Winter comfort in a bowl of pasta

Its cold today, really brrrr cold.  The type of cold you need a hot bath when you get home to warm your toes after the 10 minute walk home from the bus stop.  The ground thought it was cold too.  The pavement sparkled like it had little tiny diamonds.

I had my bath, had a quick browse through my twitter feed and I fell upon Nigella Lawson's picture of what she is eating tonight.  Truffle risotto.  It looked so comforting that it inspired me to cook something really comforting and warming.

I needed to boil some pasta to beef up another dish for my work lunch box (I love taking in home cooking that can quickly be microwaved at work - a bit of comfort in the office that usually starts conversations as my colleagues smell my food!)

In a frying pan I put in some chopped bacon to start and then added some peppers and mushrooms that needed using up.  Chopped an onion, garlic, added a generous handful of chopped kale and lightly fried together. 

To finish I added some soft goats cheese to make a sauce and added the pasta to the frying pan.  I like the pasta to really mingle with the other flavours for the last five minutes. I also love the pasta to just get a little browned.

All the ingredients for this meal (apart from the pasta) were left overs from the weekend.  Kale, well we always have some kale on hand at this time of year.  One of those excellent, hardy, winter veg.

What I got was a really comforting, curl up by the fire kind of a meal.  Exactly what I wanted and I didn't even need to season it. 

Ingredients
Bacon (chopped, 3 slices)
Onion (one onion chopped)
Garlic
Kale (4 medium pieces of kale, roughly chopped)
Capsicum Peppers
Mushrooms
Goats cheese (with added chives, soft cheese)
Pasta

End of season nasturtium pesto

There's a big frost coming tonight, hopefully it will warm a little during the day tomorrow, but I fear its the last chance saloon for those yummy nasturtium leaves.

I finished work at 4.15pm today so I thought if I hurry home I may be able to harvest those leaves in the light.  Sadly it was dark by 4.45pm so it was a job to be done with my trusty head torch!

I managed to harvest 30g of leaves.  Pretty good for some last of the season pesto.

I didn't have all the usual ingredients for the pesto and threw it together with what I had in the kitchen but it made some mighty fine pesto.

Here's tonight's ingredients:

30g pesto leaves
Rapeseed oil/balsamic vinegar (left over from a used jar of slow roasted tomatoes)
2 garlic cloves
A generous scoop of pickled nasturtium seeds

I whizzed it together in the food processor and it's something like a vinaigrette pesto combination.  When I tasted it for seasoning it was perfect - no seasoning required.  Very peppery!

Blackberries for Breakfast

It's Saturday morning, had my lie in and then started to feel a little peckish.

Wandered downstairs and fancied something a little different and decadent.  There was no crumble left :(  which is my usual decadent (if a little naughty) breakfast with minimum effort!

On weekdays I usually do some porridge.  It's perfect, fills me up and all I have to do is throw a couple of table spoons of oats and a little milk - straight in the microwave and job done.  A little bit of my rosehip and apple jelly to sweeten.  Quicky breakfast.

But this morning was a weekend morning, I couldn't just have porridge.  That would be boring.  You need a little decadence on a weekend - we work hard all week, we need a little bit of something special on the weekends.  Not much in the fridge for inspiration.  My utility room has about 4kg of apples storing nicely, they wouldn't do... but fruit ... hmmm... I like sweet things and the freezer's full of freshly foraged goodies.  The only ones that would really do as fast food are blackberries.

Today's method:

Bashed the frozen bag a little to loosen up a few blackberries and tossed them into the bowl with a few spoonfuls of porridge oats and some milk. 

Microwaved for 3 mins (the blackberries need a few minutes to thaw)

Poured a little honey for extra weekend decadence...

And enjoyed the most wonderful, filling, fruity, weekend breakfast.  One of the highlights is that it turns the porridge purple!

Garam Masala Cauliflower Cheese

These have been in quite an abundance recently, especially with our wet summer.

Brassicas are one crop that should be happy with our wet summer and these have been making regular appearances in the kitchen but what to do with the beauties?  So I hit the cookery books for some inspiration and added a twist to this old favourite.

It's truly delicious and has become a firm favourite in our home.


Garam Masala Cauliflower Cheese

(your kitchen will smell amazing!)

Ingredients:
Block of cheese (about 200g)
1 cauliflower
Few rashes of bacon (optional)
Full fat milk/single cream (cream makes the sauce thicker)
Butter
Flour
Onion
Garam Masala
Turmeric
Bit of chilli powder (optional - if you like it spicy)
Breadcrumbs (optional)

1. Chop your cauliflower and grill two or three pieces of bacon.
2. In a medium saucepan start the sauce by adding a little butter (or marg for lactose intollerance).  Once the butter starts to melt whisk it in to the flour so it is all mixed together.  Start by adding the milk or cream little by little and whisking in really well.  When the bottom of your pan is about covered you can add bigger splashes of milk or cream mixing in well.  Simmer for half an hour or so until the sauce looks thick and creamy.
3. Once the sauce is thick season it with your chosen spices and add half of your block of cheese (grated) into the sauce mixing in slowly until combined.  Once all the milk and cheese has combined and is becoming a nice thick sauce it is ready.  When you think its nearly ready check the spices are exactly to your liking and if you want more of a bite add a little bit (or a lot) of chilli powder to taste.
4. Put everything into an oven dish and grate lots of cheese over the top so that it will brown nicely. (or if you want a crunchy, cheesy top mix some breadcrumbs with the cheese before putting the cheese on your dish).
5.  Place in an oven - about gas mark 5 / 180 degrees until nicely browned.

