that can hold about a litre), and arrange the cherry tomatoes in the mixture as you please.  You can either drop them in whole or slice them in half and add them, cut sides down.

Season the lot with black pepper and cook in an oven set to 180 degrees C for about half an hour until the egg is a golden colour and has set.  Garnish with the remaining basil and serve.  Depending on how many people are dining, this could either work as a main course, with a green salad on the side, or as a side dish to accompany meat.  Either way, it passes my mother's 'back pocket' test and will certainly be made again!

A vaguely adventurous roast chicken

Roast chicken, with all the trimmings or just by itself, is a delightful meal to cook and eat; I find that I make it at least once every two months.

I'm not sure where my liking for roast chicken started: pleasant memories of family Sunday roasts, maybe; a scene in the film "Amelie" in which a particular character cooks one every week; it could have been from an article about the book "French Women Don't Get Fat", in which one annoyingly svelte French woman talked of how she was wont to cook and eat a whole chicken by herself - and not put on a pound. In any case, I got my particular cooking technique from Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat", which has served me well both for me, family and friends. Until now.

When I cook, I'm a rule follower and am in awe of those who can go to their larder, look at what they have and conjure a delicious meal, while I am still following a recipe to the letter. Past birthdays have seen me being gifted many a cook book; I am happy to pore over them and follow their rules. However, for my birthday this year, I was fortunate enough to be given a Flavour Thesaurus that has made me take a few baby steps into what I refer to as... adventure cooking.

What follows is such an "adventurous" recipe. It isn't adventurous by long chalk really, but for me it was a voyage into the unknown that I hope will lead to greater risk taking in future. The thesaurus mentioned the excellent flavour combining of chicken and mushroom: I love both, so I felt this was a good place to start.

Anointing the chicken in lemon juice

I took a medium chicken of about 1.5kg, which I washed then smeared in the juice of half a lemon; the other half I shoved up the chicken's bottom in order to give the roast a lemony fung inside and out. Turning the oven to 190ºC, I put it in a roasting tin and placed it in the oven for an hour while I prepared my vegetables.

Mushrooms galore

These were three carrots and two parsnips, peeled, halved and quartered. And mushrooms. Lots and lots of mushrooms. About a kilo to be exact; in this case, large and small button mushrooms. If I were truly adventurous, I may have used portobello, chestnut or shiitake mushrooms, but for now quantity was the adventure. I washed these and left them whole.

Flavour combining

After an hour, I took the chicken out, basted it in its own juices then put the vegetables in the roasting tin. The chicken juices would give, I hoped, a lovely flavour to the vegetables as they roasted together.

Results...

Another hour went by with occasional basting before I took the roasting tin out. Letting the chicken rest for a few moments, I took the well cooked, yet firm vegetables out into another pot (the mushrooms retained their form beautifully) while I spooned as much chicken fat out of the roasting tin, leaving the delicious caramelised chicken juices, before placing it on a hot plate.

With the chicken juices, also left in the roasting tin was liquid from all the mushrooms and lemon juice, which I aimed to boil down to a gravy. If I had a bottle of white wine handy, I would have added a glass too, but on this occasion, I decided to make do with what I had. The heat on high, I stirred the various juices until the meat juices had dissolved into the lemony mushroom liquid.

Ten minutes later, I added this gravy to the fall-off-the-bone chicken and roasted vegetables, along with a green salad to one side. Lovely.

Well, it was a small start, but as I work through the flavour thesaurus, I can dare to imagine more improvisation or off-recipe cooking. In the meantime, I've discovered a new way to make one of my favourite dishes.

Never apologise lasagna

 'Never apologise, never explain'.  These words of my mother's still ring in my ears, decades after I was exhorted not to overly excuse or give elaborate explanations for what I was doing.  When the lady doth protest too much, people stop believing and lose interest.

And so it is with recipes.  Put down something in front of a hungry family saying that it 'doesn't  look very good but if probably tastes fine or 'sorry I sort of messed up the top' doesn't make them tuck in with enthusiasm.  When we sat down to the results of this one last week and I said 'sorry but I think perhaps....' I was shouted down with a chorus of 'never apologise, just eat it'.  And, in fact, it was good.

Everyone has their own favourite lasagna recipe.  I have a wonderful lower fat quick version which I can do without a thought.  This one is a slightly more complex version of the low fat one but it's not the all singing, all dancing, every pan in the kitchen type that can take up an afternoon.

Stevie was the photographer so even if the recipe doesn't appeal (ooops, there I go again) the pictures will be of a better standard than usual and I'm including them all as she takes great food shots.

Sorry!

