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Spanish Almond Cookies

20th June 201717th August 2017Leave a comment

These Spanish almond cookies are my attempt at going abroad this year. In a culinary, if not actual, way.

James and I aren’t very good at going on holiday. We do overnight sojourns to odd corners of England every so often for various events, but we haven’t actually been properly ‘on holiday’ out of the country since a long weekend in Paris in April 2014. Which was incredible and wonderful and lovely and Paris is pretty much my favourite place and if every holiday for the next ten years was going back to Paris ad infinitum then I would be cool with it. But it was only for three days, and it was over three years ago.

Time and money, money and time. It’s so boring. They’re the same problems everyone else has too. But for some reason we haven’t managed to get round them, probably because I am an itinerant cookery teacher/freelance chef/food blogger. When you don’t have a proper salary and have full on anxiety about paying for things like the electricity and food, it’s kind of hard to justify spending money on flights and accommodation. And, er, more food in a different country.

We had a lovely little mini-honeymoon after we got married last year – a three day weekend in London. But we never went on the kind of honeymoon where you have to get vaccinations before you travel and end up take selfies at the top of mountains at sunset. And we’re never going to have that sort of honeymoon because no way am I climbing up a mountain voluntarily. But we have finally, tentatively, pencilled a week in Spain in October into the calendar. Flights to Spain are really cheap. We can worry about accommodation at a later date. Related: do I know anyone who lives in Spain?

Also, most importantly, the food in Spain is amazing. Or so I hear. I am trying to get into the spirit four months early with these little almondy morsels of delight. They are a liberally adapted version of what is apparently a Spanish almond cookie, so we’re not aiming for absolute authenticity here, but they are properly tasty: a crisp shell around a chewy, delicate interior, lightly lemon-scented and incredibly moreish. They’re also dairy and gluten free, and I was halfway to convincing myself they were healthy before I remembered the sugar.

I love a classic, American style cookie as much (and more) than the next person, but these Spanish almond cookies have won me over in their own delicious, subtle way.

Source:

Based on and adapted from this recipe for Spanish almond cookies.

Notes:

This recipe is stunningly easy. Only a few ingredients, five minutes to make the dough, five minutes to shape it into cookies, fifteen minutes in the oven, and you’re away. No dairy, no gluten, they keep well. Clearly the Spanish are onto something.

I doubled the recipe for these photos because I wanted to give the cookies to a friend, but the quantity below makes around 12-15 cookies, depending on how big you make them.

I made the dough in a food processor because I’m lazy, but you could just as easily do it in a large bowl.

Ingredients:

150g ground almonds
80g caster sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 large egg
handful of whole, skin-on almonds to top the cookies

Method:

Heat your oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Line a baking sheet. Pop your ground almonds, sugar, lemon zest, and salt in a food processor, and blitz for a few seconds to combine. Add your egg, and blitz again, stopping to scrape down the sides. You should end up with an even, sticky dough.
Dampen your hands slightly with cold water so that the dough doesn’t just stick to your fingers, and roll it into balls, each around 1 tbsp worth of mixture. Arrange them on your baking sheet, press a whole almond into each one, and bake for around 15 minutes until golden. If your oven bakes unevenly you might want to turn the tray halfway through cooking.

Update:

August 2017 – I made about 200 of these as part of a wedding dessert table I was handling a couple of weeks back, and I can report that they freeze really excellently well.

Cucumber Salad

13th June 201712th June 201710 Comments

I am a complete animal obsessive – the kind of person who will stop people in the street so that I can talk to and pet their dogs (while ignoring the human attached to the dog because talking to those who can talk back is too much effort). When people ask me if I am a dog or a cat person I say I adore both, which is true: my brother and I grew up with three cats and two dogs in the house, and I love them more than most humans. That said, I think I am a cat person at heart. They are emotionally complex, tempestuous and smart and sulky, which apparently appeals to me in an animal. This is why I have let our cat-who-is-not-our-cat, Freddie, massively emotionally manipulate me until I am basically a slave who exists to serve her.

When Freddie first showed up at our door, she was all tentative and nervy, needing cajoling to convince her that we were good, cat-loving, unintimidating folk. We’re way, way past that point now, though. She has played James and I like fiddles. Without even realising how we got here, we’re at the point where if I start to eat any sort of human food near her she will come and try to put her nose in it to share it with me, and I have to actively push her away if I do not want to lose my breakfast to a feline.

These days I have to be extremely careful when I do my food photography. If I set everything up and then turn my back for a second to pick up my camera, that cat is across the room and jumping onto my little set like an overjoyed kid being let out of a classroom and into a playground. The problem is that she has discovered that human food is more delicious than animal food, and now she’s not interested in anything else.

