Category Archives: Original recipes

May 22, 2013

Plum and Lavender Jam

Thank you all for my lovely birthday wishes last week – I had a great day, and the celebrations are set to continue this week! I will save up all the (many) photos I’ve taken and deliver them in one giant photo post. I mostly ate bread-based snacks, which might be evident by all the photos of sandwiches – I’ll ty to weed them out a bit. Easting bread-based meals is my base-state of being. Leave me to my own devices and I’ll eat pasta and sandwiches until I burst. I’m a bit like an unsupervised puppy in that way. In that way only, mind you. I have never scratched up anyone’s furniture or left little surprises on the carpet. To my knowledge.

Anyway, while I’m waiting and looking forward to my next two birthday extravaganzas (extravaganzae?), I thought I’d drop in a wee recipe. It seems like a while since I had a recipe to share. This one was borne of a kind of exciting opportunity – I suppose I’d better start at the beginning of this story, hadn’t I? To begin at the beginning, Sainsbury’s have invited me to join their Food Blogger Network. I give it all capitals because I think it makes me sound extra important. You can find details about the blogger network here and you can even see the lovely description they gave me here – look for This is Rock Salt. I was happy to accept their invitation, and almost immediately I was offered some of their new range of flavoured sugars to try. That’s when I was absolutely sure I was on to a good thing.

There were three kinds of sugar in the parcel I received within a couple of days – cinnamon, vanilla and lavender. Sainsbury’s invited everyone who tried them to come up with a recipe idea, so that got my brain cogs spinning, or at least turning. Rotating. Ticking over, if you will. The first sugar I had a go at was the lavender. I’ve used lavender in my baking before – most notably in macarons and in blueberry and lavender cupcakes - and I’ve also seen a gorgeous lavender shortbread recipe at the lovely Promenade Plantings, which I intend to try one day (with added white chocolate – I’m hooked on the idea of this combo). So, these ideas went through my mind, along with a few others – most notably white chocolate and lavender cupcakes, with little lavender shortbreads as decoration. I can just picture billowing lilac buttercream on a soft, fluffy sponge base… I digress. The sugar was there, just at the back of my mind, waiting for me to make a decision on how and when to use it. What was also there, at the back of my kitchen, was a huge punnet of plums that I’d bought from the reduced section of the supermarket, and never used. Some of them were past their best, even to the most charitable observer. It was getting to the crunch – except, it was getting to the opposite of the crunch, because fruit gets squishier… It was getting to the squish. That doesn’t have the same ring to it. However you want to say it, what I’m getting at is that they needed used up. In one of those lovely moments of ‘oh yeah!’, I landed on plum and lavender jam – a revelation, at least to me.

I’d never made jam without the ready-made jam sugar before, but pectin isn’t hard to lay hands on, and I thought it might be time to take the training wheels off, so to speak. We didn’t call them ‘training wheels’ though; when I was wee they were called ‘stabilisers’, at least in our house, which is probably why I have such an awesome and extended vocabulary and only make up one word in ten. I duly purchased some sachets of pectin and brought them home to make some jam.

If you read up on jam making, it can seem a bit intimidating. There are parts that I am still intimidated by – for example, I’ve never properly sterilised and sealed up any jars. You don’t *have* to do this, if you’re making a small batch and keeping it in the fridge. You only have to seal them up properly if you’re making a batch big enough to store in the cupboard and use through the winter. So, don’t worry about that. The other thing that can send a person into a bit of a tizz is thinking they don’t have the right equipment. Now, I won’t argue that a proper, wide preserving pan will give you reliable and predictable results, and make it easier to follow recipes written by other people will proper preserving pans. However, I’ve made a few jams and chutnies now, and they’ve all been done in my normal kitchen pots. The plum and lavender jam was made in a giant soup pot, because it was the biggest batch I’d made so far and I didn’t want to get spattered by hot jam.

I did find some jam in my hair later that night. Not a biggie.

What I’m trying to say is that you can make jam without buying specialist gear, and without special jam sugar, and without hooking jars out of a pot of boiling water like some kind of dangerous carnival game. You can also do all of these things, and get great results, and have a cupboard of homemade preserves. I aspire to that – but aspiring to one thing doesn’t mean you can’t go ahead and achieve something a few steps down the ladder, right?

