Hey Pesto

Pesto is one of my favourite things ever - I usually have jars of both red and green in the fridge at all times, plus spares in the cupboard. And for some reason that I don't quite know, I'd never made my own until this week. Our basil plant was growing out of control, and there was only one thing to do...

Ingredients:
- 50g pine nuts
- 50g fresh basil
- 25g fresh parsley
- 2 cloves garlic
- 150ml olive oil
- 50g veggie parmesan
- 2tsp lemon juice
- salt and pepper

1. Fry the pine nuts (without any oil) until lightly toasted and golden brown.
2. Tip everything into a food processor and blitz! Season to taste, and enjoy.

If you have a bit more time on your hands, you could always roast the garlic first - or even try using wild garlic if it's in season. Pesto is super versatile - use it as a dip, stir it through some pasta or add it to a pizza. It'll also keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Stuff My Mushrooms.

 

The evenings are getting lighter! 

It's seven o' clock as I write and it's still light outside. Which is lovely. 

This time of year always makes me want to go wandering round National Trust properties and do lots of studying. It's sort of lucky that I have a dissertation and a whole bunch of exam revision to do really... (I also got to go to a National Trust place this weekend - Ightham Mote, it was lovely-pictures below.) 

These lighter evenings make it an awful lot easier to take food photos - living in a flat in halls with awful neon lighting doesn't make for particularly appetising ones. But, tonight I was in the kitchen making dinner, the light looked lovely and I just had to get some photos. 

 Basically, I love mushrooms. (Bryony doesn't! Which means that if we're out and she has food with mushrooms in I always get to eat her mushrooms, so I'm not really complaining...) These are my rice stuffed mushrooms. I've blogged stuffed mushrooms before, but these ones are different. Possibly better.... 

But you'll just have to make both recipes and try them out for yourselves... 

 

Rice stuffed mushrooms (to serve two as a main or four as a side):

150g long grain rice 

2 white onions 

6 spring onions 

2 cloves of garlic 

2 tsp mixed Italian herbs 

1 stock cube 

4 flat cap mushrooms 

A liberal handful of grated cheddar cheese 

A knob of butter and a dash of olive oil 

Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Cook the rice (You place in a saucepan of boiling water and cook for about fifteen minutes until the rice is tender. Don't stir it too much or the starch from the rice is released and it goes all gooey. Drain the rice in a colander, and rinse it through with hot water.) 

2. While the rice is cooking, finely chop the onions. Heat a knob of butter and dash of olive oil in a large saucepan, and add the onion. Fry gently. 

3. Slice the spring onions and add to the pan, along with the dried herbs and a crushed stock cube. Stir in thoroughly. 

4. Crush the garlic (using a knife, or a special garlic crusher if you have one) and add to the pan. 

5. Cut the stems out of your mushrooms, chop these and add to the pan as well. 

6. By now your rice should be cooked. Add it to the onion/garlic/spring onion pan, season with salt and pepper and stir through thoroughly. Turn off the heat. 

7. Place your mushrooms in a reasonably high sided dish or roasting tray, and add a generous spoonful of the rice mixture to each mushroom. If there's any left in the pan after you've run out of room in your mushrooms just stuff it into the gaps between them in the tray, burying the mushrooms. Top with the cheese. 

8. Place the mushroom/rice tray into the oven and cook for about twenty to thirty minutes until the cheese is melted and golden. 

9. Take the tray out and serve the mushrooms. I ate mine with parsnips, but I think this would go really well with cheesy leeks, or even as a side to go with a quiche or a tart.

A Vegetable Feast

Like a veritable feast, but with more vegetables. ALL OF THE VEG.

I haven't been cooking as much recently: there, I said it. Things have been too stressful and busy (which is why there hasn't been much blogging - there hasn't been anything to blog...), BUT last week I decided enough was enough and that I needed something super healthy and delicious to make up for it all. So I made this: baked, stuffed aubergine with cous cous, feta and all things lovely.