Anyway, luckily cats are obligate carnivores and not really interested in cucumber, so this little dish was spared the threat of Freddie’s tongue. This salad is a weird mish-mash of different cuisines, but it’s light and summery and only takes ten minutes to make and, hey, I think it’s tasty and it didn’t get eaten by the cat, so here it is.

Notes: This should feed 3-4 people as a side dish, or two people as the base for a main meal with, for instance, some grilled chicken or fish.

Don’t skip the black onion seeds! They may sound like an odd ingredient if you are not used to them, but they are delicious and they make this salad, adding an interesting bitterness. You can get them from large supermarkets or local Asian shops – if you live in Oxford, you can get them in most stores up and down the Cowley Road.

Ingredients:

1/2 small red onion
juice of 1 lime
pinch of sugar
salt and pepper
1 whole cucumber
100g feta
1 small pack coriander
2 tsp black onion/nigella seeds/kalonji

Method:

First, finely dice your red onion. Put the onion in a mixing bowl, and squeeze over the juice of the lime, then add a pinch of sugar and some salt and pepper (bearing in mind that feta is very salty, so you don’t want to add too much salt at this stage). Mix it all around and let the onion sit in the mixture.
Next, halve your cucumber, scrape out the seeds (I use a teaspoon for this), and dice the remaining flesh. Crumble your feta cheese. Chop your coriander, stalks and all, as finely as you can be bothered to. Add your cucumber, feta, coriander, and black onion seeds to your red onion, give it all a good stir, then taste and adjust the seasoning. Job done.

Goats’ Cheese and Sun-dried Tomato Scones

5th June 20174th June 20174 Comments

The observant amongst you may have noticed that goats’ cheese has made several appearances on this blog. That is because it is possibly my favourite type of cheese (although choosing a favourite cheese feels rather like choosing a favourite child, and as I typed that last I was already starting to feel guilty about Stilton, halloumi, and St Jude) and it features fairly heavily in my cooking. Chicken stuffed with goats’ cheese and wrapped in bacon, shallot and goats’ cheese tart tatin, and raspberry goats’ cheese brownies are all regular fixtures around here. I would happily eat the stuff every day if I could.

Oddly though, I misguidedly disliked goats’ cheese as a young child. I vividly remember helping my mother put together some bruschetta for a party at around the age of ten or eleven, and her becoming cross with me when I insisted I didn’t like goats’ cheese.

‘Of course you like goats’ cheese’, she’d admonished. ‘And I don’t want you becoming one of those picky kids that whines about trying new things all the time’.

I didn’t become one of the picky kids, partly because I don’t think my mother would have stood for it. One of the many gifts my parents gave me was to let me (or force me) to eat a wide range of foods throughout my childhood and teenage years. Thus I was lucky enough to be spared the deep fear and mistrust engendered by anything both edible and unfamiliar that I saw in many of my peers when I reached university, and began to be wholly responsible for feeding myself for the first time. It’s kind of hard to justify being fussy about cheese when you’re used to seeing your mother eat an entire fish head, eyes included (and savoured).

So, in a brief foray into savoury baking, I bring you these goats’ cheese, sun-dried tomato, and thyme scones. They are quick and easy to make, and feel slightly less indulgent that the classic scone-jam-clotted cream triumvirate (one of my favourite things in the world, by the way), and could be reasonably appropriate for breakfast, or for lunch with some salad. Or some extra cheese, for good measure.

Notes: If you are one of those people who does not enjoy goats’ cheese (I mean, you’re wrong, but okay) then you could substitute grated cheddar or crumbled feta.

This recipe should make eight to ten standard scones, depending on your cutter size.

Ingredients:

140g self-raising flour
140g wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g cold butter, cut into small pieces
80g goats’ cheese, crumbled
15-20 sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme
1 large egg
salt and pepper
2 tbsp plain/Greek yoghurt
4 tbsp milk

Method:

Heat your oven to 190/170 fan/gas 5. In a large bowl, mix both flours and baking powder, then rub in the butter until it reaches breadcrumb stage. Stir in 1/2 (40g) of the crumbled goats’ cheese. In a jug, mix together the other 40g of the goats’ cheese, the sun-dried tomatoes, the thyme, the egg, a good pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper, the yoghurt, and the milk until combined. Make a well in your flour mix and pour in your wet mix, then mix quickly with a cutlery knife, using your hands at the end to briefly knead the dough together – don’t overwork it or your scones will be heavy.
Working quickly, pat the dough out into a rough 2cm thick round on a lightly floured surface. Stamp out as many scones as you can, using a cutter (or a glass if you don’t have a cutter to hand). Be careful not to twist the cutter as you remove it from each scone as this can impede the rise. Gather the scraps of dough, then repeat the cutting until all the dough is used – the scones from the reshaped dough will be a bit rougher and won’t rise as high, but will still be delicious.
Put all your scones on a baking sheet and finish by brushing with milk or sprinkling with wholemeal flour, if you like. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden, firm on the outside, and easy to pull apart at the ‘waist’. .

