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x x

Pan Bagnat

There is nothing more hideous than wet bread. FACT.

When I was a child we would occasionally go on a family picnic. When I say picnic, of course I mean we would sit-in-the-car-in-a-layby-eating-chicken-drumsticks,-damp-sandwiches-&-warm-orange-squash. We would have Salad Sandwiches which, now I've said it out loud, is actually quite unusual - slices of white sliced bread, slathered in tonnes of butter and filled with iceberg lettuce & tomatoes. Quite tasty if you ate them immediately but after 3 hours in a humid Citroen 2CV the tomato juice would make the bread all soggy and flaccid. Weird? Yes, but not nearly as weird as my Scottish grandparents who actually ate those soft butter lettuces sprinkled with granulated sugar. I have no idea why or how and, despite literally minutes of internet research, can't see any reference to anyone else ever eating lettuce in this way. Ho hum.  

So, to the point of this - Pan Bagnat - which I believe means 'wet bread'. It's made in various parts of the Med but I think originates from Nice in the South of France. It's essentially a loaf of rustic bread, hollowed out and stuffed with all sorts of lovely bits and pieces - it is really rather delicious and pretty much the perfect picnic food. As always, mine is not especially authentic but did make a rather brilliant job of cleaning our all the random pots of deli bits that I accumulate in the fridge.

1 loaf of rustic, crusty bread
Olives
Fresh/sundried tomatoes
Chargrilled Artichokes, Red peppers (you could make them yourself or just use the ones you get in jars)
Couple of slices of parma
Ball of mozzarella sliced up
Basil, Parsley leaves
Peppery EV olive oil & balsamic vinegar

All you need to do is slice the top off your loaf of bread and carefully scoop out the middle of the loaf - you can use all this for breadcrumbs. Dress the veg in the olive oil and vinegar and then layer up all the ingredients inside the loaf - pressing down each layer. I tried to not put the tomatoes on outside of the loaf as I was keen to avoid the soggy sandwich of yesteryear... Then pop the bread lid on top, wrap the whole loaf tightly in foil and put into the fridge under something heavy - like a pan or a couple of tins on a plate. Leave it under the weight for 24 hours and then take out of the fridge to come up to room temperature before eating. Cut into wedges and serve with a little green salad. With or without a dusting of granulated sugar...

Choux Buns filled with Vanilla Ricotta & Candied Peel

I know.

Let's just pretend the hiatus never happened and just get on with this shall we.

So. Here goes.

I don't often do puddings but this idea has been lurking in the back of my head for ages and I finally got around to making it today.

I love Sicilian Cannoli but have a pathologic fear of deep-frying so would never be tempted to make the little rolls myself - so these little Choux fellows seemed to be a good compromise. I think the choux seed was sown because we often make delicious little Gougeres at work - little Choux pastry buns made with a strong gruyere or cheddar - they are an addictive nibble and I have become somewhat intrigued by their fluffy loveliness.

So I turned to Delia. She seemed like the right sort of person to approach with pastry questions, someone who knows all the scary baking things that I avoid because they seem a bit tricky and scientific. Someone who will have a no-fail recipe and someone who probably has some sound advice about the optimal temperature of your hands when making pastry. And, if I'm completely honest, I turned to Delia because she was the first thing that came up after typing "Choux Pastry Recipe" into Google...

But they worked a treat so I can only direct you to Delia's excellent recipe here and take no credit for it whatsoever. I will say that the buns were incredibly easy to make and quite good fun!

I made the Cannoli filling up really - so it's not in anyway authentic but it IS very yummy.
1 tub supermarket ricotta
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon candied peel
Approx 3 tablespoons whipped cream

I just folded all the ingredients together and dropped a big spoonful into each little bun. Probably a million calories a bun but they were actually quite light and fluffy - in fact The Boyfriend and I managed 3 each after a fairly hearty dinner.

So I reckon Choux Pastry could become a part of my life in the future and will keep you posted on the results. No honestly, I will. I'm back on this blogging thing. Hello? Hello? Is anyone still there?

Thai Green Curry Paste & Public Humiliation

I've just spent a couple of days in Edinburgh with my sister. The purpose of my visit was to select my bridesmaid dress for her upcoming wedding and, to be honest, it wasn't something I was looking forward to. I had been told in advance that we would have to go to the designated wedding dress shop, stand in an ornate, soft-focus fitting room while a gang of wedding-obsessed shop assistants squeezed me into a parade of ill-fitting taffeta outfits for my family's amusement. The reality was as bad as it sounds but, after 2 hours of having women poke bits of my flesh into dresses that were 4 sizes too small, we actually got a lovely dress.

It made me think that I seem to have a lot of public dress-fitting humiliations - perhaps the most memorable being in a marketplace in Bangkok. My friend Karen & I were on holiday and wanted to get some dresses made for us, Karen's parents lived in Bangkok and told us about a great dressmaker in a central Bangkok market. We set out with our hastily sketched dress designs and plunged into exactly what I'd always imagined a Thai market would be - a bustling, humid, carnival of noise, livestock and confusion. We eventually found our way to the dressmaker's market stall where she asked us to hop onto a box to be measured. It is perhaps worth mentioning at this stage that I am not, as the ridiculous Sophie Dahl puts it, "a little slip shadow of a creature" - I've always been a bit on the chunky side. So, when the diminutive Thai dressmaker pulls out her tape measure and begins her work she is surprised by what she finds. In fact upon measuring my boobs, she laughs her tiny little head off! And not wanting her colleagues to miss out on the amusement, she invites nearby stallholders to come and look at the tape measure and share in my hilarious proportions. Lovely...

My therapist says I'm making good progress, all things considered.

So anyway, this all ties up in a food-related way as, while I was at my sister's house last week, I made her a Thai Green Curry paste to stick in her freezer. She had a cupboard full of Thai ingredients sourced from a nearby asian supermarket and needed some ideas for what to do with them. So, Katie, to enable you to make green curry paste whenever you fancy, the recipe is below.

