DSC_0001-1

Pistachio Carrot Cake

1 Comment

I don’t make carrot cake as much as I should. I never really think of it, because I’m too obsessed with chocolate. Also, to be completely honest, grating things is my absolute least favourite kitchen activity, and I’m lazy. I hate grating carrots. You don’t have to grate chocolate for chocolate cake. It’s a shame, though, because carrot cake is great, particularly for spring. This pistachio carrot cake is simple, robust, and delicious.

DSC_0028-1024x683

It’s also surprisingly light. There’s no point pretending that because this cake’s got fruit and vegetables in it that it’s healthy, but it’s definitely not as heavy as the chocolate-fudge-caramel-frosting confections I usually pedal on here. It keeps very well because of the high moisture content of the carrot and pineapple. And everyone loves a good carrot cake.

DSC_0042-683x1024

Source

Adapted from and inspired by this recipe.

Notes

I have never put pineapple in carrot cake before, even though I have seen it in plenty of recipes. I always thought it was unnecessary. But this time I thought I’d give it a go, and I actually loved it. You can skip it if you like and it won’t ruin the cake, but I’d urge you to try it if you haven’t done so before.

This list of ingredients looks long, but it’s because it’s got a few spices and cupboard staples in it that you likely have knocking around.

Ingredients

240g all-purpose flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp ground ginger
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
350g light brown softsugar
130g coconut oil (or any flavourless oil like vegetable or corn)
130g buttermilk (or natural yoghurt)
2 tsp vanilla extract
180g freshly grated carrot
200g tinned or frozen pineapple
70g dessicated coconut
100g chopped pistachios

cream cheese icing

450g cream cheese
120g butter, room temperature
250g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

handful of chopped pistachios

Method

  1. Get the butter for your icing out of the fridge first. Thank me later.
  2. Preheat the oven to 175C. Grease and line two matching cake tins (around 20cm in diameter). Put your flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice, and ginger in any bowl and give them a mix. In the bowl of an electric mixer (or by hand), beat the eggs and sugar together until combined. Beat in the oil, buttermilk, and vanilla. Mix in your dry ingredients until just combined, then fold in your grated carrot, pineapple, coconut, and pistachios.
  3. Divide your cake mix evenly between the two cake tins. Bake for around 30 minutes, or until golden and set in the centre. Let the cakes cool completely before you try to ice them.
  4. For the icing, beat the cream cheese and butter together until evenly combined. Beat in the icing sugar and vanilla – don’t overbeat because if you overmix cream cheese frosting it just goes runny. Put half the icing on one cake, top it with the other and finish with the rest of the icing. Sprinkle with your reserved pistachios.

DSC_0006-1

Easter Rocky Road

2 Comments

One more quick Easter recipe for you. Yes, it’s basically just Rocky Road – but the Easter version. So it’s automatically even greater. And it takes ten minutes to put together. And very little skill. And I’m tired, okay, so unfortunately for you, this lazy recipe is all you get today. The Hot Cross Cookies were a slightly more respectable attempt at Easter baking.

DSC_0024-670x1024

I barely ever make Rocky Road actually, because a) James loves it, and b) I am lukewarm about it. This makes me sound very selfish, but truly, James doesn’t really want me to make it often because it means I’ll come home one day and find him sitting on the floor in the kitchen with chocolate all over his face, an empty tin clutched in his sticky fingers, and a wild look in his eyes. I’m being cruel to be kind.

DSC_0034-683x1024

I don’t quite know what’s so joyful about Easter eggs, but they’re magical. Even if it’s completely standard chocolate that you wouldn’t normally look twice at, somehow having it in an egg shape makes it incredibly appealing. This follows through to mini eggs too. I don’t know why, but I find them totally irresistible. So, even though I am lukewarm about Rocky Road, I ate quite a lot of this batch.

DSC_0055-1-1024x683

Notes

I’m not going to pretend this is a particularly inventive or difficult thing to make. It’s just normal rocky road plus Easter eggs. You can substitute anything else when we’re not in Easter season.

