-
Custard tarts (gf) and potential lawsuits
The past two weeks have been taken up with various trips and visitors, namely a skiing trip to the Pyrenees, five turbulent ten-year-olds, a labrador puppy and a couple of adolescent hens. Our skiing trip was wonderful, if slightly hair-raising at times. Once on skis, Léo doesn’t believe in doing anything that might slow himself down. I imagine that it’s a bit like skiing with a talking torpedo. According to him, speed control is for sissies and mothers and, as such (I fall into both categories), I was on the receiving end of several barbed ‘what kept you?’ rebukes. Despite this, the snow was abundant, the sun shone everyday and, all things considered, we managed to escape remarkably unscathed. The group of people knocked flying by my human bobsleigh son fell like dominos but won’t be pressing charges as it is thought his actions were not premeditated :-?, so that’s a relief.
These tarts make excellent chairlift food: delectable, nourishing and not too fragile. They are also a good source of milk and eggs for growingtorpedoeschildren. Cooked milk is easier to digest than pasturised milk as the cooking process breaks down the complex proteins, making them more accessible.
Ingredients for pastry (makes about six mini tarts):
110g buckwheat flour
25g butter
25g virgin coconut oil
Roughly 6 tablespoons of cold water
Ingredients for custard:
250ml whole milk
250ml cream
4 tablespoons honey
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
To make the pastry, begin by cutting the butter and coconut oil into small cubes. Add to the flour in a mixing bowl and add a pinch of sea salt. Blend by hand until the mixture becomes crumbly. Add the cold water, mixing rapidly with a spoon. Remove the mixture from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until you obtain a ball of pastry (if the mixture isn’t ‘sticky’ enough to form a ball, you may need a drop more water). Wrap in a clean cotton tea towel or some cling film and leave to ‘rest’ in the fridge for about two hours. This relaxes the dough and makes it easier to use.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll out the pastry on a clean, lightly floured surface and fill the tart tins. Bear in mind that buckwheat pastry is extremely crumbly as it contains no gluten to ‘stick’ it together. You’ll probably need to patch and press the pastry into the tins as opposed to just cutting and placing it in as you would with normal pastry. Precook the pastry for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the custard filling by cooking the milk and cream over a low heat. Beat the honey and egg yolks together and slowly add the heated milk and cream mixture, beating constantly. Add the vanilla, blending well and fill the pastry cases with the mixture. Bake at 180°C for about 20 minutes or until the surface begins to brown. Serve chilled. -
Chinese pork salad and dogs with bones of contention
Hello! It’s Hugo again. Today I have a bone to pick with the cook (I use that expression at every opportunity – it’s a personal favourite ;-)). I did say I wouldn’t be unkind about the bossy one as she takes me for walks, but I’ve changed my mind. Apparently only fools never change their minds and I may be a bit mad, but I’m not a nincompoop. My problem is this: all it takes is for the sun and a few yellow flowers to appear and she gets all enthusiastic about salad. Salad is for rabbits and perhaps other herby fours, but it certainly isn’t for dogs. We used to have a rabbit called Madeleine until one of the horses let her out of her hutch and she did a runner. I know that the noisy yellow-haired one that shoots me with plastic bullets agrees with me, because we’re on the same page when it comes to food. I feel a bit sorry for him sometimes; she really gives him an earful about ‘not eating enough vegetables’. We both wish that she’d knock this healthy eating fixation of hers on the head. Anyway, please don’t compliment these unappetising green creations, because she’s a bit of a sucker and it’ll only encourage her. Perhaps you could suggest she get all gung ho about red meat?
Ingredients:
Crisp lettuce, washed and shreded
White cabbage, washed and cut finely
1 carrot, peeled and cut into ‘sticks’
1 orange, peeled and cut into small pieces
Thin slices of pre-cooked pork (or duck)
1 shallot, peeled and chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
2 tablespoons cashew nuts
Dressing:
Rice vinegar
Sesame seed oil
Maple syrup
Soya sauce
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
Assemble the salad ingredients in a bowl, add the dressing and serve. To be consumed away from petulant dogs 🙂 -
Guest post: Clementine and almond cake
Hi there, it’s Louisa here from Chez Foti and I’m guest blogging a recipe today for Fiona. We recently stumbled upon each other in the wonderful world of cyberspace and interestingly both happen to live down in deepest, darkest South West France. Well, Fiona lives in the bordering region of Aquitaine and I’m in Midi-Pyrenees, but that makes us practically neighbours in these distinctly rural and empty parts. And it’s not often you meet fellow English foodie bloggers down this way, so I’m delighted to meet her!