Thai Green Curry Paste: 

• Big knob of ginger (or galangal if you can get hold of it) 
• Couple of cloves of garlic
• Couple of shallots 
• Zest & juice of 2 limes plus more to taste 
• Couple of stalks of lemongrass 
• Couple of green chillies (My sister gets something she calls Chilli Cheeks - some sort of affliction rendering her unable to eat very spicy food because it makes her cheeks hurt [no, I've never heard of this before either...] - I'd recommend trying the chillis first to see how hot they are before adding to the paste) 
• Big bunch of coriander (stalks and all) 
• Teaspoon of sugar (palm sugar is authentic but any soft brown sugar will do) 
• A few glugs of fish sauce 
• A tablespoon or two of vegetable oil 

 Throw everything into a blender and whizz together. Taste and add more lime/fish sauce/sugar as you like. When you want to use the paste, just fry it off in a frying pan for a couple of minutes until the smell fills the room and then add coconut milk & reduce a little. Add prawns at the last minute and cook for a minute or two until they turn pink. This paste would also be good brushed onto chicken thighs or salmon fillets before grilling/barbecuing/roasting. A spoonful or two would make the base to a nice broth-y soup. Or you could fry the paste for a minute or two and then stir through some noodles & top with stir fried veg & crushed peanuts.  

(Incidentally the picture above is actually from the fateful Thailand holiday).

Fennel, Blood Orange, Red Onion & Olive Salad

Hello. Very quick post about a recipe which isn't even a recipe - its really just a list of nice things to eat all together. It's quite a zingy, springy sort of salad - nice now the weather is a bit more salad-friendly.

Finely slice up a mild red onion, you could even blanch it if you thought it was going to be a little overpowering. Slice, shave or mandolin a fennel bulb into super-thin slices. Peel and de-pith a couple of blood oranges - these were Sicilian Tarocca oranges from work but any sweet blood oranges would be delicious. Then toss together in a bowl with a handful of pitted black olives (mine were chilli-flaked black olives), some lovely olive oil and a splash of white wine vinegar. 

This is yummy with just some good bread but would also be fabulous with a flavoursome fish - something like grilled mackerel would be brilliant. 

If Barbie ate pudding she'd have Chocolate Mousse with Raspberry & Roses

I'm not a massive pudding person but every now again I do have a dabble. This one was rather inspired by the fact that we sell Crystalised Rose Petals in the shop I work in and, frankly, the sparkly-tinkerbell-loving-9-year-old-girl in me absolutely adores them! So I made a normal chocolate mousse, layered it on top of some whizzed up raspberries and a splash of rosewater and then topped it off with one of the lovely crystalised rose petals. A pudding fit for a dolls tea party! 

Makes about 6 little cups of mousse

150g very good dark chocolate 

2 eggs - separated into 2 yolks and 2 whites 

150 ml double cream 

30g granulated sugar 

1 pack of raspberries 

A splash of rosewater 

The all-important crystalised rose petals 

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over hot water and allow to cool a little while you whisk egg yolks and the sugar together. Add the melted chocolate into the egg mixture. Next whip the cream and add the chocolate/egg yolk mixture to it - folding in gently. Whip the egg whites until stiff and then fold these into the chocolate mixture. That's the mousse done. 

Blitz the raspberries & rosewater in the blender and then pass through a sieve to get rid of the pips. Pop a blob in the bottom of a little bowl/glass and then fill up the rest of the glass with the mousse and refrigerate for a couple of hours. 

Just before you serve the mousse, add your sparkly crystalised rose petal and enjoy. 


Perhaps while wearing a tutu? 

Normal service has been resumed (plus poached chicken with chilli sauce)

Hello. Sorry, I've been a bit remiss about this blogging business recently. It's been one of those months where we had a tonne of distracting stuff going on - people visiting, people working late, people in hospital and some minor DIY. So I left the blog alone for a while and then left it a bit longer and left it a bit longer still .... and in the end got a bit panicky that my next post would have to be so groundbreaking that I left it a little bit longer still! 

Anyway, having realised that I am being ridiculous, I'm just going to dive right in with some things I've been cooking - nothing groundbreaking but a couple of yummy things that we liked. 

Poached Chicken with a Chilli Sauce 

I made this for dinner tonight and it was honestly delicious. The recipe was 100% inspired by something  ate at a brilliant (but weird!) little Szechuan restaurant near Liverpool Street called My Old Place. It's a canteen-y style, no-frills  sort of place but it was full of chinese people when we went which seemed to bode well. The menu is amazing - loads of interesting-sounding dishes and a few "OMG ingredients"  like Sea Whelks and Pigs Ears - anyway we ordered 2 starters and 2 main courses between 2 of us which was WAY too much food! So you have been warned, the portions are enormous so you really don't need many at all. It was all really tasty but one of the starters really stood out - a cold dish of poached chicken on the bone with a super-hot, spicy chilli sauce.  It was really remarkable - you know when you have really "chicken-y" tasting chicken? Well it was like that. And with the fiesty but flavoursome sauce, it was genuinely brilliant. Anyway tonight I had a crack at a sort of homage to it - not exactly the same but lovely, very quick - and pretty healthy too. 

2 chicken breasts

Some chicken stock for poaching 

A good glug of sesame oil 

Teaspoon of chilli paste 

A slosh of red wine vinegar 

A slosh of dark soy sauce 

A couple of tablespoons of the liquid from a jar of stem ginger 

Bunch of spring onions, finely chopped 

Handful of finely chopped coriander (probably not as much as I used - you can see from the photo that I got a bit carried away...)

I brought the chicken stock to the boil (and threw in some ginger and lemongrass but I'd say that this was unnecessary with hindsight), then I turned the heat right down and added the chicken breasts. I poached the chicken on this super-low heat for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile I made the sauce by combining all the remaining ingredients in a saucepan and heating gently. I served the chicken sliced, on top of some plain boiled rice and with the sauce heaped over the top. 

It was really spicy in a good way - giving you a proper Ready Brek sort of glow!  

Peposo: A Tuscan peppery stew

Sorry about the pic - I know you can barely see the stew as I've managed to obscure it with a blanket of rocket....but just imagine you're looking at chunky flakes of slow-cooked beef shin in a dark and spicy gravy served on some griddled sourdough with just a FEW rocket leaves and a healthy glug of peppery olive oil.

I'd never heard of it before but internet research reveals that Peposo is a Tuscan stew made traditionally in a town near Florence which is famous for terracotta production. It makes sense as the stew is often cooked overnight and I guess a terracotta pot would be a good vehicle to do this. I've never been brave enough to cook something overnight but I made this in the morning and then left it cooking until the evening - just topping up the pot if it looked like the liquid was running low. Yes, I know, I can't seem to help myself....I'm afraid it's another "make-it-and-leave-it-cooking-while-you-get-on-with-other-stuff" recipe...