Enough philosophy. Here is my recipe for plum and lavender jam:

About 1kg plums
350g lavender sugar
one 8g sachet pectin
1 tsp balsamic vinegar

Straight away, you have to agree that the ingredients list is simple.

First, prepare the plums. This can take a while, depending how ripe they are. I added a few less-than-ripe plums into the mix, to bulk out the jam, and it still worked fine. Be aware that the more ripe the plums are, the more sweet they’ll be – the less ripe, the sharper. Take this into account because it will affect the final taste. Also, the riper they are the easier they are to remove the stone from. You will come to appreciate this, when stoning a kilogram of plums.

Tip all the fruit into a big pot, and cook over a medium-low heat for 15 minutes. The fruit will begin to look mushier and soft.

Add the sugar, pectin and vinegar, and cook for a further twenty minutes. You may want to increase the heat a notch – I went for 10 minutes at a ’3′ and 10 and a ’4′ on my electric hob. The fruit will start to break down, the colour of the skin and the ripest plums will begin to make its way into all the fruit, and ultimately you’ll have soup.

Allow the fruit soup to cool for about ten minutes, off the heat, and stir well. I stirred the skin back in to the jam – if it skeeves you out, you can remove it, easy. Although if it skeeves you out you might want to just stir it back in so you don’t have to deal with it. Whatever’s clever. Have a wee taste, carefully making sure it’s not too hot to put on your tongue. Add a bit more sugar or a bit more vinegar to taste.

Next, blend the jam – you can use a stick blender or tip it into a blender jug, probably in batches. This is why we let it cool a little – so that it’s no longer like fruit flavoured lava – but it will still hurt if you get it on you, so watch out. You don’t have to blend it, either, you can leave it rustic if you prefer.

There will still be some whole lavender flowers in there that have evaded the blender. I left them in; you can push the jam through a fine sieve at this stage if you’d rather not have bursts of floral fragrance throughout your jam. Again, it’s up to you.

Your jam is now ready. If you have lots of adorable tiny jam jars, put it in them! But realise that since you’re not sealing them up, you’ll have to keep them in the fridge until you can gift them or use them, and you should really do this within a couple of weeks to be on the safe side. This is something I didn’t really think through and now my fridge is full of tiny jars of jam. Cute in the picture, not so cute when I keep knocking them over trying to get at the cheese…

Thank you to Sainsbury’s for the sugar, and look out for my recipes using the vanilla sugar (this one just needs written up) and the cinnamon sugar (recipe developed, but untested…).

8 comments | tags: jam, lavender, plums | posted in Condiments, Confectionery, Dairy free, Gluten free, Original recipes, Snacks, Vegan, Vegetarian

April 24, 2013

Easy Fig Treats

By Rock Salt

You know what is easier than writing a blog post about making these crunchy, chewy fig treats? Only one thing – making them.

Alright I suppose that technically NOT making them or writing a blog post about them would be easier. No need to be a spoilsport.

First, buy dried figs and dessicated coconut. Those are the only two ingredients, which is more than you can say for most snacks. Next, throw the figs into a food processor. Make sure to take out any stems – I didn’t do this the first time, not realising that ‘ready to eat’ actually meant ‘not really ready to eat until you’ve gone through and removed any stems’, and while it doesn’t stop you enjoying the snacks it is a bit of a pain – like watermelon seeds are, you know? If you’re home alone, especially home alone in a house with a porch, rocking chair and back garden, you could just spit them out, giving yourself points for distance, but otherwise I’d suggest just taking them out of the equation altogether.

Process the figs until you get a thick, sticky paste, like this:

Appetising, no?

OK, no – net YET. In fact it looks a little like a Golgothan. But we won’t talk about that.

Next, sprinkle a surface with coconut – you can toast the coconut if you prefer, though it does add an extra step. Scoop the fig paste into small portions; if you have a tiny scoop, great. If not, get all lo-fi and just use your hands. Roll the paste into a ball, then roll in the coconut to cover. You’re done!

Before you know it you’ll have rows of the beauties, like this:

Now wash your hands, cos they’ll be covered in fig paste.

