Cyder...not cidre!

This post isn’t about food, but rather drink. I sampled my first (I think) champagne cyder this weekend. I also learnt that you can spell cider as cyder, as well as, of course, cidre.


We were in the country at the weekend, basking in the sunshine. We went for a wonder around the Petersfield farmers market. After which, we fancied a refreshing beverage in an outdoor space. We headed to the Old Drum (http://www.theolddrum.co.uk/) in Town. As soon as I entered, I was confronted by the following sign.

  

That was it. I had to have one. "One Gospel Green Champagne Sussex Cyder please bar-keep".


My first experience of a champagne cyder was marvellous. This wasn’t the tooth bracing sweet experience of some (usually poorer quality) ciders, but rather a subtle apple fragrance with a very crisp and dry finish. It had wonderfully tiny bubbles, reminiscent of champagne and a delicate hue of, was it elderflower?

Anyway, I would highly recommend getting your hands on some. It is local fare, originating from Sussex, however I will try and source it in London, or perhaps just stock up when I’m in the Counties.


This is cyder... not cidre!


I also plan on popping back in next time to sample the English tapas. Watch this space.

Refried beans

My beans don't have a lot of oil in them and they are also not mulch, but rather delightfully mushy and textured. I make these refried beans for our taco dinner nights, which is always a deliciously messy affair.

What you will need
2 tins of kidney beans
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
1 tea spoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 teaspoon of chilli powder
2-3 green chillies
½ teaspoon of ground cloves

Add the two drained tins of kidney beans to a pan with a tea spoon of oil. Add all the spices and cook for a minute until fragrent. Add half a cup of water, some salt, the tomato puree and chopped green chillies to the pan. If you don't have fresh green chillis, dried chilli flakes will suffice. Leave the beans on a mediumg heat to reduce. This should take between 10-15 minutes.

I don't blitz mine in the blender as I mentioned above. I simply, crush mine with a potato masher to provide a variety of textures. You can blitz yours if you so wish.

 

I served my refried beans tonight in tacos and topped with grated cheddar, lettuce and salsa and guacamole. It is also a great bean and cheese enchilada filling and great with grilled halloumi inside fajitas.

Garlic and herb mushrooms with poached egg

Brunch is always fun. You don't normally think about garlic and herbs when you think of breakfast, but with brunch, anything goes. This dish is inspired by a beautiful breakfast dish I used to eat when on honeymoon in Bali. It was crostini with a poached egg and herb salad in a lemon vinaigrette. It was delightfully fresh and crisp. The egg is buried within the herb leaves below.

 

I now like to combine herbs and lemon juice with a poached egg to bring back my food memory of eating breakfast by the sea in a five star Balinese resort.

What you will need
1 slice of toast
1 poached egg
A handful of robust mushrooms (I used shitake)
1 clove of garlic
Fresh parsley
Fresh mint
Fresh lemon

Slice a nice farm house loaf and place under the grill or in the toaster to toast. Slice the mushrooms thickly and brown in a frying pan with a tiny amount of oil and the chopped garlic. Once these have cooked through, mix through lots of chopped fresh mint and parsley and add a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Place the mushrooms on the buttered toast, season and top with the poached egg. Making a poached egg can be quite an art. You can also cheat with a variety of contraptions. Gipsy Spread did ours and the one below is not a perfect example!

I will replace with a better picture soon!

Spinach and mozzarella pockets

These pockets are very dainty and sweet, whilst also being relatively simple to make. They look great as a starter and can also be served as part of a variety lunch platter.

What you will need
Filo pastry
Butter
Half an onion
Chilli flakes
2 cloves of garlic
150g spinach
1 ball of mozzarella
10g grated parmesan
Nutmeg
Fresh lemon
Fresh basil

Place the chopped onion and garlic in a pan and sauté until brown and softened. Add the spinach and cook off all the water. Add the dried chillies, a grating of nutmeg and a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Cook until all the moisture is gone then mix in the parmesan.Take the mozzarella out of the fridge at least 20 minutes before you want to use it so that it isn’t cold and will melt when cooked for a short time.