Ingredients

125g butter
300g chocolate – dark, milk, or a mixture depending on your taste
3 tbsp golden syrup
200g oat biscuits (or whatever biscuits you like)
100g marshmallows (cut them in half if they’re big ones)
150g mini eggs
2 tbsp icing sugar (for dusting)

Method

  1. Line a 20cm square tin with baking paper and make sure you have space to fit it in your fridge.
  2. Put your butter, chocolate, and golden syrup in a large saucepan and melt over a medium heat. While everything is melting, put your biscuits in a freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin to break them up a bit, leaving some chunky pieces. When the chocolate mix is melted, stir the biscuits and marshmallows into it.
  3. Reserve a handful of your mini eggs, then roughly chop the rest and mix them into the chocolate. Spread the mixture out evenly in your lined tin and flatten the top. Push your reserved mini eggs into the surface of the rocky road, then pop the whole thing in the fridge to set for a couple of hours.
  4. When it’s set, dust the top with icing sugar, cut it into squares, and serve.
DSC_0018-1

Hot Cross Cookies

3 Comments

Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way first. I suck at piping white chocolate. Try to ignore how messy these look, and appreciate that hot cross cookies are an excellent addition to the Easter baking roster. I am a big fan of Easter brownies, and generally go for the ‘add creme eggs and mini eggs and it’s a done deal’ school of Easter baking.

DSC_0001-1024x683

But sometimes, you’ve got to mix it up. I love hot cross buns passionately, but there’s no denying they’re a bit of a faff to make. They’re not stupidly difficult or anything, but as with most breads you have to wait for things to rise and prove and so on. And sometimes (okay, often) I am just too impatient for such things. Enter: hot cross cookies.

DSC_0027-1024x683

Notes

This recipe makes around 20 generously sized cookies.

If, like me, you live in a two person household, and don’t want to bake 20 cookies at once because you know you will just eat them all, I have a solution for you. Freeze all the cookie dough (i.e. get up to the end of step 2 in the recipe), then bake the cookies off in batches of two or four or whatever is manageable for the next few weeks. You will have delicious freshly-baked cookies in fifteen minutes in small batches.

Ingredients

250g butter, softened
200g light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
3 large egg yolks
325g plain flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
100g mixed peel (should come diced but chop it finely if not)
100g raisins or sultanas
75g white chocolate

Method

  1. Line a baking tray which will fit in your freezer with parchment paper. In your largest bowl or in a stand-mixer, beat the butter and both types of sugar together until just combined and even, then beat in the egg yolks – all at once is fine. Add your flour, salt, bicarbonate, cinnamon, and allspice. Mix to form firm dough. Finally, fold in your mixed peel and sultanas.
  2. Using a small ice cream scoop (or spoons, or your hands…) scoop the dough into golf ball sized rounds and pop them on your lined tray. Freeze for an hour, or up to a month.
  3. Heat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4, and take the cookies out of the freezer. Spread the frozen dough between three or four lined baking trays – you need to give them a lot of space to expand.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the outsides of the cookies are baked and crispy, but the insides still feel soft and underbaked. Let them rest on the counter to firm up for at least 10 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool completely before piping on your chocolate.
  4. Melt your white chocolate however you see fit (in a bowl over a pan of simmering water is safest, but I often just microwave on medium power in short bursts for such small amounts). Pop it in a piping bag (or a sandwich bag), snip off the end, and pipe crosses onto your cool cookies. Alternatively, skip the cross thing and just drizzle them recklessly with chocolate. Less Easter-themed, but slightly easier.
DSC_0058

Cherry, Coconut, and Almond Cake

2 Comments

As you may have noticed, I am all for huge decadent cakes covered in stuff. But sometimes, even I am looking for something a bit more low-key. The sort of thing that you can knock up in a spare half hour. The sort of thing that doesn’t involve stacking layers, or making any buttercream. This cherry, coconut, and almond cake is not at all needy or precious. It’s a very ‘throw it together’ sort of cake. It’s low-maintenance. Robust. And it’s delicious.