Over at Chez Foti I blog hearty, generally healthy, wholesome family friendly fodder that’s always seasonal and uses local as possible fresh ingredients. Since I have a two and a four year old to nourish most of my recipes are quick and simple to prepare and obviously very child-friendly. Though there’s the occasional dalliance into grown-ups-only fair and a little naughtiness here and there. Life really is too short to be good all the time!
My recipe for you, on our little cakey blog swop, is a fabulous (chocolateless!) Clementine & Almond Cake. A wheatless, dairy-free delight which, without deliberately intending to be, is actually pretty darned good for you and almost as good as cake can get. Though if you want to naughty things up a little it’s wonderful with a big dollop of crème fraiche or Mascarpone!
Ingredients:
375g of clementines, tangerines or satsumas (they all work!)
5 large free range eggs
175g of cane sugar
250g of ground almonds
a heaped teaspoon of baking powder, sieved
a tablespoon of Amaretto, optional
a little icing sugar for dusting
Special Equipment: a 21cm spring-sided baking tin lined with greaseproof paper
Place the clementines in a saucepan and cover the fruit with cold water. Bring to the boil, cover and leave to simmer away for 2 hours. Top up the water level as it drops. After 2 hours remove from the water and allow to cool for a few minutes before whizzing to a pulp in a processor (or with a stick blender).
Pre-heat your oven to 190ºC.
Now on with this cinch of a cake. Whisk up the eggs in a large bowl, using a balloon whisk. Then whisk in the sugar followed by the ground almonds and baking powder. Finally stir in the clementine pulp.
Pour the cake mixture into your lined cake tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for around 40 minutes. It should be golden on top, firm to touch and an inserted skewer will come out clean. Leave to cool in the tin on a cooling rack.
Once cool carefully remove from the tin and lightly dust with sieved icing sugar. Serve as is or with a naughty spoon of creme fraiche or mascarpone. And if you can possible wait, this cake is even better the next day…
Thank you Louisa for this recipe — I can vouch for it because I made it and it was pure ambrosia. Visit Louisa’s blog, Chez Foti, for other delicious recipes like this one and some excellent vegetable gardening advice. Fiona, The Healthy Epicurean 🙂 -
Prawn curry and inanimate neighbours
Things aren’t looking good: I had a conversation with a plastic bag this afternoon. Obviously not a conversation in the strictest sense of the word — more of a mad monologue if precision is called for. My neighbour covers her scarecrow with a plastic bag to protect it from the rain. Which, come to think about it, is pretty random; If her aim is to hoodwink the birds, then why not a raincoat? Birds may be somewhat mentally-challenged, but I’m sure they know that people tend to wear raincoats and not plastic bags in the rain. Anyway, rushing along the track, blinded by the sun, I thought the plastic bag was my neighbour, which probably isn’t very flattering. But then again, who cares what somebody who shoots the breeze with a plastic bag thinks?
The spices in curry are packed full of antioxidants, which are, amongst other things, very effective at helping the brain to function properly 🙂
Ingredients (serves 4)
500g raw prawns, peeled and rinsed
Juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons of coconut oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 onions, chopped and sliced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
150g tomato purée
1 tin of sliced mango
250ml fish or chicken stock
1 teaspoon of freshly grated ginger
3 lime kaffir leaves
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder (or a fresh chilli, finely chopped)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup of frozen peas
Squeeze the lemon juice onto the prawns and set aside. Melt the coconut oil in a deep frying pan or casserole and gently brown the onions, garlic and cumin seeds. Once the onions are translucent, add the mangos, tomato purée, stock and spices and bring to a gentle boil to reduce the liquid. Add the peas and cook for about 15 minutes. Add the prawns and cook for a further ten minutes. Serve immediately with basmati rice. -
Chicken tagine with prunes and almonds and black labrador narration
Hello! It’s Hugo writing today’s recipe. I have a feeling the bossy, yellow-haired one often refers to me as the ‘neurotic canine’ or some such. She’s a fine one to talk — you should have seen the state she was in when I was ill recently *evil cackle*. I’m not going to say anything bitchy about her though because she takes me for a nice long walk everyday, if I do abandon her the second we set out, only coming back to shake my dripping, muddy self all over her. This tagine was paw-licking-good, although I might suggest that next time she remove the prune stones. I don’t mind crunching on bones, but stones are for girls. In fact, I spat them out and left them for the hens!