Salted Caramel Brownies

30th May 201730th May 201713 Comments

Granted, this is not an original idea in any way at all. Salted caramel brownies have become so popular that you’d be hard-pressed to find a bakery that doesn’t sell them. Salted caramel, unlike scores of other food trends (I’ve still not really got a handle on that whole cronut/cruffin/duffin situation, to be honest), has proven itself to have some serious staying power – probably because it’s stupidly tasty. Put it with chocolate, and you’re pretty much guaranteed a moment of happiness.

So I’m not really bringing anything new to the party with this recipe. And yet, brownies are the thing I bake the most regularly, and salted caramel is now the most requested flavour. I did a quick reckoning, and realised that I only have three brownie recipes on this blog which, considering I have been doing this for nearly two years, is actually pretty restrained. If you are thinking that this is not at all restrained, then probably you have not met me.

Anyway, it’s my little corner of the internet, and thus I have decided I am completely within my rights to swerve ‘pioneering’ and ‘original’, and land with a flump on ‘probably passé as food trends go but delicious enough to justify its own existence’. So here is my version of salted caramel brownies.

Notes: I have rattled on about why I think brownies are magical enough on this website and I don’t think I should really revisit the thesis. They’re still magical, though.

Obviously, feel free to skip or substitute where the white chocolate is concerned, but I really love it here. There’s something glorious about the light, sweet white chocolate against the bold density of the dark chocolate brownie and the salty complexity of the caramel.

The salted caramel recipe here will make about double the amount you will need for the brownies. I like to have spare on hand if I am going to the trouble of making it because I will always use it in something, but if you don’t want any extra then halve the quantities.

Ingredients:

200g good quality 70% dark chocolate
140g butter
2 large eggs, plus 1 extra yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
225g golden caster sugar
100g good quality white chocolate
100g plain flour
1 tsp salt

for the salted caramel

200g granulated sugar
90g salted butter, cut into cubes
120ml double cream
2 tsp sea salt

Method:

First, make the salted caramel, so that it has time to cool and thicken a little before use. Heat the sugar in a pan with a fairly large surface area (I use a frying pan) over a medium heat. Resist the temptation to stir it – you can shake the pan a bit. Keep an eye on it. Nothing will happen for ages, then the base of the sugar will start to melt. Gently swirl the pan around, moving the sugar about, until it’s all melted into a lovely golden coppery liquid.
Now whisk the butter into the sugar, a few cubes at a time, until it’s all incorporated and completely melted. Don’t worry if the mixture looks split at this stage. Now drizzle in your cream while continuing to stir the caramel – be careful, as the mixture will bubble and hiss. Boil the mixture for one minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the salt. Taste (carefully) and adjust as needed, then let cool.
Now, for the brownies. Break your chocolate into pieces and chop your butter into rough cubes and place them both in a glass or metal bowl over a pan of gently simmering water and leave them to melt, stirring occasionally. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line a 20x20cm square tin.
While your chocolate and butter melt, mix your eggs with your extra yolk and your vanilla, and weigh out your sugar. Chop or break your white chocolate into chunks. When your chocolate and butter have completely melted, beat in your sugar (I use an electric hand whisk), followed by your eggs. Add your flour and salt to the mixture and beat that in too. Stir through your white chocolate chunks.
Pour the mixture into the tin, smooth the surface, and then dollop your cooled salted caramel on top of the batter and swirl it around with a knife or skewer. Bake for around 25 mins – the salted caramel will sit in a liquidy way on top of the batter and make you think the brownies are not done, but they will firm as they cool.
Normally I advocate eating brownies warm from the pan, and while you absolutely can do that here, they will be very gooey. If I need to slice these neatly or take them anywhere I normally let them chill and firm in the fridge for a couple of hours first. Finish with a sprinkling of sea salt, if you like.

Wine Cake

23rd May 201722nd May 20172 Comments

Are you a lark, an owl, or a hummingbird? I am a lark, and have been for as long as I can remember. I find it really genuinely hard to sleep in of a morning: I wake up early and once I’m awake, that’s it, I am not getting back to sleep. Even if James and I have been out until 2am, I can’t stay in bed past 8am. As soon as I am up my mind is going full pelt and I am usually chatty and busy and keen to organise the day in excruciating detail (this is incredibly annoying for my husband, because he is an owl and cannot hold a real conversation until he is dressed, breakfasted, and topped up with coffee). I do my best work first thing in the morning: I will sit down at my laptop and start blasting through emails and tick seven tasks off my list before 9am.

