Courgette tart and a bonus recipe…

We’ve gone a bit domestic. Owning a house means we are now doing VERY exciting things at the weekend, like decorating and making multiple trips to B and Q. This weekend we painted our kitchen. It’s almost exactly the same as before, but without the damp patch above the sink from a leak, the random screws in the wall from fixtures that left with the previous owner, and a massive circular mark because their kitchen clock was bigger than ours. Not very exciting, but it made me happy. It did mean we were without a kitchen for about 36 hours, which meant pie in the pub, a bacon sandwich and a take away pizza. Today I have been craving vegetables…

I still wanted to make a nice Sunday meal though, so I went to a (very little) bit of effort. There are lots of different versions of this sort of tart on the internet; this one is mine.

A note on pastry – life’s too short to make puff pastry, so I have chosen not to bother. 

Courgette tart with chilli and garlic roasted broccoli

Ingredients

For the tart:

1 packet of ready – rolled puff pastry

1 large onion, sliced

A clove of garlic, finely chopped

Two courgettes, sliced into discs about 5mm thick

About 20 grammes finely grated parmesan (basically that’s all I had left)

A tablespoon of crème fraiche

Two tablespoons double cream

For the broccoli:

A head of broccoli

A really good slug of olive oil

Half a red chilli, finely chopped

A clove of garlic, finely chopped

Juice of half a lemon

Plenty of salt and pepper

Stick the oven on to preheat at about 200 degrees.

Prepare the broccoli by cutting into florets, and tossing it in all the other ingredients. You want it to be reasonably well coated in the oil to avoid it burning. Put on a baking tray in one layer.

Over a low heat melt a knob of butter and a drop of vegetable oil. Add the onions and a good pinch of salt, give them a stir to coat them in the butter and oil, and cook, occasionally stirring. You want to give them about 15 – 20 minutes, so they slowly caramelise and go quite sweet. Add the garlic for the last ten minutes.

While that’s cooking, lay your pastry out on a buttered baking tray, and use a sharp knife to mark a border about two centimetres in around the outside. You don’t want to go right the way through, just score it. Inside that line, prick the pastry all over with a fork. Shove that in the preheated oven for about five-ten minutes to crisp up/start to rise. The middle will still puff up, but you can just squash it down with a spoon.

Take the onion/garlic mix off the heat, then add the cheese, cream and crème fraiche, taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Not pretty, but damn tasty...

Spread this mix in a thin layer over the pastry (within the border) and then put the courgettes on top. 

Put both the broccoli and the tart in the oven for about fifteen-twenty minutes until crisped up. I turned up the heat too much on mine because I was getting impatient, but it was still fine. You might want to give the broccoli a stir around half way through.

We had a tomato salad with it too – but if you feel that you need something a bit more substantial you could do some buttered new potatoes.

BONUS RECIPE

It’s not that we currently have a glut of courgettes, but seeing as I’m writing about them anyway, here’s a recipe for one of my favourite quick dinners.

Put enough spaghetti on for one hungry person.

Grate a courgette and finely chop a clove of garlic. Melt a good sized knob of butter in a frying pan over a low heat, then add the courgette, garlic a good pinch of salt and a pinch of chilli flakes. Fry slowly – the courgette pretty much disintegrates into a sauce. It takes as long as it takes for your pasta to cook.

Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and a generous tablespoon of half fat crème fraiche.

Drain the spaghetti, reserving a little bit of the water it boiled in, and add to the courgette mix. Stir everything through and cook for a minute or two in the pan so the spaghetti is well coated and has picked up all the flavour.

Eat!

I got a slow cooker for Christmas.

A few weeks before Christmas I decided that having a slow cooker would probably change my life. It was a bit of a whim, but I work shifts, and the thought of being able to shove a load of stuff in the slow cooker then go to bed really appealed to me. And I thought it might help break the endless stir fry/pasta/ risotto cycle that makes up weeknight meals.

So far, so good. Since I got the slow cooker on Christmas morning I have used it three times, and it’s brilliant. I made chicken stock, which is the tastiest stock I’ve ever made. Here are two other recipes that I made up, but that seemed to work reasonably well.