9 lasagna noodles (get the kind that don't need precooking)
1 tblsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
500 g turkey mince (any other is fine but turkey has the least fat)
750 ml passata or tomato sauce
175 g sliced fresh mushrooms
2 tsp Italian seasoning
good grinding of black pepper
pinch of garlic powder
250g chopped fresh spinach but I used lamb's lettuce equally successfully.
500 ml low fat cottage cheese
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
500 g grated sharp cheddar or mozzarella


Heat olive oil in frying pan over medium heat.  Cook onion until softened but not browned, then add turkey and continue to cook for another 5 to 7 minutes until lightly browned.  Add tomato sauce, mushrooms, and seasonings, stir together well and simmer for about 10 minutes.











 

 
 In another bowl, combine spinach, cottage cheese and nutmeg.

 

Now layer the casserole in a 9x13 baking dish:  sauce, spinach,  noodles, cheese, sauce, spinach,noodles, sauce and top with cheese.  Any variation of this is fine but noodles need to be next to the sauce so they cook and the top should be a layer of cheese.  Play with it as you would any layered casserole to get it right for your own tastes.

Bake at 180ºC for about 20 to 30 minutes until sauce is bubbling.  Cool for a few minutes before serving.

 

Recipe for spring cleaning day

Traditionally, the Saturday before Easter is a day for cleaning house, to get ready for the festival. However, we had invited a lunch guest on the Saturday, so we moved the schedule up a bit. For once, I didn’t have to sing on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, so I blocked off the two days and got to work.

Thursday I scoured my home office. Fortunately, Norman was at a meeting in Fort Erie, because as these things go, it has to get a lot worse before it gets better. I stashed boxes in the hall to create a place to sort things out. Piles of paper for the recycling. And a lot of dead technology.

Remember floppy disks? I found quite a few. One non-functioning modem. CDs with software for laptops I no longer own. Cassette tapes. Videotapes. By the end of the day, the office was unnaturally tidy, and I was nearly as dead as the technology. Dinner was turkey burgers on onion buns with thick slabs of tomato and a considerable quantity of red wine.

Friday morning I was better prepared. For one thing, we had been invited out to dinner in the evening by a neighbour. This is highly recommended. Nobody really wants to cook after spring cleaning. Also, since handling a lot of paper and cardboard dries out your hands, I had a plan for that too. 

Here is my recipe for spring cleaning day:

Heavy-duty hand cream

Disposable snug-fitting plastic gloves (similar to surgical gloves but cheaper and thinner)

Music

Lemon pasta

Muscle-relaxing bath salts

First, remove any rings, cover your hands with hand cream, and put on the gloves. It feels a little squishy at first, but you get used to it, and does keep your hands from drying out.

Then, head down into the seventh circle of hell. In my house, this is familiarly known as the furnace room. This space lurks in furthest recesses of the basement. There are shelves along one side, crammed with junk left over after the Flood. Not the one with Noah, the one we had in the basement in 2009, when everything was removed from the basement, put in storage, later brought back and put any which way on any available surface.

As you work, turn on some good music to work by. Since it was Good Friday, there were things like the Allegri Miserere on the radio – good penitential stuff for the sins of clutter. The opening chorus of Bach’s St John Passion has a rhythm like a motor and is good for getting moving.

Work furiously for a couple of hours.

Lunch: After brushing off the cobwebs and removing my gloves, I rummaged in the fridge. Not a lot there – we were planning to go to the farmer’s market early on Saturday, and supplies were low. But there were some lemons and some Parmesan cheese. There is always some dry pasta in the cupboard and a cube of chicken stock. So we had lemon pasta.

Chicken stock cube

2 cups of water

6 oz of dry pasta

1 lemon

1 tsp mustard (optional)

Parmesan cheese, grated

Put the cube and the water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the pasta. Use a microplane on the lemon until you have a nice pile of grated lemon rind. Then squeeze the lemon. Add the lemon juice to the pasta and the mustard. Keep an eye on the pan and add water as necessary, but in small quantities. You want just enough liquid to make a lemon sauce – you are not going to drain the pasta at any point. Add the lemon rind towards the end, so it adds flavour but doesn’t cook. Serve in bowls with lots of grated Parmesan.

That provided enough fuel for us both to do another couple of hours of cleaning. The bins (rubbish and recycling) outside are now quite full. We also have a special option for recycling. We live on a street full of houses that leads down to the edge of Lake Ontario, where there is a park and a boardwalk for strolling. On a sunny day (it was), dozens of people walk by our house on the way to the beach.

We put a box containing music cassettes and CDs, and even a couple of movies on videotape in a box marked “Free – Help Yourself” and placed it near the sidewalk. They were gone in a matter of hours. Easier than lugging them to a charity shop.

Finally, I used the bath salts while I soaked for a while with a good book. I put on clean clothes. I’m ready to party this evening.

And here are the results of my work in the office. The basement is still a work in progress.