If you are thinking that I am incredibly smug and irritating and getting ready to slap me, then let me tell you the flipside of this: I am utterly, completely, totally useless in the evenings. I can’t do any meaningful mental work past about 9pm, and really ideally I’d stop all work before dinner. I find it nearly impossible to stay up late – if I had my way I’d sleep from about 10pm to 6am, but sadly my life doesn’t allow for this as I teach in the evenings and we do a lot of late-night socialising. I have fallen asleep on friends’ sofas and in pubs and on the backseats of cars because I have been forced to stay out late and my body is just not having it. I am always to first to bail out of any rowdy late night social occasion. Basically, I am deeply uncool.

And I am in the minority! I understand this. Most people glare at me when I start cheerily rambling on at them at 7am. Everyone sighs at my pathetic nature when I leave the pub and head for bed at 9.30pm. Normal people have decadent weekend lie-ins and wish for a later start to the workday, while I merrily got up at 5.30am for a year and trundled onto the 6.55am train to get to London, loving the empty streets and sunrises.

Anyway, here is my effort to join in with the crowd that is out late drinking, whilst still being at home before dark and spending all my time baking instead of socialising. Wine cake. I should really call this cake something more sophisticated but, guys, let’s be real: it’s got Moscatel and grapes in it. It’s wine cake. Wine. Cake. What is not to love?

Source: Adapted from BBC Good Food.

Notes: Dessert wines often have hints of honey, apricot, and other citrus fruits. That’s why I think the demerara sugar and the lemon and orange are lovely in this cake, it all works together. It’s not overly wine-y – it just has a pleasant backnote of wine. The oil makes it lovely and moist, and it keeps well.

I talk about using a mixer (which could be a hand whisk, a food processor, or a kitchen aid type thing), but it would be fine to do it by hand. I am just lazy.

Ingredients:

250ml dessert wine (dessert wine can be super-expensive, but I use Sainsbury’s Moscatel de Valencia, which is only £5.35)
175ml extra-virgin olive oil
200g light muscovado or light brown soft sugar
100g softened butter
zest 2 oranges
zest 2 lemons
3 eggs
225g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
150g seedless grapes, any colour, halved
5 tbsp demerara sugar

Method:

Bring the wine to boil in a small pan over a medium heat, then simmer for around ten minutes to reduce to 100ml. Pour into a jug, then add the olive oil and leave to cool. Meanwhile, butter a 23cm cake tin, then shake 1 tbsp of plain flour around it and tap out the excess. Heat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4.
Beat sugar and butter together with the zests until creamy and smooth then, with the mixer running, add the eggs one by one. Weigh your flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. With the mixer running, pour around a third of your wine and oil mix into the batter, then a third of your flour mix, then a third of your oil mix, and so on, alternating the liquid and dry mixes until everything is in and it’s all well-combined. You will be left with a smooth, fragrant, fairly liquid batter.
Pour the batter into your tin, then scatter it with the halved grapes and the demerara sugar. Bake for around 50 minutes, or until it’s firm and risen and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Start checking at around 40 minutes. Leave to cool for fifteen minutes in the tin before removing, and eat warm (lovely with cream or ice cream for a dessert) or cool.

Pistachio, Blackberry, and Lemon Loaf Cake

16th May 201716th May 20171 Comment

Working from home is a funny old way of life. I’ve gone from school to university to 9-5 jobs to getting my culinary diploma. Now I’ve washed up teaching and running the administration for a cookery school, alongside freelance catering work and making the odd birthday or wedding cake. This means that my hours are mostly my own to organise, for the first time, really, in my life. Apart from actually showing up to teach classes and attending the odd meeting, I don’t generally have to be anywhere in particular for work, and can get stuff done as and when I like.

Mostly, it suits me. I never liked having to be in an office at fixed times, regardless of how much work I had on, and I’m a terrible employee in that I hate being told what to do (yes, this was often a problem). I am bossy, obsessive, and controlling (but quite a nice person generally, honest), so sorting out my own time instead of adhering to someone else’s schedule is usually advantageous.

It’s tricky, too, though. This morning, for instance, I answered three emails, raised two invoices, dealt with some website maintenance, updated a voucher spreadsheet, and researched a recipe before 9am. However, I did all this on the sofa, in my pyjamas, whilst eating toast and cuddling the cat. So it’s easy for me to feel like I am being lazy, especially as my husband is dressed and out the door to go to the office by 8.15am.