Ingredients (serves 1):
- half an aubergine
- 1 small red onion, roughly chopped
- 10 cherry tomatoes
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
- 100g cous cous
- 200ml veg stock
- 3 spring onions, chopped
- 100g feta cheese, crumbled
- handful of fresh coriander, chopped
- salt and pepper, to taste

Method:
1. First, preheat the oven to 220°C. Place the aubergine into a baking dish with the onion, garlic and tomatoes, then drizzle with olive oil and a good amount of salt and pepper. Put this into the oven for 40 minutes, taking it out half way through to flip the aubergine and stir the rest of the veg.
2. Put the cous cous into a pan with the hot stock and heat gently for about five minutes, until the grains have expanded and the liquid has been absorbed.
3. Scoop the middle out of the roasted aubergine and add it to the cous cous, along with the onion, tomatoes and garlic (the cloves will be soft enough to just squash now). Stir in the spring onions, feta and coriander, then place the mixture back into the aubergine skin and bake for a further 15-20 minutes.

 
NB: There will be cous cous mixture left over but this is a good thing - my extras were eaten by our house mouse (aka Rebecca) but it would be great to put in the fridge and have for lunch the next day.
4. Sprinkle with an extra bit of coriander to make it look pretty, then serve with something delicious like sweet potato fries. Yum.

Ten Minute Treat: Stir Fry

Much as I love spending hours standing over the stove, gently stirring a risotto, sometimes there just isn't time. This is perfect for a mid-week meal as it's ready to eat in under ten minutes - and is healthy and wonderfully flavoured to boot.

The key to this dish is preparation. None of it takes long to cook at all, so you really do need to make sure you have everything chopped and ready to go before you start to avoid things burning etc.

Ingredients (serves 4):
- 1 red onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- thumb fresh ginger, peeled
- 1 red chilli
- 5 spring onions
- 1 large carrot, peeled
- 1 red pepper
- 100g baby corn
- 100g mangetout
- 160g marinated tofu
- handful beansprouts
- 120g stir fry sauce (pick your flavour - I like the chow mein)
- 2tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1tbsp sesame oil
- juice of ½ a lime
- 300g fine egg noodles (substitute to make vegan/gluten-free)
- sprinkle of sesame seeds

For the mangetout and baby corn I'd recommend just grabbing one of the mixed packs you can get in supermarkets. You can vary the amounts, and can really add any veg you like - mushrooms, water chestnuts or savoy cabbage would all go well - the above is just a list of my favourites/what I had in at the time.

1. Start by putting a pan of water on to boil and thinly slicing all your veg. Put the onion, garlic, ginger, chilli and spring onions together in a bowl to keep them separate from the rest - just because these go in first.
2. Put about 1tbsp olive oil in a wok and heat (think mid to high heat on your hob) - you can test if it's hot by dropping in a slice of veg and seeing if it sizzles. If it does, then go ahead and add the onion mix. Stir this for a minute before adding the carrot, pepper, corn and mangetout and tofu.

3. After another minute add the beansprouts; at this point you should also put your noodles into the pan of boiling water to cook. Make sure you're stirring everything A LOT, or it will just burn.
4. Add the stir fry sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and lime juice to the wok, along with the drained noodles once cooked (they shouldn't take more than 2 minutes).
5. Serve up and sprinkle with the sesame seeds (and some fresh coriander if you have some to hand). Voila!

What a Tart

So I thought it was about time I blogged something savoury because all I seem to be doing at the moment is cake, bread and pudding, though that's a pretty accurate representation of my current diet...

 

I made this in the summer holidays for my sister, who likes neither leeks nor anything that even vaguely resembles a quiche, BUT when I gave her this she ate it all and went back for seconds. And when Rebecca ate it yesterday she exclaimed 'I don't even like leeks!' as she also went back for seconds. It's an excellent crowd pleaser, very easy to make, and it looks awesome.

Also Dad's lent me his fancy camera, so I can now take food photographs again without having to beg Zosia to leave the library and trek all the way over just so I can take a picture of my soup/cake/etc, which is just great for everyone (except maybe my Dad's nerves).

