C'est si facile, une petite tarte! Especially if you've got a little help from Marie, over here on the left, and her ready-rolled puff pastry. I dare you: tell 'em you made it yourself. No one will know.
I determined to be tart-tastic the other weekend in Paris -- Abbi's son Lionel knocked one up in moments (yeah, yeah, very funny) and I suddenly felt I might be able to do the same. This is the work of twenty minutes -- maybe not that much -- not counting the baking time, of course, but that's putting-your-feet up time. These are my ingredients, but hey, use what you please. I'm really cool about that.
4-5 leeks, well washed and sliced thin
100g (ish) bacon, diced small
handful chopped parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
125g (ish, again) cheese of your choice, grated: I'm for gruyere, which is pretty trad
5 large eggs
80 ml double cream
salt and pepper
You'll need a loose-bottomed tart tin that fits the pastry: 30cm is good. Preheat oven to 200C.
Heat oil and butter in a saute pan and cook the leeks until they are lovely and soft. Ten minutes, maybe more. Put a lid on for a bit; don't let them brown. When they're loose and relaxed-looking, add the bacon and continue cooking until bacon's done. Add parsley and a little salt, to your taste, and pepper.
In a bowl, whisk together eggs and cream.
Unroll your pastry and line your tin. Scatter cheese over the base; then add your leek-bacon filling, spreading it out nicely. Now pour over the eggs and cream and pop into the oven. It should take no more than 20 minutes to bake -- you don't want it overdone. It will puff up beautifully. Magnifique! Make a petite salade verte and your dinner is complete. I was going to take a picture of the finished article, but we devoured it trop vite!
As I was saying: who needs pancake mix? Not me -- and not you. Not on a sunny Sunday morning when a little grain-swapping makes for an entertaining start to the day. So here's some buckwheat, black wheat, the French call it: if you're over in Brittany and have yourself a tasty galette, this is the flour it will be made from. For this morning's pancakes, I used my farine de sarrasin, some home made oatmeal flour (that's oatflakes whizzed in the food processor) and rye flour -- but any combination is possible. You can use plain old white or whole wheat flour for some or all; I also like to use fine-ground cornmeal/polenta.
Sometimes if I have half a banana that's going soft, I'll mash that up and put it in at the adding-the-egg-and-milk stage. But sometimes Theo will say: Mum, don't add banana, okay? And then I don't.
The other thing that's flexible is how much liquid you use. More liquid equals thinner, more crepe-like pancakes, which is what my gourmet son prefers. My Dad, as I've written, made thicker batter for smaller, silver-dollar cakes. As for what you cook 'em on, I have a wide flat stovetop crepe-pan, with almost no rim: it's about 35 cm across. But a regular frying pan will do, if that's what you've got.
I put on a low oven so I can keep the pancakes warm before I serve them; I dab them with a little softened butter before I serve them -- and of course have proper maple syrup to hand, warmed a little on the stove or in the microwave (20 seconds is all you need: just to take the chill off).
The measures I use, once again, for the flours are American cup measures. Get confident and you can just do it by eye!
Serves three or four, depending on how ravenous everyone is.
1/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/3 cup oatmeal flakes, whizzed in food processor to make flour
1/3 cup dark rye flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
25 g butter, melted
2 large eggs
300 ml (roughly) milk
Put the flours together in a bowl with the baking powder, salt and sugar.
Break the eggs into a smaller bowl and whisk; add milk. This is where you'd mash in that half banana, if you were of a mind to.
Fold eggs and milk into flour mix and stir until nicely combined; add melted butter. Is it thin enough for you? This quantity of milk gives a nicely springy crepe; use less milk if you want a thicker batter.
Grease your pan with an oily paper towel (use a neutral oil, like sunflower) and heat until it's really pretty hot, but not smoking. Pour on about half a cup of batter and swirl the pan around, lifting and tilting, until you have a lovely spread-out crepe. Not round? Who cares?
Cook until the edges start to lift just a little; the batter will be bubbling. Flip with a spatula and cook on the other side until the steam coming off of it begins to diminish; don't over-cook.
When you have a nice stack of these beauties, grace with maple syrup and fruit. There. Now who said breakfast was a chore?