There are two things I have learned so far… 

1. Brown the meat first – it seems like an annoying step but will really add to the flavour and colour of the meal.
2. It doesn’t reduce or thicken the sauce in the same way as doing something on the hob/in the oven, so you will have to thicken it in some way. But you can’t abandon things on the hob for 7 hours while you go to sleep unless you want to wake up in a house fire, so it’s a small price to pay.

Beef Casserole

After working overnight on Hogmanay, I came home and browned off the beef, added lots of other stuff then went to bed. I finally celebrated the new year with a bottle of prosecco and this casserole that night. It was brilliant. 

Ingredients

-          1.5 lbs of beef shin, in reasonably big chunks

-          A dessertspoon of flour

-          An onion, chopped

-          A stick of celery, chopped

-          A couple of carrots, peeled and roughly chopped into big chunks

-          Two cloves of garlic, chopped

-          A load of mushrooms, halved

-          A third of a bottle of red wine

-          Some water

-          A bay leaf

-          Salt and pepper

-          A heaped teaspoon of cornflour to thicken

Put the flour and some salt and pepper in a bowl, then add the beef and give it all a good mix round until it’s thoroughly coated. In a big frying pan, heat up some oil or fat and add the beef a bit at a time. Do it in batches so you don’t overcrowd the pan. Leave it sitting and frying until it goes nicely brown, then turn it over to do the same on the other side. When it’s brown, shove it in the slow cooker. 

Once all the beef is done, add the red wine to the pan and whack up the heat to boil off some of the alcohol, scraping up any meaty bits off the pan with a wooden spoon.

Add all the veg, bay leaf etc. to the slow cooker, then the wine. Top up with some water until all the meat and veg is nearly covered. 

Put on low for about 8 hours. Go to bed and get some sleep. Go for a walk, whatever.

When it’s nearly ready, it’ll look quite different. 

Take a ladleful of the sauce and mix it with the cornflour, before adding it back to the casserole. Make some mash and some token green veg. 

If you were to do this in the oven, you could put it on at 150 degrees for about two and a half hours. You could probably skip the cornflour step, as it would reduce itself!

Chicken and Chorizo stew.

Ingredients

-          6 pieces of chicken – thighs and drumsticks

-          Two normal sausage sized cooking chorizo/half a chorizo ring (as much as you 

like really)cut into chunks

-          An onion, peeled and sliced

-          A pepper, sliced

-          Two cloves of garlic, chopped

-          A courgette, sliced

-          Some leftover white wine

-          A tin of tomatoes

-          Salt and pepper

Season, then brown the chicken in a big frying pan in a little bit of oil. Put it in the slow cooker. Put the chorizo in the pan so it releases some of its lovely oil and starts to go a bit crispy. Chuck that in the slow cooker (oil and all) along with all the veg and tinned tomatoes. 

Put the wine in the pan and let it bubble for a few minutes, before adding it to the slow cooker. 

Add a little drop of water if you think it needs some more liquid. Put it on high for 4 hours (a long afternoon nap) then serve with rice. I think I added some spinach towards the end of cooking. (We also added a dollop of sour cream, because our chorizo was quite spicy)

I didn’t thicken this one, Joe had a big bowl of the sauce as a chorizo-y soup. It made him very happy.

Are you sensing the theme? Brown things, chuck them in, go to bed, sorted. Today before my night shift I’m making a sausage and bean casserole. 

Any other suggestions for recipes I can do? Particularly veggie ones – they’ve all been a bit meaty so far.

A new kitchen and Moroccan-ish chicken

I'd like to make the case against the shared kitchen-living room. They're rubbish. We've just spent a year and a half with one, and it has really affected how adventurous I've been with my cooking, how often we have people round, and how often this gets updated. The TV was always on, there wasn't enough space, the dining table was shoved in a corner, and it just doesn't work for someone who loves cooking.

Thankfully, now we have moved. Now we have a slightly dark, small kitchen, but it has a GAS HOB, a door I can close to have my own space, and a radio with 6music constantly on. It's bloody brilliant. I have already spent lots of time in there pottering away, while Joe has the other room to himself to watch films/play his playstation and we're both happy. Sad isn't it?

