Spelt Rough Puff Pastry.

It has been a beautiful day here today.  We got a huge amount done in the garden and it's looking great for the new season.  We also had our tea out in the garden for the first time this year.

And I had a cracker of a recipe for the meal.

For Short and Tweet, I made Dan Lepard's spelt rough puff pastry and I made it into chorizo and tomato tarts.  Dan gives a few ideas for really stunning sounding tarts in his book.  I will try to make more of them especially as the pastry was such a success.

How lovely to have a bit of extra flavour and goodness from the spelt flour.  I really wasn't expecting to be able to make a successful puff pastry so easily.  There is a bit of rolling and folding but I just let the pastry rest in the fridge each time and got on with whatever else I was doing so, in the end, it really felt I had done virtually nothing.  The pastry puffed up brilliantly.  Just as good as the ready-made stuff.  The taste, however, was far better.

The recipes for both the pastry and the tart are in Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard.  I can't find this recipe on the Guardian website but if others from Short and Tweet find it and link to it, I'll let you know.  Otherwise, buy the book.  

Individual Warm Chocolate Puddings.

Sorry, I'm one day late with posting this month's Cake Slice Bakers entry.  I had made my choc pudds well in advance - I mean, how could anyone resist? - but was too busy to post yesterday.

These are a flourless pudding served warm with the gooey middle flooding out onto the plate.  Unfortunately I slightly overdid my ones so not so much a flow of molten chocolate but the middles were still lovely and gooey.  

The recipe is from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle.  Have a look at Katie's blog to see her beautiful molten ones and the recipe. 

The best thing about this recipe?  Licking the bowl after filling the ramekins!  Am actually tempted to make this and not bother baking it next time - that chocolate mousse is amazing.

RR 14 - Oatmeal And Garlic Bread.

Dom's Random Recipe Challenge enters its second year and we were randomly asked to select our 17th cookbook on our shelves.

My 17th book is The Claire MacDonald Cookbook.  It is signed inside, "To Louise, With best wishes from Claire MacDonald of MacDonald March 2004".

Steve and I spent an amazing three days on Skye staying at Kinloch Lodge with the very charming MacDonalds and we spent one of our mornings watching her give a cookery demonstration.

I have wonderful memories of that trip.  The food in the hotel was wonderful and we spent the days walking on the beautiful and empty beaches of Skye with our dog at the time, Che, looking forward to our dinners.  

I see they have a Michelin star now.  I think that must be recent, don't think they had it when we stayed although I couldn't have faulted the food or service.

Have a look at the link above for Kinloch Lodge - the scenery is out of this world.  We really did have all the stunning, rugged beaches completely to ourselves.

Anyway, back to the bread.  I completely forgot to take any decent photos.  I served the first loaf with a bacon and avocado salad as recommended by Lady MacDonald and they went together beautifully.  The bread has the great rustic texture provided by the oatmeal and a lovely subtle taste of garlic.  I froze one of the loaves and I am convinced that when defrosted and used, the garlic taste was more pronounced.

My 5 year old bemoaned the fact I gave him non-home-made bread with his soup yesterday.  These kids must be spoiled!  I agree, though, the bought bread is nowhere near as interesting as home-made.  I love wholesome breads and I love quirky variations like this one.  Another successful random recipe. 

Froggy Cake.

I am very proud of this cake.  I made it for our friend Leo who just turned 1!  It is a 12" cake and I have never made such a big cake.  I used the recipe from Lindy Smith's book - Cakes To Inspire and Desire.  The cakes in the book are all far too elaborate for me to ever attempt but I liked the first few chapters for all the advice and the charts with quantities and baking times for madeira, fruit and chocolate cakes of all different shapes and sizes.

The design I completely copied from an image on Google Images.  The original cake belongs to someone called Jen and can be seen on her website here.  It looks like she is a professional cake baker and I don't have permission from her to put my own version here so I just hope it is okay.  If she objects, I will remove it.  If anyone would like to tell me whether it is okay for me to display my copy of her design, I would appreciate the advice. 

My cake is madeira with a layer of raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream. 

Paella And Pudding.

Random Recipes is 1 year old!  I am proud to say that I have participated in every single one since Dom came up with the idea. 

Some of the more observant of you will have noticed that I have been struggling to find the time to update my blog.  Working more than usual at the moment but this should get back to normal at the end of this month.  However, I wouldn't want to miss a Random Recipe Challenge.  It is so easy and fun.  Dom sets us a challenge each month to choose a recipe from one of the many in the many cookbooks we already own.  It really is a winner of an idea.  You are likely to get something you would reasonably want to cook as you have chosen to have these books on your shelf.

For this challenge, Dom wanted us to go back and cook something from the same book as we cooked from for our first ever entry for Random Recipes.  My first entry was one I did for a "date night" along with Steve.  We both cooked something - Steve had to cook something from Moro by Sam and Sam Clark and I cooked something from "I Love Food" by Clare-MacPherson-Grant Russell. So, we went back to those books for a second lucky dip.