I dare say you could add to these – some dates in with the figs might be good, or a splash of vanilla extract, or what about a big spoonful of cocoa powder? The fruit is naturally very sweet, and they have a great crackly texture from the seeds that is really satisfying, though you do run the risk of finding them in your teeth hours later. This is a snack that keeps on giving… They are chewy and a bit fudgey at room temperature – I stored some of mine that way for a week and they were still good. I figured, dried figs don’t need to be refrigerated, they should still be fine after they’re processed, right? If you’re not sure, or prefer a firmer texture, you can always keep them in the fridge.

It seems to me that these would be a good stand-by snack, and they’re probably pretty ace for an energy boost what with the natural sugar in the figs. They also count towards your five a day – two dried figs is one portion, so depending what size you make the treats you only need one or two to count towards your optimum fruit and veg intake.

These treats are raw, free from the most common allergens (nut, wheat, dairy, soy and egg, to name but five), contain only natural ingredients, are vegan friendly and take less than ten minutes to make. What are you waiting for?

5 comments | tags: figs, natural, paleo, raw | posted in Confectionery, Dairy free, Gluten free, Healthy, Original recipes, Snacks, Vegan, Vegetarian

March 27, 2013

Avocado Sandwich Spread (and the Penultimate Sandwich)

By Rock Salt

I saw a post on Lucy’s Friendly Foods the other day, where she mentioned her avocado mayonnaise. For some reason, the idea of avocado mayonnaise wouldn’t go out of my head, then, so I had to make my own and slather it on a giant sandwich. At least, the sandwich was giant in my mind… In reality, it seemed not to be a day for bread baking (I blame the position of the moon) and so the rolls I was making didn’t turn out as tall and proud as I’d imagined. However, I still made a sandwich of reasonable proportions – and the avocado mayo was absolutely delicious.

I changed things up and made more of a spread than a mayo. I also made it on the chopping board, rather than in a food processor, blender or even bowl, and I’m really pleased with how that worked out. You see Jamie Oliver making stuff right on the chopping board a lot, so I felt quite fancy as I was working on it. This is probably the main benefit of preparing the avocado spread this way; the secondary bonus is that you don’t have any extra dishes to wash, which to me is a big deal. Washing the dishes is pretty low on my list of priorities, and these days that’s one looooooong list!

So, to the avocado spread. I will preface this by saying that I love a good guacamole, and have a go-to, memorised in my brain recipe for it (which I once wrote about here), but fancied doing something different with avocado, for a change. This was the end result:

1 small avocado
juice of 1/2 small lime
1/8 – 1/4 tsp dijon mustard
big pinch of sea salt
several turns of black pepper
splash white wine vinegar
dash of cold-pressed rapeseed oil (optional)
dash paprika or cayenne pepper (optional)

First, peel the avocado and roughly chop. Don’t throw the stone away.

Add the lime juice, mustard, salt and pepper and vinegar, then MASH TO A PULP with your knife. You may also want to employ a fork. Do wear goggles lest you get mustard in your eye, in your fervent mashing state.

When very mashed, add a drizzle of oil, if you like – avocado is so rich already you might not want it, but it does add a certain unctuousness, and if nothing else it’s nice to have a valid reason to use that word.

Continue mashing and mixing, with fork or knife as you prefer, until you reach your desired consistency. I preferred it with some texture remaining but Lucy has hers completely smooth – depends on preference and how long you’re willing to mash for, really. Taste the spread and add more seasoning and a tiny hint of cayenne or paprika, if you like.

Now, you will be looking at your chopping board (and possibly hands) and going ‘urgh, look, there’s avocado everywhere’. Well, firstly, wash your hands (this should be self evident). As for the chopping board, fear not! Simply scrape up all the dressing, in two or three goes, with your knife, scooping it up onto the blade horizontally and then turning the knife vertically to drop the spread into a suitable container. This means you won’t drop any round the edges of the container, and you’ll scrape up almost every last drop from the board.

See?

To preserve any leftover spread for a day or two (this works a bit, though not perfectly), put the avocado stone in the bowl you’re storing it in, make sure it’s tightly covered, and refrigerate. The avocado will still go a bit grey but not as much as if you’d left the stone out, and the flavour is still good. Just eat with your eyes closed.

