Roasted tomato, garlic and goat’s cheese tart

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Louise

Tons of tomatoes, a bit of forgotten puff pastry left over from last week’s anchovy tart and plenty of herbs on the balcony made me start thinking about another tart. And it seems I’m not the only one: both David Lebovitz and Delia have been having similar thoughts (look at her recipe of the day for Tues Aug 23). Perhaps we have all over-bought at the farmers’ market or Turkish shop this week…

Having compared several recipes I’m not surprised they’re so popular: easy as, er, pie and seasonal you can have dinner ready in 40 minutes with minimal prep and only a baking sheet to wash up. The two grande dames of home cuisine on either side of the Atlantic, Martha and Delia, have a very similar approach: use some ready-made puff pastry, slather it in some kind of soft paste (purée of roasted garlic, pesto or some kind of soft cheese), cover it with slices of tomato and bake. I was very tempted by the roasted garlic until I realised that it would add a good 40 minutes more of cooking time. So I tried the Delia recipe and it was just glorious. If you don’t like goat’s cheese try it with mascarpone or some other plain soft cheese and if you have some flavoured olive oil use that over the top instead of the normal stuff. Brilliant for those nights when you want something different but don’t have the time or energy for lots of prep and stirring. Continue reading →

Posted in Cheese recipes, Cookery writers, Delia Smith, Martha Stewart, One pot, Savoury tart recipes, Summer recipes, Vegetarian recipes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Bill Granger’s Greek salad with halloumi

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Louise

Bill Granger again? Halloumi again? Yes, and I’m not going to apologise because it won’t be long, at least in the UK where it already feels like autumn, before tastes like this seem like a distant memory. This is a delicious mini-tweak to a relatively standard recipe and the crisp heat of the cheese is a lovely contrast to the fresh chill of the tomatoes, cucumbers and onions. The original recipe uses mint and parsley; I like coriander in a Greek salad so I swapped that for the mint. I also threw in the lemon zest to zing up the dressing. I could eat this all week.
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Posted in Bills Open Kitchen, Cheese recipes, Fast food fixes, Gluten-free, One pot, Salad recipes, Summer recipes, The Cook Shelf, Vegetarian recipes, Wheat-free | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Last of the summer salads: new potato, bacon and parsley

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Louise

There are ten days of August left and, though it’s not my favourite month, it is still summer. So I am going to spend these almost-two-weeks squeezing in as many warm weather flavours as I can find. First, a hot new potato salad from delicious magazine that lives up to its origin. I’ve become a real fan of mayo-free new potatoes this year and, although this uses both a saucepan and a frying pan (as opposed to just a saucepan for most potato salads) it’s worth it. And, with only four main ingredients (potatoes, bacon, onions, parsley) this is a perfect standby for one of those haven’t-got-anything-to-cook panics. Okay, you might not have parsley in those circumstances but I think it would still be lovely without it. The magazine suggests that this would serve six as part of a barbecue but, since 500g is only eight or so medium new potatoes, I’d say that was an over-generous estimate. I think it’s probably enough for two large portions as a main or four as a side dish. Continue reading →

Posted in Gluten-free, Recipes from magazines and newspapers, Salad recipes, Spring vegetable recipes, Summer recipes, Wheat-free | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lime and coriander salsa and a failed Nigel Slater recipe

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Louise

Sometimes the greatest ideas, the most obvious combinations lead to naught. I don’t mind my dinner being a bit rubbish if I haven’t made much effort. But when I have followed a recipe to the letter, not making any substitutions (which is exceedingly rare) and it still tastes a bit, well, blah, then I feel cheated. Tonight I made Nigel Slater’s pork with lime, chilli and peanuts. I love all of those ingredients; I especially love them combined, as they were, with garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, spring onions and herbs. But it didn’t work or at least it did nothing for me: there was no fresh zing, no sense of the flavours working together and all I could taste was lime and chilli.

The recipe came from Nigel Slater’s Real Food which was, I think, his fifth book. I wonder if, like other writers, food writers improve with practice and age and he had yet to reach the heights of The Kitchen Diaries; however that makes no sense because his first book is brilliant. But the whole situation leaves me not only hungry but with a dilemma: I don’t want to share a recipe that doesn’t work but, this being a Mon-Fri blog, I must share something. Continue reading →

Posted in Bill Granger, Bills Open Kitchen, Cookery writers, Fast food fixes, Nigel Slater, Real Food, Salsa and sauce recipes, Summer recipes, The Cook Shelf, Vegetarian recipes, Wheat-free | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Peter Gordon’s Tomatoes on Toast

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Louise

Don’t be fooled by that innocuous description. I think these could be life-changing tomatoes on toast, the sort of tomatoes that turn ‘on toast’ from the bridesmaid to the bride. What is it with these Antipodeans and their ability to completely upend the expected? I think if I was ever going to train in a cookery school I might be tempted to go to one in Australia or New Zealand because the recipes that come out of those countries are just unforgettable. Continue reading →

Posted in Chefs, Cook at home with Peter Gordon, Cookery writers, Fast food fixes, Peter Gordon, Peter Gordon, The Cook Shelf | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wednesday roast: classic two-lemon chicken

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Louise

Why is it a Sunday roast? Why not a Monday, or Tuesday, or even Wednesday roast? Yes, yes, I get all the likely history and the fact that most of neither have the time or energy to think about a big roast dinner in the week. But the time involved in a roast is a fallacy; at least it is if you cut out the time-consuming stuff (roasting the potatoes, steaming or mashing the veg, fine-tuning a gravy). The meat itself is one of the simplest and most economical meals you can make, both in terms of time and energy.

