Reciplace

Traditional Cornish Pasties

I remember Cornish Pasties from my childhood being really, really good things.  They were one of the naughty things I was allowed to eat when we came over to England on holiday, along with scotch eggs and sausage rolls.  But since moving here, they are no longer something that tempts me. 

I think it's because of that rubbish "Cornish Pasty Shop" place that's popped up everywhere lately. One of the boys from work and I normally end up on the same train back home after a night of post-work revelry.  And despite the fact that he spent most of his childhood in Cornwall, he still *insists* on going to this disastrous excuse of a fast-food counter at the end of a bender.  A couple of times I've been desperate enough to participate - and always regret it.  For three pounds, you too can buy a nasty, dry piece of pastry with some questionable chunks of cheap meat and a vegetable or two stuffed meagerly inside.

Real Cornish Pasties aren't like that.  To remind myself of how good they once were, The Husband and I cooked up a batch of these little beauties.  Using organic veg, a small amount of organic beef, and hand made pastry, we created some pasties that put the "Cornish Pasty Shop" to shame. 

Traditional Cornish Pasties

• 8oz flour
• 4 oz butter
• iced water
• 3/4 lb stewing steak, cubed
• 2 large potatoes, cubed
• 1 turnip or sweded, cubed
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 onion, chopped
• freshly ground salt and pepper

Place the flour with a pinch of a salt in a bowl.  Rub the butter into the flour.  Use a very small amount of iced water to help mix the dough into a ball. Place the ball into the fridge and chill until ready to use.

Place the steak, potatoes, turnip and onion in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. 

Divide the pastry into 6 balls and, on a floured work surface, roll each out into a round.  Sprinkle the round with flour, and place a mound of mixture on each.

Seal the pasties by damping the entire circumference of the pastry circle with water and the pull both sides of the pasty to meet the top.  (I needed two people to complete this step - thank goodness for The Husband!  He actually ended up rescuing me and doing all the shaping!)

Press together where the sides meet, and crimp the pastry all along the half moon shape.  Apparently the wives of the tin miners made the pasties into this shape to fit into their lunch boxes!

Coat the pasties with flour on the worksurface, and place the pasty on a well greased baking tray.

Bake in the oven at 190° for 10-15 minutes, then turn the oven down to about 180°, and bake for another 45 minutes to allow the meat and veg to cook.

These are so easy to make, and delicious straight out of the oven!  I might pack a few in a lunchbox the next time I go for an after work drinking session. 

Tuscan Spinach and Bean Soup and my favourite vinaigrette

To me, there are two rules of soup:  It must be made in winter, and it must take a long time to cook.  I love throwing a pile of veg into my slow cooker during the cold months, and letting it bubble away until I return from work to a warm and steamy soup-smelling kitchen.

But those rules go out the window for my beloved Tuscan Spinach and Bean Soup.  It's quick and easy (quick enough that you can throw it together on a weeknight), and it's a summer soup, without being served cold, like Gazpacho.

I always make this soup when I've bought an entire bag of spinach, left it in the fridge, it starts to wilt, untouched.  This recipe uses a whole bag, and it doesn't matter if it's not at its freshest.

Soup and salad is a complete meal at our house, and with only a few crisp lettuce leaves in the house and not much else, I decided to put them together with some croutons (from the crust of some stale rye bread) and my favourite salad vinaigrette. 

This salad vinaigrette is friggin' amazing.  Really.  The Husband didn't even eat salad when I first met him, but he will now sit and devour a bowl of salad with this vinaigrette on it like it's a bucket of fried chicken. 

Tuscan Spinach and Bean Soup

1tbsp olive oil
1 chopped onion
4 cloves of garlic
1 large carrot, diced
3 cups vegetable broth
1 tin chopped tomatoes (those new tinned cherry tomatoes are particularly nice)
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tin cannellini beans
1 package of spinach leaves, chopped
100g grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese
salt and pepper

In a large saucepan, heat up the oil and add the onion, garlic and carrot.  Cook gently for 5 minutes.  Add the chicken broth, tomatoes and oregano and cook for another 10 minutes. 

Stir in the beans, and bring the soup to a boil.  Turn the heat off, and add the spinach.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve with ribbons of Parmesan and fresh basil.

Jen's Favourite Salad Vinaigrette

salt and pepper
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
75mL rapeseed or sunflower oil
1 tbsp hot water

Grind some salt and pepper into a shallow bowl.  Add the mustard and vinegar, and mix to dissolve the salt and pepper.  Slowly add the oil, whisking at the same time to create an emulsion.  When it's really thick, add a spoonful of very hot water (from the kettle if it's on) to thin the vinaigrette out a little.  Pour over crisp salad leaves and crunchy croutons.