To go with this spread (or, for the spread to go with), I had envisaged The Ultimate Sandwich – ultimate for that moment of imagining, anyway. It was more or less this Dutch Crunch sandwich from last year but with added avocado, and I looked forward to it for a couple of days. Alas, when it came to making the bread, a few things went a little wrong, and while I still ended up with edible rolls, they weren’t the crackled beauties I had in mind.

James R suggested on Facebook that this might be the Penultimate Sandwich, which was ominous but stuck in my head, nonetheless…

I layered up pea shoots, tomato, strong Campbeltown cheddar, turkey breast and avocado spread on my servicable-if-not-perfect white roll, and it was almost everything I’d been dreaming of. It’s always disappointing when something doesn’t turn out as you hope – especially when you’ve invested a lot of time in it – but it’s best to appreciate it for itself, really.

After all, it might be the second last sandwich you ever eat.

8 comments | tags: avocado, sandwich, turkey | posted in Condiments, Dairy free, Gluten free, Original recipes, Other people's recipes, Snacks, Vegan, Vegetarian

March 20, 2013

St Patrick’s Day Snacks!

By Rock Salt

There are so many fun recipes around for things to make on St Patrick’s Day – mostly unusually and improbably green things, it must be said. I don’t usually celebrate or make anything special, but this year two friends asked me if I was doing anything, so I took it as a Sign and had them both over the flat for some drinks and snacks.

I wanted to make green snacks, but without employing any food colouring. It turns out that naturally green food doesn’t always stay very green after you process it in some way, so I had varying degrees of success in this endeavour. Here are some snaps I took:

Feta, cucumber and mint skewers. Pretty simple.

Spinach and pea quiche, with thyme crust.

I sort of made this one up. I followed the crust recipe from this mushroom quiche - a very forgiving recipe, as it turns out, since I ended up seriously manhandling the dough with my hot hands and it was still light and crumbly in the end.

The filling was a mix of defrosted spinach and peas, salt and pepper, a splash of milk (I only had a splash left in the carton) and an assortment of whole eggs and egg yolks. There was a lot left over, which I baked in a dish as little crustless quiche bites.

Mini soda breads (not green).

Broad bean dip.

Parsley hummus.

This is a simple food processor dip – a tin of chickpeas, a bunch of parsley, a clove of garlic get whizzed round with a drizzle of sesame oil, then seasoned to taste. To adjust the texture, I added water from the chickpea tin until it was scoopable.

The soda bread was great with either dip, or with some butter sprinkled with smoked sea salt.

Ricotta gnocchi with pesto.

I followed this recipe from Delicious Days, for fifteen minute ricotta gnocchi. I kid you not, it was so easy, genuinely taking less than fifteen minutes even though it was the first time I’d tried the recipe. Sometimes a new recipe takes longer because you’re checking it at every step, but not this one. For a start, there aren’t that many steps to check. For another, it really is that simple – mix the ingredients in the bowl, roll out, slice, boil.

I made the dough ahead of time, only leaving the shaping and boiling until just before serving. Even after sitting in the fridge for several hours, it was light and soft when it was cooked, and tasted amazing even on its own. To serve, I mixed with a drizzle of olive oil and a huge mound of fresh pesto.

If you haven’t made pesto before, I’d say it’s time to give it a try. Another food processor classic; I started with a handful of hazelnuts and two garlic cloves, which I whizzed up until the nuts were finely chopped. Then I added two basil plants and some pecorino, followed by enough olive oil to make a smooth paste. Season with salt and pepper and we’re done!

Lime-oncello (disappointingly not green).

This was the same method as my successful limoncello, but with lime rind instead of lemon, and more sugar syrup to balance the more bitter taste. It didn’t turn out nearly as green as I’d hoped, as you can see!

We also made an as-yet un-named and unperfected cocktail. It contained lime-oncello, vodka, gin, simple syrup, fresh kiwi juice and a squeeze of lime. We had it both short and topped up with soda, and it was pretty awesome either way.