Garlic Pesto

When I left my last garden, I wasn't sure whether to take my garlic with me or do something culinary with it.

For the sake of easing our muscles in a very long distance move I opted for the culinary.  (It also looked like one bulb had been taken by white rot).

And what a good idea it was... I came up with garlic pesto to use up my juvenile garlic shoots.  Its incredibly strong but an amazing garnish for roasting asparagus in - it just tastes devine!!

Recipe

50g garlic shoots, bulbs - anything that looks fresh on the garlic plants
50 ml Lemon/Lime juice
150 ml Rapeseed Oil
Salt to taste

Method

1.  Chuck everything into a blender until everything's well mixed and looks like pesto
2.  Pour into a bottle.  If the pesto is not liquid enough, add a bit more oil and shake it in the bottle until well mixed. 


We called our bottle of garlic pesto "Brathway Garlic" to remind us of our last home which was on Brathway Road, Wandsworth.

Sourdough Starter Update

From day to day my sourdough starter went through various changes.  As in the instructions I followed these were only described as lively and not so lively, I thought I would document them for any one else who wants to make their own starter and wants an indication of what to expect.

Day 1 Activity

Air bubbles formed.  A few of these were a couple of mm diameter but most of these were minute bubbles.  But air bubbles nevertheless which is a good sign of activity.  Towards the end of the 24 hours and the main sign that the sourdough starter needed feeding was the large bubbles had shrunk in size.

Day 2 Activity

There were similar air bubbles to day 1, but this time there was also white circular shaped patches (similar to what appears on bread dough when you leave it to prove). When these died down I saw that it was time to feed the starter again.

Day 3 Activity

The starter was really starting get very active by this time with masses of large bubbles a bit like the size of bubbles babies blow in the mouths.  The bubbles were using most of the space available at the top of the container so about 2 - 3 inches of this mass of bubbles created above the top level of the starter mixture.

Day 4 Activity

There were more uniform bubbles this time.  Lots of tiny bubbles.  I added mainly spelt flour for the feed this time so I think this may have had an impact.

Day 5 Activity

Again, uniform bubbles across the surface of the mixture.  They were larger this time and I used the multigrain flour.  I am finding I have more reaction from the multigrain than the spelt.

The starter is now smelling sweet and the same everyday now and the reaction is at the same rate and more predicable now so I think it's ready to use.

The starter when it has lots of activity

I continued to feed it daily for another two days and then started to make my sponge for my first sourdough loaves.  Here's a picture of the sponge bubbling away.

It made some wonderful tasting spelt sourdough bread with rather a sweet taste.  I kept the dough too moist though which made it difficult to form into rounds and flopped a bit when baked so I think I need to fine tune the recipe before I publish it.  Naturally I will use 50ml less water next time and more salt.  However, it was wonderful to see some lovely large bubbles in the loaves which were all made with my sourdough starter instead of with bought yeast.

My first sourdough starter

I've decided that now is the time to start my very own sour dough starter.  Hopefully this will be a start of a very long relationship!

I've started it with 100g of flour (mixture of spelt and mixed grain flour) and roughly the same amount of luke warm water.

I whisked the mixture until it looked the same consistency as pancake batter and put cling film over the top of the bowl. 

Already I can see three bubbles forming...

I have left it in a warm place for the fermentation to begin.

Tomorrow I will check it again.  At that stage if it's looking lively with bubbles and the cling film is a little risen then it will be time to feed it again with 30g flour and 30ml water.

The instructions on Real Bread say to continue this process for 5 more days (about 7 days in total).  After about 7 days it should start smelling yeasty, sweet, fruity and it is at this point that it will be ready to use to bake with.

Since starting to write this blog my starter has one more bubble...

Asparagus - How do you eat yours?

I love this season.  You know the one... when asparagus starts gracing local farmers markets with its lovely presence.  Our very own delicacy which grows so easily over here.  A real treat in the eating seasonal food calendar.

These were the first sprigs I bought so I really wanted to do them justice. 

I smeared home made spring garlic pesto all over them and roasted them with some slow roasted tomatoes that I harvested from my garden last autumn.

The garlic pesto was made with garlic I started growing last autumn but in the spring, before we were about to move to Birmingham, I noticed what looked like white rot on one bulb.  Not wanting to risk transporting infected garlic to my new garden in Birmingham, I made a very powerful pesto with all the parts of the garlic that had grown so far.  The result is probably the most potent garlic pesto I have ever tasted and it really complements roasting vegetables - and it tastes devine with asparagus!

Preserving Foraged Fruits

It might seem like a funny time of the year to be writing about this.  Autumn and winter would be slightly more appropriate but I'm moving house in a few weeks and have been sorting out my freezer trying to use up those frozen foods before the big move to Birmingham.