So, I used the other half of the beef shin I bought at Smithfield Market for last week's Ragu which I'd frozen - so, aside from the bottle of wine used for the sauce, the recipe was super cheap. And the results were quite surprising considering how few ingredients were involved - it was really spicy in a good way and although the gravy was quite light and thin it was very savoury and full of flavour.

You'll need: 
About a half a kilo of beef shin
A bottle of good italian wine - ideally something Tuscan like Chianti
8 cloves of garlic slices
Couple of tablespoons (yes, tablespoons) of ground black pepper
Couple of sprigs of rosemary
1 Bay leaf

And it couldn't be easier to make. First pop the oven on at about 150 degrees. Then layer the uncooked beef in an ovenproof pan with a few slices garlic cloves and a REALLY generous sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper and a sprig or two of rosemary. Continue to layer up the ingredients until you've used everything up. Add the bayleaf and pour on a whole bottle of wine and then cover the pan tightly with foil.  Put it in the oven for as long as you can manage - I did about 9 hours. All you'll need to do is check there's enough liquid in the pan every hour or two. I served it on some chunky griddled sourdough bread to soak up the sauce but I imagine it would be really good with polenta too.

Pre-pay-day-pizza

I know that February is a short month but it has felt to me like AGES since I was paid. So I've been trying to stay out of the shops and just live on the contents of our fridge, freezer and cupboards - none of which have seen much re-stocking recently.

Last night I made pizza which much be one of the cheapest dinners in the world. I loosely used the Jamie's Italy recipe for the pizza dough, but halved the quantities - although this still makes enough for 3 big pizzas - probably enough for 4-6 people:
400g strong white bread flour
100g semolina flour
Teaspoon of dried yeast
Teaspoon salt
Teaspoon sugar
Half pint of lukewarm water
I poured all the dried ingredients into a large mixing bowl and added the water. I combined the ingredients together with a fork until it looked doughy and then turned it out and kneaded it for about 10 minutes.  When it was smooth I popped it into a floured bowl and covered it with cling-film for a couple of hours until it had puffed up.

While the dough was rising I put a baking sheet into the oven at the highest heat. I then made the sauce:
About 25/30 cherry tomatoes (I'd bough them the previous week on special offer at Tesco because they were going a little soft)
3 gloves garlic
Pinch of dried oregano
Big bunch basil
Good peppery olive oil
Chunk of parmesan
Ball of mozzarella broken into pieces
I thinly sliced the garlic gloves and poached them in a tablespoon of good olive oil on a low heat for a couple of minutes. I halved the tomatoes and threw them into the saucepan with the garlic and left them to cook down for half an hour. When the sauce was ready I turned the heat off, I thinly shredded most of the basil and stirred it through the sauce.

When the dough had risen I took it out and put it on a floured  worktop and cut it into 3 chunky pieces and rolled each one out into a shape that would  fit my baking sheet. I took the hot baking sheet out of the oven, sprinkled it with Semolina Flour and placed the dough on top. I spread a big spoonful of sauce onto the dough and topped it with some pieces of mozzarella, a grating of parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil and put it into the oven, again, at the highest heat. Keep and eye on it as it can go from perfect to black in a few seconds but it should take 7-10 minutes. You should have enough here for 3 baking-sheet sized pizzas - so repeat until finished - I've put my leftover pizza dough in the freezer for another day.

I threw a couple of whole basil leaves on top of the pizza and then we ate them with our fingers, standing up in the kitchen while we ranted at Question Time on the TV - not dignified but delicious nonetheless!

Ice ice baby

I can't resist good ice cream.

I think it started when I was little. I have vague memories of visiting an Italian ice cream shop on the outskirts of Edinburgh when I was tiny. And I remember being awestruck by the enormous Knickerbockerglories bought by my Grandma in a little cafe in Haddington - it was my first encounter with Brain-Freeze, the terrible pain in the head associated with eating too much very cold food too quickly (something I can still get today from a particularly good Frozen Marguerita!).

I remember "going for a run" which, in those days, meant driving as a family to an ice cream shop in the next town, spending ages choosing the best flavours to have and then getting back into the car and eating them as slowly as we could to prolong the joy of eating ice cream. My sister was the weirdest ice-cream eater. Firstly she would only ever eat Mint Choc Chip ice cream which I have always believed to be slightly strange and toothpaste flavoured. Then, she also refused to eat an ice cream cone unless it had been "flattened" which meant my Dad had to eat a large proportion of the actual ice cream until it was flat and flush with the side of the cone. By the time I had finished my ice cream she was usually just getting started. I was, by this point, prepared to eat some of her Frozen Colgate too. Happily I could sometimes encourage her to give me some by seducing her into helping me make a tiny ice cream cone using the very end part of my cone. The charm of that soon wore off when she realised it was merely a ploy to enable eat her remaining ice cream long after after mine had finished. Ah well.

And then a few years later we moved to Greece and stumbled across ice cream Nirvana - a cafe which sold dishes of ice cream that had been piped in thin strands into a bowl, topped with red sauce and grated coconut on top having the effect of looking exactly like Spaghetti Bolognese. It was the best thing I'd ever seen or tasted. And it's only now, having Googled it, that I know it's actually a German speciality - have a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettieis. Food that looks like a completely different food - brilliant!

And of course Greece is also the home of the most elaborate, weddingy-meringue-y looking Ice Cream Cakes. You don't see anything like them in Britain really but in Athens they were the birthday cake of choice. They were just enormous piles of ice cream formed and piped and shaped into huge cakes and then decorated with chocolate, nuts and fruit and displayed in backlit free-standing freezers - looking exactly like ostentatious, elaborate hats.

And last year we were lucky enough to travel around Italy for a few weeks where we visited a carefully researched list of the best ice cream shops - we enjoyed delicious granità di caffè  with whipped cream for breakfast at the Tazzo D'Oro in Rome, we tried honey, crema, hazelnut and pistachio flavoured ice cream at the grumpy but gorgeous San Crispino and we adored the lemon sorbet in Cinque Terre. I loved the habit Roman office workers have of popping out for ice cream at some point in the day - the Italian equivalent of a swift half after work perhaps?