DSC_0010-1-683x1024

Something about the combination of coconut and the almond in this cake results in a beautifully moist and tender crumb. Studding it with fruit just makes it even more delicious. It’s a crowd-pleaser, and it will stay that way for a few days, kept at room temperature in an airtight container. It really does do a lot of heavy lifting, considering how easy it is to put together.

DSC_0048-1024x683

There’s also something comfortingly spring-like about this cake, even though it uses store cupboard ingredients. It’s a gentle hug of a cake, but its nutty fruitiness makes it light and promises of warmer days to come. You could imagine serving a cherry, coconut, and almond cake at Easter. Then again, as I write this it’s snowing heavily outside onto an already thick carpet of the stuff, so perhaps spring will never come anyway.

DSC_0042-683x1024

Notes

You can put whatever fruit you like in this, almost. I love it with cherries but it would also work well with strawberries, blueberries, blackberries…

I’ve suggested using canned or frozen cherries here, because they are stoned. I don’t have the patience for stoning cherries. And it’s not cherry season. But you do you.

Source

Adapted from the delicious blueberry cake in the excellent Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh.

Ingredients

200g butter, melted
180g ground almonds
70g dessicated coconut
250g caster sugar
80g self-raising flour
½ tsp salt
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
200g frozen or tinned cherries
30g flaked almonds

  1. Pop the butter on to melt. When it’s melted, set it aside to come to room temperature. Quarter your cherries. Grease and line a 23cm springform cake tin. Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4.
  2. Put your ground almonds, coconut, caster sugar, flour, and salt in a large mixing bowl and give them a quick stir to make it even. Beat your eggs together lightly in a measuring jug, then whisk in your melted butter and vanilla. Gradually pour this into the dry mix, beating all the while, until evenly combined. Fold in three quarters of the cherries and pour the mixture into your cake tin – you will have a very loose batter.
  3. Sprinkle the reserved cherries on top, followed by the flaked almonds. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until risen, golden, and passing the skewer test. Let it sit for at least 20 minutes before trying to get it out of the tin.
DSC_0004-1

Mocha Cupcakes

2 Comments

So, let me level with you. The reason these mocha cupcakes exist is because I fairly recently got a kitchen blowtorch and since then I have wanted to blowtorch everything. I got the idea of topping cupcakes with an Italian meringue and finishing them off with the blowtorch and got a bit obsessed with it. You might, rather reasonably, be thinking ‘well, I don’t have a blowtorch so this recipe is of no use to me’. I hear you. I get that most people do not have a blowtorch. But the Italian meringue topping these cupcakes is still perfectly delicious un-blowtorched.

DSC_0023-683x1024

When you make Italian meringue, the hot sugar syrup you incorporate into the egg whites cooks the egg, so going over it with a blowtorch is for effect and a bit of toasty flavour rather than cooking. And if you cannot really be bothered with the whole meringue deal anyway, you can simply top these delicious chocolate cupcakes with buttercream. Or leave them plain and shove them, unadorned, directly into your mouth. It’s all good.

But, should you wish to go down my mocha cupcake route, then do read on to the recipe below.

DSC_0028-1024x683

Notes

The recipe makes around 18-20 cupcakes.

The coffee in these cupcakes is mostly to boost and enhance the chocolate flavour, but it’s not really dominant. This is because I do not drink coffee. But if coffee is your jam, do feel free to up it here by raising the quantities of espresso powder, adding coffee extract, or brushing the finished cupcakes with a coffee syrup.

If you are making the meringue, you will need a sugar thermometer and some sort of electric whisk – hand held or a stand mixer will do it.

Ingredients

for the cupcakes

170g butter
170ml very strong black coffee
3 tsp espresso powder
40g cocoa powder
85g dark chocolate, finely chopped
225g light brown soft sugar
2 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
3 eggs, plus 1 extra yolk
130g plain flour
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

for the meringue topping

50g of egg white
100g of white granulated sugar
25ml of water
2 tsp espresso powder

