Pear & camembert salad

Our plan to go for a long walk today and maybe find a pub for lunch along the way got scuttled by the weather. It isn't that cold, but it is grey and rainy and not conducive for the outdoors.

So when it got close to lunchtime I was thrown on the resources of pantry and fridge. And came up with a really delicious adaptation of this Delia Smith recipe.

Basically, a bag of mixed salad leaves and a diced ripe pear went into a bowl with a bag of baguette croutons (we hardly ever have bread in the house, so we don't have bread to go stale and get made into garlic croutons from scratch). Then in a small pan I melted a (rather nice, unpasteurised, very runny) ripe camembert with 3tbs of white wine vinegar and 2 chopped cloves of garlic and poured it over the salad when it fell from my whisk in creamy ribbons.

Delicious! And the sauce was so good it will probably get an outing poured over steamed broccoli. Or possibly on a steak if we decide our arteries aren't hardening fast enough.

Butternut muffins

It seems that at the moment you can't move on the blogosphere without bumping into a delectable pumpkin recipe. It strikes me that seasonal baking must be really integral to the American psyche, because everyone is pulling out all the stops to produce really amazing dishes.

If it isn't Esi's Pumpkin shortcakes with apple compote & vanilla honey icecream it is Susan's Pumpkin cheese pie with toffee caramel swirl or Kat's Pumpkin brown butter cupcakes with dulce de leche frosting or Natasha's velvety pumpkin pie. And of course all of the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers produced gorgeous Nutty pumpkin muffins.

There are probably a few savoury dishes out there too, but it is all the desserts that are really grabbing me!

So I decided to make a batch of my breakfast muffins but to add some butternut squash in a tribute to autumn and seasonal baking.

Butternut Breakfast Muffins
150g wholemeal S.R flour
60g oatmeal
1tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
40g soft dark brown sugar
50g demerera sugar
1 large carrot, grated (I leave skin on)
40g craisins
140g steamed, mashed butternut squash
120g seed mix (it's sunflower, pumpkin, flaxseed and sesame seeds)
1 bramley apple, grated (I quarter and core it, but leave the skin on - it ends up with some green skin in, but it sort of grates off the skin and is quicker than peeling first)
2 medium eggs
60g butter, melted (you can use veg oil if you prefer)
1tsp vanilla extract

Makes somewhere between 9-15 muffins, depending on your tin. I use a friand tin because I find they are the perfect size to just have one for breakfast.

Use a brush dipped in the melted butter to grease your muffin tins.

Preheat oven to 180C. Put the flour, oatmeal, cinnamon & salt into a large bowl. Add the sugar (the dark brown sugar clumps together, so stir it well into the flour), carrot, craisins, seeds, butternut & apple and mix until combined. Add eggs, the rest of the melted butter and vanilla and mix until combined. These are quite forgiving, you can mix them harder than average muffins and they don't go leathery.

Spoon into greased muffin tins and bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes (depending on size), or until risen and browned. They don't rise that much because there is so much stuff in them!

Royal Foody Joust - Squash Fritters

This month's Foodie Joust challenge was set by Susan from Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy after she nailed the October joust with an amazing gorgonzola, pear and fennel tart.

And her three ingredients for this challenge were acorn squash, orange and sage.

This took a lot of thinking about! I couldn't remember even seeing acorn squash before, let alone eating one (although it turns out they stock them next to the butternuts in the supermarket, so I clearly wasn't looking too hard before!).

I had a few ideas but I couldn't really figure out how to marry up the orange and the sage. In the end I decided to make a squash fritter and flavour it with orange zest and dried sage.

In Italy you get a nut meringue biscuit called brutti ma buoni - which means "ugly but good". I decided that it was a pretty good description of my very delicious but not beautiful fritters!

Squash Fritters "Brutti ma buoni"

1 acorn squash, halved, seeds removed
slosh of olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1/2 tsp dried sage
Finely grated zest of an orange
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 eggs
salt & pepper
oil for frying

Bake the squash in a 180C oven for 1/2 hour or until a fork pierces it easily & allow to cool. When it is cool enough to handle, scrape the flesh out into a bowl and mash with a fork to a rough puree.