So, Catherine and I had planned to meet in town for a ginger beer, but in the end she came round to my gaff. It seemed only fair to offer her something to rival a Fentimans, but what might that be? Lemonade? Simple, but maybe a bit obvious. In the end, I came up with this, and I bet you'll like it. It is aptly named, since Catherine is certainly cordial.
juice and zest of two lemons
4 tablespoons sugar
4 cm ginger root, peeled and coarsely grated
A few summer fruits -- a couple of strawberries, a couple of cherries... take out any stones, and chop the fruit up a bit
Put the lemon juice, zest, sugar, and ginger in a little pan on the hob; bring to a boil and just let the sugar dissolve. Have ready a clean glass jar into which you've put the cut up fruit; pour over the ginger-lemon-sugar mix. Stick in the fridge and allow to cool.
Thin to taste with water or soda water in a tall iced glass; you can strain it if you want, but we loved the gingery fruity bits at the bottoms of our cups.
Makes enough for about six glasses. Will it keep? It didn't last long enough for us to find out!
Went for a swim at the lido the other morning; on my way home, just at the top of Broadway Market, I found these gorgeous apricots lying in wait for me -- how could I resist?
The trouble with an apricot, however, is that -- however beautiful -- they never really taste very nice, do they? Always a bit dry, and furry, and somehow disappointing.
Unless, of course, you turn them into jam.
Yes, yes, it always makes me a little nervous too, jam-making. All that stuff about setting points, and the "wrinkle test" (sounds like something I'm going to do more and more as I head deep into middle age...). But relax! Who cares if your jam is a bit runny? It will still be delicious. As for sterilizing jars: I used to use Theo's baby bottle sterilizer, but that's long gone, of course. Now I reckon a hot dishwasher is fine: put the jars in, with their lids, run the dishwasher, and don't open it until you are ready to fill the jars. Job done. For this recipe you'll need five 370g jars -- I use old Bonne Maman jars, mostly.
My go-to guru for jam -- and more -- is the late Oded Schwartz: my copy of Preserving is pleasingly sticky and stained. This is adapted from there. The main adaptation is that I don't bother (what with being so lazy) with cracking the apricot stones, and putting the kernels into the jam, as Schwartz suggests... I use some almond extract instead.
1.25 kg apricots
zest and juice of one lemon
1 kg preserving sugar (the kind with pectin added)
300 ml water
1 tsp almond extract
Put a couple of saucers in the freezer.
Quarter the apricots, remove and discard stones. Put the fruit into a glass or ceramic bowl and pour over the lemon juice and zest; let sit until needed.
Put the sugar and water in a wide, heavy preserving pan. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then boil rapidly for 3-4 minutes. Add the apricots and simmer for about 5 minutes. Then bring to a rapid boil and keep it there, stirring frequently, for 2-25 minutes, until the setting point is reached. How can you tell? Spoon some some the boiling jam onto one of your cold saucers: if it wrinkles when you push the surface, it's done.
Add the almond extract and stir in. Remove from the heat -- and Oded says to skim, but guess what? I can't be arsed. Ladle the jam into the jars you've just taken from the dishwasher, and behold!
It's a good word, interstices, don't you think? "A space, especially a small or narrow one, between things or parts." And therein lies much of my philosophy of cooking. What? You don't have time to cook? Yes you do. Just think about the interstices.
I thought we might have chicken for dinner tonight; I'd defrosted some thighs. Yes, I could just bung them in the oven when suppertime comes into view -- but a ten minutes' effort, post-breakfast, will make that suppertime so very much more rewarding.
I made a quick (really quick!) marinade for my thighs (ooh, matron....)
1 tbsp fines herbes
1 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon extract (we'll return to this excellent ingredient later)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
good grinding black pepper
2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp good olive oil
3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
6-8 chicken thighs, skin pulled off and chucked away
1 plastic baggie -- resealable is best
1 more tablespoon olive oil
Mix up the fines herbs, salt, lemon extract, red pepper flakes, black pepper, turmeric, garlic and olive oil in a little bowl. Dump the chicken thighs into the baggie and pour over your marinade. Seal the baggie, or tie it shut well, and now squoosh the chicken all about so that the marinade covers every thigh. Put in the fridge until you are ready to use -- overnight, all day, for an hour or so.
When you are ready to cook it, preheat your oven to 200C, put the marinated thighs in a baking dish and drizzle over the last spoonful of oil. Give them about half an hour -- till the juices run clear.