Method

  1. Heat your oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Line two muffin tins with around 20 paper cases (if you only have one tin, just bake in two batches). Put your butter and coffee in a large pan over a low heat to melt the butter, then add the espresso powder and stir to dissolve. Whisk in your cocoa and chopped dark chocolate until the chocolate is melted. Add your sugar, vanilla, and salt, and mix again. Mix in your eggs and extra yolk. Finally, sieve your flour and bicarb over the pan and fold that in too. You should have a very runny cake mix.
  2. Fill your paper cases two thirds full (I use an ice cream scoop). Bake them for 15 minutes, or until your cakes are risen and fairly firm.
  3. While your cakes are baking, make your meringue. Beat your egg whites with an electric whisk or in a stand mixer until they form stiff peaks. Put your sugar, water, and espresso powder in a pan and heat gently, stirring a little, to dissolve the sugar. When the sugar is dissolved, whack the heat up and let it bubble away until it hits 120C on a sugar thermometer. Then pour the syrup into the stiff egg whites in a thin stream, beating all the while on high speed. When it’s all in you should have thick, glossy meringue. Keep whisking it for around five minutes, until the bowl is cool to the touch.
  4. When your cupcakes are baked, top them as you wish. If you’ve made the meringue, you can either spoon or pipe it onto the cakes, and you can blowtorch them or leave it at that. You could also top the cupcakes with buttercream or leave them plain.
DSC_0087

Camembert Pithivier

4 Comments

I know this isn’t necessarily the most mouthwatering blog post title in the world, but will you stick around when I tell you that a ‘camembert pithivier’ is really just a ‘melted cheese pie’? And really, in life, aren’t we all just looking to eat a slab of gloriously bronzed, buttery, flaky pastry, stuffed with bits of crispy bacon and hot melted cheese? I know I am. Enter camembert pithivier.

DSC_0044-1024x683

A pithivier is just a round pie made with two discs of puff pastry that enclose some sort of filling. Traditionally they are scored with lines around the pastry dome, and the edges are scalloped, but if you don’t do that it’s not like it’s going to change how it tastes. They were originally filled with frangipane, but now people make savoury pithivier and anything goes. It’s actually one of my favourite ways to make a pie, because there’s no lining of a tin or getting pastry to fit in a dish or blind baking (see also: galette). It’s freestyle.

DSC_0077-1024x683

If you are scared off by camembert and don’t like strong cheeses, then I do beg you to reconsider. The taste isn’t really a refection of the smell, and it’s a wonderfully gentle and luxurious thing to eat. That said, you could theoretically replace the camembert in the middle of this pithivier with a big lump of any cheese that melts nicely.

DSC_0093-1-725x1024

Notes:

This is best served straight from the oven, for maximum melted cheese joy, but it does keep and reheat perfectly well too, to give you a very superior packed lunch. You can also make it right up to the baking stage and keep it in the fridge or freezer, ready to pop into the oven when a hungry crowd arrives. If you’re freezing it, defrost in the fridge before baking.

Ingredients:

Knob of butter
1 red onion, diced
2 leeks, diced
160g diced bacon or pancetta
5-6 sprigs of thyme, leaves removed and finely chopped
generous glass of white wine
pepper
2 pieces ready rolled puff pastry
1 camembert cheese
1 beaten egg, to glaze

Method

  1. Heat your butter on a medium heat in a large saucepan until foaming. Put your diced onion and leeks into the pan and cook on for 8-10 minutes until softened. Add the bacon, turn up the heat, and cook until the bacon is starting to crisp. Add the thyme, stir, and cook for a minute more. Pour in your wine and cook until almost all the liquid has evaporated (this should only take a minute or two). Season the mix with pepper (but not salt, because the bacon and cheese are inherently salty). Spread the bacon mix out on a plate and leave until completely cold (once it’s cooled a little, putting the plate into the fridge or freezer will speed this along).
  2. Assemble the pithivier. Unroll one sheet of the puff pastry. Cut out a large circle – I usually cut around a plate – and place the camembert in the centre of it. Arrange most of the bacon mixture in a ring around the cheese, leaving a border of a couple of centimetres of uncovered pastry round the edge, then mound the remainder on top of the cheese to make a dome. Brush the exposed pastry round the edge of the circle with beaten egg.
  3. Unroll the other piece of puff pastry and drape it over your cheese and bacon dome. Press it down around the edge of the pastry where you have brushed on the beaten egg. If you do this properly you shouldn’t have any leaks. As you can see from the pictures, I missed a bit and got a bit of a cheese explosion, but a river of melted cheese is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Trim the top piece of pastry too, to match the edges of your bottom piece. Poke a hole in the centre of the dome to let steam out. If you like, you can lightly score the dome with a knife to create the classic pithivier pattern. You can also scallop the edges, but neither of these things are necessary. Brush the whole thing with beaten egg. Pop it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is completely firm.
  4. Heat your oven to 210C/190C fan/gas 5. Place your chilled pithivier on a baking sheet, and bake for around 30 minutes, or until the pastry is cooked through and gloriously golden. Cut into your pithivier at the table and revel in the delight of the moment when all the melted cheese pours out.
DSC_0040-1