Use the butter to grease two ramekins, Layer 2 sheets of the filo pastry into the ramekins, ensuring there is enough at the ends to fold over the top of the ramekin. Make sure that the pastry is tucked inside the ramekin to provide enough space for the filling.

When the ramekin is lined, place a quarter of the spinach mix into the ramekin, before putting in half a ball of mozzarella and then topping with another quarter of the spinach mix.

Fold the pastry ends over and brush lightly with melted butter. Cook these in the oven for 12-15 minutes at 170 degrees until browned.

Turn the ramekins upside down to turn the pockets out. Serve with a fresh salad. We had a green salad and lemon and olive potatoes with ours for dinner tonight. You can find the recipe for the potatoes here

http://gipsytoast.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/olive-and-lemon-potatoes.html.

Olive and lemon potatoes

This is a great summer time side dish. In the winter, Gipsy Spread loves his potatoes roasted with garlic and sage or rosemary, but in summer we like the fresh combination of lemons and lighter herbs. These potatoes are also great cold so can be served at an al fresco lunch, picnic or barbeque and not a single drop of mayo is for this potato salad.

What you will need
Jersey/Baby new potatoes (250g for 2)
Olive oil
Olives
1/2 a lemon
1/2 a red onion
Fresh chives
Fresh lemon thyme

Half the potatoes and boil in salted water until cooked, but still firm. This should take about 15 minutes. Drain the potatoes and whilst still warm, add a good slug of olive oil, seasoning and the juice of half a lemon. This means the potatoes take on more of the flavours. Slice about 2 tablespoons of green or black olives and finely slice the red onion. Stir these through the potatoes. Serve warm or cold with chopped fresh chives and lemon thyme.

 

You can also add some chilli flakes to the potatoes, but we were having these with the spinach and mozzarella pockets for dinner tonight which also have chilli in them.

Cheesy peas aka muttar paneer

 
I may be biased, but I have never come across a muttar paneer in restaurants that I like more than mine. There are of course other paneer recipes that I do enjoy; in particular, I had a very good paneer dish at the Silk restaurant in the Courthouse Hotel, twice.
The menu can be found at http://www.courthouse-hotel.com/bars/silk.html and I always order the karahi paneer from my local Indian take away http://yakyeti.co.uk/.
 

So, this is one of my personal essentials for any Indian thali I might produce. Unfortunately, unlike a lot of Indian food, this is not one for the vegans.

I also treat the paneer differently to how it is usually treated in curry. I do not understand the concept of frying cheese. It’s wrong. Adding fat to something that already has a high fat content. Really? Anyway, I grill mine.

What you will need
1 packet of paneer
1 onion
2-3 cloved of garlic
1 thumbsized piece of ginger
3-4 fresh green chillis (optional)
2 tea spoons ground cumin
2 tea spoons ground coriander
½ teaspoon of garam masala
½ tea spoon turmeric
1 teaspoon of chilli powder
1 tin of tomatoes
1 table spoon tomato puree
1/2 tea spoon of tamarind concentrate
Frozen peas (or fresh)

Firstly, cube your paneer. I tend to get about 5 slices lengthways to cube. I then put these in a roasting tin and place under the grill on a medium heat to lightly toast/brown. You’ll need to turn the little fellas, but it’s not necessary to ensure all sides are toasted.

Whilst this happening, chop the onion, garlic and ginger and sauté in a tablespoon of oil until browned and softened. Add heaped tea spoons of the cumin and coriander, as well as the turmeric, garam masala and chilli powder. Cook these off for just a minute then add the tinned tomatoes, the same amount of water, salt and tomato puree.

Chop as many chillies as you like and add to the pan, along with the tamarind concentrate. You can use tamarind pulp, but you might need a bit more of it, alternatively you could add the juice of 1 lemon to provide the sourness.

Finally, add about two-three handfuls of green peas to the pan and cook on a low to medium heat for about 20 minutes. The sauce should reduce. Although if it reduces too much, just top up with a little more water.

