Apples for Eve

So the end of my final term has come. My dissertation, which happens to be about cookery writing, has been handed in. I only hope that all my research (read: hours spent ooing and aahing over gastroporn) has paid off. Now that my freedom in the kitchen has returned, I wanted to be inspired to make something that would take all afternoon. That inspiration came in the form of this video. I am only accustomed to the distinctly turgid little balls purchasable from all supermarkets, and so was intrigued to try something a little more ‘authentic’. Goodness knows why we strive for authenticity when, surely, the aim of cooking is simply to make something good (enough) to eat. I have to agree though, there is something smugly satisfying about convincing yourself that yours is as close to the Tuscan original that can be expected from a kitchen in Bethnal Green.

As with most Italian food, it’s best kept simple and so I simply plopped some ricotta and steamed spinach amongst my comforting delights before dashing off for an evening of fun and frolics. Oh, life is good right now.

One warning about this dish is that it makes a lot, and is also quite time consuming BUT the freshness and tenderness definitely make it worth it. You can deal with the excess, as I happily did, by making the dough into little potato pancakes. The dough doesn’t keep well and will go grey in the fridge after a few hours, this may seem off-putting, but I can only be honest with you. The pancakes, however, will keep for a few days and are just as good reheated with a fried egg and spicy tomato salsa, as they are fresh.

Ingredients 

1 kg King Edward or Maris Piper potatoes

200g plain flour

1 beaten egg

a good pinch of salt

30g semolina for coating

olive oil

butter

spinach and ricotta (optional)

cracked black pepper

• Place the potatoes, with the skins on (this is important to retain the starch, but don’t think you haven’t got out of peeling them!)  into boiling salted water and cook for 20-25 mins or until just cooked. This will obviously depend on the size of the potatoes.
• Meanwhile, clean a big surface and get your egg and flour ready as it’s important to make the dough while the potatoes are still warm and so you don’t want to waste any time faffing about with scales later on.
• When the potatoes are cooked, peel them, with a peeler, or with your fingers if your hands are made of asbestos. Let your house-mate make jokes about hot potatoes and let him/her mime throwing them around but do not laugh. This is serious gnocchi.
• Mash the potato as finely as you can, you probably will need to resort to a fork in the end. Who actually has a potato ricer? I like mash, but not that much.
• When you have given up on your potatoes, plonk them on the table and make a well in the middle. Add your beaten egg, salt and flour and knead into a firm dough.
• Make long sausage shapes and from these, cut little oblongs and press a fork into them a bit so they look like how gnocchi looks.

• Roll in the semolina.
• Then, either place in rapidly boiling water for about a minute, until they come to the surface of the water. Or, as I did, heat a combination of butter and oil in a pan (butter for richness, oil to stop the butter from burning) and fry for two minutes on each side, until golden brown.
• Serve on warm plates with your cooked spinach and blobs of ricotta, some seasoning and a drizzle of good olive oil.
• Mmmmmm

Recently I’ve been experimenting with the delightful black pudding. It’s a great student food, even the ones available at farmers’ markets are affordable and it’s packed full of iron and protein. There are wide variations, but the base idea of using part of an animal to encase blood remains the same from Portugal to Norway and Russia to Nepal. Pigs, cows, sheep and goats’ blood is normally used, sometimes a mixture. The most luxuriant example I have come across uses the blood and fat of a porpoise which was fed to nobles in the 15th century. The first literary reference to black pudding comes in the eighteenth book of Homer’s Odyssey, whilst the first recipe was included in one of the first cookbooks ever written by Apicius in the Middle Ages.

Despite the recent rise in sales of offal and all the nasty bits, we are still quite squeamish about eating blood. I’ve tried to make a dish that gets away from the usual association of black pudding as just another fry-up element and I think the recipe below makes a very easy week night supper. I’ve kept the flavour combinations simple and classic, with the richness from the pudding it’s important not to overload the dish, the lemon and caraway in the dressing are there to brighten the whole thing up. I wish I had had some mozzarella when making this, it would have rounded it off nicely so if you have some, feel free to make the addition.

