I've moved!

Well, I have moved lock, stock and 2 smoking keyboards over to my own little website. Pop in to see me at www.recipesandthat.com.

Thanks

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!