Bring back the Beetroot! (Beet and couscous salad)

Recently, I was inspired by my friand baking friend at work to "Bring back the Beetroot".  She and her team won a staff competition by creating a gorgeous display of beets, and making all kinds of different salads and cakes with this classic pink root.  While pink is not my favourite colour, there's certainly something quite girly and fun about eating pink salad!

Last month, I bought a pack of lovely organic pickled whole beetroot, which I was going to make a salad with.  It sat in the fridge for a few days after I came down with a cold/man flu.  On day three, when I finally felt ready to start eating again, those beets were calling me from the fridge, just begging me to eat them. I scarfed down all 6 whole beets in seconds.  My fingers were stained pink for days, and I had to cancel the salad idea.  (Not to mention a few days of.... errrr... an interesting hue in the bathroom...)

Today I bought some more lovely organic beets, so I decided to try again.   And here's what I did:

• 250g pack of cooked/pickled beetroot, sliced
• Whole pack of feta cheese (200g), crumbled
• handful of fresh mint leaves, chopped
• a bag (fresh) or tin (if you must) of chickpeas
• one lime
• a handful of pinenuts
• 200g buckwheat (but you could use couscous)

Toast the pinenuts, and pour boiling water on the buckwheat or couscous to soak.  Combine all of the ingredients, squeezing the lime juice over the salad at the end. 

And take a look at this lovely website, also campaigning to bring back the beets: http://www.lovebeetroot.co.uk/

Freezable Pizza Buns

This week The Husband has some sort of a motivational week at work where he has to cook lunch for all of his employees.  We thought of a few of our favourite gourmet treats... most of which would probably be lost on 20 year olds from Croydon. 

Then I remembered Pizza Buns!  My mum and I used to make huge batches of these to freeze for lunches when I was in school.  A small proportion of them ended up being discovered at the end of the year at the bottom of my locker, or in my bike bag... but nonetheless, I have fond memories of these delicious little parcels.

I emailed my mum right away for the recipe... and she wrote back within minutes (even though she lives on the other side of the world, I can always count on an almost-immediate response, any time of day or night!)  Somehow, my mother the former librarian had misplaced the recipe!  This is a woman who has alphabetically archived recipes she cut out of the newspaper in 1964 and never made.   We still can't figure out how she managed to lose this family classic.   So we had to try to recreate it!

The dough was easy... it's just regular pizza dough. 

• 1kg strong white bread flour or Tipo ‘00’ flour
• 1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
• 2 x 7g sachets of dried yeast
• 1 tablespoon golden caster sugar
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 650ml lukewarm water

Seive the flour and water onto a clean worksurface, and pour the mixed yeast, olive oil, sugar and water into a well in the middle.  Fold the flour into the water until you have a ball of wet dough that you can start to knead with your hands.  Knead until you have nice soft, smooth springy dough. 

Put the ball of dough into a bowl with a damp cloth over top.  Leave for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size.  Remove the ball of dough, knock it down by kneading it some more, and you're ready to use it.

Here comes the time consuming part....  Roll the dough out into a thin sheet, get a circular cookie cutter or a pint glass, and start cutting out thin circles.  This makes about 120 circles, so put aside an hour or so for this boring step.

For the meat mixture, we threw a few packets of ground beef, garlic, onions, green pepper, mushrooms, slices of pepperoni, a few jars of pizza sauce, and lots of dried herbs like oregano, parsley, thyme and sage, into our big slow cooker.  We let this bubble away while we slaved over the dough circles.   At the end, we stirred in an entire block of shredded white cheddar.  Go on, treat yourself to a few spoonfuls of the meat mixture at this point...  mmmmmm!

Finally, put a few large spoonfuls of meat mixture in the middle of one of the dough circles.  Use a pastry brush to slightly wet the outside of the circle, and place another circle on top.   Press around the edge to seal. 

Now you're ready to put the pizza buns in the oven.  (In batches probably, this recipe make loads of them!)  Put them in the middle shelf and bake for 25-30 minutes. 

Let them cool on a baking rack and wrap them in cling film.   They will keep in your freezer for a couple of months, and make loads of lunches and quick dinners!  And dispite all the meat and cheese, are probably way healthier than pizza pockets from the frozen section of the supermarket!

Freezable Burritos for Lunch with fresh Mexican salad

Working in Central London can take it's toll on your wallet. I have to pay *ahem* £4,000 per year on travel, and work worryingly close to Oxford Street and it's tempting wares.  Grabbing a quick bite to eat on your lunch break can cost you upwards of £6/day, which adds up!  We've got a lovely cafeteria in our office building which is a heckuvalot cheaper than eating elsewhere, but it gets tiring after a while, and my manager is convinced the food from there contains worms.  Errr....   