And back in East London I think I can safely say that we probably eat too much ice cream in our house. I'm not a massive pudding person but we do often nip out for post-dinner ice cream - I love Carluccios dark almost chewy sorbet-ish chocolate ice cream and the BF is happiest with a bowl of vanilla (or a guilty slice of Vienetta). So as an experiment and in attempt to be healthier I had a crack at frozen yoghurt today. I don't have an ice cream maker so I emptied a big carton of greek yoghurt, 2 dessert-spoons of Vanilla essence and 2 of caster sugar into a tupperware box, mixed it up and then popped it in the freezer. I took it out every hour and gave it a thorough mix up with a fork to try to get rid of any ice crystals. I'm afraid our camera was out of juice so there aren't any piccies but it was pretty good actually. It was a little too solid and needed some time out of the freezer before eating but it was creamy and tasty and a cheap (and slightly healthier...?) alternative to supermarket ice cream. I will definitely be investigating more frozen yoghurt recipes and will let you know how I get on.

Shin of beef ragu with gremolata & pecorino

You might have noticed that I'm a little bit obsessed with Ragu. No, not the jar of Dolmio-esque sauce of the same name which I believed was a very sophisticated dinner option when I was a student with one saucepan in the 1990s (but which I swiftly abandoned after the introduction of the much more glamourous and exotic Supermarket Pesto which I ate almost daily at university with pasta and, weirdly, either smoked mackerel or cottage cheese...). No no no. Ragu (or Ragout in France) is just the name given to a meat-based sauce - usually comprising of onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes & some kind of meat.

And proper Ragu ticks all my love-to-cook boxes:
1. It takes hours and hours and only improves with time.
2. It's the sort of rustic food you want to eat around a big table with rough red wine and country bread.
3. It's as cheap as you like.

I've made a Ragu out of all sorts. Leftover roast pork was pretty good - and frugal. Rabbit meat makes a delicious Ragu but it isn't a breeze to get hold of on your way home from work of an evening. I've made it with a mixture of pork and beef minced - nice but prefer chunks to mince. And tonight I made a Beef Shin Ragu which was unctuous and melting, flavoursome AND remarkably cheap.

So my mission this morning was finding shin of beef. I rushed out early and hot-footed it down to Smithfield Market to one of the butchers around the market which sells to the public. Smithfield is a beautiful covered market housing a wholesale meat market  - it's an interesting place to wander around, you see everything from crates of Halal chickens to half a cow being lugged about by men in gory-looking lab-coats. It is also home to a pub called the Cock Tavern which I always mean to take my Dad to, as it's a sort of blokey shrine to all things Meat. It's open all hours to cater for the market trading public and it serves an apparently amazing breakfast for less than a tenner of steak, sausages, liver, kidney and black pudding. That's all together on one plate you understand....a carnivore's carnival!

Anyway, I went to the butchers on the south side of the market and bought nearly 1.5 kilos of beef shin for about £6. I've put half of it in the freezer, so it works out as £3 for enough meat for a super-generous meal for two plus enough for a Leftovers Lunch for two tomorrow which I though was ridiculously good value.

I softened a red and white onion, 3 cloves of garlic 2 carrots and  2 sticks of celery in a little oil and butter. In another pan I browned the beef, adding half a bottle of red wine to deglaze the pan and then throwing the lot into the pan with the vegetables. I added a tin of tomatoes, a couple of bay leaves and then just left it to get on with it.

In fact I left it cooking from the end of Loose Women to the start Channel 4 news. For anyone who doesn't have a day off during the  week that's 6 and a half hours! So I cleaned the house, answered emails, did the washing, fake tanned and deep conditioned, sorted out what my boyfriend calls the "clothes bomb" (the pile of clothes left abandoned after a frantic "arghh-what-should-I-wear" panic last night) and just popped back to stir the Ragu about once an hour while I got on with my day. So although it seems like a pain to be cooking something for 6 hours, actually it couldn't be easier as you can just crack on with whatever you've got to do and let the sauce cook down for as long as you've got. There's also always a moment with any stew where I think "argh, the meat's not going to go all melty and stringy" but it always does if you leave it long enough, and this was no exception - after 6 hours it was a dark, delicious, slightly dry sauce which I served on Pappardelle with a sprinkling of zingy gremolata (finely shredded parsley, garlic and lemon zest) and a little pecorino. The gremolata was an idea from another food blog - I thought it was a lovely addition but the Boyfriend wasn't so keen - I think give it a try.

My best sort of food - really wintery comfort food.

Pasteis de Nata: Portuguese custard tarts

In my previous life I was lucky enough to do a tiny bit of traveling in my job. I worked at a bank and a couple of times a year I had to go off to another one of our European offices to have a chat to them about their marketing and how they might improve it. As you might expect, they were never delighted to have a bunch of Brits flying in to (in their view) criticise their work and tell them how they SHOULD be doing things. But, although I found the work a little painful, I still went to some great places I never would have been to otherwise - Moscow, Warsaw, Dusseldorf, Budapest, and on one occasion, lovely Lisbon.

Everything about the trip was lovely. The weather was glorious. Heaven knows how we'd managed to swing it but we ended up staying at the most beautiful hotel - the gorgeous Lapa Palace. We actually managed to squeeze in some sightseeing and sunbathing by the pool. In fact I retain an enduring memory of our little group making our way up an extremely steep hill towards a restaurant in the castle grounds overlooking the city after an all-day-meeting. We were a group of mainly female colleagues, most of us in stupidly high heels and some of us with the ubiquitous "wheelie-travel-bags" - we must have been a ridiculous sight and sound - stumbling, clattering and wheeling across the ancient cobblestones up to the castle!

And the people we'd gone to visit were lovely, friendly people working out of a really small, informal office. They had installed the most monstrous, high-tech, proper coffee machine in their little office - so throughout the 2-day meeting we had the most delicious proper coffee on tap. And each afternoon our hosts got in a pile of the delicious little portuguese custard tarts - Pasteis de Nata. I'd never really understood what the fuss was all about with these as I'm not a huge fan of either pastry or custard but one of these tarts was enough to make me think I'd been a little too hasty in my judgement... For anyone who hasn't tried them - you should. They're tiny pastry cups of cinnamon-y, vanilla-y caramelised custard-y joy - they are honestly amazing.

So when I found a pack of puff pasty in the freezer during a clear-out last week, I thought I'd have a go at making them myself. And actually they were fairly easy - you just make the custard first and then when the custard is cool pour it into the pastry cases and bake on a super-high heat so the tops blister a little.