Ingredients 

150g black pudding

100g (or so) lardons

½ a lettuce

a mug of peas

a handful fresh thyme

a handful fresh mint

1 eating apple

1 tbspn olive oil

For the dressing: (not strict measurements, it’s important to taste and alter as you wish and to keep doing so until you are satisfied)

2 desertspn extra virgin olive oil

1 desertspn white wine vinegar

¼ tspn salt

1 small garlic clove

juice of half a lemon

½ tspn caraway seeds

pinch of ground white pepper

½ tspn caster sugar

• Start by making the dressing so that the flavours have time to mingle. In a pestle and mortar grind the garlic, caraway seeds and salt together to form a paste.
• Add the pepper and vinegar and stir.
• Add the oil.
• Add the lemon and sugar a little at a time until you have the right balance of bitterness and sweetness.
• Wash the leaves of the lettuce and lay out on a clean tea towel to dry.
• Cook your peas so they are only just cooked.
• Meanwhile, tear up the thyme and mint and put in a large mixing bowl.
• Slice the black pudding, if it is not already sliced. Peel and chop the apple.
•  Heat the oil in a large frying pan and when it is really hot, put in the lardons and black pudding. Keep the lardons moving until they go golden brown and then remove them from the pan onto a piece of kitchen roll so they go crispy.
• The black pudding will need 2-3 mins on each side and should be done at the same time as the lardons.
• Put the black pudding to one side and fry the apple in the juices from the meat, until only just golden brown.
• Put the dry lettuce in the bowl with a herbs. Double check the seasoning of the dressing and dress the salad so the leaves are just coated.
• Arrange the leaves on a plate and then top with the black pudding, lardons, peas, apple and mozzerella (if you have some)
• Drizzle with the remainder of the dressing and enjoy!

Oft have I been outraged by the extortionate price of good cereal and oh my does woe betide me when I resort to masticating the cardboard that most supermarkets pass off as fast-breaking material. I struggle to get out of bed in the morning when I know the only sustenance available is a fibrous mulch so similar to grout I might as well be eating…grout.

There is, however, one benefit of this pre-noon endurance challenge that comes in the form of a little something we often take for granted: perspective. If sub-standard bran flakes are one of my biggest concerns, then I’m a pretty fortunate lady .

What I mean to say is I’ve toyed with Leon’s recipe for granola and I now wake up looking forward to a bountiful crunch in the morning, which sets me up nicely and is a long way from the over-priced tree bark I’ve become accustomed to. For now, I can concentrate on my other dilemmas, which could prove to be somewhat more difficult than roasting some oats.

Really Great Granola (makes lots and lots)

150g runny honey

75ml sunflower oil

250g oats

100g bran

100g wheatgerm

150g sunflower seeds

150g pumpkin seeds

75g sesame seeds

100g sultanas

100g other dried fruit e.g. apricots, pineapple, cranberries

Typing this out made me realise that there really isn’t a strict recipe for this. I’m not a very nutty person but I know a lot of people would appreciate the addition of some hazelnuts or pecans. Dates are also great but as they are very high GI, I’ve left them out. Also, we have bran and wheatgerm lying around as it goes in our bread, but if you’re struggling to find some then Planet Organic or The Grocery do good affordable ones. Sorry that’s for Londoners only.

• Preheat the oven to 200°C.
• On a low heat, in a small saucepan, melt the oil and honey together so it’s super runny.
• Lay the oats, bran and seeds out on the biggest baking tray you have, potentially across two.
• Then pour the oily honey over your oat/bran/seed combo and mix well. It will still be quite dry but that’s fine.
• Bake for 20 mins, mixing halfway through.
• Leave in the tray to cool.
• Chop additional fruit and nuts if need be.
• Mix everything together and store in an airtight jar.
• Greet the day with some of your granola, yoghurt and fruit for something to keep you going for aaaaggeessss. Or at least until lunch.

I feel a bit naughty writing about the same recipe in two places but this one is just too good not to! I’ve started a new column in The London Student about ingredients that are a little bit out of the ordinary, or at least not in keeping with the meat-and-two-veg ethic. Here is what I had to say about wasabi:

I’m sure you’ve smeared it on your sashimi or nigiri, but have you ever wondered how this peculiar green paste got to sit alongside your pickled ginger and fish-shaped sachet of soy sauce?

Although wasabi is most commonly compared to horseradish, it is in fact not related. It is a small plant that grows in rural Japan, hence its literal translation ‘mountain hollyhock’. It takes several years to mature naturally although it can be cultivated in a man-made environment, where special attention has to be paid as it can only grow in temperatures of between 11-14°C. So it’s just as well you only need a smidgen to make a difference to your dish. The paste we most commonly come across is made from the root of the plant, but the leaves, stalks and flowers can also be used to make a pickle to accompany Japanese curries if you’re lucky enough to discover the entire plant in an Asian supermarket.