Serve this with either rice or nan bread. My preference is always nan bread. Nope I did not make my own, but maybe I will another day and share that with you too. Also, you could make some rotlis. See the recipe here http://gipsytoast.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/rotlis.html.

Remember that curry is always better the second day as the spices have had longer to get to know each other. In Indian households, curry is made earlier in the day and then reheated for dinner, rather than eaten immediately.

 

Pasta with olives and capers aka vegetarian puttanesca

This is a really simple dish. It is the vegetarian's equivalent of the puttanesca (the prostitute's sauce). It is without the anchovies and with some good old fashioned booze thrown in. I'm  sure the Italian prostitutes of old would have partaken in a small glass of wine!?

What you will need
Pasta (enough for 4)
1 tin of tomatoes
3-4 cloves garlic
1 dried chilli
Balsamic vinegar
125ml red wine
2 teaspoons chopped capers
Green or black olives
Parmesan cheese

So, start with the pasta sauce. Chop the onion and garlic and saute until soft and brown for about 10 minutes. Add the glass of wine and cook the alcohol off for a minute before adding the chopped tomatoes and half the same amount of water. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar for sweetness, flake the dried chilli in; add two large tea spoons of chopped capers and really as many sliced olives as you fancy. I add about 3-4 tablespoons as this is a key ingredient of the sauce. Taste and season, remember the capers and olives are already salty.

Reduce the sauce for 15-20 minutes. I have a friend who insists on sieving his arrabiata/tomato sauces because he doesn't like the texture of the chopped tomatoes. If you feel the same, just use passata instead of chopped tomatoes. I personally like a variety of textures in my food.

When you're ready for dinner, cook the pasta. I had fresh fusilli pasta in the fridge, so this is what we had. A photo of my plate is below.

I served this with fresh parmesan and fresh greek basil. Gipsy Spread of course had his with a wonderful Waitrose' chorizo whorl sausage skewer. Photos of his are below.

Mixing the Italian with the Spanish, we had dinner on the Mediterranean tonight.

Roasted butternut squash with butterbeans and feta

I made my roast butternut squash, butter bean and feta salad when we went away to a cottage for mother in law Spread’s 70th birthday. Gipsy Spread decided to marinade a leg of lamb from Ottolenghi’s recipe in 'Jerusalem'. Contributions were also provided by the rest of the family who gathered.

Now, I have been roasting and eating squash since it first started appearing in our supermarkets over 15 years ago. I have memories of roasting it skin on with chillies and garlic in the warehouse I shared with five photographers in Hackney inbetween my under grad and post grad degrees - it was the year 2000. I was actually once that cool.

So, it was a surprise when everyone kept worrying about how I was roasting my squash at the cottage. The squash does not burn, but does need to caramelise for my recipe; for it to be at its sweetest and to contrast greatest with the sublimely salty feta.

So what you will need
1 small butternut squash
3-4 cloves of garlic
4 dried chillies
2 fresh or dry bay leaves
2 tins of butterbeans
3-4 red onions
1 packet of feta cheese
Olive oil
White wine vinegar
2 teaspoons of capers
Fresh lemon thyme

Firstly, peel and de-seed the squash then cube the flesh into even sized pieces. You don’t want these to be too big as otherwise they will take longer to cook and will not roast evenly. Peel and slice each of the onions in half and then each half into thirds. Crush the garlic and add to a roasting tin with the onions, bay leaves, dried chillies and squash and lightly coat in olive oil, seasoning well. Place the roasting tin in a preheated oven at 200 degrees. They should take approximately an hour to roast, which includes dark, caramelised corners and edges.

In the meantime, you can dress the butterbeans. Drain the tins of butterbeans and place in a large bowl. In a dressing jar, mix up your vinaigrette. Place about ¾ olive oil in the jar with ¼ white wine vinegar, the chopped capers, a sqeeze of fresh lemon juice and the leaves from the lemon thyme. Season the dressing and taste to ensure the balance between vinegar and oil is right for you and amend if necessary.

Once the squash and onions have roasted, serve them on the butterbeans with the dressing and crumble over the feta. This should serve 4-6 people. If it’s just me and Gipsy Spread, we would normally make half as much and I might have some left over for a work lunch.