Pasteis de Nata - makes about 24 tarts 
1 pack froze puff pastry - defrosted
4 egg yolks
Big carton of double cream - 600ml
2 tablespoons of plain flour
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
A little extra sugar and some cinnamon for sprinkling

First make your custard. Combine the cream, egg yolks, flour, sugar and vanilla in cold saucepan - use a whisk to combine. Turn the heat on very low and, stirring all the time, gently heat the mixture. This bit takes a little while but be patient, keep stirring and don't be tempted to turn the heat up as you'll end up with scrambled eggs. You'll see the mixture getting thicker and when it looks like custard take it off the heat and leave it to cool. Meanwhile roll out the pastry a little. Sprinkle the rolled out pastry with sugar and cinnamon, fold up and re-roll out so there's a layer of sugar and cinnamon in the pastry. Cut out pastry circles (using a wine glass in my case...) and use to line a muffin tray/yorkshire pudding tin - whatever you have to hand really. When the custard is cool, drop a blob into each pastry cup. Put into the hottest oven possible for 10/15 minutes - keep an eye as they burn quickly. You're looking for browned pastry and very slightly blackened custard. If you can bear to, wait until they are cool and serve with a really good strong cup of coffee.

Greece is NOT the word today: Afelia & a Made-Up Cake

I have to be honest, I never ate Afelia when I lived in Greece. I think it's actually a Cypriot recipe and I found a recipe for it in the lovely Falling Cloudberries book by Tessa Kiros. It's one of my favourite cookbooks - it's very personal and contains the author's recollections of her childhood growing up in different parts of the world - Greece, Cyprus, Finland, Italy and South Africa - and, of course, the food she ate in each place. Her writing is very evocative and includes some  lovely details about how she used to eat leftover slow-cooked lamb with oregano for breakfast when she lived in Greece or likening the hills in Italy to the curves of a voluptuous women wearing skin tight green velvet and corduroy.

Anyway, Afelia is basically pork slowly cooked in red wine with coriander seeds and it sounded so simple, delicious and cheap that I thought I'd better give it a go.

Well, mine couldn't have been duller.

It was quite watery and not very flavoursome - in fact I added quite a bit of salt at the table to try to make it taste of something! Very disappointing.

In an attempt to save the evening from the culinary doldrums I did something almost never do - I made a cake. It was a bit improvised (I didn't have much sugar...) based on what I had in the cupboard... so I ended up with a ground almond and clementine loaf cake. Here it is:

Honestly? It wasn't a triumph. It needed more sugar, more clementine zest and had it a freakishly crispy and bread-like crust on it.

Ah well. Best to forget about this one and look forward to tomorrow's project - the super-frugal Breast of Lamb.

Greece is the word Part 2: Spanakopita

I had been seeing my boyfriend for about 3 months when we decided to go on holiday together.  I remember some of my friends raising an eyebrow about the fact we'd rashly booked a holiday without ever spending a whole weekend together. But it was that early period in a relationship where you are both keen to impress so...in an attempt to appear relaxed and spontaneous (instead of the now-apparent reality of mild control-freakery and abject anxiety) I booked us a cottage on a far-flung Greek island. Having spent some time living in Greece as a teenager I thought I would be able to impress him with my rudimentary language abilities and knowledge of the country and culture. 


But, it soon became apparent just how rudimentary my knowledge was. Keen to demonstrate my bi-lingual abilities, I began showing off as soon as we stepped off the plane onto Greek soil. Spotting a Greek sign I began to translate; "So that's a G, then I think that's an R, an A, that one's an F I think and then E, I, A - so look it says Grafeia!". I was triumphant. The BF looked impressed...and expectant. "Wow, and so what does it mean?" he asked... Of course, I had no idea. In linguistic terms I was pre-school - I could barely read the alphabet and certainly couldn't identify many actual words. To his credit, BF only looked crestfallen for a couple of seconds. Undeterred, we looked for a taxi to take us from the airport to the port. I felt quite relaxed about this - I had taken 100s of taxis as a child and could even remember how to say left and right in Greek so I was brimming with Travel Confidence. We queued up for a taxi in the baking midday heat. The line moved quickly and we were soon as the front of the queue. In stilted English/Greek I requested the driver take us to the port. He nodded and directed us to a taxi where a large Greek family of 5 were packing themselves and a bird in a birdcage into the back seats. The driver escorted the bewildered BF and I towards this already over-occupied taxi. He motioned for us both to get into a single passenger seat. Along with our luggage. Flustered, we did actually attempt to do this until it became apparent that we would have to sacrifice either my suitcase or the lower half of my body. We sheepishly scrambled out of the taxi, back into the queue - all the while trying to appear nonchalant about the ordeal. 


Some time later, after having secured a whole taxi to ourselves, we arrived at the port. Our mission was to find something called a Flying Dolphin which would take us to the island we'd be staying on. We had 15 minutes to do this. In my youth I'd taken many a ferry to many an island so I felt sure I could bounce back here. Struggling across the harbour with our luggage, red-faced and damp with exertion but purposeful - I was looking for anything that would float. I headed for what, with hindsight, appeared to be a Russian Super-Tanker. "This'll be our boat" I gasped as I half-ran, half stumbled along the water-side. For anyone trying to reach Skopelos in a hurry it is worth noting the following: 
This is a super-tanker: 

This is a flying dolphin: 

No need for further details here really but after some complicated Anglo/Greek/Russian negotiations we narrowly avoided a trip to Minsk and were safely aboard the correct form of transport headed for the correct Island. 


I regained my composure on the boat and after disembarking in the pretty harbour and getting into a taxi to our villa I was in good spirits again. The taxi headed up hill towards some sun-dappled olive groves. And it carried on and on and on until we'd been driving for about 30 minutes, seemingly vertically up the side of a mountain. I only mention this because I specifically booked a villa that was within walking distance of the little harbour town because neither the BF or I drive a car. The villa itself was gorgeous but, later that evening, as we walked down the mountain torch-in-hand, we nervously took photos of landmarks along our route to ensure we could find our way back home again. 


