POST CATEGORY : Recipes

Slow cooker apple chutney

Slow cooker apple chutney

We have been blessed / cursed* With a lot of pears from our garden and a crate of apples from the neighbours. So the chutney factory begins! 

I decided to experiment with the slow cooker to enable me to make chutney during the week without having to watch over it all the time.

I’m really pleased with the result.

Ingredients:

1.3-1.4kg apples ( peeled, cored and chopped)                                                   2 large onions peeled and chopped  2 garlic cloves crushed                   300ml cider vinegar                                             675g Demerara sugar                             1tsp each of cinnamon, ginger, cayenne and chilli powder                      2tsp salt

  
Method:

Turn the slow cooker to high whilst you prep.                                                Put all the ingredients in the slow cooker and cook on high, lid off, for 30 minutes or until the sugar has dissolved.                                                   Put the lid back on and cook on high for 9 hours ( I took the lid off after 6 hours and cooked the rest of the time with it off to reduce the mixture and allow the liquid to evaporate.

  

Once thickened, Put in sterilised jars and seal.

  

(*delete as appropriate)

Keen triple nut butter granola bars

Keen triple nut butter granola bars

Last time I went back home to Northern Ireland I managed to get some Keen nut butters. They have a fantastically creative range of nut butters and I’m looking forward to experimenting. 

 2 1/4 cups of homemade nutty crunch granola  

1/4 cup dark chocolate chips 
1 cup pitted dates

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup Keen triple nut butter 

Put the dates in a food processor and blitz them up until they form a ball. Put the dates in a mixing bowl with the granola and chocolate chips. Mix everything together.  

  

Melt the maple syrup and nut butter in a  saucepan and add it to the mixing bowl to coat the dry ingredients.  

Line a loaf tin with cling film, add the mix and press it down ensuring you create a flat top. 

  
Fold the remaining cling film over the top.  Put the tin into the freezer to set for about 15 minutes.  Take out of the freezer and cut into bars. 

  

Super tasty bruschetta with heritage tomatoes

Super tasty bruschetta with heritage tomatoes


Here’s a quick and easy way to make some ordinary ingredients into a really delicious starter, or meal in its own right.

This is based on a simple bruschetta I was served in a restaurant. It was simple, fresh, vibrant and tasty…  The key to my version is preparing the tomatoes using more salt that you think can possibly be healthy (most of it drips away) and make a simple olive paste for the bread. Using heritage tomatoes isn’t essential, but they tend to taste better and contain less water. Visually they make things much more interesting.

To serve four you need:
Olives (100g)
Bread (four slices)
Tomatoes (the more varied the better)
Garlic (four or five cloves)
Olive oil (ideally extra virgin)
Tomato puree
Chilli
Dried mixed herbs
Wine vinegar (red or white)
Salt

Roughly cut up the tomatoes and place them in a colander over a bowl to catch the juice. Sprinkle salt over the tomatoes. You need a lot of salt. For six good sized tomatoes I end up using about three or four teaspoons of salt but don’t worry, most of this drips away with the juice. Gently mix the salt in with the tomatoes.

The salt draws out the liquid and you’ll find juice starts running into the bowl. Move the tomatoes around every so often as you want to get as much liquid out as possible. After about 15 mins or so, discard the juice (it’s far too salty to be useful) and put the tomatoes in a bowl.

Mix up a dressing with three parts oil to one part vinegar (you don’t need much dressing so don’t overdo it). I usually throw in some dried mixed herbs, a crushed clove of garlic and half a chilli. Pour this over the tomatoes and mix it through.

Wizz up 100g olives and a few cloves of garlic to a fine paste, adding olive oil to loosen. Mix in two teaspoons of tomato puree (or more to taste). You can add a bit of chilli, though perhaps not needed alongside the dressing. I sometimes add a few drops of dark soy sauce. This intensifies the flavour and adds a bit of colour.

Toast your bread and spread a thin layer of the olive paste. Then pile high with tomatoes and serve.

Learning about bread

Learning about bread

Last weekend, I went with my friend Liz to the Cake and Bake Show in Manchester and we had a great time. I booked into a bread workshop with Patrick Ryan of the Bread Revolution. It is amazing how much you can learn in 35 minutes. What follows is my attempt to show you how to make 3 breads using what I learned in the workshop.