The marinade means you don't miss the crispy skin... and thighs baked without their skin are much, much less fatty. Gets my vote.
Here they are: our favourite beans. We could eat these beans for breakfast, lunch and supper and we would never tire of them: that is, pretty much, the universal household sentiment.
We discovered the method of making the magic beans in (of all places) Norway, generally not thought of in connection with green vegetables. We were there, lounging round a fjord, a couple of summers ago, and my friend Linda -- a brilliant percussionist, do have a look here -- cooked up a pan of these babies and we gobbled 'em up. (Come to think of it, we were there to make a show of stories, so I guess it's perfectly appropriate that I found these magic beans.) Anyway -- you will never look back. You won't steam or boil, and you won't have to argue your youngsters into eating them. Ready, set, go!
Fine beans, green beans, whatever you call them, a nice big bunch
1 tbsp sunflower or other neutral oil
1 tbsp good soy sauce
optional: finely chopped garlic and/or 1 tbsp of sesame seeds.
First, de-stem the beans, and rinse them in a sieve. Don't dry them: you want quite a bit of water clinging to their little green skins.
Put the oil into the wide saute pan and heat until the oil is really, really hot. Have the lid of the pan standing by. Now -- drop the rinsed beans into the pan and they will HISSSSSS and WHOOOOSH as that moisture hits the hot oil, and so being careful not to get spattered swiftly CLAMP your pan lid on top and turn the heat down some. Give the beans a shake, so they stir themselves in the pan.
Cook them this way for about ten minutes -- maybe more, depending on how soft you like them. Open the lid and stir periodically; when they are nearly as soft as you like pour over the soy sauce and let them brown in that a little. They should be wrinkly and a little scorched-looking: that's what makes them so yummy. Now's the time, if you want, to add the garlic and the sesame seeds and stir another moment or two, just till the garlic softens in the hot pan. Delicious either way.
Iced coffee. It's not hard. When I was growing up, there was always a jar of it in the fridge, the remains of the morning's pot. Probably that doesn't go down too well with the cold-brew crowd, but it worked for my Mom.
I'm not so good at planning ahead, however. Too much like hard work. But -- simples! Turn on the blessed Nespresso, pour over ice and
... Bob is your proverbial uncle. I add a little milk. But you don't have too.
Now, nuts are a good snack, right? Theo likes nuts. Trouble is, he likes KP nuts, which are, let's say, pretty salty. (Interesting, however, that when you click on "Nutritional information" on KP's website you'll only get told how good for you nuts are: not how much salt is in each serving. It's too small to read on the packet. Answer: every 50g serving -- that's not a lot -- contains 12 per cent of an adult's recommended salt intake.)
So I said to Theo: I'll roast you some nuts. I headed out to the wonderful Taj Stores on Brick Lane where a big bag of peanuts can be had for just a few quid. I measured a cup of peanuts (I'd bought the red-skinned kind) into a bowl, poured a tablespoon of oil over them and about half a teaspoon of salt, not much more, swirled it around till the nuts were well coated, and then turned them out onto a baking tray I'd lined with foil (I'd only lined it with foil because I'm lazy and didn't want to wash up the tray). I'd set my oven to 190C, and in went my tray -- for not very much more than 5 minutes. Maybe 7. I kept a close eye on them; nuts go from nicely toasted to burnt pretty swiftly.
There! Lovely, crunchy, roasted nuts! Taste! I said to Theo, who did -- and made a face. I like KP nuts, he said. They're really nice and salty.
Sigh. So what to do with my tray of roasted nuts? How about.... make peanut butter? Did I know how to make peanut butter? I did not. But I figured it out. I've refined it since those early days and added in some other nuts, too. I promise you: once you make your own peanut butter you will never, ever buy commercial peanut butter again. It's nothing to do with cost, but this is much cheaper than commercial peanut butter too. And as for Theo: this is how he'll eat my roasted nuts, and no mistake.
I'm using American cup measures here: Delia has a nice conversion chart if you need one.
1 cup peanuts
1/4 cup cashews or pistachios or whatever you like
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt, or a little more if you like; I use sel de Guerande, now
2 tbsps dark brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil: or you can fill your cup measure almost to the top with vegetable oil, and then top it up with a tablespoon or two of sesame oil
Preheat oven to 190C.