So, on to the food. We had some friends round last night for some eating, drinking, and catching up. I wanted to make something that wouldn't be too much faff, wouldn't have me stuck in the kitchen while they were here and was a little bit different. So I decided to make up a recipe for Moroccan chicken, and make some houmous and baba ganoush to go with it. It was a success – I'd bought about four extra pieces of chicken thinking it might be nice in a sandwich the next day and it was all eaten.

I apologise for the terrible photos. Frankly, I'd been drinking.

As usual, I'm not one for writing up other peoples recipes, so here are a couple of links for the houmous and baba ganoush recipes I used. I made these in the morning before my friends arrived.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2029/homemade-houmous – I'd use slightly less tahini than this recipe suggests

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/25/how-to-make-perfect-baba-ganoush (by the way, this column is brilliant, you should read it)

Making baba ganoush also means I got to do this: (which is fun)

Moroccan-ish Chicken:

(serves four very hungry/greedy people)

Ingredients:

12 chicken drumsticks and thighs, ideally on the bone and with skin, but 

we had a bit of a mixture

1 x preserved lemon (or two, if they're little)

2 big tablespoons harissa

2 tablespoons honey

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

a good slug of olive oil

teaspoon of cumin

salt and pepper

- To prepare the preserved lemon, scoop out the flesh from inside into a big bowl (big enough for all your chicken). Slice the rind and add that too.

- Mix everything else except the chicken together, adding enough oil to make sure it's not too thick – it should be the consistency of double cream

- Put the chicken in and mix well. Cover it in cling film and leave it in the fridge for a few hours.

- When you're ready to cook, preheat your oven to 180 degrees, and lay the chicken pieces out in one layer. I needed two trays. Pour over any remaining marinade. Cook for 30 – 40 minutes until the skin has blackened a bit and it's cooked through.

For something So easy, this was really tasty. Definitely worth doing. I think the marinade would probably work really well with a whole roast chicken too.

I served it with a load of olives, some steamed green beans, cous cous mixed with pomegranate seeds, and toasted pitta breads.

We then had brownies with raspberries and ice cream, so here's a picture of that too:

The sauce that goes with everything.

I love the sunshine. I love summer. Even if I have to plaster on the factor 20 just to leave the house. Even if it does make it really difficult to sleep during the day before night shifts, so that I end up lying in bed writing up a blog when I should be getting another hour or two of kip.

It also makes for some interesting cooking. This year we don't have a garden, so barbecues are out of the question. In truth, it just means we spend a lot of time in our local beer garden just to ensure that we get out in the sun. It also means I'm often cooking after a G and T. 

See? A sunny spot by the canal. Not too shabby.

 So things to avoid when cooking in the summer: Gravy. Standing by the hob for hours. Stodge. Anything too complex that can't be done after a gin.

Luckily there's a sauce that goes with everything, and makes everything taste a bit summery. It's my version of salsa verde, and I've no idea if it's authentic (it probably isn't) but it's light, and herby, and really useful with meat, fish, halloumi and all sorts. Use whatever green leafy herbs you like. I also use it as an opportunity to use up any green things in the fridge, like spring onions or spinach.

Salsa verde:

Ingredients:

a big bunch of parsley

a good handful of basil

a clove of garlic, peeled

a spring onion, roughly chopped into chunks

a teaspoonful of capers

the juice and zest of half a lemon

a load of extra virgin olive oil, but if it seems like you're using too much you can thin it 

down with a bit of water 

Plenty of salt and pepper

1. Put everything in a blender with about three glugs of olive oil.
2. Blitz it. Add more oil if it seems too thick.
3. Blitz it some more. Add more oil/some water if it seems too thick.
   
   
   
   
   

We had it with some grilled pork chops. We also had buttery new potatoes, and because I had a leek to use up, leeks grilled with a bit of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

It will keep for a while in the fridge, but I decided to use it up fairly quickly by tossing it through a load of veg and roasting it. Add a bit of crumbled feta, and I'd made a few meals to take to work too. 

Chicken, bacon, leeks.

This post is a complete cheat. There are no photos, and it's not a special meal. I'm currently on nightshifts, which means Joe is making my dinner quite a lot of the time. We had a leek to use up, and some chicken legs in the freezer, so I said I'd cobble together a recipe and send it to him. He's not into cooking, so I kept it pretty simple. I've been so lax on the blog lately I thought I might as well upload it too.