Out of the various things stuffed into our really tiny freezer compartment I found a few gems I'd collected last summer and autumn... a bag of 250g blackberries, 500g hawthorn berries and 500g elderberries.  Laziness was the only excuse for not doing something with them in the autumn.  Maybe it was the distraction of my boyfriend returning from a tour of duty but these are only excuses at the end of the day.  At the time I had just learned to make chutney and my very own tomato ketchup which has to be one of the most delicious things I've ever made.

I had plans for these bags of fruit, the haw berries were destined to be made into haw berry ketchup and the elderberries' destiny was a pontack sauce.  Both these recipes were in my Preserves Handbook (River Cottage) which is currently my preserving bible.

So yesterday I spent the day in my kitchen with these bubbling concoctions made from last autumn's foraged foods.

There's something so special about cooking foraged foods.  They are like gifts from nature.  The majority of people walk past them, none the wiser that they could be made into delicious foods.  I remember when I was picking them, riding around on my bike, intently inspecting every bush in all the public parks within a 2 mile radius of my London flat armed with freezer bags.  I especially remember picking the elderberries from the back of a bush and passers by looking at me in an almost alarmed way - What's she doing?!  When I was picking the blackberries some teenagers spotted me and one said to the other "I told you they were edible!!"

I made a delicious rosehip and apple jelly last autumn but then lost the momentum.

But right now, I've got it back.  The haw berry ketchup is complete and tastes delicious.  I got my boyfriend's approval with that one.  He had some with his sausages this morning!

I am still working on the pontack sauce.  It is currently simmering on the oven and I am sure it will make another delicious sauce.

There is something so grounding about making preserves out of foraged foods, I'm now hooked again!

Haw Berry Sauce (makes 300ml sauce)

Ingredients:   500g hawthorn berries, 300ml white wine vinegar, 300ml water, 150g sugar, pepper and salt to taste

How:  Simmer the haw berries in 300ml water and 300ml vinegar for half an hour or so.  What you are looking for is the haw berries getting soft and the sauce looking red-brown in colour.  Take off the heat and rub through a sieve pushing as much as you possibly can through the sieve leaving the large stones behind.  You will get a nice pureed type paste of haw berries in the pan below the sieve.  Simmer this liquid adding in the sugar.  Simmer for about 5 minutes and add salt and pepper to taste.  When it is completely to your liking, pour into your sauce bottle.

Pontack Sauce (makes 350ml sauce)

Ingredients:  500g elderberries, 500ml cider vinegar, 200g chopped shallots, 6 cloves, 4 allspice berries, handful of peppercorns, nugget of ginger or teaspoon of ginger paste.

How:  Put the elderberries mixed with the cider vinegar in a dish and put them in the oven on a low heat (about 120 degrees C) for about 6 hours.  Next, put the mixture into a saucepan and add the chopped shallots and all the spices.  Simmer for about half an hour.  Next, pour the mixture through a sieve.  Next, bring the mixture to the boil for 5 minutes and pour into your sauce bottle.

Roasted Roots for supper

Today I harvested root veg.  From crops of carrots, parsnips and beetroots I steamed the beetroot tops and roasted all the roots.  

As my crops of root veg are rather modest in size! they didn't take long to roast.  I only put the heat of the oven to about 140 degrees C and they took about half an hour to roast.  I roasted them with a chopped shallot and some garlic.

When they were ready I mixed in some goats cheese and a little chilli and mixed it in well.  I steamed the beetroot tops and made a light vinaigrette to flavour the tops (rapeseed oil, whole grain mustard, a touch of balsamic vinegar)

I was really surprised but this meal was really filling and satisfying in the knowledge that all my ingredients were grown organically in my garden.  Yum :)

Stuffed Gem Squash

Do you remember the gem squash I grew in the garden last summer?  Gem Squash - the intrepid explorer  Yesterday, I thought it was time to do my home grown gem squash justice and what a delicious dish it made.  I just have to share it with you!

As my boyfriend is lactose intolerant I stuffed his gem squash with my home grown Slow Roasted Tomatoes, a finely chopped shallot, a mix of herbs ground with a pestle and mortar (oregano, chilli flakes, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, bay leaf, salt and pepper), poured some of the oil the slow roasted tomatoes were in and mixed the herbs with the stuffing by stirring around with a tea spoon and put the lid on.

I, on the other hand am not lactose intolerant and have a serious addiction to cheese - particularly nice, soft goats cheese!  So I started off stuffing my gem squash with a good scoop of goats cheese, slow roasted tomatoes, a drizzle of the oil the slow roasted tomatoes were stored in and the mix of herbs I used in Matt's gem squash.

I accompanied these with some lamb cutlets with a good spread of my home made (and home grown) Nasturtium Pesto

Then I roasted them all in the oven for an hour at 180 degrees centigrade.

Here's how they looked straight out of the oven after an hour.  When they came out the oven they smelt absolutely devine and tasted absolutely scrumptious. 

Recipes used in the making of this meal:
Nasturtium Pesto
Slow Roasted Tomatoes