Later still, we relaxed with a glass of Ouzo in a seafront taverna and I confidently ordered a selection of mezze dishes. "You'll love Spanakopita", I enthused, "spinach pies - delicious little triangles of fillo pastry filled with spinach and feta cheese". When it arrives it looks like a cumberland sausage made of puff pastry. Weirdly this seemed to be the final straw for the BF. "Sorry Lyssa but did you ever actually live in Greece? Did you you make it up?" the BF, quite reasonably, asked. In my defence, it had been 15 years since I'd lived there so, yes, my memories of Greece were perhaps a little too vague to be helpful but, frankly, things had changed too. Well the pies had anyway. 


In the early hours of the morning after a long, lovely dinner we stumbled home up our mountain. The only light for miles around was the flickering light of our torch and the fireflies that lit our path through the olive grove. The Cicadas were silent and the faint tinkle of a goat's bell was only interrupted occasionally by our wheezing as we climbed the steep incline home. This (and probably the ouzo) made me forget the humiliation of the day and it all seemed rather charming and whimsical and, well, just Greek.  


Anyway, long introduction to a short recipe.  


Spanakopita.  
Pack of fillo pastry 
Large knob of butter melted melted butter 
2 big packs of spinach 
Pack of Feta 
Half pack of ricotta 
Half nutmeg, grated 


Pre heat the oven and a baking sheet to 200 degrees. Wilt the spinach in boiling water and squeeze out all the water. It's worth being anal about this bit otherwise you'll end up with a soggy bottom. When all the spinach as wilted crumble in the feta and ricotta cheeses and grate over the nutmeg and mix thoroughly. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and start to layer up the pastry sheets one by one, brushing melted butter generously onto each sheet. After you have layered half the pack of fillo pile the spinach/cheese mixture on top pressing the mixture to the edges of the pastry. Then layer the rest of the fillo pastry on top of the spinach mixture - again brushing each layer with butter. Then put into the oven for 20-30 minutes - keep an eye on it as it burns quickly. Unfortunately there's no tidy way to cut the pie into pieces so just dive in - like this:

This is yummy served hot but equally good the following day served cold for lunch with a salad. 

Greece is the word. Part 1: Pasticcio

I think Greek food is underrated. It's such a shame because, at it's best, it takes the fantastic ingredients the country has available and uses them to simple, unpretentious effect.

Some of the best food I've ever had has been in Greece; plain grilled prawns eaten straight off a newspaper-covered taverna table, throwing the shells into a bucket; freshly caught 'Barbounia' barbecued by the sea and eaten with your fingers and all of those amazing dishes selected from the laminated, misspelt old menus featuring faded photos of the dishes taken in c. 1979 - spiced loukaniko sausages, octopus in vinegar, salty grilled Saganaki cheese, proper oregano-spiked lamb Souvlaki and Horiatiki salad with chewy, crusty country bread. Delicious.

But unfortunately a lot of people only experience the worst of Greek food - the tourist food - overcooked kebabs, flaccid moussaka and plasticky taramasalata. Hideous? Yes, of course - but all destinations have equivalent touristy fare. I've endured deeply underwhelming pasta in Rome, terrible Borscht in Moscow, a very average baguette in Paris and my boyfriend never ceases to be disappointed by the quality of most fish and chips in Britain.

So, in the hope that people give Greek food another chance, I'm going to do a couple of Greek recipes in the next few weeks to show off a bit about a style of food that's cheap, healthy and pretty delicious actually.

And if you need further inspiration have a look at these Greek Food blogs:
- http://kalisasorexi.com
- http://kalofagas.ca
- http://ellysaysopa.com (American lady who does some Greek food but lots of other good things too)

Pasticcio is a good place to start - it's really the Lasagne of The Greeks. This is my interpretation of Pasticcio - maybe it's not 100% authentic - but I think it's 100% delicious. I've been a bit rough with my measurements here because it really depends on the size of your dish - you need a really deep oven-proof dish for this one otherwise you'll over flow and be cleaning the oven for days....

Pasticcio 
Around 750g of  good quality minced beef and pork
A couple of cloves of garlic
A finely chopped onion
Couple of bayleaves
Half a bottle of red wine
About half a teaspoon of ground cloves
A cinnamon stick
A teaspoon of dried oregano
A squeeze of tomato puree
A tin of tomatoes
A couple of eggs beaten
Enough rigatoni/penne pasta for one thick layer in your dish
Plain flour
Big knob of butter
A couple of pints of milk
2 big handfuls of kefalotyri cheese (or a sharp pecorino if you can't get it).

In a big saucepan fry off the onions and garlic in a little butter. Crumble the minced meat into the onion mixture browning it over a medium to high heat. Add the bayleaves, cloves, cinnamon and oregano and tomato puree and stir well. Slosh in the wine, the tin of tomatoes and then fill the empty tin with water and add that too. Then turn the heat down as low as possible and leave to bubble gently to itself for as long as you've got - a couple of hours is good.

Then make a basic cheese sauce. Melt a big knob of butter in a saucepan and add a couple of spoons of plain flour stirring to form a thick paste. Add the milk little by little stirring all the while to incorporate the floury mixture. When you have a thick-ish sauce add a handful of the cheese and stir to melt.

Cook the pasta according to the instructions.

To assemble: add half the cheese sauce to the pasta along with the beaten eggs. Stir well to combine. Pour two thirds of the sauce/egg coated pasta into a well-buttered, deep dish. Pour the spiced meat onto the pasta and then cover with the final third of the pasta. Pour on the remaining cheese sauce and spinkle with the remaining cheese. So it looks something like this:

Then pop it in the oven at about 220 degrees for about 40 minutes (but check after half an hour) until it is golden, bubbling and crispy on the top. Something like this:

Enjoy with a mound of green salad and a nice glass of red wine.

Slow roasted belly pork, mashed cannellini beans & roasted datteri tomatoes

It's no secret that I love slow cooking. If a TV Chef utters the magic words "pop it into the oven for at least 4 hours" I know I'm going to try the recipe. I love the melting, falling apart texture of a slow cooked joint, the fact you can pull the bone out of 5-hour-leg-of-lamb with a gentle tug. In fact I've always wanted to cook something in a low oven overnight but am yet to summon up the courage...

And of all the joints of meat to slow-cook, pork belly is one of my favourites. I love the fact it is comparatively cheap (despite gaining recent popularity as a Gastropub Fave), I love its melting, gooey texture and the fact that it's so forgiving - you can pop it into the oven on a really low heat for 2 hours or 4 hours and it'll still be delicious.