I also made these non-green bonus marshmallow pies. Now, the trouble with these is that they were born of a total recipe failure. I tried to make green tea marshmallows using veggie gelatin, and oh boy, did that not work… So I used the resulting gooey, sticky not-marshmallow (which was liquid at room temperature) to fill little pate sucree shells, using the recipe from these jam tarts. This is my go-to sweet pastry, it works perfectly every times. I baked the tarts up, keeping an eye out for the not-marshmallow burning, and ended up with these lovely little things, which were a bit crispy on the top and chewy in the middle. And no longer even a tiny bit green.

Can’t win ‘em all, right?

7 comments | tags: buffet, green food, St Patrick's Day | posted in Bread, Drinks, Irish food, Italian food, Original recipes, Other people's recipes, Pastry, Snacks, Vegetarian

March 6, 2013

Tonkatsu with Noodles

By Rock Salt

Initial disclaimer: this isn’t really tonkatsu, because it’s not deep fried. It’s somewhere between tonkatsu, pork escalope and schnitzel. Or, if you want to speak plainly, it’s a breaded pork chop. I’ve made something similar before, which turned out a lot of brown photographs and was pretty forgettable – that time, it was called Pork Milanese. So many names for something so simple. This time, I changed it up a little to give it a more Japanese edge, and served over veg-strewn noodles, with a variety of toppings. So many toppings, in fact, that you can’t really see all of them, or the noodles underneath. Well, there’s no point in skimping on these things, is there?

This is going to be one of those posts that’s more a method than a recipe. The amounts are a bit up and down – there was quite a large element of ‘what’s in the fridge?’ in the construction of this meal, which makes it difficult to replicate.

The first thing to do is get a couple of boneless pork chops (you can buy normal chops and remove the bone yourself, too) or pork steaks of any kind; collar, leg, shoulder, loin – whatever’s available to you. Then, HAMMER THEM. Hammer them into submission, until they’re about a quarter of an inch thick all the way across. I like to sandwich the meat between two layers of clingfilm to do this, so that neither cutting board nor hammering implement has to be scrubbed clean of all trace of raw meat. I use my rolling pin as the implement, you can choose your own. Probably a real hammer isn’t best, and a meat tenderiser will spike the meat (and clingfilm) as well as flattening, so it’s not ideal. You can get a meat mallet thing if you want to be proper.

The meat will look a wee bit dazed and, depending on the cut, may be barely hanging together in some places. Not a big deal, you’ll just have to be a little careful when you’re moving it around.

The next step is to coat the pork in a mix of beaten egg and miso paste. The miso was a flash of inspiration, and worked out really well – no need to season the meat, as miso is so salty, and it added a more authentic edge to proceedings. I used one teaspoon of miso paste to one large egg, mixed well, then dipped both chops in the egg mixture, turning to coat. Next, the pork went into a dish of fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs. You could use prepared breadcrumbs or panko, whatever you have to hand.

At this stage, the pork can wait around for a little while, while you prepare any veg you want in your noodles. I had broccoli florets, mushrooms and spring onion in mine. When you are ready to start cooking the pork, heat a tablespoon of oil and a knob of butter in a frying pan big enough to hold however many chops you’re cooking (or two frying pans if you have loads). Keep the heat at medium so that you don’t scorch the breadcrumbs, and fry the meat for three or four minutes on each side.

Stir fry any veg and boil any noodles that you’re having while the pork cooks, and prepare any toppings you’re having. I had a thin omelette (made with the excess miso-egg mixture), which I tore into strips, some torn seaweed and a couple of hard-boiled quails eggs. Just before serving, toss together your cooked veg and noodles and season – I flavoured my stir fry with garlic, ginger and chili, then added sesame oil and soy sauce to the end result.

Remove the pork from the frying pan and rest while you decant the noodley goodness into deep bowls. Slice the pork into strips and lay on top of the noodles, along with whatever other garnish you’re having.

Devour.

The pork is crunchy on the outside but still very soft and juicy in the middle – because you’ve hammered it out so thinly, it doesn’t take long to cook all the way through, even without the heat being cranked up to the max. This is a simple meal to prepare, perfect for a weeknight, and you can vary it depending on what ingredients you prefer, or have to hand. The cupboards and fridge were well and truly raided for this one – and it was a triumph!