I made this for a lunch party where Giles baked a ham (I've no idea how he did it, so can't explain it here), and it was totally brilliant.
This isn't the exact Jamie Oliver recipe, but it's close enough.
In the food processor, with the coarse shredding attachment, I shredded some
carrots
celeriac
fennel
and put it all in a massive bowl and squeezed lemon juice over it to stop it from going brown. Then we sliced up some
white cabbage and
red cabbage by hand, because putting it through the food processor kind of minces it up: no good.
I added the cabbages to the other veggies and tossed it around by hand. Then for a dressing I used
some large dollops of good quality plain yoghurt
some salt and pepper
one or two dollops of grainy mustard
a handful of fresh mint leaves, chopped up
And it was out of this world. Jamie: the master.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Halloumi and quinoa salad
Oooh what a scrumptious thing this is. It's a Greek-inspired, fresh thing of lovliness, which can be tailored to suit your exact tastebuds. I had it for lunch just now and mine went something like this:
(For 2)
1 packet Halloumi cheese
80g dried quinoa
half a red chilli, deseeded and chopped very small
2 spring onions
1 stick celery, chopped
1 small bunch fresh mint, chopped
2 dollops natural yoghurt
pinch of salt
1 Cook the quinoa for about 16 mins and drain
2 while in the sieve, mix in all the ingredients except the halloumi
3 slice and fry as much of the packet of halloumi as you fancy - one packet is slightly too much for two people
4 pile up the quinoa mixture onto a plate, put a dollop of yoghurt on top, followed by the halloumi and sprinkle some more mint on top
Yummy
(For 2)
1 packet Halloumi cheese
80g dried quinoa
half a red chilli, deseeded and chopped very small
2 spring onions
1 stick celery, chopped
1 small bunch fresh mint, chopped
2 dollops natural yoghurt
pinch of salt
1 Cook the quinoa for about 16 mins and drain
2 while in the sieve, mix in all the ingredients except the halloumi
3 slice and fry as much of the packet of halloumi as you fancy - one packet is slightly too much for two people
4 pile up the quinoa mixture onto a plate, put a dollop of yoghurt on top, followed by the halloumi and sprinkle some more mint on top
Yummy
Monday, 14 December 2009
Carly's salad
I don't like salad. I don't even, really, like vegetables that much. I like hot, fried things, salty, fatty things. I like meat. And pies. And, most of all, meat in pies.
But I've got to eat salad. Got to. I am a grown-up and a sensible person and what separates me from animals is the ability to act now for my future self - thus I must eat vegetables to be healthy and not die from heart disease before then next series of X Factor starts.
The other problem is that I'm not that great at making salad - especially not salad dressings. What will always prevent me, and anyone else, from being anything other than a perfectly competent home cook is a lack of clever taste buds. What makes, in my view, someone like Jamie Oliver, a genius, is his mastery of taste. He can create with taste in the way that a brilliant novelist can create with words. When it comes to taste, I'm barely past my ABCs.
Anyway, I put out a plea on Facebook for a great salad and my old friend Carly Chenowyth (try typing THAT when you're drunk) replied with a lovely asian fusion confection, that involved mung beans, which I've always dismissed as little more than tapwater in fancy dress.
But Carly is an Australian, you see, and does asian fusion off the top of her head, poof, just like that. So I went for it and it was magnificent (although I did add a lot of chopped, grilled chicken, just because I felt like it). Giles, who had initially made his just-seen-a-gross-mouldy-thing face, hoovered it up.
So here we go (this is not the exact recipe as Carly gave it to me, but this is my interpretation)
Carly's salad
Mung beans
carrots
alfafa
sesame oil
large clove of garlic
sherry vinegar
0.5 fresh red chilli
light soy sauce
salt
grated ginger
juice of half a lime
a small sprinkling of sugar
This is a very long list of ingredients, and you could skip out most of them except the beans, the sesame oil, the soy, chilli and garlic. Everything else is just vaguely asian salady-stuff I had hanging around.
Anyway, so start off with a base of about 3 parts sesame oil to 2 parts soy. Then add the garlic if you like garlic, or for just a hint (raw garlic at lunchtime doesn't work for me) chop up a really large clove into 3 chunks and let it sit in the dressing until you're ready to eat, at which point you can fish it out.