This is a sort of roast, made with chicken, leeks and pancetta or bacon. Serves two.

Ingredients:

- two chicken legs

- two cloves of garlic
- some pancetta / chopped smoked bacon

- a leek

- a glass of white wine

Roughly chop and wash the leek - it can be quite chunky.
Smash up a couple of cloves of garlic and peel them (don't have to be finely chopped)
Season the chicken legs with salt and pepper
Put the oven on to preheat at 180 degrees

In a big frying pan, fry the pancetta on a high-ish heat in a little vegetable oil until it browns and goes a little bit crispy (five minutes).

Then add the seasoned chicken to brown. Put it skin side down and leave it for a few minutes, then flip it. You're not looking for it to cook, just start crisping up.

Take the chicken out and put it to one side then stir in the leeks and garlic. Cook for two minutes, then tip it into the roasting dish.

Put the pan back on the heat and add a glass of white wine. Stir and scrape to get any crispy bits off the bottom. Let it bubble for a minute or two, then add to the roasting dish.

Put the chicken on top, then put in the oven for 30 - 40 minutes, while you sort spuds and veg. Check the chicken after twenty minutes and make sure it's not drying out in the pan. Add a splash of water if it is.

Serve with mash and the veg of your choice. Use the pan juices as a slightly thin, but very tasty gravy. If you wanted to make it a bit fancier, you could stir in a splash of cream to make more of a sauce.

Butternut squash and cauliflower curry

Joe did the shopping this week, and I'd put cauliflower on the list. I don't think he's ever bought cauliflower before. It was giant. He bought the biggest cauliflower in the shop. Seriously, it was bigger than my head. After a massive cauliflower cheese bake, there was still half a cauliflower left, and I didn't have many ideas that didn't involve more cheese sauce. Then I saw one of Jamie's 30 minute meal programmes on repeat and he turned it into a curry. He massively cheated and used store bought paste, which I never have in, so I made up my own version. It took maybe 45 minutes.

I've written up a lot of curries on this blog, but I love them, and I love making them. They're also a brilliant way of using up stuff. The following recipe makes an awful lot of curry. It fed us tonight, then another pot of it to freeze so we can have it another night, then three portions for me to take to work. 

Giant pot of curry

This would be good with fresh coriander in both the curry and the raita, but I didn't have any.

Ingredients:

2 red chillies, in big chunks

5 cloves of garlic, peeled

a piece of ginger the size of your thumb, peeled and in big chunks

3 onions, sliced

a butternut squash, chopped into rough chunks

a normal sized head of cauliflower / half a giant head of cauliflower, cut into florets

half a bag of spinach

tin of tomatoes

tin of coconut milk

a tablespoon of cumin

a tablespoon of coriander

teaspoon of turmeric

teaspoon of mustard seeds

half a tablespoon of garam masala

half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper

Raita ingredients:

I make this every time we have curry, and it changes every time. It just depends what I 

have in. It's not authentic raita

half a big tub of natural yoghurt (I used low fat)

a couple of inches of cucumber, grated

a couple of chopped spring onions

juice of half a lemon/lime

plenty of salt and pepper

1.  Fry the onion on a medium heat in some vegetable oil with a pinch of salt for about five minutes, then add the butternut squash. Fry for another five/ten minutes. It's ok if it starts to brown, just don't let it stick or burn.

2.  Meanwhile, put the chilli, garlic and ginger in a hand blender and blitz it.

3.  Add the spices to the vegetables, stir and fry for another minute or two, then add the chilli, garlic and ginger. Fry for another few minutes, it should start smelling amazing.

4.  Add the tomatoes and coconut milk, plus half a tin of water. Shove a lid on, then leave it to simmer for fifteen/twenty minutes.

5.  Now make the raita, by mixing all the ingredients listed above.

6.  After fifteen minutes, the squash should be nearly cooked. Taste and season if it needs it. Stir in the cauliflower, and cook for another ten minutes, adding the spinach towards the end.

That's it, serve it all with rice.

Whilst making this I listened to 6 music. And drank wine. I needed a bit of time out.

Everyone can make a bolognese.

