Meat-Free Monday: Fondue Squash with Orzo

When I saw this recipe a couple of weeks ago, I knew that I had to make it! I mean, what could be better than pumpkin, baked slowly with garlic, cheese and crème fraîche? Well, pumpkin baked slowly with garlic, cheese and crème fraîche and mixed with lovely little torpedoes of orzo pasta. Am I right?

Well, I did encounter a slight hurdle - a round squash was not to be found. So I used butternut, and since there wasn't a big enough cavity for my cheese mixture, I peeled it, cut it into chunks and tipped it into a pyrex baking dish, then covered it with foil.

Unfortunately the flavour was only so-so. It was just a bit one-dimensional. It was definitely sweet and creamy, if that is what blows your hair back, but I wanted more. Paul made the point that vegetarian dishes sometimes lack umami, so it feels like there is a hole in the flavour landscape. I think he is partly right, but I don't think adding bacon is necessarily the answer (on this occasion). Adding some dry white wine, to balance the sweetness with a bit of acidity perhaps. Maybe finishing it with a gremolata (garlic, parsley and lemon zest) instead of the crisp sage leaves. Maybe just a squeeze of lemon juice for a bit of zing, or some parmesan for a deeper savoury kick. It's definitely worth revisiting with some of those ideas in mind.

Trout

Paul hasn't had much chance to go fishing this year - the combination of working away and his fishing partner in crime being overseas has reduced the opportunities. But at the start of autumn, as the fish started to get a bit feistier after the summer torpor, they did get out for a throw. And Paul brought home this lovely 5lb creature.

One fillet was cut into tranches. I just seasoned a couple with a bit of salt & pepper, cooked them in a hot pan with a little olive oil and served them with a basil and lemon dressing, tomato & buffalo mozzarella salad and courgette chips. It was moist, juicy and had a lovely flavour - just perfect.

The remaining piece from the fresh fillet went into a seafood lasagne. I cut the flesh into chunks and combined it with some mirepoix (previously cooked and cooled), shredded spinach, undyed smoked haddock and big fat prawns. Then I mixed in some white sauce, layered it up with spinach lasagne sheets and topped it with more white sauce and some grated cheese to get the top nicely browned.

A 5lb fish is far too much for the two of us to eat fresh, so I cured the second fillet for 2 days in the fridge, in a mixture of sugar, salt & dill, then hot-smoked it on beechwood chips.

I think this was my most successful smoked fish so far. The smoke flavour subtle enough to let the flavour of the fish through, the sugar and salt were well balanced and there was a delicate aniseed tang from the dill.

We ate some of it just on crackers, to test the flavour, and the rest was portioned up and stored in the freezer.

The other night I pulled out a piece and made a pasta dish/ While some angel hair pasta was boiling, I crushed a clove of garlic. While the pasta was drained, I sauteed the garlic in a knob of butter in the pasta saucepan, then added 100ml Greek yoghurt, some boiled and peeled brown shrimp, some baby spinach leaves and some flakes of the smoked trout. I tossed the drained pasta through this mixture until everything was hot, then served it with some roasted cherry tomatoes and salmon roe. The slight tang of the yoghurt, the smoke from the trout, the salty burst of the salmon roe with the sweet-acid burst of the tomatoes and the sweetness of the brown shrimp all came together really beautifully. Totally delicious.

Pheasant saltimbocca

One of the compensations for the cold and dark of autumn is the food (the other is cashmere). As much as I love the fruit and vegetables, the barbecued meat and chilled desserts of summer, I can't help but think that winter food is a lot more interesting. Rich, gelatinous meat, earthy pulses, softly melting cheese and sweet root vegetables give a lot of scope for a cook when the wind is cold.

Remind me I said this come February when I am sick to the back teeth of cabbage, OK?

One of the big features of British autumn produce are the game meats that come into season. In the last couple of years the supermarkets have taken them on board and have started to produce some more user-friendly, convenient cuts, which will hopefully broaden the appeal of these lean, tasty meats.

Now, I don't go to the supermarket very often (love my internet grocery shopping), but the other day I did have an errand to run, so had a bit of a poke around the butchery aisle while I was there. And I spied a packet of skinned pheasant thigh fillets.

By the time I got home I knew I wanted to make a pheasant saltimbocca with them. I thought I was being SO original and SO clever, but then I had a look at t'internet and discovered that one of Alex's Masterchef final dishes was a pheasant saltimbocca. I missed the final, but I must have read about it somewhere.

Anyway - here's my recipe.

Pheasant Saltimbocca (serves 2)

8 skinned pheasant thigh fillets
4 fresh sage leaves
4 large/8 small slices of proscuitto
Freshly ground black pepper
plain flour
knob of butter
splash of olive oil
bigger splash of dry sherry (I would have preferred dry marsala but it's hard to come by)

Place 2 pheasant thigh fillets, slightly overlapping, between sheets of cling film and give them a bit of a whack with a rolling pin to make them a more even thickness and stick them together (you could do each one individually, but I wanted a higher ratio of pheasant to proscuitto in each bite). Place a sage leaf on the combined, bigger pheasant thigh, and season with black pepper. Wrap in a slice of proscuitto, 2 if they aren't big enough to enclose it. You could stick it together with a toothpick if you think it is insecure, but mine held together without.

Repeat with the remaining pheasant, sage and proscuitto.

Dust each parcel lightly with flour.

