food, glorious (endless) food.

The egg on the left is from a very normal sized chicken.  Wince.

Only when visiting my Nonna could it be possible that my camera contains more photographs of food than of Faelen!  Our days there truly revolve around food.  

As we drink our morning coffee we discuss lunch.  My Nonna is a wonderful cook (I am sure it is part of the job description of an Italian Grandmother) - just look at that baccala and tomato stew below.  But if we aren't working out what to buy from the market, we are working out how best to coordinate transport to the chosen restaurant.
As we eat lunch we discuss wine and menus, chefs and cooks, and reminisce about favourite meals and lunch time companions from previous years.  
After lunch, we briefly comment how we never need eat again before figuring out whether or not we will need bread to go with the cheese and greens planned for supper.  
After supper, it would be churlish not to have a small slice of cake or a square of dark chocolate with hazelnuts.
Then as we sit by the fire in the evening, it is time to discuss what we might do for food tomorrow - after all, it is good to be prepared.

 

Weed salad - dandelion and chicory leaves amongst others to be steamed and served with oil and lemon juice.

 

Baccala - mounds of salt cod

comfort foods; potato leek and kale cakes.

This week is going to be my last week of over-filling my free time.  Over the last week I have been so lucky; I have been able to see almost all of my favourite people, one day after the other.  And this week is looking much the same.  Friends are visiting from all around in this last, pre-baby time.  I feel spoilt knowing that my busy, working friends are taking the time to mostly watch me nap.  But I am exhausted.  As much as I am looking forwards to this week, I am looking forwards to the next one.  Burrowing in a hibernation and hiding from the world until the baby boy arrives.

I am tired but cosy.  I feel like my whole body is slowing down for this last stretch.  And in the moments of quiet I am enjoying in my home between guests I find all I can think about is food.  Warming, autumnal dishes to feed James and I as the evenings get darker.  Whilst this blog isn't a food blog, the focus of my days is the kitchen, so for a while this might be what I have to share.
These kale & leek potato cakes are the perfect simple supper, plus they freeze beautifully (I have smugly stocked several into the freezer for after babies arrival).



Ingredients

~500g of potatoes (floury or baking spuds)
2 leeks
a big bunch of kale
1 chilli (the ones we have grown are so hot only one was needed for all of the cakes)
3-4 tsp of bobbly mustard
2 egg yolks
a good amount of butter
2-3 tbsp of creme fraiche
salt and pepper
And to serve: smoked cheddar, or poached eggs and grated cheddar, or crumbly blue cheese, or goats cheese, or whatever your heart is craving.

Peel the potatoes and boil until they are mashable.  Drain and let them dry slightly before putting them through a potato ricer (it is important that they are well mashed).  Dice the leeks and kale and fry in a good knob of butter until they are soft.  Add the finely chopped chilli and cook for another minute or so.

Mix the vegetables into the potato and mix in the mustard, yolks and creme fraiche all together.  Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Shape into little patties; I made 8 from this recipe, and flour on both sides.  At this point if you want to freeze them, make sure they are well floured and lay on a baking tray and whack them in the freezer.  Once frozen you can take them off of the tray and put them into a sandwich bag so they take up less room.

When you are ready to eat them (make sure if using frozen cakes that they are fully defrosted before cooking), heat a good knob of butter in a little olive oil in a large frying pan.  Cook the potato cakes on both sides until dark golden and crispy.  I served ours with poached eggs and grated cheese on top but I imagine they would be pretty good topped with slices of goats cheese or blue cheese and thrown under the grill for a minute.  

Perfect with an autumnal slaw.




Also - look! A double yoker!  How clever are those lovely chucks.

autumnal pickings and comfort foods.

James is working nights at the moment, so aside from the 10 minutes or so in which he is awake to engulf breakfast/dinner on his way in/out the door, my days are quite solitary.  I seem to be spending a lot of my time thinking about food at the moment.  We have been getting our vegetable boxes from Riverford Organics again, so am having to become more inventive with seasonal veg I don't typically buy whilst eagerly trying to ready the freezer for the impending arrival of baby boy.
Luckily my mum is wonderful and keeps informing me of things she has stocked up on at the markets for us (savoury crumbles and a whole carrot cake 'for the visitors'), giving me the freedom to think of more and more inventive ways of using the endless carrots we are currently inundated with!