The Taste Test: Cream Cheese

3 Comments

I think cream cheese is a bit of an unsung kitchen hero. I always have a tub of it lurking in my fridge. You can use it in savoury dishes – spread on toast or or a bagel or as the base for building a wrap, of course, but also to thicken sauces and soups, or to enrich bread dough and pastry. You can use it in desserts – cheesecake is the obvious answer, but it’s also great in buttercream that benefits from a savoury edge (not just cream cheese icing but in peanut butter and caramel frostings too) and is a fantastic filling for all sorts of stuff, complemented particularly well by fruit.

Yes, you can buy lots of fancy varieties of cream cheese these days, spiked with herbs and garlic or rippled with chilli. But I like the plain and simple stuff: it’s versatile, cheap, and lasts for ages. And, really, there are few things I like more than a freshly toasted bagel covered liberally in cream cheese with a mound of smoked salmon.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of cream cheese or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Cream Cheese

DSC_0060-1024x683

Cream Cheese
100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Sainsbury’s
0.45
258
25
2.8
0.5
5.4
0.55
Philadelphia
0.56
235
21.5
4.0
0.2
5.5
0.75
Tesco
0.44
285
27.4
4.0
1.6
4.7
0.5
Aldi
0.25
243
23
3.4
1.1
5.4
0.72
Waitrose
0.38
285
27.4
4.0
1.6
4.7
0.53

A – Philadelphia- 7/10

  • Looked smooth in comparison to some of the others. Tasted rich and creamy and mild, with a little welcome acidity but not too much. Nothing surprising but a good base all-rounder.

B – Aldi- 7/10

  • Immediately less smooth and more craggy than A, visually, and it came through on the taste, but it was still enjoyable. More of a savoury, cheese-y taste than the first sample. Not bad at all, but a very different thing to A.

C – Waitrose- 5/10

  • Smooth. Much firmer and chalkier than the first two samples. Less flavour than A or B. Dissolves away in your mouth. Fine but undistinguished.

D – Tesco- 3/10

  • Looks and tastes less smooth than the other samples. Quite flavourless and very obviously grainy in the mouth.

E – Sainsbury’s – 6/10

  • Creamy and smooth. Similar to sample A in that it was creamy rather than cheese-y. Pleasant enough but unremarkable.

Conclusions

I was surprised that there was a visual difference between the samples. Some looked obviously creamier, some were crumblier. This carried through on the taste: I wondered if I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them, but actually I could, easily.

There were two camps here: creamy and cheese-y. Philadelphia was the winner, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the creamy camp, although Sainsbury’s a close second. These mild samples would both be great for use in desserts particularly. Aldi, though, was the winner for the cheese-y side – this tasted far more like soft cheese than like cream. It has a lot of flavour, and would be great for savoury things like sauces and soups.

This will be the last in my Taste Test series for a little while, as my real job is sucking up a lot of my time. But I am planning the next round! So if you have anything you would like me to put to the test, please comment and leave your ideas below…

DSC_0003

Orange and Rhubarb Cheesecake

3 Comments

Here is an antidote to the grey days, the rainy days, the days when Spring is a misty, half-forgotten memory and you can’t remember the last time you went out without a coat. Yes, the cold snap is dragging on a bit, but that’s all the more reason to make yourself a sunshine-y treat, even if you’re doing it with winter ingredients. Rhubarb and oranges are both plentiful right now, and they’re an ideal match in this creamy cheesecake. The vibrant pinks and oranges will cheer up any gloomy day, and this crowd-pleasing dessert is sure to put a smile on your face.

