Reciplace

Real Food Festival

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in real life who is a bit of a quality food fanatic.  I read so many websites, message boards and books about people campaigning for real bread, better school meals, tighter laws on transporting live animals etc etc.  But here in the real world, I've got a company cafeteria selling masses of chicken dishes for £3.   I'm surrounded by programming geeks who eat ready meals and takeaways on a daily basis.  Even the foodiest Friand-baking girl on the Food Team likes to indulge in a bit of tinned tomato soup with a babybel floating on it.  ("It melts, but never loses its shape!")**  

So imagine my excitement when I had three press tickets to the Real Food Festival at Earls Court bestowed upon me!  I grabbed the husband, and our best Veggie Bowler friend, and arrived shortly after opening.  One big huge freakin' MASSIVE building filled with aisle upon aisle of farmers, producers, organic advocates, people with petitions about food labeling, and hundreds of visitors who felt the same way I do about sustainable food!  It took hours and hours to visit every single stall, and to taste every single sample.    

We left with eight jute bags of yummy purchases between the three of us - everything from rare teas to local sausages.  I spent a new record amount of dough on a special type of flour created for Andrew Whitley (author of Bread Matters) by Gilchesters Organic, and signed up for a Soil Association membership.  The boys spent loads of money on wine and pickled things. 

All in all, it was one of the best days of our lives.  No exaggeration.  Bloody brilliant.  And we can't wait for next year!

**(She really is very foodie though, honest!)

Breadsticks! The good kind!

How cool are they!  I made those! 

I'm so obsessed with bread lately.  There's something so satisfying about delicately, yet firmly, kneading a blob of wet mess into a beautiful ball of dough.  These are some yummerific breadsticks I "threw together" when I had a few people around last weekend. 

One of the nerdy boys from work was there.  I'm surrounded by boys talking about firmware and cloud computing all day - but the Aussie Nerd is the only one who pretends to be interested when I talk about what I cooked for dinner last night.  He's really good at that.  Much better than pretending to be interested in the bag of new clothes I came back with after lunch from Uniqlo. 

So I thought I'd show off some bread skills by whipping up this batch of ridiculously easy breadsticks.  The recipe is from the new Bread: River Cottage Handbook No. 3 by Daniel Stevens, and uses half bread flour, half white flour.   They recommend curling the edges over like candy canes.  These don't look anything like those uniform sticks that come in a box from the supermarket! 

First batch had Parmesan shavings and salt, second batch had fresh rosemary from the garden. 

I thought I'd go one step further and make a big bowl of Aioli to dip the sticks in.  An hour later I was still pouring olive oil in one drop at a time, with my other arm about to drop off from whisking, and remembered why people buy mayonnaise these days.  It tasted pretty darn good though.  Well worth it.

The world's best food and recipe site?

I have a lot of strong opinions about food sites.   I have my favourites, (BBC Good Food... BBC Good Food... BBC Good Food....) and I tend to go back to those favourites rather than use google to find things.  Some sites are fantastic from a usability point of view (BBC Good Food... Epicurious), and others are a great example of social communities within the site (Recipe Zaar, AllRecipes). 

UKTV Food has always made available an incredible amount of recipes.  It's one I use heavily because there's no shortage of ideas for even the most obscure ingredient, and most of the recipes are created and endorsed by celebrity chefs.  Oh, and because I work for UKTV.  I wasn't around when the current incarnation of the site was developed, and I've always had strong opinions about how it should work.

I can't even explain the current level of excitement around here at the moment.  In a few months, we will be unveiling what I think will be the world's best food site.  The UKTV Food website is getting a complete overhaul, and we are obsessing over every tiny detail to make it the prettiest, most usable, feature rich site out there. 

My Friand-baking friend is holding the reins and doing a killer job, and we have a team stacked full of talent.  We spent hours agonising over tiny details on how the site should work, but I know it will all pay off.  I cannot WAIT to start using it at home.  It's going to be the BEST food site EVER!!!

Sundried Tomato and Spinach Muffins

I *heart* muffins. Me and the husband even have matching His and Hers plastic muffin containers that we take our muffins to work in. It's true!

I normally stuff muffins full of bran and leftover fruit, but this time I decided to go a little whacky and do some very savoury muffins.

For these muffins, I mixed together:

• 500g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Then I put half a bag of baby spinach in the food processor until it was nice a pureed.  I added that to the dry mixture, along with 300g plain yogurt, an egg, 300mL milk, and some tabasco sauce. 