But most of all I love the fact that almost all national cuisines have a use for it. You can shred it and serve it in tortillas with refried pinto beans, lime juice and chillis for a Mexican flavour. You can braise it in a sticky, aromatic, gingery sauce and serve with spring onions for an Asian flavour. Or you can rub it with crushed fennel seeds and chilli flakes and serve with some good roasted tomatoes and mashed cannellini beans for a kind-of-Italian angle.

Which was what I did in the picture above. I bashed up the fennel seeds and chilli flakes with a little sea salt and black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and then rubbed it all over the meat. I left it for an hour or so at room temperature and then I put on top of a mound of sliced red onions in a roasting dish and put it into a hot oven but immediately turned the temperature right down to 150-ish. I left it to cook for about 3 hours, pouring a little stock around the meat after about 2 hours. I served it on some sweet little roasted Datteri tomatoes with a scoop of creamy mashed cannellini beans splashed with some nice peppery olive oil.

I thought it was a good, lazy Sunday lunch dish. In my fantasy life it would always be followed by a long dog-walk, the Sunday papers and a snooze on the sofa.

A quail tale

I'm not the sort of person who eats Quail on a regular basis. Although I consider myself a fairly adventurous and curious cook, tiny game birds are not a mid-week staple in our house. But I spotted a recipe for Roasted Paprika Quails with Romesco Sauce and it just really appealed. I was also persuaded by the beautiful photograph of the dish - crisp, plump little quails sat on a bright rustic platter alongside a gorgeous antique pewter bowl of the rich red sauce. Adorable.  

The recipe is from Cook in Boots by Ravinder Bhogal. You might remember her - she was awarded the dubious title of the "New Fanny Craddock" by Gordon Ramsey on his F-Word tv show a couple of years ago. Her book references food from different countries and cultures and consequently recipes are diverse and interesting - fusion-y but in a good way. The book is also full of lush photographs, really beautiful food shots, tonnes of vintage props - floral teacups, lace tablecloths - and loads of gorgeous shoe-porn-shots of shiny Louboutins and sparkly Choos.

But although the recipes are appealing, the format is a bit too girlie even for me! The chapters divide food into categories like "Lots of martinis and food to pick at", "PMT"and "Skinny food for when you feel the pinch of the Chloe Jeans" - it all feels a bit cliched and Girlie Magazine (not THAT kind of Girlie Magazine, more like the Grazia token recipe article).

Anyhoo, the quail. So Waitrose were selling them - 2 in a box - for about £4 which I thought wasn't bad for a little treat - and one per person is just about enough. Ravinder says that having them with a salad is sufficient but I'm greedier than her so served them on a bed of Red Camargue Rice which made a nice nutty accompaniment. They were tasty little chaps actually with a discernibly different flavour - more like duck than chicken - and although they're fiddly to eat, provided you don't mind getting stick into some bone gnawing, they make an interesting alternative to a Sunday Roast Chicken.

Adapted from Ravinder Bhogal's Roasted Paprika Quails with Romesco Sauce
2 quails (one per person should be enough)
Teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
2 Garlic cloves
Paprika
Handful of almonds
Handful of breadcrumbs (I used an old ciabatta loaf)
A couple of tomatoes (I used about 8 cherry tomatoes)
Either 2 fresh red peppers roasted and skinned or the same amount of jarred roasted peppers in oil
A glug of red wine vinegar
A glug of olive oil

Rub the quail with oil, thyme leaves and a couple of teaspoons of paprika and leave to marinate for a couple of hours if possible. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees. Pop the quails into the oven for about 25/30 mins. While they are roasting get your rice on (Red Rice takes about 25 minutes to cook) and make the sauce. Pop the almonds, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, breadcrumbs and red wine vinegar into the blender and blitz. Add olive oil to loosen as necessary.

Serve the quails on top of the red rice with a handful of rocket and a little bowl of sauce for dipping. 

Sausages with Chakchouka (plus a peculiar deconstructed banoffee pie)

This is a super-quick post to tell you about an easy, wintery mid-week supper.

It was inspired by something in Rick Stein's lovely Mediterranean Escapes book - a recipe for a Moroccan dish called Chakchouka. Chakchouka is a little warm salad-y dish that would probably be served with some nice flatbread but tonight I used it as a saucy foil for some spicy sausages and basmati rice.

Spicy sausages with Chakchouka 

4/6 sausages for 2 - depends how peckish you are! 

2 peppers (Rick says green but I only had red)

3 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

Half teaspoon cayenne

1.5 teaspoons cumin

A handful of good cherry tomatoes or a tin of tomatoes if you can't find any tasty fresh ones

Bunch of coriander roughly chopped

Oil for frying

Blacken the peppers on the hob top (extractor fan useful here). Get the sausages into the oven on a medium heat. Crush the garlic and fry off in a little olive oil. After a minute add the cumin, cayenne and paprika and fry for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes and simmer on a low heat so the tomatoes break down a little. Run the peppers under the tap rubbing away the blackened skin. Roughly chop the peppers and add into the tomato mixture along with the coriander. Simmer on a low heat for another 10 minutes.

When your sausages are crusty and delicious take them out of the oven and slice diagonally. Serve on a pile of fluffy basmati with a heap of the Chakchouka.

PS. I also made a slightly weird pudding tonight - I had some old bananas to use up so I thought I'd try a sort of rudimentary deconstructed Banoffee Pie...I just crumbled a couple of digestive biscuits into a bowl and then topped it with spoonfuls of marscapone, a shamefully ready-made caramel sauce and a sliced banana.

As the Russian Meerkat would say..."simples".

And actually really tasty.

I ♥ East London

I have to confess that I never really wanted to move to East London. 


7 years ago I was a South-West London girl through and through. My 'high street' was the then-grotty Wandsworth shopping centre (and the Kings Road on payday). I had a highly developed Cab Radar as I took taxis literally everywhere - I was legendary in my ability to find a taxi in Putney at 11.45pm on a Friday night. I was happy knowing I could pop to Northcote Road to buy a handmade cupcake sold by a yummy mummy in a lilac cashmere pashmina. I gave little thought to whether I wanted to spend the rest of my days in a place where Starbucks was inaccessible due to the queue of shiny-haired, double-buggied 30-somethings waiting for a Skinny Latte for them and a Babyccino for little Amelia. And I certainly never thought that I was the sort of girl who would consider the moving to the mythical East.  