Sautee the onion in the olive oil until translucent, then add the sage and stir a minute more to get the oils coming out of the dried sage. Allow to cool and then add to the squash along with all the other ingredients. Shallow fry spoonfuls of the mixture on both sides until well cooked. Makes about 10 fritters.
The first night we had these with some delicious wild boar and apple sausages, and a simple tomato mozzarella salad. The sweetness of the squash with the earthiness of the sage and the highnotes of orange zest were just perfect with the meaty sausages.

The next night we reheated the leftover fritters and had them with venison haunch steaks and an edamame bean salad, and again they were a great accompaniment. I think they would reach new highs with pan-fried duck breasts, or as a breakfast dish with some thick slabs of crisp bacon. So. Not pretty, but very, very good!

2 steak dinners

As well as the lovely piece of fillet that we bought for the beef wellington last weekend, we also bought a beautiful forerib steak, figuring that it would be enough for a couple of meals for us. And in fact it made 2 dinners and a lunch. Fantastic value, when it cost £10.

So on the first night we just roasted it in a hot oven, carved it and served it with vegetables. A piece of beef like that is so good that it really doesn't need a sauce or too much fuss. In a perfect world we would have barbecued it over charcoal but the weather was a bit crap for that.
Then on the second night (after Paul had snacked on cold roast beef with mustard for lunch), he made a steak sauce for pasta. He really makes a lovely pasta sauce! He says the key to it is letting it take its time.

This time he sauteed diced onions in olive oil until they were really well browned and sweet (which I have learned makes such a difference), added loads of dried herbs (oregano, marjoram and rosemary, I think), a lot of minced garlic, the diced beef and a jar of tomato and basil pasta sauce.

After simmering a few minutes he added some soaked & drained dried mushrooms (leftover from the wellington). When it was really thick, rich and delicious he tossed some wholemeal spaghetti through it, allowing the sauce to soak into the pasta over a low heat for another minute or so.

We didn't have any parmesan in the house, unfortunately, so we made do with a bit of grated cheddar. A very comforting dinner on a cold night!

Tuscan Wine Dinner

Another month, another wine tasting dinner at the Rose & Crown. This one was on a Tuscan theme, and I was pretty excited because the rep at the previous one had assured me that there would be a proper pudding wine, so we wouldn't have the same dessert iss-yews that have plagued some of the recent dinners.

And indeed, there were no such problems this time.

We started with the iconic Tuscan soup pappa al pomodoro - which I tried in Florence last year and loved. Who would have thought that a thick puree of tomatoes and that horrible Tuscan saltless bread could be so delicious? This version wasn't quite as thick (I suspect pandering to conservative Rickmansworth tastes) but perfectly seasoned and an amazing accompaniment to the 2007 Beguardo Rose. It really was one of those moments of alchemy when both the wine and the food are better for the match.

As my next course I had what they called Ravioli Nudi - which I would call gnocchi gnudi. I have made something similar following a River Cafe recipe, but it's similar to this - gnocchi made from ricotta and spinach bound with eggs and a bit of flour and given some oomph with parmesan. These were lovely. Light and not at all cloying. It was paired with a 2006 Campo Ceni which was quite robust and fruity - lots of ripe berry flavours. Not quite the perfect accompaniment but a very nice wine!

The "meat" option for that course was a stuffed pepper (which I didn't choose because the ingredients were too similar to the vegetarian main that I wanted). I'm often a bit dubious about stuffed peppers because the stuffing is so often rice-based and really heavy, but this one was filled with a lovely light diced vegetable mix and topped with a bit of cheese. There was some proscuitto in it, which is why it counted as the meaty option.

For the main course they brought out the big guns. A 2003 vernaccia di San Gimignano made by Panizzi. It was absolutely lovely. The time in the bottle had aged it to a deep gold colour and it had that beautiful buttery finish that you get with aged Hunter Valley semillon. Apparently a lot of people complained about it because they like their white wines young and flinty. Pinheads. I like a pinot gris as much as the next girl but a slightly older white wine like this is an entirely different kettle of fish.

With the vernaccia I had what they called Melanzane Parmigiana. It really wasn't what I think of when I say melanzane parmigiana, but it was fabulous. Thin slices of courgette and aubergine were layered with an intensely flavoured tomato confit and a round of softly melted goats cheese. Amazing! The panzanella on the side was disappointing - cubes of stale bread with a lot of vinegary onions and the occasional bit o' tomato.