I do as much work now as I did when I had a ‘proper job’, but not all of it feels like work (recipe testing and ingredients shopping, I’m looking at you), and lots of it is done at funny times. I work best early in the morning, so I will get a lot done first thing, but then I will often be out doing something at some point during the day when everyone else is stuck in the office. Then again, I am usually doing work late into the night and always on weekends – I once received a surprised and delighted reply from a customer when I answered her email at midnight on Christmas Eve. Plus on most Thursday, Friday, and Sunday nights, you can usually find me teaching and not getting home until 11pm.

I don’t know. I am sure (read: I hope) most people who have an unconventional job and/or work from home suffer from this slight guilt and nervousness. I always feel like I am somehow getting away with something when I have a long lunch with a friend on a weekday, or spend an hour bobbing up and down the Cowley Road to find obscure Asian ingredients on a Wednesday afternoon.

Anyway, as I said, one of the pre-9am things I did this morning was researching a recipe, and that recipe is for this Pistachio, Blackberry, and Lemon Loaf Cake.

I love pistachios. Love love love them to a disturbing degree. They’re so versatile, playing excellent roles in both sweet and savoury dishes, and completely beautiful in their enticing shades of soft purple and vivid green. I have been wanting to make a pistachio cake for a while, and then I thought of the juicy purple of blackberries against a soft nutty green, with the kick of brightening lemon, and this cake was born.

Source: The base loaf cake recipe is adapted from this one at Smitten Kitchen.

Notes: I love blackberries here but I am sure this would work well with blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries. You could also leave out the lemon if you don’t fancy it, and skip all the decoration on the top.

Ingredients:

150g roasted pistachio kernels
200 grams granulated sugar
1 tsp sea salt
zest of 1 lemon
145g butter, cut into rough cubes (from the fridge is fine)
3 eggs
60ml cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 scant tsp baking powder
120g plain flour
1oog blackberries

for the icing and finishing

100g icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon (roughly)
handful of pistachios
handful of blackberries

Method:

Preheat your oven to 170C/150C fan/ gas 3. Roast your pistachios in the oven for 5-10 minutes until they are slightly darkened and smelling lovely. While that’s happening, grease and line your loaf tin (you can maybe get away without doing this if you have a non-stick tin, but I am always too scared to risk it).
Pop your pistachios in a food processor with the sugar and salt blitz it all until it’s a rough powder – you want it as well blended as possible but you don’t want to go too far and make the pistachios release their oil and become wet. Chuck in your lemon zest and cubed butter and blitz again – it will look weird and clumpy for a while but eventually smooth out, so just keep running the mixer. With the mixer running, add your eggs one by one, and pour in your milk and vanilla.
You should now have a rather thin, green, fairly smooth mixture. Take it out of the processor and pop it in a bowl, then add your baking powder, plain flour, and blackberries, then fold to just combine but don’t mix further. If your blackberries are huge you might want to cut them in half for more even distribution.
Pour your mixture into your prepared tin and pop in your preheated oven to bake. This is a slow, gentle bake – my cake took 60 minutes in my quite fierce oven, but as with any cake with a long baking time it will vary quite a bit depending on your oven. Check at 45 minutes and then keep checking every ten minutes until the cake is risen and firm and passes the skewer test.
You can absolutely keep it as it is, but if you want to gild the lily, sieve your icing sugar into a bowl and gradually add lemon juice, whisking it into an icing that is fairly thick and falls off a spoon in a slow drizzle. Let your cake cool in the tin, then turn it out and finish it with a flair of lemon icing and some artfully arranged blackberries and pistachios.

Cherry and Pecan Blondies

29th March 201729th March 20172 Comments

Last week I went to visit one of my closest friends in York, by train, because I am a fool. I usually drive, but decided to take the train this time, reasoning that in the cumulative seven hours of train time over two days I could get a significant amount of work done. I did not take into account the fact that the train would have no working WiFi, or that you would only be lucky enough to be granted a plug socket if you had booked a window seat. So by the time I got to York I had basically wasted three and a half hours and was absolutely starving because I had also assumed the train would have food and so had not packed any lunch.

God, this is a really whiny blog post.

Anyway, when I got to York station there was a brownie stall, so we all know what happened there. I got many, many brownies. They also had blondies, which I did not buy because they were not brownies and brownies are basically my favourite food (I wish I was joking). But they did put the idea of blondies into my head. I realised I had never had one, and enquiries revealed that many of my friends did not know what they were. I think maybe they are more common in America?

The short story is that I made this batch and tried one and then immediately had to give them all away to stop myself from face-planting into the whole tray.

Source: Liberally adapted from the goddess at Smitten Kitchen.

