Category Archives: Other people's recipes

May 15, 2013

Birthday Party!

So, guess what?

You’re right, I have no way to know if you’re guessing or not, and this is a pointless exercise. But still, guess!

That’s right (she said, hearing your guess through the powers of the internet) – it’s my birthday today! Guess what else? Oh OK, we won’t go through that again – it’s my 30th birthday. I have been rocking around on this planet for 30 years and as I type, I’m swinging between casual acceptance, frank disbelief and what can only be described as stomach clenching panic, at a rather alarming rate.

The casual acceptance part is like ‘Yep, it’s just a number. Plus, life is awesome, and you’re not one of those people who’s set any kind of “life targets” that you now feel like you should scrimmage around and get accomplished in the next twenty minutes. Well done. Let’s party.’

The frank disbelief is like ‘Whaaaaaaaaat? I’m just getting started! It can’t possibly have been 30 years.’

The stomach clenching panic is like ‘DEATH IS COMING.’

So, now you know. Your humble writer is 30 years old on this very day, and as you read this she is probably doing some awesome bouldering. If you’re not familiar with it, bouldering is indoor climbing without ropes or helmets or any of that carry on. The G man and I started doing this in the last couple of months, and even though some weeks I’m really scared of climbing to the top of the walls and/or falling off while I’m doing it (which to be honest I think is probably natural, and I try not to give myself a hard time about it), most of the time I love it, and I feel like a spider monkey. The best parts are where you lose your footing and haul yourself back up with your arms – that makes a person feel BADASS, no doubt about it. I’m already getting people to prod the new muscles in my forearms, which I am disproportionately proud of.

Anyway, that is part of my birthday plan. The whole picture looks like this:

10am or thereabouts: wake up without the aid of an alarm clock and relish being at home, in bed, on a work day.

11am: have a long, leisurely shower. Sing ‘Caledonia’, ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ and ‘Life on Mars’ at top of lungs. Sing any other songs that pop into head, also at top of lungs.

12 noon – 1pm: climb to the top of walls and jump back down again like bouldering rock star legend.

2pm: arrive at astonishingly awesome parents’ house, where astonishingly awesome siblings will also be arriving forthwith. Drink bourbon. Laugh until face hurts. Eat food that I have had no hand in preparing, and will have no hand in cleaning up after. Possibly play enthusiastic if amateurish guitar and sing at top of lungs some more.

11pm: arrive back at my flat, escorted by ever-patient G man. Watch a film with dinosaurs or aliens in it. Sleep the sleep of the just.

Doesn’t that sound great?

While I’m off doing that, I thought I’d give you some birthday party pictures to peruse. The week before last, I threw a birthday party for my beloved Thursday Sister Miss Pig. We had banners, paper plates, wine and more snacks than you could shake a stick at – the works. I took a whole bunch of photos, and today I’d like to share them all with you – after this big bunch of words at the top of the post, you deserve them.

Things started off very civilised.

I made some exciting things for us to eat. First of all, blue cheese and walnut sandwich cracker guys:

The recipe for these is here – Stilton and Walnut Crackers. I Scottished it up by using Strathdon Blue for the crackers, and the filling was some Skinny Crowdie with a splash of cream, a sprinkling of blue cheese and some minced spring onion. Delicious.

Then, sticking with the cheese theme, I made these Homemade Goldfish Crackers.

I used a sharp Cornish Cruncher cheese for these – this cheese is great just on its own, but adds a mega flavour boost to the crackers. They didn’t turn out as crunchy as goldfish crackers, instead being more puffy and pastry-ish, but they hit the spot. I also make them in heart and flower shapes, because those are the shapes that Miss Pig likes (and because I don’t have a fish shaped cutter, of course).

The last savoury joy was these sourdough grissini, of which I was extraordinarily proud. They earned me a proposal of sorts when I took the leftovers into work – that good. My sourdough starter Louie is still going strong, almost 18 months on. He did me proud.

There are three kinds of breadstick there – sesame seed, poppy seed and salt, pepper, garlic, chili and fennel. Oh yes. Add a bit of humus and you’re golden. You can find the recipe for Sourdough Grissini on YeastSpotting.

I also made some sweet items for us. First up, a batch of brigadeiros, which you can read a blog post about here. The original recipe is here.

They’re fudgy, chocolatey truffles, which are so much lighter than your usual chocolate truffle while still delivering a rich flavour. They’re a little trickier and more time consuming to make than normal truffles, too, but worth the effort. People make a face when they eat these – a GOOD face.