Ingredients (serves 4)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
8 chicken thighs
Juice of half a lemon
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon coriander
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Bay leaf
Two generous tablespoons of orange marmalade (or apricot jam)
400g dried prunes
200g almonds, roughly chopped
500ml chicken stock
Fresh coriander to servePreheat the oven to 180°C. Gently brown the onions, garlic and chicken in the olive oil in a medium-sized casserole dish. Once golden brown (after about eight minutes), add the lemon juice, seasoning and spices and continue to brown for a further five minutes. Add the marmalade (or jam), prunes, almonds and chicken stock and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook in the oven for about an hour and a half or until the sauce is beginning to caramelise slightly.I served this with spicy cauliflower. -
Spelt apple cake and discomfiting headwear
I had assumed that I’d become immune to embarrassment, thanks to a long haul desensitisation programme courtesy of my husband. It just wasn’t humanly possible to blush every single time someone fell victim to his uninhibited candour (‘if I had feet like yours, I wouldn’t wear open-toed shoes’ springs to mind).
But for some reason, in his Basque terrorist guise when we went out to lunch today, he inadvertently excelled himself. Obviously I have nothing against Basque terrorists per se. After all, nobody can wear a beret quite like a Basque. And their food is beyond divine. Of course, they hit a low point when they started blowing things up, but nobody’s perfect. But the beret, a promotional gift from our local DIY store with their logo written across the front in BRIGHT RED LETTERS, proved to be a cringe too far. I appear to have become, amongst other things, a beret snob 😳
This apple cake is as simple as it gets, but no less delicious for it and certainly nothing to be ashamed of; I’ve had enough shame for one week 😉
Ingredients
2 large apples, peeled and sliced
handful of raisins
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
150g cane sugar
200g spelt flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs, beaten
1 pot of yoghurt (125g)
75ml melted virgin coconut oil
75ml melted butter
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Poach the apples and raisins in a small amount of water. Add the cinnamon. Once the apples are soft (about 15 minutes), drain the excess cooking juice and set aside. Combine the sugar, flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, then add the yoghurt, eggs and melted coconut oil and butter. Mix well. Stir in the poached apples and cook in a medium-sized cake tin for 30 minutes. -
Easy fisherman’s pie (gf) and assorted ailments
I have been anything but a Healthy Epicurean this past week 🙁 If I ever give tips on flu-dodging, please feel free to ignore – I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about. My endless witterings about optimal vitamin D levels and the like, have proved to be as useless as they are boring. Having said that, so far, neither husband nor son have caught it, so maybe I’m just better at dispensing advice than implementing it. True to form, poor Hugo developed piroplasmosis, a potentially fatal tick-borne canine disease, as a mark of sympathy. One syringe full of antidote and two raw steaks later and he was raring to go again. I only wish the same could be said for me #whingemoan 🙄
I adapted this fish pie from a recipe by Tana Ramsay. My version is gluten-free.
Ingredients (serves 4)
300g white fish (cod or haddock), skinned and boned
200g salmon, skinned and boned
150g prawns, peeled
200ml milk
200ml vegetable stock
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 leeks, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
4 mushrooms, peeled and sliced
3 large potatoes, peeled
half a celeriac, peeled
knob of butter
Sea salt and freshly ground black Pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
150ml double cream
4 tablespoons grated cheese (cheddar, compté, parmesan)
Preheat the oven to 190°C. Place the fish and prawns in a frying pan and cover with the milk and stock to poach (for approximately ten minutes). Fry the onion, leeks, carrots and mushrooms in olive oïl to soften. Cut the potatoes and celeriac into large chunks and boil until tender. Drain and mash with a knob of butter and the seasoning.
Add the drained fish to the fried vegetables and double cream and combine well. Place this mixture in an ovenproof dish. Spoon the mashed potato/celeriac over the top, sprinkling the grated cheese on top. Cook for about 30 minutes until the potatoes and cheese are golden brown and bubbling. -
Raspberry and apple tart with almond topping and crabby electronics
I’ve had a very busy week accomplishing lots of useful things: I grilled two computers (one was struck by lightning, which wasn’t really my fault; the other was struck by impatience, which was.) My credit card was chewed up because I think I’m capable of talking and typing my PIN number simultaneously. A non-identified metal object fell off the bottom of the car and I burned out the motor of the Kitchenaid (which is quite a feat as they’re meant to be indestructible.) I am typing this very cautiously on my ipad, fully expecting it to spontaneously combust at any minute. If I don’t post for a while you’ll know why 😉
I did however manage to make these tarts without exploding the oven, so that was really quite encouraging. 🙂
Ingredients for pastry (serves 6-8):
150g buckwheat flour
70g spelt flour
50g butter
50g virgin coconut oil
Roughly 6 tablespoons of cold water
Ingredients for filling:
2 apples, peeled and sliced
60g raspberries
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Ingredients for topping:
60g powdered almonds
30g virgin coconut oil
15g cane sugar
10g almond flakes
To make the pastry, begin by cutting the butter and coconut oil into small cubes. Add to the flour in a mixing bowl and add a pinch of sea salt. Blend by hand until the mixture becomes crumbly. Add the cold water, mixing rapidly with a spoon. Remove the mixture from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until you obtain a ball of pastry (if the mixture isn’t ‘sticky’ enough to form a ball, you may need a drop more water). Wrap in a clean cotton tea towel and leave to ‘rest’ in the fridge for about two hours. This relaxes the dough and makes it easier to use.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll out the pastry on a clean, lightly floured surface and fill the tart tins. Precook the pastry for 12 minutes.