At the time, East London was a mysterious place where people wore short-sleeved tee-shirts over long-sleeved t-shirts, listened to shouty music and where, inexplicably, no-one wore fake tan or anything in a colour. A little bit like a massive student union bar for people who dabbled in performance art. Surely it was no place for someone like me? Someone who likes to have a nice glass of prosecco in a bar where they can actually sit down? Someone who wears sunglasses on their head just to keep their hair back and, yes, someone who has The Sound of Music on their Ipod? 


So, when my boyfriend suggested we consider moving East, I gritted my teeth and prepared for the worst - I would have to start skateboarding to work while wearing a peruvian poncho and leg-warmers and listening to a Nirvana/Pan Pipes 'Mash Up' on my Ipod. Urgh. My boyfriend now says there was only one way he could persuade me to make the move - focus on the markets. So he embarked on a campaign of taking me to all the markets in East London - week after week we visited Spitalfields Market, Columbia Road Flower Market, Brick Lane Sunday Market, Broadway Market, Whitecross Road Food Market. Of course, I was completely charmed by them all and head over heels in love with East London. I couldn't wait to move! Fickle? Moi? 


Happily, seven years later, I'm still delighted we made the move. I love where we live - it's full of interesting and different sorts of people, shops and restaurants - I love that it's hard to spot a 'type' of person who lives round here (although there are still one or two Nathan Barleys but they just provide entertainment). And of course there's a significant Bangladeshi community round here who have created the Brick Lane curry empire. Brick Lane is now synonymous with the Post Pub Curry - the neon stretch of road that beckons after a couple of post-work lagers. Unfortunately my experience with Brick Lane curries has been decidedly average, but there are a couple of genuinely fantastic places for curry slightly off the Lane itself. We're lucky enough to live in the middle of four amazing Pakistani places: Needoo Grill, Tayyabs, Lahore Kebab House and, our regular haunt, Mirch Masala - 'shall we have a Mirch" is heard on a weekly basis in our house! Mirch Masala is actually a small chain - they have restaurants in Southall and Tooting in London and one or two in the suburbs - it's very informal, almost canteen-y in style and, as with all these places, you need to bring your own booze if you want a drink.  


But really it's all about the food. The food is fantastic - simple but delicious - lots of grilled and spiced meat, interesting pulses (a sweet, spicy butter bean dish which is delicious) and charred breads. We love their mixed grill with lentil dhal and garlic naan bread pictured above - the mixed grill contains chicken pieces, little spiced drumsticks, lamb chops and little kofta-type sausages - it's certainly too much food for 2 people, although we do try!


Anyway, it's worth a trip East to try any one of these restaurants and I'd try and get here as quickly as you can because things are definitely changing around here - I'm sad to say that the Babyccino has now made its way here too so it's only a matter of time before canteen-style spiced lamb chops are replaced by organic, free-range rose petal macaroons.  Although actually they sound pretty good too...

Trevisana and taleggio risotto

I would consider myself a very "girlie" girl.

I own more than 30 lip glosses, I have seen the  Sex And The City film more than 20 times and cried each and every time (oh god, the horror of the jilting scene) and, yes, there are items of clothing in my wardrobe that still have their shop-labels attached to them.

But, despite that, I'm just not a massive fan of pink.

And while tonight's risotto tasted lovely, there's no getting away from the fact that it was definitely (and defiantly) pink. So if you can get past that then do give this a go.

Trevisana or Radicchio is a red Italian chicory which is tasty but quite bitter in a good way. Apparently it's also good split and grilled with some good balsamic vinegar. In this simple risotto it marries well with the rich, mild creaminess of the taleggio.

Trevisana and taleggio risotto 
One head of trevisano shredded
One red onion finely chopped
A mug-ful of risotto rice
2/3 mugs of chicken stock
2 plump cloves of garlic crushed
A fist sized chunk of taleggio cheese cubed
A splash of olive oil
A big knob of butter

Fry the onion and garlic in a little oil and half of the butter until translucent. Add the shredded trevisana and allow to wilt. Add the rice and stir well to coat with the buttery juice. Then add the hot stock, ladle by ladle, stirring all the time. I know, it's a long old process but I find it quite pleasantly relaxing to just stir mindlessly for a while. When the rice reaches the still-a-little-bite-inside-but-soft-on-the-outside stage add the cheese and stir through to melt. Add the rest of the butter and stir again to incorporate and to add a sheen to the finished dish. I dribbled a bit of grassy olive oil on the finished plate.

Barbara Cartland would LOVE it.

Hate mushrooms? Try my Mushroom Risotto!

I am aware of fact that I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time devising ways to get my boyfriend to eat food that he hates. Cauliflower soup, warm broccoli salads, cabbage etc. So you'll be relieved to hear that tonight I made his favourite supper - a lovely warming mushroom risotto.

It's worth mentioning at this stage that my boyfriend hates mushrooms.

You see! It makes no sense.

Who hates mushrooms but loves mushroom risotto?

And for that reason, I will continue my endeavours with unpopular foodstuffs - because you never know when I might stumble across his new favourite food...

Mushroom Risotto 

- Pack of mushrooms

- Handful of dried mushrooms

- One white onion

- Couple of cloves of garlic

- A good stock cube - I found some excellent mushroom stock cubes in Carluccios

- Enough arborio rice for two people

- Knob butter

- A few sprigs of thyme

- A couple of big handfuls freshly grated parmesan

Finely chop the onion and garlic and fry lightly in a little butter and oil. Soak your dried mushrooms in boiling water with a stock cube and leave until soft and tender. Slice your fresh mushrooms up and throw into the saucepan with the onions and garlic. Add the fresh thyme leaves and fry everything for another 5 minutes. Add the dried mushrooms and the rice, stirring well to ensure the rice is well coated in the buttery juice.

Then start adding the mushroom soaking liquor/stock mixture one ladle at a time. Stir gently but fairly constantly adding ladle--fuls of liquid when the previous one has been absorbed. You know how the rice should be - but I just keep trying a little until it reaches the right texture - soft but still retaining a tiny bit of bite. When you're happy the rice is done, turn the heat off, add a handful of parmesan, stir and then generous knob of butter and stir well to create a nice glossy finish. I serve with extra parmesan for sprinkling.

Evidently this is worth trying even if you hate mushrooms.