I enthusiastically recommend this recipe for Lentil & Squash Bake with a Cheesy Potato Topping from Waitrose as a mean way of using up a tonne of Autumnal veggies.  I followed the recipe pretty much as is except I replaced the tinned tomatoes with some big ol' fresh tomatoes that were going over.  It is a wonderful, heart warming dish and very conveniently makes one for dinner and one for the freezer.  
There are no pictures of this supper because we simply sat and ate it.



Finally, I have also discovered (which makes it sound more impressive than 'I am a terribly irritating passenger in the car when we are in a hurry') the East Bristol Bakery which sells perfect seeded sourdough loaves.  I have stowed one away in the freezer to make sure those early breakfasts post-baby are catered for in style.  
I may not have prepared for the homebirth yet but I like to think that I have my priorities sorted.

Pasta #2 black spaghetti and crab.

Spaghetti is a pretty classic pasta shape, pretty much a regularly member of the household, the one we all know by name.  Spaghetti comes from 'spago'; the diminutive form meaning string or twine (a name that really requires no explanation).  Commonplace or not, Spaghetti should not be taken for granted, it is simple, delicious and perfect looking.  (In fact Spaghetti is so loved in this house that the guinea-pig was named in honour of it)!

This recipe uses black pasta; pasta dyed with squid ink which gives the pasta a delicate fishy flavour but a plain pasta would be just as tasty.

Again this is another pasta recipe where the sauce takes pretty much as long as the pasta takes to cook!

Ingredients (serves 2 generously)

200g of Spaghetti (or 2-3 nests if using fresh pasta)
The contents of one picked crab (or you can pick it yourself if you're feeling brave)
2 garlic cloves
1 chili
a good bunch of parsley
100 ml of white wine
2 tbsp of creme fraiche (or cream for the decadent)
pinch of salt and a good grind of black pepper
1/2 a lemon

Put water on to boil for the pasta.  When the water is boiling add the pasta and cook for a minute less than the packet instructions suggest, so the pasta is left slightly al dente.

Finely chop the garlic and the chili and fry till the garlic nearly burns in a good glug of olive oil.  Add the crab meat and mash to make a paste.  Allow to fry together for a minute before adding the white wine.  Whilst this is simmering, chop up the parsley and stir into the crab meat mixture (leaving a little aside to scatter on the pasta at the end).  Take the pan off the heat and stir in the creme fraiche.

Once the pasta is drained, tip it into the frying pan with crab sauce and mix it all up together.  Add salt and black pepper to taste and dish up.  Scatter over the rest of the parsley and serve with slices of lemon (I like mine a lot more lemony than others - personal lemon discretion is the key for this dish)!



Enjoy with a glass of white wine (unless you're pregnant, in which case stare enviously at the white wine your partner drinks whilst you begrudgingly drink water).

the best (autumnal) plum and polenta cake.

Something about the weather cooling off makes me hanker for days spent in the kitchen.  Perhaps I am subconsciously preparing food for the winter?  Or just greedy..?  I don't know.  What I do know is, after the horrors of moving, I am having a baggy-leggings-wearing-tea-drinking-and-baking-hiding-from-unpacking-more-boxes day today!



This is one of the best cake recipes ever.   The polenta and walnuts make it dense and moist but never sludgy and it is perfect made with all types of late summer/autumnal fruits - I used damsons here, but plums, blackberries, blackberry and apple, pretty much anything goes.  It is so good straight from the oven with ice cream yet it still holds its shape and texture well enough to make perfect, lunch-box sized slabs for days afterwards.
I do love cake.



Ingredients

150g butter
150g unrefined golden caster sugar
~20 plums or damsons or enough blackberries to scatter over the surface
75g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
100g polenta (or semolina if you don't have polenta)
50g of shelled walnuts



Put the oven onto 180'C and line a cake tin with baking paper (the tin I used was 20cm by 20cm).
Beat the butter and the eggs together until pale and fluffy.  
Crack the eggs into another bowl and lightly beat together then beat them slowly into the butter and sugar.
Sift the flour and baking powder together and then fold them gently into the mixture.
Fold in the polenta.
Crush the walnuts down (I did this by hand, I am a messy cook but you can chop then up or put them in a sandwich bag and bash them with a rolling pin if you prefer).
Pour and scrape the mixture into the baking tin.
If using plums or damsons, wash, halve and stone them.
Scatter the fruit on top of the cake mixture then push slightly into the surface (the fruit tends to sink towards the bottom of the tin during cooking).
Cook for about 40-45 minutes, test with a clean skewer (push into the cake, if it comes out clean without any wet mix on, then your cake is done, if not give it another few minutes).
Once cooked allow it to cool in the cake tin before popping it out.
Eat with lots of vanilla ice cream.