Making a Poolish ( a fermentation starter)
Mix 250g of strong bread flour, 250ml water and 3g of dried yeast (5g if its fresh yeast). leave overnight. It will look like this the next day:

Making the bread dough
In a large bowl, put 1kg of strong bread flour and mix in 15g salt. It is important of mix the salt through so that it doesn’t react with the yeast.
Add in your Poolish and spike the mix with an extra 3g dried yeast ( or 5g if fresh yeast).

Add 600ml cold water ( cold water slows the yeast down so that it proves for longer and improves the flavour)

Mix in the bowl with a dough scraper until you have a rough dough

Then tip it out onto the table and knead.

Kneading
One thing that surprised me to learn was that you don’t need to knead for a long time! A little trick I learnt was that you can knead for 30 seconds leave it to rest then repeat three times and you still get a good bread. This was a complete revelation to me and a relief!!
After the first knead let it rest for the ten minutes, whilst you think about flavours.

Flavouring
For my three breads I did the following flavours:
Wild garlic pesto bread ( using my pesto recipe from the blog. Wild garlic is only in season for a short time and now is that time!)

Malted grains bread: (using a pack of malted grains I bought from Flour Bin, a fantastic stall at the show. http://www.flourbin.com/ I also bought some malt flour from them so watch this space for more bread recipes)

Toasted seeds bread: I used linseed ( from Flour Bin), sesame seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds and cumin seeds and toasted them in a dry frying pan. I then added a splash of soy sauce. This was a great tip from Patrick Ryan and gave the mix a great flavour.

More kneading and resting then proving
Split the dough into three, mix your flavours in to your three bread doughs, knead and rest again for 10 minutes.
Knead again and then leave the bread to prove for at least an hour thought it may take longer depending on the heat of the room.

Shaping and second prove
After the first prove knock the dough back then shape the bread.
I did three different shapes
A baguette style: I folded up the dough long ways then lined a long loaf tin with a tea towel dusted with flour and placed the dough in it for its second prove.

A swirl shape (there’s probably a better name!): make the dough into a LNG baguette shape, rest for a minute then roll up the dough one way at one end and opposite way at the other end ( it should Look a bit like two Danish swirls!)

A crown ( though I need to practice this a lot more): place a small bowl in the centre of your proving basket and rub it with a little oil. Divide your dough into 7. Roll out one of the pieces into a circle and place it over the small bowl. Roll up the other pieces into balls and place them around the bowl. Cut triangles from the circle and food over each ball and leave to prove.

Baking
Once the dough has proved a second time, put the breads on a baking tray and bake for approximately 30 minutes at 210c. Pour a jug of water into a tray at the bottom of the oven to create steam.
And….here is the result….

Still room for improvement but Patrcik Ryan said in reply to my tweet that it was ‘pretty impressive for your first go’ and my husband loved the bread. I’ll take that!
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Lamb leftovers are the best: lamb pittas with Harissa yoghurt sauce

Lamb leftovers are the best: lamb pittas with Harissa yoghurt sauce

I love lamb, especially when it is slow cooked. You can’t really have Easter Sunday roast dinner without it. As we had to leave the house at 6am for our sunrise service at church, we put the 3kg lamb shoulder in the oven with garlic and rosemary and set the timer.


It slow cooked for 4 hours and was ready when we returned home. We had a great afternoon eating with our church family.


And added bonus: LEFTOVERS!!

Here’s what I rustled up to use up the shredded lamb

Shredded lamb
Salad leaves
Pitta breads

Harissa yoghurt sauce:


mix together
1/2 cup of fat free yoghurt
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp Harissa paste
Juice of half lemon
1 garlic clove crushes

Heat this pitta bread under the grill for a couple of minutes
Open up the pitta and layer with the warmed shredded lamb and salad leaves
Drizzle over some Harissa yoghurt sauce and enjoy


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Sundried tomato and chorizo soda bread

Sundried tomato and chorizo soda bread

I love soda bread, it’s quick and easy to make, it smells amazing and most of all it reminds me of home. I had some leftover bits from antipasti in the fridge so I decided to experiment this afternoon and here is the result.

450g plain flour
1 teaspoon each of sugar and salt
1 1/2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp dried chilli
80g chorizo cubed
5 sundried tomatoes chopped
300ml tub buttermilk
100ml milk
1 tbsp lemon juice

Preheat a baking tray in the oven a 180c

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl


then add the chorizo, chilli and sundried tomatoes


Add the buttermilk milk and lemon juice and mix until the dough starts to come together
On a floured surface knead lightly and shape it into a round loaf
Place it on the hot oven tray and score a cross in the top


Bake for about 40-45 minutes ( until golden and it sounds hollow when you tap the bottom of it)


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Raspberry and pear cake

Raspberry and pear cake

More gifts from the garden today led to an afternoon baking a cake.