As it is normally included in savoury dishes, I thought I would mix things up a little bit and combine it with chocolate for a cupcake with a kick and a punch. I know you’re thinking, ‘Holy Katsu!’, but bear with me. The bitterness of the chocolate and the warmth of the wasabi work in harmony rather than competing to make a beautiful little number. Here is how to do it:

Chocolate and Wasabi Cupcakes (makes 16)

Ingredients

For the cakes:

100g good dark chocolate (at least 70%)

100g butter

175g golden caster sugar

1 tspn vanilla extract

3 large eggs

100g self-raising flour

½ tspn baking powder

¼ tspn salt

1 generous tbspn wasabi paste (Don’t be scared! It loses some of its potency in cooking)

For the icing:

50g softened butter

100g full-fat cream cheese

250g icing sugar

1 tspn vanilla extract

½ tspn ground ginger

To decorate:

Crushed wasabi peanuts

Stem ginger

• On a very low heat in a large saucepan melt the chocolate and butter together and when they are smooth, add the sugar. Mix well, but don’t worry, the sugar is not supposed to dissolve so the mixture will be a bit grainy.
• Leave to cool for 10-15 mins.

• Preheat the oven to 180°C.
• Add the eggs, one at a time.
• Then, sift in the dry ingredients and finally thoroughly work in the wasabi.

• Scoop a good dessertspoon into each paper case and bake for 15-20 mins, depending on your oven. To test, insert a thin knife or skewer and if it comes out clean then they are done, but if it has some goo on it then they need a little more time.
• While they are in the oven, make the icing. Blend the butter and cream cheese together with a wooden spoon.
• Gradually sift in the icing sugar and when all is well blended, add the ginger and vanilla.
• When the cakes have cooled, slice the tops to give a flat surface for the icing. Smear a good teaspoon of the icing on top and decorate with the crushed wasabi peanuts and finely chopped ginger as you see fit.
•  Tuck in!

I’ve been a fan of the Spooning with Rosie cookbook ever since the discovery of her seeded soda bread.  Unfortunately, I have now banged on about said bread so often it accompanies Berlin in the ‘list of topics Eve is not allowed to talk about’. I tried out another one of Rosie’s recipes on Friday night and I must say this tomato and ricotta risotto is marvellous. It’s a winter filler but not too bloating (for those still kidding themselves 2012 is THE year to reach peak physical form) because it uses pearl barley as opposed to risotto rice.  Normally pearl barley is one of those ingredients kept at the back of the cupboard, where probably most of it has spilt out into little piles along with stray sultanas. I had never used it for anything other than bulking out soups before but it works really well and so I wholeheartedly recommend exploring the depths of your store cupboard.

This dish has yet to make the aforementioned list but I figured I should probably tell you guys about it as I’m not one for keeping secrets. Here are reasons why it is so good: firstly, it is cheap, in keeping with my £20 a week goal. Secondly, it’s nutritionally balanced and low GI. Thirdly, it’s one of those dishes where you honestly don’t want meat to make it better, a rare occasion. Fourthly, you may think on first reading the recipe that it’s a bit faffy but it’s actually not as faffy as it seems. Fifthly, it needs much less attention than a conventional risotto and finally, it’s absolutely delicious and moreish and I wish I had some more leftovers so if you make this please can I have some thank you I’ll do the washing up I promise ok great.

Tomato and Ricotta Pearl Barley Risotto (adapted from Spooning with Rosie)

serves 3-4

500g ripe fresh tomatoes

1l chicken/vegetable stock

1 large onion

4 cloves garlic (or 3 if they’re really big)

250g pearl barley

125g ricotta

1 tspn balsamic vinegar

½ tspn caster sugar

½ tspn dried thyme (optional)

pinch of smoked paprika (optional)

2 tbspn olive oil

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• Slice the tomatoes.
• Put in a saucepan with the stock, bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 15 mins.
• Meanwhile, finely chop the onions and garlic.
• Take off the heat. Blend with a hand schjudger thing.
• Strain through a sieve to get rid of skin and pips.
• To this soupy wonder add the vinegar and sugar.
• Gently fry the onions in the normal olive oil and when they have gone clearish, add the garlic for 1 minute before adding the pearl barley.
• Give it a good stir so everything is coated in the oil and then add the tomatoey stock.
• Add thyme and paprika if desired, stir, bring to a gently simmer and leave for 45 mins.
• Towards the end of this time it is a good idea to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t stick to the pan, but other than that you have yourself the perfect amount of time to catch a sitcom re-run and put some plates in the oven to warm.
• Just before serving, season to taste, although it probably won’t need much.
• To serve, plate up the risotto, add chunks of ricotta and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. I did mine with a rocket and Parmesan salad to give it a bit of green, which went very nicely even if I do say so myself, which I do.

