Purple sprouting broccoli with blood orange sauce
Thanks to Nigel Slater for this lovely recipe in today’s paper. My sauce could’ve been a little thicker but it was a delicious dish - the subtle sweet and bitter blood orange is amazing with psb.
The recipe is here: http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/21/nigel-slater-purple-sprouting-broccoli
Rainbow chard, polenta, parmesan
Adapted from this Angela Hartnett recipe (because I still haven’t quite got to grips with blue cheese) this was yummy with parmesan but I think would have been best of all with gooey melted taleggio on top.
I’ve experimented with various soft polenta techniques and I think my favourite is to cook it with a mixture of milk and water, with a little pinch of vegetable stock, a good grind of black pepper and a big knob of butter (why is it that the way to make anything taste good is simply to add more of the unhealthy bit?)
Rainbow chard is my new favourite vegetable. It’s got such a lovely flavour, like spinach but with more bite and just a hint of the earthy-sweet beetroot it’s related to… And the multi-coloured stalks just look so pretty too!
Cavolo nero on garlicky toast
I am, irrationally, sort of nervous of eating vegan food. I’m sure it’s exactly the same silly reaction I get so annoyed about in meat eaters who are fearful of eating a vegetarian meal (incidentally, I’ve also realised how annoying I find the phrase ‘vegetarian meal’ - as though it’s some whole other species of food rather than just a meal that doesn’t have meat in it.)
So I should stop being so stupid and just embrace the idea that not every meal must contain cheese or eggs. I want to make my diet less dairy-y (along with making the dairy I do eat less animal-unfriendly) and here’s a good example of an amazingly tasty meal that contains no eggs or dairy (I’m not going to call it ‘vegan’food’ anymore).
The trick to crepes is making them aggressively thin (it only takes a few tablespoons of batter, and swirl that pan!) and using a non-stick or very well-seasoned pan so sticking is not an option. They only take about 30 seconds to cook on the first side and then flip for another 15 seconds or so. Just like pancakes, the first one will probably be messed up but that’s just your sacrificial crepe (it still tastes good). I forgot how easy they are, and how yummy some creamy, garlicky mushrooms are spooned on top.
This amount of crepe batter will make about 8 crepes, depending on the size of your pan. You could easily double it and refrigerate your leftover crepes. They warm up in seconds in a dry pan and then you can have crepes for breakfast AND dinner!
I made these for dinner tonight - substituting half the plain flour for buckwheat flour to make galettes instead of crepes. YUM.
Solo supper - Friday
Creamy mushroom galettes - courtesy of Made Weekly
Tuesday and (leftover) Wednesday - solo supper
Aubergine and (Quorn) sausage stew
Fry the onion gently for five minutes, then add the celery and aubergine and cook slowly for around fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, cook the sausages as per the packet instructions.
Add the chopped tomatoes and wine, cook until the stew is bubbling and the aubergine is cooked. Just before serving, add the sausages, chopped into pieces, and the capers, and stir to combine.
Serve with garlic bread.
Me make art (at bloc projects)
This is, obviously, not food. But it is the reason for my solo-supper project this week (my boyfriend is in Sheffield making this instead of eating dinner with me).
Solo supper - Monday
Curried parsnip soup with frazzled shallot sourdough croutons
This soup is super easy to make and the shallot croutons add a lovely crisp texture to the velvety soup.
Fry a small onion until golden, add three chopped parsnips and a teaspoon of curry powder and cook for a few more minutes. Add vegetable stock and simmer until the parsnip is very soft. Blitz with a handheld blender until smooth.
To make the croutons, fry two shallots in a knob of butter (or oil if you’re vegan) until golden, then add some cubed sourdough bread and continue to cook until the shallots and bread are crisp.
(I added a little dollop of Greek yoghurt because I was slightly over-zealous with the curry powder and it was quite spicy!)
Solo supper - Sunday
Tonight I had cheese on toasted sourdough, topped with a big pile of juicy steamed asparagus. I look at this and think it’s not enough for a proper meal, but it was exactly right.
The boyfriend’s away this week, so I’m going to be cooking for one most evenings. I find it interesting how differently I eat when it’s just me, even though I’m always the one who does most of the cooking, so I think I’ll post a photo of each evening meal.
(When I was a teenager we used refer to the dinner you ate by yourself as ‘lonely beans’ - because it often ended up being baked beans on toast.)
Asparagus on eggy cheesey toast
One egg yoke mixed with a little grated gruyere and salt and pepper. Piled on sourdough toast, grilled and topped with steamed asparagus. YUM.
Poached egg on spring onion and potato cakes.
I made the cakes by mixing some left-over mash with a large spring onion, lightly fried, salt and pepper. I formed this into a cake and fried in a teaspoon of rapeseed oil while the egg was poaching. Quick and delicious.
Pizza - purple sprouting broccoli and mascarpone. Pizza dough recipe from Jamie - http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/uncategorised-recipes/pizza-dough
Pizza - courgette and tallegio. Pizza dough from Jamie - http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/uncategorised-recipes/pizza-dough
Crepes with mushroom, spinach and mascarpone stuffing topped with emmental cheese
These were leftovers from a feast of pancakes with our friends on Tuesday (the start of lent, and pancake day in the the UK). We’d had buckwheat galettes (see below) stuffed with spinach and gruyere or garlicky, herby mushrooms made creamy with a little mascarpone and emmental. For desert we had thinner, more refined crepes filled with stewed apple, salted caramel sauce and whipped cream. As you can tell, we’re all on strict diets…
For these, the day after, I sautéed the mushrooms with garlic and a little butter, steamed some baby spinach and added that, then melted a spoon of mascarpone into the mix. I made two pancakes and filled them with the mixtures, rolled, topped with a grating of emmental and grilled briefly.
Basic crepe/ galette recipe
Mix the ingredients together in a bowl. Wipe a non-stick pan with a little oil, bring to a medium heat and add a small ladle-full of the mixture, tipping the pan to get an even coverage. cook until the edges are starting to lift and the underside is a golden colour, then flip and cook the other side.
The first one won’t be perfect so eat it hot from the pan with a grating of cheese or a squeeze of lemon and some sugar. “You could argue that the perfect crêpe is always the first of the batch … Wolfed hot and hissing from the pan, squirted with lemon and a thick layer of sugar - this is the pancake that pleases the mouth if not the eye.” - Nigel Slater