Poach the apples and raspberries in a little water, adding the cinnamon to the fruit. Prepare the topping by rubbing the coconut oil into the powdered almonds, before adding the sugar. Assemble the tarts once the pastry is pre-cooked by filling each pastry case with the poached fruit and then covering with crumble topping and almond flakes. Put back in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the topping is beginning to brown. -
Aubergine lasagne (gf) and potentially badly-behaved tennis mothers
Léo, my son, played in a tennis tournament yesterday. For me, this resulted in an acute attack of what I can only describe as Internal Tourettes. In my head, I morphed into a sort of raging maniac. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty; move over Tiger Mother – you’ve got competition! My shameless unsportsmanlike mind cheered at double faults, hissed and snarled at anyone deigning to applaud theenemyopponent and yelled things that I’m certainly not going to commit to type. And yet, there I sat with a beatific smile that said ‘it’s the taking part, not the winning that counts’. Yeah right
. This was definitely one of those occasions that called for unbridled hypocrisy, something I’ve apparently mastered to a T.
This lasagne is suitable comfort for scrupulously gallant players who might or might not have been defeated by up-themselves whippersnappers 😉
Ingredients (serves six)
2 medium-sized aubergines
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
500g minced beef
400g tinned tomatoes
4 tablespoons tomato purée
1 teaspoon tabasco
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
50ml red wine
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of rosemary
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
200g Mozarella, finely sliced
100g Parmesan, shaved
Peel the aubergines and then cut into roughly 3mm slices. Leave them to ‘sweat’ out their moisture for about an hour by sprinkling with sea salt. Meanwhile, you can begin to cook the meat. Gently fry the onion, garlic and carrot in olive oil in a large frying pan for about five minutes. Add the minced beef and continue to brown for about 5 minutes. Add the tinned and puréed tomatoes, herbs and seasoning and stir well, making sure to break up the mince. Add the wine and gently simmer until the liquid has reduced and the sauce is concentrated and fairly homogenous (roughly 45 minutes).
Rinse the salt from the aubergines, which should by now have shed most of their excess water and pat them dry. Take a good-sized roasting dish and layer the meat, aubergines and cheese (in that order) several times, finishing with a generous layer of Parmesan cheese. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 180°C for about an hour, or until the cheese is bubbling and turning golden brown. -
Spelt bread
I envy mothers who disingenuously exclaim ‘I have such problems with my childrens’ eating habits: they just can’t get enough caviar/oysters/organic broccoli…’. Obviously when I say envy, I mean it in a thoroughly irascible, need-to-suppress-violent-urges sort of way. My son is passionate about bread (he’s partial to ketchup too actually, but I don’t think we really need to go there ;-)). He’s been besotted with bread since his first teeth appeared and his enthusiasiam shows no signs of abating. This spelt bread meets with his approval and believe me, he’s something of an expert in the matter.
Spelt is a tasty and healthy alternative to wheat and has a delicate nutty flavour. It’s actually an ancient grain that has come back into favour as more and more people have problems digesting wheat. Spelt has a tough outer husk, meaning that it can protect itself from attack and making it a very suitable candidate for pesticide-free production. Not only does it have more vitamins and minerals than wheat flour, it also has a higher protein content. Although spelt contains gluten, it is in a more fragile form and therefore easier to digest than wheat gluten, which is why people with a wheat intolerance are often able to eat spelt flour.
Ingredients (makes one small loaf)
250g spelt flour
5g active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
150ml lukewarm water
Begin by diluting the yeast in a few drops of water. Add to the flour and salt and then add the lukewarm water. Add the olive oil and mix well with a wooden spoon and then either knead by hand or mechanically for about ten minutes, until the mixture becomes like plastic. Leave to rise in a warm (25-35°C), draft-free place, covered with a damp tea towel for 45 minutes. The dough should double in volume. Knead again and shape into the desired form. Place on greaseproof paper, cover with the damp tea towel and leave to rise again for about 1h 15 minutes. Transfer to a lightly oiled baking tray and bake in a hot (225°C) preheated oven for 30 minutes.