So I like to bring my lunch every day.  But believe me, when you have to leave the house at 7am you do not want to be building sandwiches in the morning!  So what to do?  The answer is making big batches of yummy stuff on the weekends, and freezing it up to take during the week.  Variety is key though, you don't want to be taking the same lasagna every day for a week, or you'll start to resent it and never cook it again (experience speaking here...).   

This is one of my favourite make-ahead lunches.   They are easy to make, make loads at a time, taste fantastic, and stack easily in the freezer without taking up too much room.   They're also good to make when a certain boyfriend (not mentioning any names) has left a weeks' worth of plastic containers at work and you have nothing to put a lasagna in to if you wanted to!

We start by making the burrito filling in the slow cooker.  I usually use a pack of organic lean ground beef (mince), a tin of kidney beans, a tin of black beans, 2 tins of crushed tomatoes, a couple of onions, some carrots, and lots of mexican seasoning such as crushed cumin seeds, hot sauce and chilli powder.   Cook on low for 4-6 hours. 

At this point, I normally refrigerate the mixture for a few hours or overnight, as it becomes less wet and is much easier to wrap in tortillas. 

Put about 4 big spoonfuls of mixture into a tortilla wrap.  Spoon over the top some refried beans, salsa, shredded cheddar, cooked rice, and if you like, some sliced jalapeno peppers.  Roll and wrap tightly, then immediately wrap again tightly in cling-film.  This makes about ten burritos, which you can neatly stack in your freezer.

On the night before you take a burrito for lunch, prepare the Mexican salad.  In a small bowl, mix together a handful of sliced cherry tomatoes, 3 chopped spring onions, half a sliced avocado, a large handful of chopped fresh coriander, a little bit of tabasco and the juice of half a lime.  We normally double this amount so we can both have burritos.  The lime juice helps to prevent the avocado from turning brown in the fridge overnight, but it will still turn a little. 

At work, just unwrap your frozen burrito and put on a plate, heat up in the microwave, and dish out the salad onto the plate when it's ready.  (Hopefully you've got those plastic containers back by now so you have something to put the salad in!)

Quinoa, Feta and Spinach Soup

Over the Christmas holidays, we went back to Canada to visit friends and family.  On New Years' Day, I ripped a recipe out of a newspaper in Toronto for a vegetarian soup using quinoa - a grain I've wanted to try for a while, but haven't found an inspiring enough use for it.  I dare not ask any of the food-writer girls at work for a recipe, seeing as I don't even know how to pronounce it!  But it looks pretty neat when it's cooked - it goes all transparent and glassy like those little scented beads they annoyingly put in the bag when you buy underwear at La Senza.

Once back in the UK, I tried the soup.  It was watery and seriously lacking in flavour.  So I binned the recipe.   Being the cheapskate that I am, I still packed up the leftovers and froze them to take to work for lunch.  I'd rather suffer through a bad food mistake than throw it away!  Weirdly, the soup was incredible when I took it to work the next week.  I think the feta had melted when I heated it up in the microwave, and it was gorgeous!  I was kicking myself for throwing the recipe away, but a ten minute intense session with Mr. Google and I found it again!  It's from a book called Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen and it was printed in the Toronto Star.

The original calls for shucking corn cobs and squeezing milk out of them with the back of a knife.  Sorry, but I don't shuck corn on a weeknight - it tastes fine with frozen sweetcorn.  I also let it cook for around 10 minutes on a low heat at the end, to allow the feta to melt, and turn it into a chowder-like texture.  Since you're using hot water as a base, rather than a stock, I think it needs some sort of flavour to infuse the liquid.  It's sooo much better this time around, and perfect for freezing and taking to work for lunch this week - yum!

Here's my slightly modified version of Deborah Madison's Quinoa, Feta and Spinach Soup:

7 cups water
3/4 cup quinoa, rinsed well
3/4 cup frozen sweetcorn kernels
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeño chili, seeded, finely diced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 white potatoes, peeled, cut in 1/4-inch dice
Freshly ground pepper
1/2 lb (225 g) feta cheese, cut in small cubes
4 cups baby spinach
one bunch green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup chopped coriander leaves

In medium saucepan, bring water to boil. Add quinoa; return to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer 10 minutes. Drain; reserving quinoa and cooking liquid separately.

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium-high. Add garlic and chili. Cook 30 seconds.

Add cumin, salt, potatoes and 6 cups quinoa cooking liquid. Bring to boil. Add quinoa. Reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer, partially covered, until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Add corn kernels and season with pepper.

Stir in cheese, spinach, onions and coriander Cover. Cook 10 minutes. Stir well.

Makes about 4 servings.