So I've been a bit ill. I don't get ill really. Not properly, visit-the-doctors, spend-days-in-bed ill. I regularly get a bit of a cold or whatever and feel a bit sorry for myself (and moan a lot, and make a lot of soup) but I still do everything I would normally do. I tried that this time, and ended up leaving work half way through a shift and calling in sick for the first time in three years. Ah well. The point of this preamble is not for sympathy, but to discuss food choices. I found myself becoming a child again. I was sitting on a sofa, under the same duvet I had when I was ill as a kid, eating tinned tomato soup. Boiled eggs mashed up in a cup. All it needed was white bread spread with margarine to go with it. Brilliant (yet terrible at the same time).

Now I'm feeling loads better. I've started getting bored at home, want go running, go to the pub. (I probably shouldn't do either of those things quite yet...) But I'm not ready to stop regressing. I've always loved spaghetti bolognese. We had mince most Tuesdays when I was growing up, and whenever I saw it defrosting I would always campaign for spaghetti bolognese. More often than not we'd have mince and tatties, as we had pasta on Mondays.  My mum was against having the same carbs two days in a row. Eventually she gave in to my campaigning with a weary “If you really want spaghetti bolognese, you make it.” As such, this is a recipe I've been honing since I was about twelve.

I'm aware there are lots of much easier ways to make a bolognese – often involving a well known brand of pasta sauce – but I've worked out this recipe throughout the last, erm, fifteen years?  For many of those years I was very skint, so this recipe can also make 1lb of mince feed at least four people.

A note on pasta... I will always call this spaghetti bolognese even though we often don't have spaghetti in the house. I use whatever shape of pasta we've bought in industrial sized bags. This week, penne. Most importantly, if you want your pasta to taste of something make sure you stir it into the bolognese while it's on the heat. You don't want a pile of pasta, then a pile of bolognese. The pasta will be horrible. Bolognese is a sauce and it's supposed to coat the pasta properly.

This is almost certainly not authentic.

My version of Bolognese

Ingredients:

1lb decent steak mince (I think that's probably about 450grammes?)

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon diced up/or a small pack of lardons

2 onions, finely chopped

a carrot, peeled and finely chopped

2 sticks of celery, finely chopped

6 or so chestnut or button mushrooms, chopped

a red or orange pepper, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

a big glass of red wine

a tin of tomatoes

2 tablespoons of tomato puree

a splash of milk (optional, but I think it adds a bit of richness and helps bring it

all together)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried thyme/some fresh thyme

2 dried bay leaves

plenty of salt and pepper

-  First, in a big pan, fry off your bacon/lardons until it's going a bit crispy and tasty. Resist the urge to eat a bit of it out of the pan. (actually eat a bit of it, there's nothing better than fried smoked bacon)

-  Add the onions, carrots, celery and pepper, a big pinch of salt and give it a stir. Now shove a lid on and leave it for five – ten minutes. It should be on a lowish heat, so everything starts to sweat but not colour.

-  Add the mince and garlic, and stir it a bit then let it brown. Stir it occasionally for five minutes until there aren't any pink bits left in the meat.

-  Add the mushrooms and tomato puree, stir, then cook for another five minutes.

-  Add the red wine and turn up a bit to bubble off the alcohol.

-  Add everything else (tomatoes, herbs etc.), give it a good stir, turn it right down and pop the lid on. Now cook it for about an hour, stirring occasionally. 

-  Keep an eye on it – it should reduce and get quite thick. If you think it looks a bit wet, take the lid off for a while. Keep tasting it and checking for seasoning. (if you don't have an hour and a half to make your bolognese you can cook it on a higher heat for less time, it just won't be quite as rich. I'd still give it half an hour of simmering if you can)

-  If you've got four people round for dinner, cook your pasta and drain it, before adding to the pan with the bolognese. If you're freezing some of it, take some of the bolognese out and put it in some tupperware, then stir your pasta into the rest of it. Cook the pasta in the bolognese for thirty seconds – a minute.

There we go! Serve with grated parmesan, salad etc. It probably doesn't need garlic bread, but sometimes it's nice to have a carb overload. 

I promise to do more adventurous food soon. Probably when I've finished the antibiotics and stopped regressing.