 

Well, after the birthday, I was asked for the recipe by both mother in law Spread and also my brother in law, so the caramelised squash speaks for itself. This is a highly satisfying meal and Gipsy Spread will sometime have some meat or sausages with this also. Tonight, it was a piri piri cod fillet.

This last picture is with the jerk halloumi, rather than feta, as I had it already marinaded and ready to eat from the other night. I will replace with a picture of the true recipe, with feta soon.

 

Jerk halloumi with griddled watermelon

I think marinating halloumi can be quite hard. It takes some time to really get the flavours into the hard cheese. The combination of strong flavours in this jerk style marinade does work though, especially if left over night. The lovely saltiness of the halloumi with the kick and heat of all the spices also works wonderfully with a fruity sweet salad.


What you will need
1 packet of halloumi
2 tea spoons of dried chilli flakes (or half a scotch bonnet)
2 tea spoons of paprika
A pinch of grated nutmeg
1 tea spoon of ground allspice
1 tea spoon ground cumin
½ tea spoon of ground cinnamon
½ tea spoon black pepper
Fresh thyme
Juice of half a lemon
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 tea spoon of honey
1-2 teaspoons of olive oil
1 capful of rum
Sliced watermelon


Slice the halloumi into six or seven thick slices. Add all the other ingredients (excluding the watermelon) into a bowl to create the marinade, season with salt and mix the halloumi in, making sure they are all coated in the spices. You can add more chilli at this point if you want it hotter. Leave the halloumi to marinade overnight.


When ready to eat, remove the halloumi from the marinade and place on greasproof paper in the oven at 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes until brown and bubbling. Don't leave it too long, otherwise it will turn rubbery and hard.


At the same time, slice some fresh watermelon and brush with olive oil and griddle until toasted and brown on both sides.

Serve the halloumi on some crisp lettuce and the griddled water melon for a refreshing summer dish.

This marinade can also be used for barbeques. The halloumi can be cubed and skewered along with onion, cherry tomatoes and cubes of watermelon, mango or pineapple. Try this to give the veggies a treat at your next barbeque instead of simply buying the quorn burgers. I also like to make spicy bean or bean and halloumi burgers for the barbeque.

Rhubarb chutney

I still had some rhubarb left from that purchased on the visit to mother in law Spread the other weekened. I knocked up this quick and easy chutney to preserve the rhubarb and keep in the fridge. I'll most likely eat with some cheese this week.


What you will need
4 sticks of rhubarb
2 onions
3 table spoons of brown sugar
1 star anise
4 dried chillies
4 tables spoons of white wine or cider vinegar


In a non stick pan add the finely sliced rhubarb and onions with the brown sugar, crushed dried chillies and star anise and season. Cook these down on a low heat for 10-15 minutes. Makes sure the rhubarb and onions have softened and caramelised, but that the water has evaporated. At this point, add the vinegar and let this reduce for about 10-15 minutes. I used cider vinegar as Gipsy Spread was possibly having the chutney with his pork for dinner tonight.

You can also serve the chutney simply with some cheese and/or meats for lunch or after dinner. Alternatively, serve on the side of your main course, such cheesecakes (like fishcakes, but with cheese). Watch this space.

Yeast free cheese and herb marmite loaf

I think I mentioned last night, that the fridge is down to the bare bones, with the food shop arriving tonight. I found myself wondering what I could eat for breakfast/lunch.

I was fancying some cheese on toast or welsh rarebit. With no bread or eggs in the fridge, this was going to prove a tad difficult.

I did an internet search for yeast free breads and came across a few. Some included lots of oil, others included the use of beer as a raising agent (we have no beer in the house either. Wine yes, beer no). I then stumbled upon good old Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's soda bread recipe, which does not require eggs, yeast or any fat. I therefore based my lunch bread on this recipe, customising by adding cheese, herbs and marmite to taste. I thought the marmite might also help the bread rise and remember, it also salts the bread.