Ingredients:
Pastry
- 175g plain flour (I use 100g of white and 75g of wholemeal)
- 110g butter, cubed
- ½tsp salt
- sprinkle of black pepper
- ½tsp thyme leaves
- 2-3tbsp cold water

Filling
- 25g butter
- 2 onions, chopped
- 1 large leek, washed and chopped
- 1tsp caster sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 200ml double cream
- 1 egg, beaten
- 125g soft goat's cheese, crumbled
- 1tsp French mustard
- salt and pepper
- 1tsp thyme leaves, plus a few extra sprigs for decoration

Method:
1. First, make your pastry. Using the tips of your fingers, rub together the flour and butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the salt, pepper and thyme, then add the water a little at a time. You only need enough to bring everything together into a dough, so be careful not to over-do it.
2. Wrap the dough in clingfilm, and put it in the fridge while you get started on your filling.
3. Put the butter, onions, leek and garlic into a pan, then turn the heat up and add the sugar. Make sure you stir fairly often so it doesn't stick and burn, but there's not much else to it! Cook for about 15-20 minutes, until everything's lovely and caramelised, then take off the heat and put to one side. At this point you should also turn on your oven, and set it to 180°C.
4. Take your pastry out of the fridge, lightly flour your worktop and roll the pastry out to about 5mm thick. Then use your rolling pin/bottle to drape it into your quiche dish (if you don't have a quiche dish, you can use the lid of a casserole dish or anything similar - just make sure it can go in the oven).
5. Gently ease the pastry to fit properly in the dish, then grab a fork and prick lots of holes in the bottom of the pastry (which is a great alternative to baking beans) before blind baking in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes.
6. While your pastry case is baking, you can get the filling sorted out. Grab a large measuring jug and measure out the cream, then add the egg, mustard and goat's cheese and mix it all together (alternatively, you could put a third of the goat's cheese to one side and sprinkle it over the top before baking). Tip in the leek mixture, the salt and pepper and half the thyme leaves and stir together.
7. Once the pastry is out of the oven, trim the edges and tip in the filling. Sprinkle the goats cheese (if using this method) and the rest of the thyme leaves on top, then put back in the oven for 30 minutes.

8. Voila! Decorate with the thyme sprigs, and eat with something yummy like potato wedges (or a salad if you've been living off cake like I have). Jamie and I intend to take the leftovers to eat on our Windsor Great Park picnic tomorrow, along with some very exciting blackberry and elderflower cakes which I shall also blog soon. NOM.

3 Ways to Make Garlic Bread

I make garlic bread a lot. Like, once or twice every week. We have it with risotto. Or with pasta. Or with savoury rice. Or with stew, sometimes, or vegetable bakes... You get the picture. Anyway, I end A LOT of posts with 'serve with garlic bread' and it's in millions of pictures - and I recently realised I'd never actually blogged a recipe for it. My bad!

The basic recipe is the same for all three variations, all that differs is how you put it together and cook it. It's the easiest thing, and I promise once you've had it shop-bought garlic bread will never seem the same again.

Ingredients:
- butter: enough to cover however much bread you have.
- garlic: one clove per person.
- drizzle of olive oil
- squirt of lemon juice
- handful of chopped parsley (or a good sprinkle of dried)
- salt and pepper

Method:
Chop the garlic as finely as you can and stick everything in a bowl. Mix it up. THAT'S IT. Told you it was easy.

Now, the different kinds...

1. This is my favourite sort, and the easiest.
Grab yourself some part-baked bread (tesco usually has 4 batons for £1, and it freezes like a charm). Cut open and spread with your garlic butter. Bake according to the instructions on the bread packet.

2. This is great if you haven't got any of the part-baked bread, but do have general bread.
Slice your bread, but not quite to the bottom. This way all the butter stays in better, and it's fun ripping it when it's cooked (if you have ready-sliced bread, don't worry, keep reading). Use your garlic butter to spread your slices on both sides then press them together, before wrapping it all up in tinfoil and baking at 200°C for about 20 minutes.

3. This one's for if you have some time on your hands. It will impress, though!
Make yourself some pizza dough. Spread with your garlic butter (not quite to the edges) and cook at 220°Cfor 10-15 minutes, until it's all golden.

ALSO, any of them can be made gluten free. For the first two, quarter a few slices of gluten free bread and then cook in exactly the same ways. For the third, use gluten free flour. It actually couldn't be easier.