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.

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!

Strawberry Farms and Earl Grey Jam.

The small town my family live in in Somerset is commonly described as the arse end of nowhere.  Whilst the surrounding area is beautiful, it really doesn't provide a lot in the way of 'activities'.  Going on a date has to become a little more imaginative when restaurants aren't really a thing round here and the one coffee shop has opening hours I have yet to comprehend but appear to be approximately one hour once a month.

So instead we went on a strawberry picking date.  I hadn't been to a pick-your-own in years; I forgot how incredible they smell.

Following the strawberry picking date we enjoyed a jam making date, then, best of all,  a jam eating date.  We made the Strawberry and Earl Grey jam from Piccante Dolce, which was just wonderful.  Who knew that strawberries and Earl Grey tea could be such a perfect combination?
I sense this is a date we might be repeating.  (NB - please excuse the ridiculous hair - turns out there is no dignified way to grow out a short hair style!)

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.

Local and Weekly.

This blog has become a little unfocused, it no longer addresses the things I thought it would when I started writing.  In an attempt to achieve some degree of consistency, I now declare Wednesday as 'Food Day in Bohemia'.

This is our weekly food, delivered by the lovely chatty man from Riverford Organics.  Most of the food is indigenous to the UK.   The two exceptions are the peppers which are French and land freighted to reduce the carbon footprint and the bananas, clearly from a little further afield, are from Riverford's fair trade community project based in the Dominican Republic.  

The only additions to our box this week are eggs from my mother's chickens (Babs, Mrs Tweedy & Jerfouli) and an awful lot of pasta from the Jazz Hands Pasta bunch (yes, also my mother).  

Whilst I am not a vegetarian (I totally don't possess enough willpower) I do feel that meat should be a luxury not a staple in a healthy, happy diet and summer time is the easiest time to find your vegetarian vibe.

So this week I will be eating simply and healthily and I thought it might be nice to share a couple super simple, seasonal dishes that I will be creating with our haul!

French Bean Salad.

Steam your beans till they are soft but still have a bit of bite, I think 5-7 minutes would do the trick, but just try them.  When you think they're ready, drain them and put into a big bowl.  In a frying pan heat up some olive oil and then fry finely chopped garlic (for the amount of beans in the photo above I'd do a clove or two) until just turning golden.  Pour over the beans and toss them up together.

This is an awesome hot salad but I like it even more when it is cold.  It is a perfect lunch box filler, especially with some chopped cherry tomatoes.

Mushroom Paté.

Another lunchtime favourite in my house.  Finely dice 1-2 cloves of garlic and fry in some olive oil.  Chop up the mushrooms into itty bitty pieces and add to the pan with the garlic.  Add a teaspoon of fresh Thyme.  When looking cooked and dark in colour add a tablespoon or two of ground almonds into the pan and mix up.  If the paste looks too thick then add a little more olive oil or even a little creme fraiche if you have it, if it is too thin then add some more almonds.  Add salt and pepper to taste then spread on toast.

There and back again: a glutton's tale.

So my Monday food post is proving to be a tragic reminder of all the beautiful food stuffs I have left behind.  I have traded in the warm, sticky plums and perfumed tomatoes of Italy for the cardboardy peaches and manky salad of the UK!  

I think the thing that makes most envious of Italy's food culture is the generosity.  Most people in the region grow at least some of their fruit and veg so whilst some may have a glut of zucchini others struggle with the number of plums or tomatoes crowding their gardens.  In England, if you are lucky enough to know someone who grows vegetables in their garden or allotment, you might see a few runner beans once said gardener has fried, baked, stewed, broiled and generally OD-ed on runner beans.  In Italy it means that you get a knock on your door from someone (who may be a friend or a neighbour or someone entirely unknown who simply heard that you needed some figs) holding a basket filled to the brim with the vibrant bounty of their plot.  You may then choose to respond with your own basket of unwanted produce or simply chat in the doorway for at least an hour.  Food is an incredibly social activity.  

Back here in Wales, new people have just moved in to the flat downstairs and I am keeping my fingers crossed they might knock on my door later having heard that I am running horribly low on Basil.

More realistically, James and I are still continuing with our bid to avoid the supermarkets and it feels that every week is both a little more successful and a little bit easier.  Planning our food requirements ahead of time is really the key factor in achieving success; as we can no longer just nip to the Tesco's on the corner we have to make sure that we are well prepared for the week in order to avoid the 'hungry-cranky-house-syndrome'.  Plus, I love planning food for the week - Sunday afternoons spent perusing cookery books together whilst drinking tea never fails to feel perfect.

This week we have even stepped it up a notch and in light of the continuing campaigns over the price of milk we have included dairy products in the list of banned substances from supermarkets; this week our milk and butter is to be supplied by Riverford Organics.  It does cost more, but then, I guess that is kinda the point...

Hope you all have lovely dinners planned tonight.

My Nonna's very special stuffed peaches.

Okay, so no lies, this recipe definitely benefits from the addition of; glorious sunshine, peaches straight from the garden and icy prosecco, but I am sure it is still fine in cooler climates.  My Nonna used to make these every year we stayed with her as children and my gosh I loathed them.  Then one year I was bullied into convinced to 'try just one mouthful' and now it simply breaks my heart a little to think of all the lovely peaches I missed out on over the years.

The Recipe.

• At least 1 peach per person (and probably more if you want to eat them for breakfast the next few days)
• Crunchy Amaretto biscuits, the number depends on the size of the biscuits/peaches - maybe 2/3 per peach half.
• A couple good spoonfuls Cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• Optional: a good glug of brandy

There is no such thing as quantities for a Nonna recipe - it is a 'try and adjust' kinda recipe.  Take your peaches, halve them and remove the stone and lay them out on a baking tray.  Scoop out the peachy flesh (to make room for the stuffing see) and put it in a bowl - do not over scoop though (look at the photo above for a rough guide).  Into the same bowl  mix in the crumbled biscuits and the cocoa powder then add the brandy.  Finally mix in the beaten egg.  Push this delicious paste into the peach halves and put them in the oven.

I cannot really give you an oven temperature or a cooking time as you never, ever, put the oven on for stuffed peaches alone.  They are to fill the gaps in the oven around the bread you are baking or the summer veg you are roasting.  If I had to I would suggest 180-200'C and around half an hour, just keep an eye on them.  You know they are done when the peaches have gone all soft and the stuffing is dry and cracked on top.

.

Eat hot or cold with cream, yogurt, or ice cream or unadorned, for breakfast, lunch or dinner or simply throughout the day.  Look how versatile they are!