I used this recipe from Rachel Allen’s ‘Bake’. It’s a variation of her Dutch apple cake

2 eggs
175g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
85g butter
75ml milk
125g plain flour
Zest of an orange
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
100g raspberries
2 pears thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 200c
Whisk the eggs, caster sugar and vanilla in a bowl until the mixture is thick and looks like mousse ( this takes a few minutes)


Melt the butter and milk in a pan and then pour onto the eggs whilst whisking.
Fold the dry ingredients and orange zest into the egg mix and then pour into a square cake tin.


Arrange the pear and raspberries over the cake mix ( some will sink)
Bake for 10 minutes then reduce the oven to 180 and bake for a further 25 minutes.


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Autumn fruit and marzipan muffins

Autumn fruit and marzipan muffins

Our garden has certainly been fruitful this autumn. Plenty of pears, plums and raspberries to enjoy. The danger with baking is it is all too easy to make the same cakes over and over again as you know they work. So, I decided to spend an afternoon searching my many recipe books for new ideas that I could adapt. Here is one I adapted from my Ottolenghi recipe book.

480g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
110g melted unsalted butter
280ml milk
Zest of 2 oranges
100g marzipan

Autumn fruit compote
500g plums stoned and cut into chunks
250g raspberries
60g caster sugar
1 stick of cinnamon

To make the compote, put the fruit, sugar and cinnamon mixed together in an oven dish and bake for 15 mins at 170c. When it has softened and its lovely and juicy and sticky, take it out of the oven and set outside to cool.


Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon in a bowl. In a separate bowl whisk the sugar and eggs together then add the milk and butter and combine it. Grate the marzipan into the mix and add the orange zest. Add 100g of the compote and mix.


Fold in the dry ingredients and spoon the mix into muffin cases.
Bake at 170c for 25-30 mins
Serve with the remaining compote


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Torta di Susine (Plum Cake)

Torta di Susine (Plum Cake)

I may have mentioned before that I have a bit of an obsession with cookery books, there is nothing I enjoy more than an evening reading through various books and planning what I might make. One of my favourite food writers is Tessa Kiros. I discovered her books when I went to Florence on a school trip! I was wandering around Sienna and buying as much food as I thought I could squeeze into my suitcase to bring back. In one little eaterie was a copy of ‘Twelve’ a Tuscan cookbook Tessa Kiros. The thing I love most about her books is their simplicity. I’ve since bought ‘Apples for Jam’ and ‘Falling Cloudberries’

Anyway, today I made a simple plum cake from Twelve. I’m not going to print out the full recipe as I really want you to buy the book ( it’s on page 212).
But you put plums in the bottom of the tin


you whisk the sugar, vanilla and eggs together until they are pale and fluffy


You add the flour, baking powder, melted butter and milk and mix to make a batter which you pour over the plums before adding the rest of the plums on top and sprinkling with sugar


And after an hour this is what you get


Not pretty and perfect but really rather delicious

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Plum crumble

Plum crumble

I LOVE crumble. There is something very comforting about it, especially when it’s in a big bowl with some custard ( and I often give myself permission to cheat and buy ambrosia ready to heat custard) My favourite crumble is Plum crumble.

You will need
For the filling:
A punnet ( or two) of plums
A little butter and some soft brown sugar
Halve and stone the plums and arrange them in a large fairly shallow dish. Dot a little butter over the plums and sprinkle over some soft brown sugar to taste


Put in the oven at 180c for 20 minutes to soften

For the crumble topping:
100g hazelnuts
75g butter
175g flour
110g Demerara sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
Put all the topping ingredients in a food processor or mini chopper and blitz


Put the topping on the softened plums and return to the oven until the topping is golden brown and the plums bubbling underneath.


Serve with custard

Apple crumble

I use a mix of about 5/6 cooking apples and 4 eating apples ( usually cox or braeburns) peeled and sliced
I add 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves and 1 teaspoon cinnamon to the apples and about 25-30g brown sugar and mix well.


I make the same crumble mix as above but often replace the hazelnuts for almonds and add a little more cinnamon to the mix

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