Next I made some little tartlets which I’m struggling to name – they’re somewhere between jam tarts and meringue pies, except the meringue is soft, more like marshmallow. This is because I freestyled it, by whipping up an unspecified amount of egg white with enough sugar to make a glossy meringue that stood up in peaks. I eyeballed it, and then piped it over the baked jam tarts and used my cook’s blowtorch to cook and colour the surface of them. Then I sort of looked away when someone took the first bite out of one in case the marshmalloweringue exploded everywhere, instantly sticking everything in the room to everything else in the room. When there were no cries of alarm I looked back – turns out that they were soft and pillowy but not excessively sticky and definitely not explosive. Phew – bullet dodged.

The other great thing about these is that they represent my first successful attempt at wheat free pastry – are you excited about this? Because I *definitely* am. I’ll blog it properly on my next attempt, but for now suffice to say it was light and crisp and did not crumble into ash in our mouths, which is always the fear when you make wheat free pastry and biscuits. Also I made the tartlets flower-shaped, and I loved the end result. They’re so pretty! The jam was rhubarb and ginger, from a jar (shoosh, I made the pastry, what more do you want? Jam on it? Oh…).

The piece de resistance was these wee pig cupcakes, which were inspired by an idea in the book Cupcakes, Cookies and Pie – Oh My!

Check out the colour difference in those photos. THE LEVELS! MY EYES!

The ears and noses are mini marshmallows – to do the ears you snip some marshmallows diagonally to form those sweet wee triangles, and then you wedge them into the icing. The cakes are Devil’s Food Cake (my go-to chocolate cake recipe) and the icing is a vanilla buttercream, tinted pink. The eyes are reversed chocolate chips, and the smiles are drawn on with an icing pen after the icing has set a little.

I was heard to remark that I thought they looked a bit like I made them at nursery – I still feel that way. It’s not a criticism, necessarily, but they do look like a project you might do with your kids. However, given that I don’t have any of those, I get to do this fun stuff myself. Miss Pig, as her name suggests, likes pigs – when I happened across the pigs idea in that book, it was a no-brainer.

The night progressed in the way that these nights do…

Wine was consumed…

Sparklers were lit…

Things were knocked over…

We laughed, and listened to 80s tunes, and ate until we couldn’t eat any more. We took photographs of all the food with our phones:

It was a simply lovely party. When everyone went home I had a one-woman dance party round my flat until it was really silly late – and when I say dance party, I really mean it. That thing about dancing like nobody’s watching? That.

Looking over these photos and writing this post was an absolute joy – it’s been a long while since I took on a big kitchen project like this, and having everything work out so successfully was reassuring and pleasing in equal measures.

So, while I’m off enjoying my birthday (30? Really??), I hope you’ve enjoyed checking out our birthday party. I can recommend throwing one, complete with paper cups and a disposable tablecloth. You’ll have a great time.

Baking to excess is optional.

21 comments | tags: birthday cake, birthday party, party food, pigs | posted in Bread, Cake, Chocolates, Confectionery, Dessert, Other people's recipes, Pastry, Snacks

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 13, 2013

Paprika and Chickpea Soup (with Built-In Poached Quails Eggs)

By Rock Salt

Fact: I have made this soup before.

Fact: it is delicious.

Fact: this time I added quails eggs and it was amazing.

The beauty of this soup, as I was at great pains to point out in my last post about it, is its versatility. You can add whatever ingredients you happen to have knocking about the cupboards, or starting to go wrong in the fridge. This time, I added a chili that was getting wrinkly round the edges, swapped a normal onion for the recommended red onion and added some lemon juice from the lonely half lemon in the picture above. The resulting soup was very spicy, so I added a splash of creamy whole milk before I served it. This time, i really have shaken the habit of eating half a loaf with every bowl of soup, and had some tiny little oatcakes with it instead. It was aces.

Now, the reason that I’m reblogging about this recipe – which isn’t even one of my own – is that I had a culinary brainwave while I was making it. Last time I said that a poached egg on top sounded like a great addition. That was over a year ago, and I’d never revisited this recipe in order to try that out. This time I gave it a go – but I didn’t just add any old poached egg.

Oh no.

I added poached quails eggs. And I poached them RIGHT IN THE SOUP. I still feel like a braniac for having this idea.

A few minutes before I was ready to serve the soup, I cracked my eggs onto the surface. This is one of those soups that is almost thick enough to stand your spoon up in, so the egg initially rests almost on the surface.

After a minute, the egg had started to sink. ‘Hm,’ I thought. ‘We may have a situation here.’ I carefully lowered a spoon in under the egg – I could still see the top of the yolk – and lifted it upwards again. It seemed to be doing OK, the white hadn’t completely dispersed through the whole pot, so I let it go for another three minutes, watching and occasionally encouraging it back up to the surface.

