Blue cheese, butternut squash on a Monday

Something warming and vegetarian to kick start the week. This is a gorgeous mix of sweetness from the squash, earthiness in the blue cheese and a slight crunch from the toasted pine nuts.

It was perfect eaten in front of the fire and better still, it was made for me by my husband.

1/2 small butternut squash, cut into cubes
1/2 large onion diced
60g of blue cheese, crumbled
75ml of white wine
150g of Arborio risotto rice
3 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
30g of pine nuts, dry fried to toast
15g of Parmesan cheese, grated
1 tbsp olive oil
30g butter
500ml vegetable stock

Pre heat the oven to 180C and pop the butternut squash, tossed in the olive oil and some salt and pepper, on to roast for 35 minutes or until golden.

Sweat off the onions in the butter. When soft add the rice. Stir until all the rice is coated with the melted butter then add the wine.

Cook off the wine, stirring continuously. Add the stock little by little and continue to stir waiting for the stock to cook off before adding more.

When the rice is cooked through add half the blue cheese, the parmesan and the roasted butternut squash and stir together.

When the cheese has melted remove from the heat and stir through the toasted pine nuts.

Top with the finely chopped sage leaves and crumble the rest of the blue cheese over to serve.

Have a terrible picture of it. It tastes a lot better than it looks here.

Phok'ing amazing Pho

I’ve had one miserable cold after the other since the beginning of December.  I had a couple of days over Christmas where I felt a bit better, but then going back to work at the beginning of January meant another couple of weeks of snivelling and whining that I thought I was dying.  Apparently I’m not very good at being ill.  All that I’ve really wanted to eat was hot, spicy clear soup.

I demanded that my husband took me out for pho, a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup.  We’re lucky that we have several really good Vietnamese cafes and restaurants nearby, which are family run.  But then I started thinking about my idea to try a new recipe every week this year and I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make my own pho.  It’s basically a slow cooked bone broth, with spices and noodles.

I read several different recipes to try and come up with the best one.  All of them seemed to be missing a few steps here and there, so I muddled through the best I could and then tried to write a more coherent one myself.

Ingredients for the broth

2lb beef bones, including bone marrow

2lbs oxtail

3 large white onions

Large chunk of root ginger

Small beef brisket

2 cinnamon sticks

1 cardamom pod

2 star anise

2 tbs cloves

2 tsp coriander seed

Orange peel

2 tbsp salt

2 tbsp fish sauce

2 tbsp sugar

 

• Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the bones and oxtail and boil for 2-3 minutes.
• Remove the bones and oxtail, discard the water and thoroughly rinse the bones and oxtail with cold running water.
• Place the bones and oxtail in your largest stock pot and fill with cold water.  Return to the hob and heat.
• While the stock pot is heating again, peel the onions and cut in half.  Cut the ginger in half lengthwise.  Place these under the grill and cook until browned. 
• Remove the onions and ginger from the grill and trim any blackened parts off as these will make your stock muddy looking.  Add the onions and ginger to the stock pot.
• Take a clean pot, fill with water, a pinch of salt and bring to the boil.  Place the brisket in the boiling water and poach for 2 minutes. 
• Remove the poached brisket from the water and add to the stock pot, which should now be boiling.
• Simmer the stock pot for 1.5 hours.  During this time the stock will collect fat/scum on top.  Skim this off with a fine mesh sieve. 
• Once the 1.5 hours is up, remove the brisket.  This should still be in one piece.  Place to one side to cool.
• While the brisket is cooling, take a frying pan and dry fry the spices together to release the aroma. 
• Take the toasted spices and tie in a square of muslin and then add to the stock pot.
• Add the fish sauce, sugar and salt.
•  Add more water if you feel the stock pot needs it at any point.
• Take the cooled brisket, paint each side with fish sauce, season with salt and pepper, wrap and store in the fridge until required.

 

The secret to a good bone broth seems to be the longer you cook it, the better it tastes.  I left mine simmering for 4 hours after I had taken the brisket out, so 5.5 hours in total.  I added more water a couple of times and continued to skim fat or foam off it whenever it was required.  The house smelt amazing when this was cooking.  Then I turned it off, covered with the lid and left it to cool overnight on the hob.

 

The next day I skimmed off as much settled fat as possible and then strained the broth through a colander.  Set the bones and oxtail to one side for the moment*.  I sieved the broth through a muslin to remove any remaining sediment, before  placing in the fridge to cool, in the hope I could remove any more fat that I’d missed in the skimming process.  As it turned out, I’d actually got most of the fat and the remained amount was easily removed once it had solidified in the fridge.

 

Soup Ingredients

Rice noodles

Spring onions

Red chillies

Sliced brisket

Bean sprouts

Red peppers (if you want)

Lemon wedges

Thai basil (if you can find it)

Mint

Thin cut flank steak – sliced raw

sirracha

 

Layering up your soup bowl is a fairly personal choice.  I just gathered the ingredients together and ditched them on a serving platter on the table for people to help themselves.

 

The cooked noodles are placed in the bottom of the bowl and the boiling stock ladled over the top.  Each person then adds the other ingredients that they want afterwards.  The only tip that we had was to add the uncooked steak first to allow as much time as possible for it to cook through.

 

*I took the cooked oxtail and removed it from the bone and kept it back to make an oxtail ragu.  It was a delicious second meal and the meat was tender and tasty. 