DSC_0016-1024x675

There’s something completely addictive about this cheesecake. James and I ate half of it between the two of us on day one, and gave the rest away very reluctantly as a self-preservation measure. There’s a luxurious creaminess to it, but also the bright and refreshing lightness of fruit. A worryingly delicious combination.

It’s also very simple to make. My inherently laziness has always resulted in my plumping for set cheesecakes rather than baked cheesecakes as a general rule (except that one time I went mad). Even though both are delicious, the set variety are undeniably easier.

DSC_0021-1-683x1024

Ingredients

400g rhubarb
2 tbsp caster sugar
250g ginger biscuits (or biscuits of your choice – digestives and oat biscuits also work well)
100g butter, melted
600g full-fat cream cheese
zest of 3 oranges – use the segments for the decoration
125g icing sugar
150ml double cream

Method

  1. Heat your oven to 220C/ 200C fan/ gas 5. Trim your rhubarb, and cut it into roughly 3cm chunks. Toss the rhubarb in the 2 tbsp caster sugar. Roast for 10-15 minutes, or until the rhubarb is soft but not collapsing. I then ran over it with a blowtorch for extra char, but that’s obviously totally not necessary – I realise most people don’t have a kitchen blowtorch! Leave it to cool.
  2. Line a 23cm springform tin. Gently melt your butter, if you haven’t already. Blitz your biscuits to rubble in a food processor, or pop them in a bag and bash them for some stress-busting fun. Mix the biscuits and the melted butter together, then press them into your tin as evenly as possible. Chill while you make the filling.
  3. In a large bowl or stand mixer, blend the cream cheese, orange zest, and icing sugar until smooth. Add the cream and beat until the mixture has thickened a little. Gently fold in half your roasted rhubarb, saving the rest for decoration. Spread the filling evenly over the base and chill until set, six hours or overnight.
  4. Finish the cheesecake with segments of the zested oranges and the remaining rhubarb.
DSC_0032

The Taste Test: Falafel

2 Comments

I absolutely love falafel. Also hummus. Falafel and hummus together, ideally. Chickpea on chickpea. I don’t know why I find them so comforting, but I genuinely adore them. Of course, you can make falafel yourself. And I sometimes do. But, to be perfectly honest, it is a bit of a hassle. If you want them to be really excellent you have to deep fry them. I don’t have a deep fryer (thank god, really, because I’d never stop using it if I did), so I have to faff about with a pan and hot oil and even though it’s perfectly doable, I am lazy enough that I don’t do it too often.

So, mostly, I buy falafel. And that’s perfectly okay. But I’ve never thought too much about what kind of falafel I buy, preferring to simply chuck the cheapest option directly into my open mouth. It’s silly, though, because good, proper falafel are a wonderful thing, and worth getting right. Yes, the best are fresh from the fryer, hot and crisp and perfectly seasoned. But since we don’t live in a perfect world, most often it’s the supermarket version that will simply have to do.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of falafel or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Falafel

DSC_0076-1024x698

Falafel
per 100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Waitrose
1.56
256
12.9
23.9
7.7
7.3
0.91
Aldi
0.64
245
12
26
5.7
6.3
1.4
Tesco
1.64
208
9
20.3
7.2
7.6
0.9
Sainsbury’s
1.00
281
15.5
25.2
6.4
6.8
1.25
Cauldron
0.63
268
14
25
6.0
7.5
1.5

A – Tesco – 4/10

  • Holds itself together well, doesn’t fall apart when you bite into it. A bit too dry when eating. A little bland – some spiciness of the finish but not enough salt. Not offensive but not interesting.

B – Aldi – 6/10

  • More texture than A. Obvious chunks of chickpea, more flavour. Still a little bland. Tastes of chickpea but not a lot else. Could do with more spice and salt, but basically fine.