Notes: I have taken the same approach to these as I would with brownies, i.e. that they should be dense and fudgy, rather than light and cakey. Thus I prefer to bake them the night, or a few hours, before I need them, enabling me to undercook them slightly and leave them to set and cool out of the oven, rather than drying them out. However, if you don’t have that kind of time, it’s perfectly fine to either add five minutes to the baking time or eat them hot and gooey from the pan with a fork (or your fingers, no judgement here).

You can obviously put whatever you want into these – different fruit, different nuts, skip the chocolate – but I think this is a winning combination.

This recipe is stupidly easy. You can put the batter together in ten minutes. There is no reason not to make them right now.

Ingredients:

180g butter, melted and browned
270g dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1.5 tsp vanilla
Pinch of sea salt
180g plain flour
80g dried cherries
80g toasted pecans
50g white chocolate

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line a 20cm square baking tin. Pop your pecans into the oven to toast for about 5 minutes – keep an eye on them and shake them around occasionally, because they will go from toasty-delicious to burnt frighteningly fast. Pop your butter in a pan to melt and brown it (you can just melt it if you are short on time, but if you take it to the stage of brown nuttiness then it will add an even better flavour to your blondies).
2. Mix your melted butter with your dark brown sugar, then beat until smooth, ensuring you get any lumps out of the sugar. Add your eggs and vanilla, beat again, then add your salt and flour and mix to combine. Chop your cherries and pecans fairly finely and mix them in too, then pour the mixture into the tin and level it out.
3. Break your white chocolate into squares and press them into the top of the raw blondie batter – you can also just mix them in, but I think white chocolate is extra tasty roasted and exposed directly to the heat of the oven.
4. Bake for around 20 minutes – you are looking for it to be set in the middle, but only just. Eat while hot and squidgy, or leave to cool and set for a few hours or overnight and cut into squares.

Proper Chicken Soup

21st March 201721st March 20174 Comments

This recipe is not revolutionary, or glamorous. It’s not authentic, or the definitive version of anything. It’s not even seasonally appropriate, now that I can actually see the sun, and some daffodils, and have abandoned one outdoor layer (but still wear a coat at all times, obviously, because I’m not some kind of crazy risk-taking daredevil who wishes to court hypothermia). It is only something simple that James likes. He asked me to write it down for him, and since I was writing it down for him anyway I thought I may as well write it down for you too. Also, apparently this blog now only covers soup and macarons.

This is the kind of chicken soup that takes a little time, and a little effort, although it isn’t at all difficult. It is genuinely healthy (something that can be said of very few things on this blog). It requires care, and attention. It is the sort of thing I make for people when I want to show them kindness in some way (I am only able to show kindness through the making of soup, bread, and cake, all of which I randomly leave on the doorsteps of friends in the neighbourhood because social interaction requires too much effort and I am useless). It is supposedly the sort of thing one uses to cure illness, and though this claim has no scientific basis that I am aware of, I merrily presume it is true anyway and make it for those who seem to be somehow ailing. This is why I would make a terrible doctor.

Notes: This recipe is obviously infinitely adaptable, so go ahead and add whatever vegetables and herbs you have kicking about. This is just my version among thousands of others.

You will need a large saucepan or pot that you can comfortably fit a whole chicken into.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (I usually get one that will feed three-four people even if I am cooking for two, so that we have plenty leftover)
3 large carrots
2 stalks celery
1 white onion
a bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 bay leaves (fresh or dry, either is fine)
handful of dry black peppercorns
4 shallots
1 fresh red chilli
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
1 nest of dried noodles (egg or rice, or whatever you have, is fine)

Method:

Roughly chop 1 carrot, both stalks of celery, and the onion into large pieces – no need to peel. Put them in the bottom of your largest saucepan or pot, along with the stalks (not the leaves) from the bunch of parsley, the bay leaves, and the peppercorns. Take any string and packaging off the whole chicken and add it to the pot, then cover the bird with cold water. Add a generous pinch of salt. Put the pot on a low heat, cover, and bring the water to a gentle poaching simmer. Let the chicken poach for around 1 – 1.5 hours until cooked through, checking it occasionally to make sure it is still covered in water. When cooked, the legs should be loose and completely floppy, coming away from the chicken when tugged.
Remove all of the chicken from the pot, and turn the heat on the pan up to high, letting the liquid reduce. Meanwhile, strip all of the meat from your chicken and set it aside – you will either have to wait for it to cool slightly, or wear gloves. Discard the skin, and place the chicken bones back into the pot. Bubble the stock away for another half hour or so, tasting occasionally – it should be full of chicken-y goodness.
Meanwhile, prep the rest of the soup ingredients. Roughly chop your parsley leaves, peel your shallots and cut them into slim rings, chop your chilli (seeds in or out, up to you), and peel and dice your ginger. When your stock is reduced and tastes delicious, strain it and discard the original vegetables and the chicken bones. Put the stock back into the original pot.
Finally, add your shallots, chilli, and ginger to the liquid. Cook gently for 10 minutes, then add your chicken meat and your noodles. Cook until the noodles are soft (usually around four minutes). Take your soup off the heat, stir in your chopped parsley, and taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt and pepper as required.