Heat a large saute pan and add the butter and oil. When the butter foams, add the pheasant parcels. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side; the proscuitto should be crisping but you don't want to overcook the pheasant. Pour the sherry in, swirl around for a second and then remove the pheasant. Scrape up any crispy bits into the sherry while it reduces a bit and then pour it over the pheasant.

I served it with a warm roast butternut, spinach and puy lentil salad, but mash would be good too.

Christmas preparations

This year, for the first time ever, Paul and I are having Christmas at home. I have to say, I am a bit excited about this. As much fun as a family Christmas can be, I really like the idea of it just being us, and in our own home, not some hotel somewhere.

And obviously, I have already started to think about the food.

One of the traditional Christmas foods in England is a roast goose. A goose is far too big for the two of us, so I was thinking about dividing it up - confiting the legs for another meal and boning out the breast and stuffing it for Christmas. The downfall of this cunning plan is that I have never boned out poultry before.

So I figured I would start small with a chicken and see how I got on.


It actually turned out very well. It was a bit fiddly and time consuming, but not at all difficult.


I stuffed the boned chicken with a mixture of rehydrated dried porcini, ordinary white mushrooms, pinenuts, onion, tarragon and breadcrumbs, with a little lemon zest. Then I sewed it up and roasted it.


Delicious. The only trouble being that of course stuffing it is actually a way of stretching the meat. So my new cunning plan is to cut off the breasts and legs of my goose, freeze half, and just roast a breast and one confited leg. That should still give plenty of leftovers for sandwiches the following day.

Given that it is still early November, these plans may be subject to change.

Pumpkin Yoghurt Slice for Halloween 2010

I wasn't going to carve a pumpkin this year - although I was very happy with last year's attempt - but on Friday I was in Waitrose and they had cute little carving pumpkins, so I couldn't resist.

My nod to Halloween was going to be a pumpkin pie. Which I really like. Paul was sceptical though: he felt that it could easily be too pumpkin-y and not spicy enough. So I gave it some serious thought and came up with something mid-way between pumpkin pie and cheesecake, but quite a lot lighter than either.

It's a rich vanilla shortbread base (pretty much the base from Joy of Baking's Millionaire's Shortbread), topped with a spiced yoghurt and butternut puree. It turned out beautifully: Paul liked it, so I think even other pumpkin pie sceptics could be turned around by this.

Pumpkin Yoghurt Slice

Base

170g butter, softened
50g golden caster sugar
1/2tsp vanilla bean paste
100g plain flour
100g tapioca flour

Filling

400g TOTAL Greek yoghurt (I'm still using the enormous supply they kindly sent me)

300g butternut squash (this is the raw, peeled weight)
85ml maple syrup
1tsp pumpkin pie spice (I haven't seen pumpkin pie spice in the UK, I used this blend)
2 eggs

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a 7" x 11" lamington tin with baking parchment.

Cut the butternut into small chunks and bake for about half an hour until tender but not too brown.

Place the maple syrup in a small pan and boil for a few minutes until slightly reduced, then cool. You want it the consistency of honey, not toffee.

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla paste with a wooden spoon until fluffy, then add the flours and mix to a paste. I find it easiest to bring it together with my hands towards the end. Press firmly into the base of the lamington. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Force the cooked butternut through a sieve so you have a smooth puree. Discard the fibrous bits left in the sieve. Beat into the puree the cooled, reduced maple syrup, the yoghurt and spices. Taste, and add more spices if needed, remembering that the flavours will develop more with cooking. Then beat in the eggs.

Pour the filling mixture over the shortbread base and return to the oven. Bake for about 35 minutes or until just set in the middle. Remove from the oven and cool.

I topped it with some caramelised almond flakes but that is optional.

Serve at room temperature.

Harvest 2010

While I can't say that 2010 produced an abundant harvest from our garden, it certainly provided us with a few good meals and some excellent learning points for next year.

There isn't really a whole lot to say about each thing, so I decided to take the opportunity to do another snazzy slideshow.

Chip hash

I hate wasting food. I really, really hate it. Even so, I was faintly worried that I was taking frugality a bit too far with this one.

As an occasional treat, on a Friday evening Paul and I will get takeaway fish and chips from the shop around the corner. It's very good, but the portions of chips are enormous. We usually get a medium chips to share (they only do medium and large) and even then we can only eat about 1/3 of them.

The last time we did this I looked at the enormous pile of leftover chips and declared that enough was enough - I couldn't bring myself to throw them away.

But what to do with them? They don't reheat to the same glory, so I needed to come up with a different form to present them in. And thus was born...

Leftover chip hash (serves 2)

Leftover chips (French fries people, not crisps)
1 onion, diced
1 packet of bacon, cut into lardons
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
handful of parsley, chopped
eggs to serve

Put your bacon into a saute pan and cook gently until the fat starts to render out. Add your onion and stir until translucent. Turn up the heat and add the chips, cut into smaller chunks, and the garlic, and stir until everything is beginning to mush in places and crisp in places. Season generously with black pepper (no extra salt, don't be silly) and chopped parsley. Top with fried or poached eggs.

Delicious. I almost wished I had a hangover, as I realised what perfect hangover food this was. And then I wished I had a bloody mary, because that would really be an epic food match. I will never throw away chips again.


ETA Simona from the lovely bi-lingual blog briciole put me on to the Love Food, Hate Waste website. It's a campaign I am very happy to support!