When it was all mixed up and ready to put into the muffin tins, I only filled each muffin case half way.  I then put a few chopped up sundried tomatoes in the center, and then filled up the rest of the muffin.  Then I baked them for 25 minutes at 200°C.

Next time I'm going to put little cubes of feta cheese in them.  Will the feta melt at 200 degrees?  Will it then harden again when the muffin goes cold?  Watch this space, muffin fans.

In other muffin news, my mum is putting together a list of common leftover fruit, and the quantities and other ingredients that go nicely with them in muffins.  It will be the ultimate muffin guide!  She seems to be taking forever to pass it over to me though - as a librarian and semi-perfectionist, she won't let it out of her hands until she's decided on the perfect title for the document.  My dad's suggestion of "Muffins: Whatever Shit You Got" didn't go over well.

Easy Peasy Cheese Souffle

I've heard it so many times.  "The secret of making a souffle is that it's not as difficult as they say it is."  Hmmm.  It looks difficult.  It looks like the kind of thing that's going to take calm preparation, not the panicked disorganisation that goes on in my kitchen. 

So I thought I'd give it a whirl. And you know what? It wasn't difficult. It wasn't even time consuming.  Whipping those egg whites to perfect stiffness was a bit boring, and I wouldn't do this on a weeknight or anything, but it wasn't exactly some kind of gourmet dark art.

Tasted pretty nice, too.  We had it with steamed buttered french beans.  It tasted a bit like a really posh bowl of cheesey scrambled eggs.  Each ramekin only held one egg each, but we were stuffed after eating!  It must have been all the air in there, because after a few belches, we were starving again. 

Not sure I'd make it again, but at least I can say I can do it. 

Note:
It's a bit painful for me to look at these photos, as only an hour later, the black Le Creuset ramekin had a fatal accident with the ceramic tiled floor.  Goodbye, sweet raemkin. 

White crusty bread!

It's finally official... we've left beautiful Brighton by the sea and moved much closer to work, in dreary ol' London.  The downside is that I no longer have a Waitrose, M&S, and Topshop within metres of my house.  Upside is that we now have a garden, and a kitchen to DIE for.... which is making me feel extremely domestic. 

I left work early on Thursday, and thought I fancied a bit of Stepford bliss in my gorgeous new kitchen.  What could be more domestic than baking bread!

I used a combination of white flour and strong bread flour - which made it nice and squishy.   I also sprinkled lots of flour on top, and put a dish of water in the oven, which made the nice crusty top.  And check out the lines I made with a knife!  Makes it look like proper artisan bakery bread!

And boy does kneading feel properly good after a stressful week at work!

But the taste.... mmmm the taste.  Homemade bread is just a completely different food than store bought bread.  No improvers or masses of water to give it structure.... just good old fashioned flour and yeast.  Yum!

Basil and Chorizo Pizza. I want to eat this every night for the rest of my life.

Every once in while I eat something that I decide I just want to eat every single day forever and ever. I imagine becoming the crazy-lady that only eats one dish.... going to the supermarket and buying the ingredients in bulk... eating that one thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner for all of eternity.

This was one of those things.  Sadly, I ended up having porridge for breakfast the next morning, so things for me and this pizza didn't turn out to be long term.  But it was only about a week before I had another delicious encounter with the World's Best Pizza.

We quite like thin crusts on pizza, so we usually use a Turkish Lavash bread for the base. (I can just HEAR the Italian readers cringing...)  You can crisp it up in the oven ahead of time, but when you eat it, it makes a nice crispy bread, which is still malleable enough to roll up.

Here's how easy it is to make this pizza:

1. In a mini food processor, whizz up 2 tbsp of olive oil with a big handful of fresh basil leaves
2. Slice up a ball of mozzarella and a bit of good quality chorizo
3. Brush the thin pizza base with your basil oil
4. Scatter the mozzarella, chorizo, and some sundried or sunkissed tomatoes over the pizza
5. Slice up an avocado and squeeze a lemon over the top
6. Bake the pizza for 10 minutes
7. Top the pizza with the avocado slices and a few more leaves of basil

Incredible! But don't blame me if you never eat anything else ever again.

Tofu and vegetable superfood skewers

Here's another superfood extravaganza for the books. And... I'm starting to sound like a broken record here.... it's from those lovelies at Tesco magazine.... but using ingredients delivered by Ocado! There just doesn't seem to be any editorial control over these people! Do they even talk to their colleagues in the products department? All of their recipes call for things like buckwheat and chinese 5 spice paste, which Tesco doesn't actually sell.