The essence of summer - Linguine and my favourite (easy peasy) fresh tomato pesto

As I am sure I have mentioned on countless occasions, my family make pasta for a living.  They make pasta, I eat pasta, it is a pretty sweet deal.  In fact I eat pasta a lot - Sophia Loren's quote 'everything you see, I owe to Spagetti' sums me up nicely (but perhaps without the glamour and incredible cleavage)!  
But I realised that, despite cooking pasta several times a week, I have taken it for granted.  The dishes never get photographed and they certainly don't get celebrated.  So I am going to attempt to rectify this - in the manner of Elise Cripe and her 40 Pizza Project - I want to embrace a year of pastas.  Forty different pasta dishes is really just the dream goal!



Pasta Number 1: Fresh tomatoes and Linguine

I love Linguine.  It is the one kind of pasta you are guaranteed to find in this house any time day or night.  It is like the handyman of the pasta world, there are few things it cannot do.  Linguine is the length of Spaghetti but is slightly flattened giving it an elliptical shape so sauce clings more readily to it and making it peasy to twizzle onto your fork.  The name Linguine actually means little tongues although in reality I feel the length would be alarming for a tongue. 

During the Summer months my favourite way to eat pasta is with a fresh tomato sauce and these pasta tongues are just perfect for slipping around in a mix of fragrant tomato and olive oil (although a Pappardelle or Rigatone wouldn't be bad either).

The best bit of this pasta dish?  The sauce takes as long to prepare as the pasta takes to cook!

Ingredients

(Serves 2)

Linguine pasta (2-3 nests)

Fresh tomatoes; either a couple big beef tomatoes or 5-6 if they are a smaller salad variety.   (The tastiness of the sauce depend  wholly on the quality of the tomatoes; good tomatoes are typically rich in colour and have a strong smell)

A handful of fresh basil

A big fat clove of garlic or two smaller ones

Olive oil

A splash of balsamic vinegar

Salt to taste

Fresh pecorino or parmesan cheese to serve

Put a pan of water on to boil.  Whilst waiting for the water to boil, using a blender or a food processor first blend the garlic down, then add the tomatoes, the basil and the splash of balsamic vinegar and blend until soupy.  Add a generous glug or two of olive oil and salt to taste. 

When the water is boiling chuck in the pasta and cook according to the packet or for three minutes if using fresh pasta.  Once cooked, drain well then pour the tomato sauce on and quickly dish up.  Grate cheese liberally all over!



Best enjoyed outside :)

harvest time and moving time.

The big news is, on Saturday, James and I will be moving into our new house in Bristol.  I am so excited to have everything back out of storage and start again the challenge of making another rented house somehow our own.  I can't wait to have my own kitchen again and to set up a nursery for Bump and, most of all, I can't wait till James isn't commuting 2+ hours every day to work and we will have some time to spend together in the evenings!

But I am sorry to be leaving the family home again.  It has been a squeeze -  six (sometimes seven or eight if the girlfriends/boyfriends stay) in a small cottage with one bathroom has occasionally been a little chaotic - but it has also been so good.  I mean it has been pretty perfect being able to reap the rewards of a bountiful garden despite having put in none of the legwork first, not to mention waking up daily to the sound of chickens!  Mostly though it has been so good to spend actual time with my mum and her partner despite their insane workloads; it has been so good to just be here and be with family again.  I am going to miss this small, bustling house badly.



Moving news aside, these pictures are of the latest haul from the garden.  The courgette plants are finally starting to die back but it would appear they won't leave without one last push.  And the beans, well they certainly aren't going to be stopping any time soon!  It is incredible that such a small space can produce so much.



The Curly Kale has however failed to thrive.  Three guesses from the picture below who is responsible (and the first two don't count)!



Cheeky things.

I am going back now to sit in the garden; with only a few evenings left here I can't afford to spend them inside!

Behind the scenes at the Farmers' Market.

Since living back with my parents I have been helping out (aka eating my way round the different stands) at one of the weekly farmers' markets.  
I love reading the blog posts of those visiting Farmers' Markets; the colours and range of local produce make taking a bad photograph nearly impossible but from behind the stand, it is slightly less picturesque; think more freezer boxes and plastic bags.