Dessert, however, did not disappoint. A couple of cubes of a dense, orangey sponge, topped with a thick chocolate glaze, a couple of light, fluffy, Bramley apple fritters and a beautiful, ripe fig provided a whole symphony of flavours to match with the vin santo. None of it was too sweet, so the sweet wine was really able to shine. I'd have been happy just with the figs and maybe a biscotti with the wine, but the apple fritters were just the right balance of tart/sweet filling and hot crisp coating.

The wine rep was at the table next to us. Lovely girl - I got the impression she'd had a glass of each wine at every table - and a job well done.

Dinner with friends

Let's start with the less successful element of dinner first, shall we?

I decided that I wanted to make this gorgeous wholemeal salt-kissed buttermilk berry cake from Arika's blog. But instead of following the directions properly I substituted 1 cup of ground almonds for some of the flour, and decided that they would be a cute dessert done in my individual silicon rose moulds.

Fortunately there was too much batter for the rose moulds, so I also made 4 in friand tins, which is the only reason we were able to serve cake for dessert. I swear those rose moulds are getting kicked to the curb. This is the second thing I have made in them and the second disaster. They are not getting a second chance! I reduced the cook time slightly because I was doing smaller cakes, the knife tested clean, and then when I tried to turn them out they splodged onto my cake rack in a puddle of raw batter and dribbly raspberry juices. What a waste of ingredients!

The ones in the friand tin, however, turned out beautifully. The combination of sweet and salt was delicious - although I wouldn't want to eat a lot of it. And if I make it again I am definitely just making one big cake!

And on to better things...

One of our friends is quite a particular eater. She prefers lean meat, well-done, and will turn her nose up at the delicious crispy burnt fatty bits on a barbecued rib eye steak. Weird-o. So Paul decided to get a nice (and just quietly - hideously expensive) piece of fillet and make one of his famous beef wellingtons.
Although I can't quite figure out how he became famed for his wellington when I make the duxelles that makes it good...

So - I sauteed a punnet of chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped, in butter with some garlic & thyme, added some soaked, drained and chopped dried wild mushrooms (a mixture of porcini, chanterelle and a bunch of other stuff) and a slosh of JD and cooked it slowly until it was really dry, cooled it and then blended it to a rough paste with a spoonful of mustard to bind it. I thought it should have been Dijon mustard, but Paul insisted that hot English was the thing. So English it was.

Paul then panfried the piece of fillet really well to get it nicely browned and half cooked. The problem with a wellington is the pastry insulates the meat and it becomes much harder to judge how well done it is - but you don't want a totally cooked piece of meat to go in because it won't exchange flavours with the pastry properly.

The cooled meat went on a piece of all-butter puff pastry, rolled out quite thickly, then it was smothered in the duxelles.

Another layer of pastry over the top, some crimping and a bit of cute pastry doodad on the top and into the oven.

He started it at quite a high heat, then after about 15 minutes turned it down to 160C for another 35 minutes or so.

It was delicious! The meat was buttery soft, the duxelles added a rich foresty flavour and the pastry shows why butter puff beats the weird pre-rolled stuff with all the hydrogenated vegetable fats etc. Our friend totally demolished her portion, so we'd have to say that, despite issues with the dessert, this was a very successful dinner!

Paul's Thighs

My husband is currently a gentleman of leisure, so you can expect to see quite a lot more of his cooking over the next while. He seems to think I am some sort of territorial lioness in my kitchen (I mean our kitchen, sweety!) so he needs to defeat me by stealth and cunning and cook before I get home from work.

He has been perfecting this chicken stirfry for years now. It is so delicious!

You fry the living hell out of chicken thigh fillets in a small splash of oil. Then you add some chopped garlic, some mushrooms and when the garlic is starting to brown you add quite a lot of soy sauce and reduce it really quickly to a glaze. I think reduced sodium soy would be the way forward, but we only have your basic Kikkoman.

So good! We had some frozen veg cooked in the pan juices, but a bit of steamed rice and gai larn would be a fantastic accompaniment.