Add a sprinkling of salt and then the chopped chilli and you're done. If you want to add the other ingredients, add a little of each one and keep tasting as you go. The dressing tastes pretty overwhelming when it's neat, but over the mung beans and the carrots and alfafa, it's perfect.
I blanched the mung beans for one minute just to take the edge off and julienned the carrots rather than grated them as grated carrots always taste a bit weird to me. Throw the veggies in a bowl, pour over the dressing and that's that. If you want to add a bit of grilled chicken, brush it with the dressing before it goes under the grill and really grill it hard, to make it nice and crispy.
If anyone out there has a failsafe, tasty salad idea, send it my way.
But I've got to eat salad. Got to. I am a grown-up and a sensible person and what separates me from animals is the ability to act now for my future self - thus I must eat vegetables to be healthy and not die from heart disease before then next series of X Factor starts.
The other problem is that I'm not that great at making salad - especially not salad dressings. What will always prevent me, and anyone else, from being anything other than a perfectly competent home cook is a lack of clever taste buds. What makes, in my view, someone like Jamie Oliver, a genius, is his mastery of taste. He can create with taste in the way that a brilliant novelist can create with words. When it comes to taste, I'm barely past my ABCs.
Anyway, I put out a plea on Facebook for a great salad and my old friend Carly Chenowyth (try typing THAT when you're drunk) replied with a lovely asian fusion confection, that involved mung beans, which I've always dismissed as little more than tapwater in fancy dress.
But Carly is an Australian, you see, and does asian fusion off the top of her head, poof, just like that. So I went for it and it was magnificent (although I did add a lot of chopped, grilled chicken, just because I felt like it). Giles, who had initially made his just-seen-a-gross-mouldy-thing face, hoovered it up.
So here we go (this is not the exact recipe as Carly gave it to me, but this is my interpretation)
Carly's salad
Mung beans
carrots
alfafa
sesame oil
large clove of garlic
sherry vinegar
0.5 fresh red chilli
light soy sauce
salt
grated ginger
juice of half a lime
a small sprinkling of sugar
This is a very long list of ingredients, and you could skip out most of them except the beans, the sesame oil, the soy, chilli and garlic. Everything else is just vaguely asian salady-stuff I had hanging around.
Anyway, so start off with a base of about 3 parts sesame oil to 2 parts soy. Then add the garlic if you like garlic, or for just a hint (raw garlic at lunchtime doesn't work for me) chop up a really large clove into 3 chunks and let it sit in the dressing until you're ready to eat, at which point you can fish it out.
Add a sprinkling of salt and then the chopped chilli and you're done. If you want to add the other ingredients, add a little of each one and keep tasting as you go. The dressing tastes pretty overwhelming when it's neat, but over the mung beans and the carrots and alfafa, it's perfect.
I blanched the mung beans for one minute just to take the edge off and julienned the carrots rather than grated them as grated carrots always taste a bit weird to me. Throw the veggies in a bowl, pour over the dressing and that's that. If you want to add a bit of grilled chicken, brush it with the dressing before it goes under the grill and really grill it hard, to make it nice and crispy.
If anyone out there has a failsafe, tasty salad idea, send it my way.
A note about potato dauphinoise
Ok, I don't know a lot about a lot, but I do know about potato dauphinoise and enough people have expressed dismay at how their dauphs have turned out - 'practically raw' 'bland' and so on, for me to write about it.
The trick is to bung a LOT of salt and pepper and garlic inbetween your layers of potato. More than you think you need. A good sprinkle of salt, a good four twists of the pepper grinder and at least half a clove of garlic, chopped or microplaned.
Then you must, must, cook the sucker for ages. Like, two hours. You can just about get away with 1.5 hours if your oven is top-class. But nothing bad will happen if you blast it for 2 hours, so just throw it in there and forget about it.
A good dauph is the best thing ever, but it's not worth making an average one.
The trick is to bung a LOT of salt and pepper and garlic inbetween your layers of potato. More than you think you need. A good sprinkle of salt, a good four twists of the pepper grinder and at least half a clove of garlic, chopped or microplaned.
Then you must, must, cook the sucker for ages. Like, two hours. You can just about get away with 1.5 hours if your oven is top-class. But nothing bad will happen if you blast it for 2 hours, so just throw it in there and forget about it.