Roast Butternut Soup with Coconut, Lemongrass, and Chilli

9th February 20179th February 20171 Comment

It’s not often I can say this about a recipe featured on this blog, but this is vegan, gluten free, and healthy. Don’t worry, I have not abandoned the baked goods. But James and I do not live on macarons and pie alone (oh, if only), and plenty of savoury food comes out of my kitchen. Some of it is even healthy. I just don’t tend to feature it on this blog, because I find it less interesting. Also because so much of the savoury food I make is thrown together with whatever is lying around in the fridge, in a very ‘meh, it’ll probably be fine, chuck it in’ sort of a way, and so it’s hard for me to recreate dishes again, let alone write down how I made them.

However, the recipe for this soup was specifically requested (I know, how exciting) after I made it for a group at a yoga retreat, and so I recreated it and actually bothered to write down what I was doing, and here it is. Apologies for the rather uninspiring photos – they were taken at speed in the dying light. Still though, look how healthy it all looks…

Notes:

It’s soup, so you can play it a bit fast and loose with the ingredients. Only one onion left? No problem. Got some herbs you want to throw in there? Go for it. Not a vegetarian and want to go mad and add bacon? Live your best life today.

Ingredients:

1 large butternut squash
olive oil
2 onions
thumb sized piece of fresh ginger
2 lemongrass stalks
80g Thai red curry paste (about 1/2 a small jar, or make your own if you’d rather, or add more to taste)
1 can full fat coconut milk
750ml vegetable stock
1 lime
1 chilli (optional – to garnish)

Method:

Preheat your oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 6. Peel your squash and cut it into roughly finger sized chunks, discarding the seeds. Pop it in a roasting tray, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, then roast for around 40 minutes – you want it meltingly soft and just charring around the edges, for flavour.
While that’s happening, slice your onions, peel and roughly chop your ginger, and bash your lemongrass stalks a bit so they release flavour. Put a generous slug of olive oil in your largest saucepan and cook the onions, ginger, and lemongrass down together, until the onions are soft. Add your curry paste and cook gently for 3-4 minutes until everything smells amazing. Tip in your butternut squash, coconut milk (saving a couple of tbsp if you want some to drizzle on the soup), and stock. Stir it all together and then simmer for around 10 minutes. Find the lemongrass and pull it out.
When everything is all happily cooked down and amalgamated, blitz your soup until smooth – I use a stick blender, but a liquidiser or food processor will do the job. Add your lime juice, give it a good stir, and check the seasoning. It should be rich and warming, with a lingering chilli kick at the end. Add more salt, pepper, or lime as needed. Serve hot, drizzled with the leftover coconut milk if you’re feeling artistic, and add some chopped chilli or extra chilli sauce if you want it to have more spice.

Pistachio and Apricot Macarons

31st January 20172nd February 20172 Comments

Yes, I know my last blog post was also a macaron recipe. I spent a little while worrying about this, before I remembered that this is my blog and I can put whatever I like on it, and if I want to do seventeen variations on macarons in a row and never post a thing about vegetables again, then no one will really care. Except maybe my dentist (sidenote: I used to think I didn’t have a problem with dentists, until I had to have a wisdom tooth removed a couple of months ago. Now I understand why people fear dentists).

Anyway, these were experimental macarons, partly because I have never done macarons with a nut other than almonds in the shell before, and partly because I had a pack of apricot leather leftover from teaching a class and wasn’t sure what to use it for. Apricot and pistachio sounded like a pretty delicious combination. And thus these little babies were born.

Notes (my standard macaron notes):

For this, you will need at least three baking sheets (I sometimes go onto a fourth) and parchment to line them, a sugar thermometer, a food processor, an electric hand whisk or a stand mixer, and a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle, as well as the normal bowls and scales and stuff. Sorry, lots of kit I know, but that’s just how it is for these.
This recipe makes around 50 shells, or 25 paired macarons, although this obviously depends on how big you pipe them.
I don’t personally think you need to bother ageing your egg whites unless they are stupendously fresh to start with – perhaps you have your own chickens or something, who knows – but I do always make sure mine are room temperature.
I am not awesome at piping, and so my personal preference is to line my baking sheets with disposable parchment and, using a cookie cutter, draw circles onto it in black Sharpie as a guide, then flip it over ready to be piped on to. You can also buy templates that are already on silicone mats (which I should do but I am cheap) or print them off the internet, or just pipe freestyle if you are confident. You want to end up with something like this.