The end result was something between a fried egg and a poached egg, flavoured by the soup and ready to carefully scoop out and garnish my dinner with.

: Egg goes in…

: …sinks below the surface…

: …cooks!

I gently pushed the two poached eggs off to the side of the pot, and ladled out enough soup from the other side to fill a bowl. I added a splash of milk and swirled it through, then scooped the eggs from the pot and delicately laid them on top. The final touch was a scattering of spring onions, a late addition but one I was really glad of.

You now have two choices, if you’ve poached some eggs in your soup. You can burst the yolk and let it mingle with the rest of the soup:

Or you can scoop the egg up on your oatcake or other dipping implement and enjoy it in one mouthful:

I got to do both, since I had two eggs. It’s a win/win situation.

7 comments | tags: chickpeas, poached eggs, soup | posted in Dairy free, Gluten free, Other people's recipes, Spicy food, Vegetarian

February 27, 2013

Kedgeree with Duck Egg

By Rock Salt

Felicity Cloake at The Guardian does this nice thing, now and again, where she takes a classic recipe, does a lot of research into the different ways of making it, then presents us with the ultimate combination of these recipes, creating the ‘perfect’ version of the dish du jour. I like it, it’s good to see the different ways that you can make something – low fat, whole wheat, traditional, ‘with a twist’ (has that phrase gone now? I feel like it might be a bit nineties…) – and it’s interesting to read through the variations and Felicity’s reactions to them, before the final recipe is presented. It’s nice to see someone else’s train of thought, reassuring to know that it’s not just me who can be an over-thinker when it comes to snacks.

I recently followed Felicity’s recipe for the perfect kedgeree… except that I didn’t really. I used it as a jumping off point, more than following it. Even though she’d clearly done a lot of hard working in forming that recipe. I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed, and other excuses of that nature. I’m just a natural rebel, OK? A born lever-puller.

The first person to name the film that quote comes from wins something nice. Like my eternal regard.

So, the kedgeree.

This is one of those ‘I might have slightly made it up as I went along’ blog posts.

These are amounts to serve two:

200g basmati rice
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 – 1 tsp chili flakes
2 crushed cardamom pods
1 tbsp curry powder
200g cooked, smoked mackerel
handful frozen peas
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced or quartered
Squeeze of lemon juice
Small bunch of parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste

I did follow Felicity’s advice about rinsing and then soaking the rice. I think it helped make the rice less starchy and sticky. Rice and I have a bit of a troubled relationship, but it worked out well this time, so perhaps giving it a nice relaxing bath before throwing it into boiling water is the way to go.

To sum that process up: rinse the rice in running water until the water runs clear, then cover with fresh, cold water and rest for at least half an hour.

Once it’s been soaked, drain it and put it over a medium heat, with 290ml fresh water. Specific, no?

Bring the rice to the boil, stir, then cover tightly, whack the heat down as low as it goes and leave for 25 minutes. Don’t disturb it. This recipe is basically like a spa day for rice. I added a teatowel between my pot and the lid, to make a tighter seal and keep more steam in the pot. Don’t ask me to describe how I wedged it in there, because right now it is quite late and I’d just use words like ‘wedged’ and ‘squished’ and it wouldn’t be helpful.

After the sauna is over, remove the rice from the heat but leave the pot lid, and any kitchen linens you may have sandwiched between it and the pot, in place. The rice is resting, again. Give it five minutes, then open and run a fork through the rice to break it up.

Heat the oil over a medium high heat, in a large frying pan, then add the onion and cook until softened. Then, add the chili flakes, curry powder and cardamom. Stir round to coat the onion in the spices, and inhale deeply as they start to smell toasty. And then possibly choke as the smell of the chili hits the back of your throat unexpectedly. Sorry about that.

Add the rice to the pan, stir well to coat, and add the peas. Then, flake the fish in – this is why it has to be pre-cooked, because you’re just warming it up, now. Heat for a few minutes, until the peas are cooked and hot, then taste the rice. Season as necessary. Add a squeeze of lemon juice.

Put the kedgeree into bowls and scatter with the parsley, then lay a sliced egg on top. I think a whole egg per person is reasonable.

I used duck eggs. Do you know what I have to say about duck eggs?

They’re bigger.

Suffice to say I was a little underwhelmed by my first duck egg. The white seemed to be more translucent, and sweeter than a chicken’s egg – but not so much that you’d really notice. It was nice, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the revelation I’d been hoping for.

Perhaps I should stop looking for revelations in eggs.