This one makes use of lovely soft fresh tofu. If you actually had to restrict yourself to Tesco ingredients, you'd have to use that awful long-life Blue Dragon tofu in a cardboard box. Retch.

This is pretty quick and easy - perfect for a weeknight. The tofu is a tad under-flavoured, but not too bad if you make sure it's grilled properly. The salad bit is gorgeous.

Ingredients

* 250 g pack tofu, cut into pieces
* 1 large courgette, cut into rings, then halved
* 2 small red onions, peeled and cut into wedges
* 8 bamboo skewers
* 2 tbsp olive oil
* juice of 1 lemon
* 1 tsp Chinese 5-spice paste
* 300 g quinoa
* 250 g cooked broccoli florettes
* 30 g fresh parsley, finely chopped
* 2 tsp harissa paste
* 100 g pack pomegranate seeds

1. Place alternate pieces of tofu, courgette and onion onto 8 bamboo skewers and brush with half the olive oil. Grill for about 15 minutes until browned, turn regularly. Then drizzle with half the lemon juice and sprinkle with 5-spice powder.

2. Cook the quinoa for 15 minutes, according to packet instructions, draining off any excess water. Mix in the broccoli, parsley, rose harissa or harissa powder, the remaining lemon juice and olive oil, then sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.

3. Divide the quinoa pilaf between four plates and place two skewers on each to serve.

Yummy leeks and eggs for breakfast

This is a Sunday staple in our house.  Perfect for mornings when you sleep in a little late, and fancy some brunch.  (Brunch is my favourite meal, followed closely by linner.)  It's so easy and sooooo yum, it's great to make when you have guests staying over as it looks like hard work.

All you need is leeks, soya milk (I've also used double cream), eggs, and grainy mustard.  We make this dish so often, that it's earned it's own concatenated name, "Leggs". 

Using one leek per person, finely slice the leek and sauté in a frying pan of butter and olive oil.  When it starts to go a little soft, add a few tablespoons of soya milk, and a good few dollops of mustard.  Sauté 5 minutes more until the mixture is very very soft.

In a ramekin (one per person), line the edges with the leek mixture, then crack two eggs over the top.  Carefully pour in a small spoonful of soya milk, season generously with salt and pepper, and microwave with clingfilm wrapped tightly over the ramekin. 

How long you microwave is up to you and how much you like jiggly bits of egg.   I usually cook mine for 3 minutes, and The Husband's for 5.  Keep in mind that the egg will keep cooking after you remove it from the microwave.  Remove the film, stir, and let cool before eating. 

Black Salsify, Spinach & Gruyere Gratin

Here's a lovely recipe I was sent by my veg box people, We Love Local.  They send me all kinds of mad things every week, most of which I have some kind of idea what to do with.  But not this week!  I opened the box to find a pile of long brown sticks I had no idea what to do with.  I'd read about salsify (scorzonera) before, but never seen it up close.

Lucky for me, We Love Local had included instructions and a nice sounding recipe to go with it.  The recipe matched a ton of things I needed to use up, so half an hour later we were tucking in to a gorgeous bowl of creamy veg.  I didn't even tamper with the recipe like I usually do!

We're moving up to London in two weeks - I don't know how I'm going to live without my beloved veg box company.  I'm sure there will be plenty to choose from in London, but I will be surprised if they come close to offering the quality and variety that We Love Local do.

Black Salsify, Spinach & Gruyere Gratin

30g of butter plus extra for greasing the gratin dish
450g black salsify, peeled or scrubbed
250g baby spinach
300ml vegetable or chicken stock
300ml single cream
Gruyere or edam cheese (no exact amounts here as it depends on how much cheesiness you like!)
White breadcrumbs, a couple of handfuls

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and butter the inside of your gratin dish.

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil.

Peel the salsify and cut into the desired lengths, then drop straight into the boiling water. Cook until just tender (around 8-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of your salsify).

Meanwhile, mix the stock and cream together and season.

Place a layer of salsify in the bottom of the dish and then add a layer of spinach. Grate over some gruyere cheese then finish with the remaining salsify and spinach.

Pour over the cream-stock mixture then mix the breadcrumbs with a generous amount of grated gruyere and sprinkle over the top of the gratin.
Bake until golden and bubbling.