On the plus side we get the ringside seat for people watching.  
Every Wednesday there is the woman in her seventies who buys just four ravioli for her supper and the woman who almost clears the stand buying three meals worth of pasta every week for her family of five.  There are the umm-ers and ahh-ers who coo over the pasta for a long time and buy nothing.  There are the artsy (potentially blogger) types who awkwardly take photographs before feeling obliged to buy a portion of pappardelle. 
Then we move onto ultimate people watching - I won last week with this entry:

yes, that is a dog dressed in a golfing outfit.  Only the cap is visible here but he was also wearing a charming argyle sweater!

Main job perk? Our stand is opposite the sushi and tempura prawn stand.  Win.

Nonna's Birthday.

The last few hot, beautiful, manic days have reached a close and I am now back in rainy England.  

And, wow, my Nonna's birthday celebration was one worthy of a hobbit.  My cousin and his partner slaved tirelessly at the pizza oven and hundreds of pizzas were consumed (no exaggeration) and countless glasses of prosecco for the non-pregnant among us.  The table was stacked high with fig and mozerella salad, fresh tomatoes and basil, borlotti beans and garlic and bruschettas, salamis and cheeses.  Once the sun set, two local musicians played a beautiful set just for Nonna.  It was a pretty magical evening.

The next bit is a bit photo heavy so I have put the rest of the pictures after the break.

From the garden (and a mean sugarsnap pea and coriander slaw).

We have eaten outside every evening since I moved back.  We eat late in this house; my mother and her partner run a local artisan pasta business which is exceptionally demanding and my mother is a full time nurse on top of that.  They are busy bees.  But in the evening, when they return from their busy days we all sit down at the table outside, eat together and talk until it is dark and we can no longer manage the mosquitoes.  And somehow the siblings are always able to sense food being laid on the table and they reappear from the ether to join us.

Supper looks a lot like this every evening.  Almost all the ingredients are sourced from the garden and then topped up with treats that the pasta-lords have managed to trade for at the farmer's markets during the week.  Simple, local food at its very best.

I don't tend to share too many recipes on this blog.  Don't get me wrong, I cook a lot but I am also aware the blogosphere is so full of incredible cooks that I feel there is little requirement for me to contribute.  But this slaw, this sugarsnap pea and coriander slaw, fully deserves its moment.



This is a vague recipe with vague amounts.  Quantities for a rustic slaw are a no-no, just play with it and it will work.

Gather as many sugarsnap peas as you can (if you haven't got a wonderful mother growing them, I know they can be quite pricey) and slice thinly.  You could grate them but I think it would be even more fiddly.
Then in another bowl mix an even amount of mayonnaise and yoghurt (enough to coat the sugar snap peas).  Chop a clove of garlic until it is basically a paste and mix it into the mayo/yoghurt mix.  Roughly chop a good sized bunch of coriander, stalks and all, and mix it in.  Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon (or a whole lemon if you are lucky enough to have a tonne of peas) and season with salt and pepper as you like.  
This is a mean slaw and it keeps perfectly in the fridge for a couple days (I couldn't comment on whether it lasts longer, we ate all of ours).  Eat with everything; sandwiches, barbecues, fish, who cares, it goes.

Making Christmas #8: Chocolate Spoons.

Another last minute project for chucking into the hampers and it is so simple it almost feels like cheating!  I bought a spoon mold at a local kitchen shop but you can also buy them here on amazon.  Then to make these beauts you literally just melt the chocolate of your choice, pour it into the molds and let them harden overnight.  To make them a bit special, once they are hardened flick melted chocolate (of a different colour) over the surface, wait for them to dry and wrap them up.

I am going to wrap mine up in grease-proof paper and twine and slip them into the hampers .  (Apart from the one I currently using to stir my coffee (a proper mocha) and the one that James has stolen for eating ice-cream)!

Making Christmas #7: Christmas Cranberry Chutney.

I think that Chutneys are some of the loveliest presents to receive for Christmas.  Initially I always overlook them in favour of more exciting gifts, but then, when boxing day arrives and you are feasting on cold leftovers, Chutneys are the make or break factor.  This recipe makes a very tart chutney, so do feel free to add a little more sugar if you feel it necessary.  I literally cannot wait to have this spread thickly in my cold turkey and stuffing sandwiches.

You will need:

     1kg Bramley apples

     500g of fresh cranberries

     450g finely chopped onions

     75g of finely chopped fresh ginger

     1 tbsp of whole black peppercorns

     500g granulated sugar

     250 ml red wine vinegar

Put all the ingredients into a heavybased saucepan and cook on a low heat for about an hour.  You want to chutney to have cooked off most of the watery liquid but for the fruit to still have some bite.  

Spoon into sterilised jars and give all (except one jar) away.