One of the most boring things about blogs is when the blogger makes ridiculous excuses for not having blogged in a while but hear me out, I think mine is pretty good. For the past few months I have had neither a kitchen nor the internet and when you write a food blog, it’s fair to say both of those are, well, imperative.

This is just say that I am still basking in the wonder that was our house Christmas dinner last Sunday (see picture below)

It was definitely a good’un.

This is one of my favourite times of the year when I’m reminded of what inspired me to start this blog in the first place. The apples and pears (not in the Cockney rhyming slang sense) are bountiful, I don’t know what to do with all the fruits (literal fruits) of friends’ and family’s labour. But thank you.

I’ve recently found out that the flat I’ll be moving to in the next couple of weeks is part of an urban regeneration scheme, which translates to us having access to an allotment. I’m overjoyed, this time next year I’ll get revenge. I might only grow marrows, one for every person I know, and then carve my friends’ most distinguishing features into them. I’ll wrap them up so they looks like Terry’s chocolate oranges (I’m a deceptively apt wrapper) then Bam! Marrow doppelganger! Yeah, that’ll be great. So watch out… Alternatively, if I don’t know you and you’d like to be sculpted out of marrow, commissions are very welcome.

Enough of my tangential waffling, here’s a recipe that has a minty Springishness about it, yet uses seasonal ingredients and will warm you up nicely. That doesn’t mean you can forget about your slipper socks, y’know, the ones with the grip on the bottom, but you can keep them in the draw for now.

A Beautiful Broth

serves 4

500g (as many as you can carry in two hands) broad beans*

3 medium waxy potatoes

Loads of spinach

1 medium red onion

2 large cloves garlic

750ml vegetable stock/bouillon

A good slosh of extra virgin olive oil

1 massive handful of mint

1 large bay leaf

Salt and pepper

4 slices of smoked streaky bacon (optional)

*readily available at the mo, but frozen can be used at other times of the year. The weight given is pre-shelling. Once shelled, probably only 100g are used.

1. Shell the beans. Just pop them outs of their pods, gasp in awe at how fluffy the pods are inside and think about how much you’d like to be wrapped up in one. Lucky beans. In seriousness, you can blanch them first to make that a little easier if you like, but with such tender ones, this shouldn’t be an issue.
2. Dice the potatoes. As in, cut them into cubes about the size of dice.
3. Slice the onions, not too finely.
4. Slice the garlic, you can be a little slap-dash here too, if you like, let’s go wild.
5. Heat the oil.
6. Sweat the onions and potatoes for 10 mins. Use a nice big pan and don’t let the tatties stick to the base of it.
7. Add the garlic for one more sweaty minute.
8. Add the stock and bay leaf.
9. Heat the grill for the bacon.
10. Bring the broth to the boil. Imagine you’re using a cauldron.
11. Start grilling the bacon.
12. Cover and simmer the broth for 5-10 mins. Making sure the potatoes aren’t too soft.
13. Add your beans and cook for 5 more mins.
14. Cram all your spinach into the pan. Doubt that it’s going to wilt down. Sigh when it does.
15. Season.
16. Stir in the mint just before ladling, in a witch-like manner, into bowls.
17. Balance your bacon bits on top.
18. Voila.

Hey guys and gals, another little gem for you here. If you don’t fancy sinking your carnivorous canines into my carnitas then I’ve got something a little more veggie friendly for you today.

When I was doing a bit of work for my new friends at Truman’s beer back in February, I chanced upon the wonder that is Leon. I say chanced upon, it’s quite a big chance seeing as how they’re a chain with over ten establishments in London, however, the point is that I went there and they are great. I was given their first cookbook as a birthday present, so I can’t take credit for this recipe, but I can take credit for how radiant you’ll look when you’re contentment makes you glow like these roasted, sumptuous treats.



I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that they borrowed my brain when coming up with the ethos for Leon. Most of the food is seasonal and local, they even have low GI brownies. Low Glycaemic Index food, means that the sugar from the food enters your blood stream more slowly, hence keeping your energy steady, as opposed to having it peak and trough like a yoyo trying to walk the dog and go round the world at the same time. I was one of those children that spent most of their time upside-down, hanging off monkey-bars, trees, relatives, y’know. It’s only as I’ve got older that I’ve realised I need to be a little more careful with how I handle my sugar. To make matters worse, it’s not just those ssuuhhweeeett thangs that have a high GI. Potatoes are a nightmare for a glucose storm, I know, a little harmless mash with your bangers, how can something that looks so much like clouds be wrong?! Sorry my friend, but that energy is going in quick and leaving you Slumped. That’s right, with a capital S. This recipe is GI friendly, so fed to children they will be likely maintain a terminal velocity proportional to their body weight, divided by their age. Ok, that last bit isn’t true but it is something that’s tasty and won’t make you bounce off the ceiling.