Take, for example, a chicken.

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Posted in Chicken recipes, Cookery writers, Donna Hay, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Gluten-free, Marcella Hazan, One pot, Summer recipes, The Cook Shelf, Tips you won't want to live without, Wheat-free | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Simon Hopkinson’s anchovy and onion tart

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Louise

I’ve never been much of a fan of telly chefs; I remember vaguely watching the Galloping Gourmet prancing about a kitchen in the days of black and white television, I probably watched some Delia under duress in the seventies and giggled at Keith Floyd in the eighties but, since then, I’ve rarely engaged with any of them. Which is why I was so intrigued when three different friends, completely separately, told me how much they had liked the new Simon Hopkinson programme. The recipes were, and I quote, ‘things I can imagine making and eating’. When one of those friends kindly gave me a copy of the book that accompanies the TV series, I wanted to test out the recipes and the opinions.

The book, a bit like Hopkinson’s most famous one, is very idiosyncratic. He doesn’t attempt to cover every dish or permutation (a plus, in my opinion since who can?), he focuses on particular ingredients or groups of ingredients (a second plus, since often I want to cook a specific thing; I love the first Riverford book for doing this) and the recipes are, for the most part, accessible to the normal human (bar a few notable exceptions, like the one that uses cotechino sausage and mustard fruits). They’re also incredibly tempting. So far I want to try lamb with Asian green sauce, apricot and almond turnovers and the buttered rice with mozzarella, garlic and basil (I especially like the last for sounding like risotto without the work). Continue reading →

Posted in Cookery writers, One pot, Simon Hopkinson, Summer recipes, The Good Cook | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Basil oil

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Louise

My basil plant is starting to look a little leggy and unhappy. Chuffed as I am that I have managed to keep it alive for several months (probably due to the fact that I bought it from a garden centre not a supermarket) it is now time to accept that in the next few weeks I need to start using up the leaves, or storing them in some way because they won’t survive the winter. I’m not too sad about this. As I said on Friday basil is one of those things I want to eat by the handful all summer but once the leaves start to turn, thyme, rosemary and bay take over. But even though the shops are full of school uniforms and the August weather is rubbish, I want to hang on to the light and the flavours of heat for a few more weeks. The obvious thing would be to make some pesto but I’m more interested in doing something I’ve never tried before: basil oil.

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Posted in Cookery writers, Jill Dupleix, New food, Recipes 1 2 3, Rozanne Gold, Salsa and sauce recipes, Summer recipes, The Cook Shelf, Vegetarian recipes, Wheat-free | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Summer survival kit: what you really need for easy everyday food

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Louise

It struck me this week that I had too little, and yet too much stuff. Too little because, once the shops started to close early, I didn’t have enough required staples to make a cup of tea (milk); too much because, even without shopping, I still threw away a large head of broccoli that had turned the sort of fetching shade of yellow that is only seen at the end of rough Channel ferry crossings. So, even though I am very careful about how much I buy (bar the odd kid-in-a-sweetshop trip to the farmers’ market) I am incapable of getting it right and avoiding waste.

Yet, thanks to WTF I am more and more aware of how little is required to make an interesting meal. Many cookery books include a list of store-cupboard ingredients; some of them are brief (Innocent‘s half a page) and some a little ridiculous (The Art of Simple Food‘s rather oxymoronic ten pages) but they all assume that you want the same thing all year round. And that you have enough room for all that stuff.

However, even in this rather disappointing British summer I have realised that there are certain things I want now (basil, lemon zest, black olives) that I won’t even think of in February. What’s more, if you keep a certain number of truly seasonal basics in the fridge you will rarely ever need to go shopping for more than one or two ingredients.

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Posted in Fast food fixes, Fish recipes, One pot, Summer recipes, Wheat-free | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Rose Prince’s Three-Minute Spelt Bread

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Louise

Tesco’s is open again, taxis are touting for business and, apart from the police officers on every street, life in my little bit of London seems to be calming down. I never thought I’d say this but I was glad to see that supermarket’s familiar blue and red sign lit up. The ability to walk into a shop, late in the evening, without being threatened by a baseball bat is something that I have always taken for granted in London. Only in Baltimore in the US have I ever found shopping a threatening or dispiriting experience; when the goods and the assistant are behind bars, browsing seems a bit de trop. But then we all know what happened to Omar.

Restoration of a sense of calm meant that I came home after dark and then couldn’t face cooking. So I fell back on the contents of the fridge which, thanks to the almost-curfew of Tuesday night, meant some slices of homemade spelt bread, some olive oil and a handful of plum tomatoes. Since I have been writing this I have learnt that my eating and cooking style is almost always far removed from the meat and two veg cliché; I like one main dish, veggie or carnivorous, with either bread or salad/veg to go with it. And good bread makes all the difference to this style of eating; habas con jamon or roasted aubergines are not the same with floppy sliced. So why not make your own?

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Posted in Bread recipes, Rose Prince, The New English Table | Tagged , , | 6 Comments