Steve picked Paella De Pollo Con Alcachofas Y Oloroso (Rice with chicken, artichokes and oloroso).  A regular recipe of Steve's from this book is the Pork, Chorizo and Spinach Paella which we both love so we were excited at the thought of a variation for him to add to his repertoire.

Here is the photo - the lack of colour is entirely my fault as I forgot to pick up the parsley.

We had this meal as a family on a Saturday night and it was very tasty and went down well with the boys.  This recipe was very flavoursome and a great excuse to buy a nice bottle of olorosso but I must say that if you are going to choose a Moro paella recipe to cook, I would recommend the pork, chorizo and spinach one over this one.  I think it has more flavour and much more punch.  I might suggest to Steve the next time he makes the pork one, though, to try adding some of the olorosso as he might be able to enhance it even more!

For pudding, I made the cold lemon souffles with almonds from "I Love To Cook".  I over whipped my cream so these weren't as smooth and light and pretty as they could have been.  They are really just a mousse but the way they are presented in the book makes them look like souffles and really rather impressive.  Alas my ones were not impressive at all and more faff than they were worth.  I would like to try them again, though, to see if they are worth the faff if I get it right.  They certainly had a sharp lemony taste and I do love lemon desserts.

Anyway, I would just like to say Happy Birthday to Random Recipes and a big congratulations to Dom for setting up such an enjoyable challenge, for keeping it going all year and for all his amazing work on the brilliant round ups. 

New Year, New Book.

Well, Steve and I received four new cookbooks for Christmas this year.

He got Adventures With Chocolate by Paul A. Young from me.

  From him, I received The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit.  

From his Auntie and Uncle we got Maw Broon's Kitchen Notebook.

 From my Sister-in-law I got Everyday Harumi: Simple Japanese Food For Family and Friends by Harumi Kurihara (I think she's the Japanese Nigella and just as beautiful!).

They are all wonderful books and it is rather exciting having new books to cook from.  I wasted no time in joining in with Dom's Random Recipe Challenge for this month - New Year, New Book.

I randomly chose a recipe from Everyday Harumi.  I have to admit to cheating and not randomly selecting the book - I just knew I would get a recipe from here which would make a delicious and healthy meal for us all and I wasn't disappointed.

The recipe I was given was Yakitori.  The recipe is for chicken and baby leek skewers with teriyaki sauce.  I didn't have any baby leek or skewers so I just made it freestyle and served a salad with grilled asparagus.  

I asked Adam to put the salad on the plates for me while I finished the chicken and it turns out he is definitely a food blogger in the making - check out the food stylin' going on here!

So here is a bit of the recipe.  For Harumi's much classier skewers I suggest you buy the book - really simple but beautiful Japanese family-friendly meals.

Teriyaki Sauce.

Ingredients - 

100ml soy sauce (umm, that's my fancy soy sauce all finished - any room in any of your packing cases for the trip home, Little Macaroon?) 

100ml mirin

4 tbsp caster sugar

Method - 

Put everything into a small saucepan and gently cook for about 20mins.  Skim the surface of any scum if necessary.  Coat the chicken in the sauce once cooked. 

Any leftover Teriyaki chicken makes an excellent Bento box filling.  I filled mine to take to work next day with the chicken, asparagus and salad.  

Poached Salmon with Herb Dressing.

Now this is a lovely light, healthy and refreshing dish to counteract all the excesses of Christmas.

For Random Recipes this month, Dom asked us to make space for new Christmas pressies by choosing a cookbook to donate to charity and cooking a random recipe from it before giving it away.  I did have a look at all my books but as we moved house this year, we had already done a massive clear out and the only books we had left were ones we really wanted to keep.  

I did, however, remember that a friend of mine had been clearing out some of her old copies of Everyday Food magazine by Martha Stewart and had given me a great big bag of them.  I had intended to go through them all and pass the ones I had finished with to another friend of ours.  Well, it had been some time since I had passed any on to her so I thought I could use one of them for this challenge and get started passing on the magazines again.

The recipe randomly chosen was from Issue 51 of Everyday Food from Martha Stewart and I have changed it quite a bit. The original recipe can be found on the Martha Stewart website here.

Recipe - Poached Salmon Salad with Herb Dressing.

Serves 4.

Ingredients.

4 skinless salmon fillets

zest of 1 lemon, peeled into strips

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

sea salt and ground pepper

1 clove of garlic

200g creme fraiche

1 handful fresh tarragon leaves

1 handful fresh parsley leaves

1 packet of baby salad leaves

1/2 cucumber diced or handful cherry tomatoes, halved

Method.

1. Place salmon in a pan and cover with cold water.  Add lemon zest and season with salt and pepper.  Bring to the boil over a high heat.  Cover, remove from the heat and let stand until salmon is opaque throughout, about 15 mins.

2. In a blender, combine creme fraiche, lemon juice, garlic, tarragon and parsley.  Season with salt and pepper.  Blend until smooth and set aside.

3. Divide salad and cucumber/tomatoes over four plates.  Top with poached salmon (leave whole or flake) and drizzle with dressing.