I cooked these for me Ma and Pa and there were no complaints. In fact, there weren’t many noises at all, except for munching and the scraping of plates. I know of lots of people are moving into new houses at the moment in preparation for a new term, this would be a perfect house-warming dish to share.

Ingredients

700g sweet potato (about 2 largish ones)

2 tspn ground cumin

2 tspn ground coriander

2 cloves garlic

Loadsa fresh coriander

Half a lemon

125g gram flour (* scroll to the bottom if you’re as confused as I was)

Olive oil

Sesame seeds

Salt and Pepper



1. The Leon recipe says to roast the sweet potato but I didn’t have time so I just peeled and boiled it. BORING
2. Mash it up, mash it right up with the cumin, coriander x 2, garlic finely chopped, juice of the half lemon and gram flour
3. Season
4. Put in the freezer for half an hour so all the flavours can be friendly with each other. Not sure how this works, I wouldn’t be very friendly if someone put me in a freezer
5. Heat oven to 200°C
6. Oil a tray
7. Put big dollops of orange mess on tray
8. Sprinkle with sesame seeds
9. Bake for 15 mins or until going golden brown on the edges
10. I served mine in a wrap with heaps of salad, sweet chili sauce and mayo. Drool worthy.

*This is flour from chickpeas or lentils. In Oxford, I found it in Uhuru, the whole food  shop on the Cowley Road but I’m sure the Indian shops have it too. In London, wander up Bethnal Green Road and you’ll see they have it in basically every corner shop.

Oxford is quite the contrast to Berlin. The utterly befuddling chaos of Berlin seems so far away, but that’s what coming home is all about. I’m finding home comforts so novel including my mum’s pineapple upside down cake. I would give you the recipe, but it’s a secret.

Hello! What a jolly sight, eh? A nice slab of pork…shoulder? I’m not really sure. The lady at the market (who looked a little too similar to her products, if you ask me) said they didn’t have any ‘Schulter’ and so I pointed at what looked good.

‘A big juicy bit please, marbled with fat if you can, nice and lean, there’s a good’un!’ I said in my head as something equivalent of ‘large pork now’ came out of my mouth in German.  I then mentally followed an uninterpretable grunt with ‘What’s that you say? I am very sorry I haven’t any truffles, probably shouldn’t have killed your pig if that’s what you’re after!’. At least I assume that was the subject of her enquiry.

As you may have gathered by now I’m not a massive meat eater, this is partly due to a guilty environmental conscience but also down to being a big fat fuss-pot. I drool just as much as anyone else over a duck confit or steak tartare but these are not daily dishes and the point of this blog is to show food that makes your guinea pigs go ‘Wow, I think I’m going to melt’ so that you can then sit back and watch them do so. I know, right? Melting guinea pigs. Mental.

With meat, I like to keep it simple. A Poulet aux Quarante Gousses d’Ail for example, sounds like a nightmare but is little more than your average Sunday roast. The following is another recipe with very few ingredients, three in fact. Two of which are salt and water- so can you guess the last one?

‘But doesn’t it just taste briny?!’ I hear you cry. No! It tastes even better than a Hog Roast at a festival when you’re hungover and convinced that crumbly pigginess is the only thing that can save you. Yes, this is pork carnitas.

Ingredients

1kg pork (shoulder, deboned ribs or similar)

2 tspn table salt

Cold water

Lots of optional extras to suit you (I can recommend the redcurrants)

Method

1. Chop the pork into cubes about half the size of an Oxo pack, a bit bigger than bite-size.
2. Place into a large saucepan/cast iron pan (if you have one, you snazzy thing, you) but don’t  make the pork more than one layer deep. You might have to spread the meat over two pans, or at least I did.
3. Coat the meat in the salt. (So, one teaspoon per pot, if divided equally senoritas)
4. Only just cover with cold water
5. Bring to a rolling boil
6. Turn the heat down. You now have about an hour and a half to wait so…
7. Have a Corona
8. Find tall, dark, stranger to teach you tango
9. Keep an eye on the meat. When all the liquid has evaporated, it will fry in its own loveliness.
10. Once frying, keep on the heat for a further ten minutes. At this point, I added some black pepper, chilli and some dark brown sugar but they are not essential.
11. Carnitas is tradtionally your pork meat served in a tortilla with salsa or guacamole etc. I served mine with a red onion, lime and coriander relish, sour cream and redcurrants. It was delicious.