Ingredients:

for the shells

200g white caster sugar
75ml hot water (from a hot tap is fine, but boil a kettle if you like)
200g icing sugar
100g ground almonds
100g pistachios
160g egg whites (divided into two bowls of 80g each)
Pinch of salt

for the apricot filling

apricot leather – I lazily bought mine, but you can make it, or substitute a thick apricot gel or jam, or flavour buttercream with apricot jam, or use something else entirely. I can’t tell you how to live your life.

Method:

Get out three baking sheets and line them with parchment (or silicone), and create a template if you need one. Pop your water and caster sugar in a saucepan, stir it gently together with a wooden spoon, and put the pan on a low heat to dissolve the sugar (starting with hot water speeds this up). While that’s happening, pop your pistachios with 2 tbsp of the icing sugar in a food processor and blitz for about 2 minutes, or until you have a very fine pistachio flour. Add the rest of the icing sugar and the ground almonds, then blitz again for 1 minute. Scrape the sides down, then blitz for an additional minute. Pass the sugar and nut powder through a sieve into a large bowl. You might be left with some chunkier nut mixture in the sieve. Don’t force it through – you want smooth macarons – but save it to sprinkle over the top of the shells once baked, if you like.
If your sugar has dissolved into your water (the liquid shouldn’t feel gritty), turn up the heat on your syrup, stick your thermometer in it, and start to bubble it up to 115 degrees celsius (which is your target). Meanwhile, mix 80g of egg white into your sieved almond pistachio mixture with a spatula to make a thick, stiff paste. It will look like there isn’t enough liquid, but keep working it and it will come together. Pop the other 80g of egg white into a clean glass bowl with the pinch of salt and whisk to stiff peaks.
When the sugar syrup hits 115 degrees, pour it into the whisked egg whites in a thin stream while still whisking them on high speed. The mixture will become shiny. Once all the sugar syrup is in the whites, keep whisking for five minutes or so while the bowl cools until you have your stiff meringue mix. Whack 1/3 of the meringue mix into the almond pistachio paste and beat it in any old how to loosen it.
Now gently fold the remaining meringue into your macaron batter with a spatula. You need to make sure it’s well incorporated and there are no streaks, but the more you mix it the more air will be knocked out, and the looser the batter becomes. If you don’t mix enough, there will be unincorporated meringue and the batter won’t smooth out when piped. If you go too far, it will run everywhere when piped. You want to be able to lift the spatula up and draw a trail of batter across the surface of the bowl and leave a line which stays there for around 10 seconds, but then gradually disappears back into the body of the mixture. People say it is supposed to look like lava but that’s totally unhelpful to me as I don’t know what lava looks like. Go slowly, one fold at a time, and keep checking it. If in doubt, go for under rather than over mixing, as the process of piping the batter will knock more air out too.
When you are happy with your batter, put half of it into your piping bag and begin to pipe out your rounds. I find it easier to only use half the mix at once or the weight of it makes it come out of the bag very fast, which is tricky to pipe. Piping these just takes practice. Give yourself space, pipe directly down rather than at an angle, move quickly and get into a rhythm. Your batter will spread a little so aim for batter circles slightly smaller than your template circles. Once you have finished piping, pick up each tray, lift it a good few inches off the surface, and drop it straight down. Do this a couple of times. You need to knock out any air bubbles that have accumulated. After this is done, leave your macarons to rest for around half an hour. Once rested, they should have a slight skin. Leaving them for longer – up to a couple of hours – shouldn’t hurt them.
When your macarons have rested, heat your oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Bake your macaron shells for around 20 minutes. This is obviously dependent on your oven and the size of your macarons, so keep an eye on them. Check after 17 minutes. When your shells are cooked, they should lift off your baking parchment without leaving much residue behind. If they are leaving lots of very sticky mixture or not lifting off, give them more time. If they are completely dry and hollow then they are over-baked (but will still be yummy when filled). When they are done, get them on a cooling rack and once they are cool enough to touch, take them off the parchment.
Match the shells of your macarons into pairs of similar sizes. Using a cookie cutter, stamp rounds out of your apricot leather and place between your pairs of shells – or, if you are using an alternative apricot filling, simply pipe rounds of it onto the bottom shell and gently sandwich on the top. If using, sprinkle with the leftover pistachio and almond mix.

Really, you should store macarons in the fridge in an air-tight container for 24 hours before eating them to let the shells soften into the filling but my willpower isn’t always up to this. Regardless, they keep very well.