Put all the nuts in a bowl; swirl the oil around them, and the salt. Turn out onto a baking sheet, lined with foil if you like; pop into the oven for about 5-7 minutes (if you keep your nuts in the freezer, like I do, it may take a few minutes longer). When they are nicely toasty, take them out, and let them cool down a little.
Now dump them into a food processor with the brown sugar. Switch it on (it will be loud!) and pour the oil down through the chute while it's running. Keep it running until it's the consistency you like; you'll need to scrape down the bowl a few times and make sure the oil doesn't pool at the bottom but is mixed in with the nuts. It will never be completely smooth: it will be grainy, which, I learned, after reading Jon Krampner's wonderful history of peanut butter, Creamy and Crunchy, is how all peanut butter used to be.
This makes about a jam-jar full. And, indeed, I put the peanut butter into a cleaned-in-the-dishwasher but not sterilized jam jar. It may separate a little; just give it a stir. I keep it in the cupboard, not the fridge. Maybe it would go off eventually... but it's never lasted long enough for me to find out!
My Dad was famous for his pancakes. How famous? Well, famous in our house, and that was famous enough for all of us. The pancake ritual was an important part of my growing up: my Dad was a firm believer in "silver dollar" pancakes -- his were a little bigger than the coin in question, but not much -- and so the first time, as a kid, I ordered pancakes in a diner and got a stack as wide as my face, well, it was quite a shock, I can tell you.
But what my Dad and the diner did have in common, I'm betting, was that they used pancake mix. My Dad certainly did: we were a Bisquick household and no mistake. This did not diminish the power of the ritual; and yet, now that I make my own pancakes, I never, ever use a mix. I'm sad that I haven't been able to discuss this with my Dad, but I only started making pancakes after he was gone.
But this is not the place for my pancake recipe. We'll get to that. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not a big fan of flour mixes: why pay more money for something that's usually just as simple -- and much cheaper -- to make yourself?
And yet. Somehow, a browse on Ocado led me to Neill's buttermilk scone mix. As if in a dream, I added a bag of the stuff to my order; and tried them out the other afternoon. Well! That was a big success. Husband is a serious scone-and-teacake aficionado: and pronounced the result a triumphs. But now the question is begged: could I replicate my triumph without the mix? Watch this space....
When are you going to make chicken pie again? asks my son. No time like the present, I say. Chicken pie in our house is a scratch affair: we are not afraid of ready made pastry or, indeed, a bit of stock from a bottle.
Oil and butter, a tbsp each, approx
4 chicken thighs, cut up into 2 cm cubes (look at me! centimetres! I am so European!)
3 leeks, cleaned and chopped
4 medium carrots, peeled, cut into 2 cm segments, steamed until tender
Two good handfuls frozen peas
chopped fresh herbs
One tbsp plain flour
half a mug of stock, or thereabouts
Bit of cream, if you like
A good spoonful of Boursin (I'm in Boursin moment...)
Ready made puff pastry
Preheat oven to 200C
Saute the leeks in the oil and butter in a deep, wide pan; when they are tender, add the chicken and cook until done, about 7 minutes. Throw in the carrots, the salt and pepper, the chopped fresh herbs and the peas -- no need to thaw in advance.
Scatter over the flour and stir through; now add the stock, the cream, the Boursin, and let it all bubble a minute.
Tip it into what I learned -- many years ago, marooned for two weeks on St Kilda -- to call an ashet: a shallow but not-too-shallow dish you can put in the oven.
Roll out your pastry to fit; pop it on top of your chicken pie mix and make a few tasteful slashes in it.
Into the oven it goes; 25 minutes should do the trick. Yum. Easy as pie!
I'm trying to kick the kitchen-gadget habit; but a couple of weeks ago in Paris, killing time on the rue d'Assas, I couldn't resist the above, which you can find here. It's an egg poacher for the microwave, and I'm smitten. Scramble up an egg in a bowl with a little spoonful of cream or creme fraiche (or, heck, Boursin or cream cheese), salt and pepper, and some little dots of butter. Dab a little oil inside the silicone pot; slide in your egg and pop on the cover; give it 30 seconds in the micro (mine's 800w)and check what you've got; you might need to stir it and give it another 10 seconds. A perfect coddled egg, no boiling water necessary. Breakfast!