A good dauph is the best thing ever, but it's not worth making an average one.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
O! For a Scotch Egg
God I love Scotch Eggs. I had forgotten how much until I rediscovered them at my amazingly food-fabulous local pub, The Bull and Last. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/giles_coren/article4935099.ece
Here they have them on the bar, as a snack, although they are big as your fist (if you're a girl with small-ish hands) and they have, somehow, contrived to make them so that the EGG IS RUNNY when you cut into it.
Anyway, it turns out that they are a sublime doddle to make in one's own kitchen. Have a go, it's very jolly. And you can make three, put them in the fridge, forget about them and then be thrilled the following lunchtime because you've got a Scotch Egg to eat.
Scotch egg
1 egg
another egg, beaten
2 sausages' worth of sausagemeat (as good quality as you can get your hands on, I used Cumberland)
some bread - a bit stale if possible, whizzed up in the food processor to make breadcrumbs - about one, 1.5 slices
flour
groundnut oil for frying
Preheat your oven to 180
1 Boil one egg for 9 minutes. Or for less, maybe 7 mins, if you are feeling brave and want to have a go at keeping the egg runny. Cool the egg in cold water and peel
2 Dry the egg off and roll it in seasoned flour
3 extract the top-end, high quality sausagemeat from your two sausages by scoring the sausage skin from top to bottom with a knife and peeling it away. mash it all together with your hand and then pat out in a circle about 1cm thick on a floured surface
4 place the egg in the middle of the sausage circle and then bring the sides up around and over it, bbeing extra careful if you've got a 7 minute egg not to squish it. smooth the sausagemeat around the egg until there are no gaps. This is very easy.
5 roll your ball of sausage and egg into the beaten egg and then roll it through the breadcrumbs, gently pressing as many crumbs into the surface of the egg as you can.
6 get your groundnut oil really smoking hot and then shallow fry the egg for about five or six minutes, until the breadcrumbs are a nice golden brown all over
7 transfer to a baking tray or sheet and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
Friday, 11 December 2009
Easy tomato and courgette gratin
What with all my pork pie and turkish delight making, I'm getting a bit fat. And it's not even, really, Christmas yet. I haven't even had the first mince pie of the year (more of which later).
So I'm going on a post-Christmas run-up, pre-Christmas diet, in anticipation of all the chocolate and potato and salmon-on-bread I'm going to be eating, starting in about a week's time.
Staring at the larder at about lunchtime yesterday, all I could think about was have a very large egg sandwich (or maybe 2) with a lot of butter and homemade celery salt:
(Celery salt:
The leaves from a head of celery
salt
Cut from a head of celery all the leaves and arrange them on a baking tray. Put in the oven at 180 for five minutes until they are dry and crispy. Remove to a pestle and mortar and bash up, then add rock or sea salt.)
But I couldn't have that, all that bread. But what I did have was a quantity of tomatoes and some courgettes and remembered a Delia recipe for a tomato and courgette gratin. The secret with a gratin, I find, is to use about four times as much cheese as you think is reasonable and scatter, over the top a small quantity of breadcrumbs, which give a smidge of crunch and a tiny thrill of carbohydrate to the stodge-dodger.
Tomato and courgette gratin:
I used six large-ish tomatoes and two courgettes for this. It fed two hungry people, with a salad, with leftovers.
A large block of parmesan
a handfull of breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
sage or other herbs
1 Slice up the courgettes thinly and sautee them for about ten minutes with sage and garlic (or thyme, or whatever herbs you have) and salt.
2 Slice up the tomatoes and the parmesan, leaving about a third of the parmesan to grate over the dish
3 arrange the tomatoes, courgettes and parmesan slices in layers. Delia recommends overlapping them, like tiles on a roof, but I simply don't have that kind of dexterity, so it all went in sort of higgledy piggledy.
4 grate over the remaining parmesan and scatter over the breadcrumbs and season generously with salt and pepper
5 stick in the oven at 190 for 30 mins
So I'm going on a post-Christmas run-up, pre-Christmas diet, in anticipation of all the chocolate and potato and salmon-on-bread I'm going to be eating, starting in about a week's time.