C – Cauldron- 7/10

  • Obviously visually different from all the others. Much lighter and softer, not at all dry. Very smooth. Flavour of chickpeas, and a bit of a herby taste too. A nice spiciness on the aftertaste. Could do with a little more salt.

D – Waitrose – 8/10

  • Really different from the others. Chunks of onion and chickpea are obvious. Sweeter than the others, in a good way, but more spiciness too. Tastes of real ingredients, not a bland paste.

E – Sainsbury’s – 4/10

  • Not particularly fresh or natural tasting, but not awful either. Fine, but very nondescript.

Conclusions

Two front-runners here. The Waitrose falafel were  the tastiest and the clear winner. They were actually sweet potato falafel – I couldn’t find a sample of plain own-brand falafel in the shop – but what really made them stand out from the pack was the fact that they tasted like they had been made from real, natural ingredients that you could identify on eating.

The Cauldron falafel are probably a brand leader and I really liked those too, although they were very different from the other samples, being softer and lighter. It seems falafel are such simple little things, and comparatively fresh, so you can’t really get away with just using cheap ingredients and not bothering to season them properly.

All of them would be fine in a wrap or doused in hummus, but I was really surprised and interested at the vast gulf between the basic and the high-end offerings here – I will definitely buy Cauldron in the future, whereas before I would not have bothered with a brand, thinking that supermarket own would be just as good.

DSC_0058-1

Goats’ Cheese and Spinach Tortilla

2 Comments

This isn’t so much a recipe as a suggestion. An idea. Inspiration. I know you know how to make this. Whether you call it a tortilla, or a frittata, or an omelette, or ‘miscellaneous egg dish’, you can cook this. But I find that sometimes you just cannot think of anything to cook. You know there has to be a meal. You know you have to make it. But what? Name some meals. Any ideas? Anything? And you can’t think of a single thing that people eat. Or maybe that’s just me when I’m tired.

DSC_0034-1-1024x683

Anyway, this is an excellent thing to cook. It can feed a group of people, or, if you are solo or one of a pair, you can keep the slices and they make excellent and re-heatable leftovers. You can put whatever odds and ends you have in the fridge in it. You can make it in twenty minutes. It’s very suitable on its own for breakfast – heated up or eaten on the hoof. It’s a perfect lunch and can be very easily transported to work, if that’s your jam. And it’s a satisfying dinner, served with salad or extra vegetables or a hunk of bread if you so choose. Sometimes, meals can just be simple.

DSC_0073-683x1024

Notes

Obviously you can add whatever you want to this, skipping out the meat if that’s not your thing, throwing in extra vegetables that are kicking around the fridge, or topping it with other cheeses. You do not have to know what you are doing.

Ingredients

3 tbsp olive oil
a knob of butter
400g little potatoes, unpeeled and sliced (baby new potatoes, Jersey Royals, Anya… anything like that)
1 onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
leaves of 1 thyme sprig, finely chopped
leaves of 1 rosemary sprig, finely chopped
Pinch of paprika
Pinch of sea salt
150g chorizo, sliced
handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
200g spinach, chopped
8 large eggs, whisked
small log of goats cheese, sliced

Method

  1. Heat your oven to 160C/140C fan/ gas 3. In your largest ovenproof frying pan – ideally non-stick – melt your butter and heat your oil on a medium heat. Then pop your potatoes, onion and garlic in, and begin to gently cook them. After a minute, add the thyme, rosemary, paprika, and salt, and stir everything together. Let it cook for a minute, then add your chorizo. Put a lid on your pan (if it doesn’t have a lid put a baking tray or something over it), and let everything sweat gently for five minutes
  2. When everything is soft, add your parsley and spinach, and stir to wilt the spinach. Take the pan off the heat and add your eggs. Stir together until everything is evenly distributed.  Lay your slices of goats’ cheese on top of the egg mixture.
  3. Put your pan in the oven for around 10-15 minutes, or until the egg is cooked through. If you like, you can give it a minute or two under the grill to bronze the top. Let it sit for five minutes before turning it out and slicing it.