 

Easy, amazing, lemon drizzle cake

This is an absolutely brilliant, easy lemon drizzle cake.  My lovely friend Cath made it last time I stayed with her.  She was raving about how easy it was to make, but I assumed it was just because she’s better at baking than me.  Turns out, it really is just dead easy to make.

It seems like a good place to kick start the blog in the new year, after a whole year of not posting.  I’ve been talking a lot about being stuck in a cooking rut recently.  This year I am trying to cook something new every week.   I might even try harder to write about it afterwards.  Taking decent photos will be next year’s project.

 

Ingredients

155g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

155g golden caster sugar

20g corn flour

155g butter (room temp)

3 large eggs

Grated zest and juice of one lemon

 

For the drizzle

160g sugar

Juice of 2 lemons

 

• Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin
• Sift the flours, baking powder and sugar in to the food processor and then pulse briefly to combine.
• Add the butter, eggs, zest and juice and then process until fully combined.
• Empty into the lined loaf tin and then bake for35-40 minutes, until golden brown on top.
• Remove and leave to cool in the tin.  Prick all over with a fork or skewer. 
• Mix the drizzle and pour over.  Leave the drizzle to set and then remove from the tin.
• The cake will keep for up to 3-4 days in a tin.  And it’s completely brilliant.

Overnight Oats - new favourite breakfast

As the weather starts getting a bit warmer, I'm less keen to have porridge for breakfast.  I'm not terribly good in the mornings although I know I'm much better when I do have breakfast, so I've spent most of the winter trying to eat porridge or have a protein shake which my very tolerant husband made for me, while I'm drying my hair.

My ideal scenario is always to have my breakfast while I'm actually at work, after I've woken up a bit, but unfortunately my new job doesn't have great kitchen facilities, so I either need to eat before I leave the house or have something I can take with me and eat at my desk.  Hence the winter of multitasking.  Recently I've started experimenting with overnight oats, this is my favourite recipe so far.

It's really easy to make, tastes delicious and keeps me going until lunchtime without any problems.  It also comes in at under 250 calories.  Obviously (with the overnight bit) I get to make it the night before and conserve my time in the morning for getting out of the door without falling over/sleeping.

Banana and Peanut Butter Oats

1/3 cup rolled oats

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp vanilla (I use vanilla paste)

1 tsp chia seeds

1 tsp peanut butter

1/2 banana finely chopped

1/3 cup unsweetened almond milk.

Then you just ditch everything into a watertight container (I use small tupperware people on pinterest tend to use Mason Jars because they photograph better and, you know, Mason Jars and Pinterest.  In real life I'm happier with bad photos and no broken glass in my handbag), shake and pop in the fridge.

I should probably add, that as much as we liked it, I did make it for my parents in law at the weekend and they were not particularly enamoured with it.  They both looked particularly relieved when we offered them an alternative breakfast instead.

Celebratory drinks

Last weekend the Very Tolerant Husband and I had a late Valentine's day meal.  We'd had a really busy couple of weeks, with house guests and birthdays, so thought we take time to have a special meal together the two of us.

I kicked things off with new cocktail. It was so good that I made it again this weekend when my little sister, brother in law and their gorgeous daughter came to stay. My sister and BiL thought that it tasted of Christmas,  but I think that it's just the cointreau that made them think that. It's a lovely cocktail for any time of year and it's a gorgeous colour.

The Garnet
2x measures of vodka
1x measure of cointreau
2x measures of pomegranate juice
12 blueberries
Teaspoon of honey
Splash of lime juice

Muddle together the blueberries and honey,  add the other ingredients before shaking over ice. Double sieve into cocktail slippers and garnish with blueberries on a cocktail stick.

Weekend Breakfasts

I'm a big fan of weekend breakfasts, usually because I tend to only eat two meals at the weekend.  I keep thinking that I would like to open a breakfast club, but I have no idea how I would make it work. This week's offering was a breakfast quesada, with some gorgeous freshly ground coffee which a friend brought me back from her recent travels in Columbia.

The breakfast quesada was super simple to make and would be excellent for children, should you have them. 

I took two mini wraps, spread a thin layer of peanut butter on one,  placed some thin slices of banana on top of this, quartered some strawberries and added these to the banana and then scattered a few chocolate chips over the top (these were left out on the very tolerant husband's version because of his chocolate allergy)

Once topped with the other mini wrap, the quesada was lightly toasted on both sides by dry frying. This is just enough to start cooking the strawberries and bananas and make them really juicy and gorgeous. 

Further experiments in quiche

The quiche Lorraine with added broccoli was good,  but I was looking for something a little bit more interesting for my new niece's naming day. I found pictures of this carrot and courgette tart,  but no recipe, so I've had to make it up as I went.  It's actually worked out pretty well,  but it could use a bit of refining.

As an added bonus I got to buy some new kitchen toys;  a mandolin, which I've wanted for ages,  and a large flan case,  which I really needed.

I used the rest of the pastry from the last set of quiches and blind baked in the same way. 

I then took two courgettes and two carrots, peeled them and used the mandolin to slice them into long thin ribbons.  These were used to layer in alternative ribbons around the flan case to create a flower effect.  This could probably be neatened up on a second attempt by trimming the vegetable slices to a more similar widths.

For the filling I used the same two large eggs, 250ml single cream combined with a bit of salt and pepper as last time,  but this time I added in 150g of finely grated pecorino.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180C, or until set and golden.