Staring at the larder at about lunchtime yesterday, all I could think about was have a very large egg sandwich (or maybe 2) with a lot of butter and homemade celery salt:
(Celery salt:
The leaves from a head of celery
salt
Cut from a head of celery all the leaves and arrange them on a baking tray. Put in the oven at 180 for five minutes until they are dry and crispy. Remove to a pestle and mortar and bash up, then add rock or sea salt.)
But I couldn't have that, all that bread. But what I did have was a quantity of tomatoes and some courgettes and remembered a Delia recipe for a tomato and courgette gratin. The secret with a gratin, I find, is to use about four times as much cheese as you think is reasonable and scatter, over the top a small quantity of breadcrumbs, which give a smidge of crunch and a tiny thrill of carbohydrate to the stodge-dodger.
Tomato and courgette gratin:
I used six large-ish tomatoes and two courgettes for this. It fed two hungry people, with a salad, with leftovers.
A large block of parmesan
a handfull of breadcrumbs
salt
pepper
sage or other herbs
1 Slice up the courgettes thinly and sautee them for about ten minutes with sage and garlic (or thyme, or whatever herbs you have) and salt.
2 Slice up the tomatoes and the parmesan, leaving about a third of the parmesan to grate over the dish
3 arrange the tomatoes, courgettes and parmesan slices in layers. Delia recommends overlapping them, like tiles on a roof, but I simply don't have that kind of dexterity, so it all went in sort of higgledy piggledy.
4 grate over the remaining parmesan and scatter over the breadcrumbs and season generously with salt and pepper
5 stick in the oven at 190 for 30 mins
Monday, 7 December 2009
Mass catering
At the end of every dinner or lunch I give, by myself, I always - no matter how well everything has gone - think to myself "Next time I'm going to make a lasagne."
But, like a mad person expecting different results from the same actions, I always end up making something with multiple moving parts, vegetables to be timed at the last minute, something different for my Pescetarian, two different types of nibble. Madness.
At my Saturday lunch Giles, who is massively helpful in the kitchen (I'm not being sarcastic, he really is) was out for the day, so everything fell to me. And what did I decide to make? Risotto? Bangers and mash?
No. The full menu was as follows:
- Smoked salmon on brown bread
- cocktail sausages in a cranberry sauce
- Roast chicken with thyme and lemon
- Potato dauphinoise
- cod in breadcrumbs for the P
- brussel sprouts sauteed in chilli and garlic
- spotted dog
I mean, it was fine - I didn't cry, everything was really nice (I'm not too sure about the cod in breadcrumbs. The P is famously polite and would eat all of whatever hideous thing you put in front of him and go 'yum is there any more?') But by the time we sat down I was MAGENTA in the face and the kitchen was total and utter chaos, despite all my very Hyacinth Bucket preparations.
So, no more. Next time I'm by myself and want to have eight people round - which was great, incredibly jolly and fun - I really am going to make a massive lasagne, or a risotto, or bangers and mash and a salad. Because, in all honesty, if I went round to someone's house for lunch and found out they were doing a great big macaroni cheese, I'd be thrilled.
But, like a mad person expecting different results from the same actions, I always end up making something with multiple moving parts, vegetables to be timed at the last minute, something different for my Pescetarian, two different types of nibble. Madness.
At my Saturday lunch Giles, who is massively helpful in the kitchen (I'm not being sarcastic, he really is) was out for the day, so everything fell to me. And what did I decide to make? Risotto? Bangers and mash?
No. The full menu was as follows:
- Smoked salmon on brown bread
- cocktail sausages in a cranberry sauce
- Roast chicken with thyme and lemon
- Potato dauphinoise
- cod in breadcrumbs for the P
- brussel sprouts sauteed in chilli and garlic
- spotted dog
I mean, it was fine - I didn't cry, everything was really nice (I'm not too sure about the cod in breadcrumbs. The P is famously polite and would eat all of whatever hideous thing you put in front of him and go 'yum is there any more?') But by the time we sat down I was MAGENTA in the face and the kitchen was total and utter chaos, despite all my very Hyacinth Bucket preparations.
So, no more. Next time I'm by myself and want to have eight people round - which was great, incredibly jolly and fun - I really am going to make a massive lasagne, or a risotto, or bangers and mash and a salad. Because, in all honesty, if I went round to someone's house for lunch and found out they were doing a great big macaroni cheese, I'd be thrilled.
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