What you will need (for a small loaf)
250g self raising flour
150ml milk
1 tea spoon bicarbonate of sosa
1 tea spoon of ground black pepper
3 tablespoons of mixed seeds (I used the omega 3 mix and a tablespoon of poppy seeds)
50g of cheddar
1 tea spoon of marmite
Fresh thyme

Firstly, mix the dry ingredients together. I did not have self raising flour, so I used plain white flour with a tea spoon of bicarbonate of soda. Make a well in the middle of the ingredients and add the milk and marmite and mix the dough together with the tea spoon. I'm a marmite lover, but if you're a hater, omit it and add a tea spoon of salt. Get in with your hand towards the end to completely bind together and knead slightly.

Once the dough has been blended, push another hole into the middle of the dough and add the cheese and fresh thyme. Pull the dough up and around the cheddar and knead a little bit further to ensure the cheese is fully combined.

Shape the dough into a round and put a cross in the middle.

 

Place the bread in a pre heated oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes.

This is delicious served warm with some butter, but would be great served with a poached egg for breakfast (perhaps tomorrow with the leftovers) or served with soup.

Of course the bread can be customised in any way you like, with for example the addition of herbs and spices or with cinnamon and raisons for a sweet bread. It's great as you don't need to wait for the dough to rise and can make, bake and serve immediately. Pretty impressive as well if you have someone pop round unexpectedly and want to give them lunch.

Creamed spinach and peas

It was Friday night. We were down to the wire for ingredients for dinner. There was an M&S venison cottage pie dug out of the freezer for Gipsy Spread and a vintage cheddar and caramelised onion tart for me. Now, what to accompany these. Hmmmm.

We had frozen spinach and peas in the freezer and some of the double cream left from the rhubarb crumble I made last week. The recipe can be reviewed at http://gipsytoast.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/rhubarb-crumble.html. Creamed spinach and peas it was then.

What you will need
A handful of chopped cooked spinach
Two handfuls of green peas
Double cream (or creme fraiche)
Fresh thyme
Lemon
Fresh chives
Nutmeg

Firstly, defrost the spinach if frozen, or wilt if fresh. Add the peas and a tablespoon or two of the cream. Season well with salt and plenty of pepper. Grate over some nutmeg and add the chopped chives and thyme. Add a final squeeze of fresh lemon juice and cook the flavour together on a very low heat for 5-10 minutes.

Serve this as a side dish with your main course. The greens are lovely and earthy and the cream is sweet and rich.

Rotlis

I was working from home today and wanted to have keema for my lunch. In order to do this, I need to make rotli. This is what we call the unleavened bread which accompanies almost all Indian meals. It is also sometimes referred to as chapati, although to me, the former is far superior to the latter.

Shop bought chapatis are doughy and thick. The home made rotli is light, airy and very fine.

What you will need

180g of atta, otherwise known as chappati flour
Approximately 100 ml warm water
1 teaspoon of oil

Place the flour into a bowl and slowly add the warm water, until the dough reaches a bread dough consistency. Add more or less water, applying your own judgement. This stuff has great elasticity. Add the oil and a pinch of salt to the dough and knead to bind all the crumbs together.

This should make about 8-10 rotlis. A serving would normally be 2-3 per person, although my brother is known to get through about 6.

Seperate the dough into even lemon sized balls and roll the rotlis out on a floured suffice. The rotli rolling pin is traditionally thin, but a normal sized rolling pin should surface, or my other rolling pin which is a cleaned wine bottle. They should be rolled very thin, about 1mm thick You may need more flour for the board and rolling pin to stop them sticking.

As children, this is how we would help with dinner. Rolling out the rotli always involved the game 'name that country', so don't worry if they are not perfectly round.

Again, I use my tawa, but you can cook these off in a non stick frying pan. They only take seconds each side. After which, using tongs, give them a blast on the live gas flame to finish. They should inflate.

One cooked, spread each with a little bit of butter. These can be eaten immediately or put aside and reheat later.

Serve these delicious breads with your chosen curry. For me, at lunch time, it was the vegetarian keema.

Vegetarian keema

When I turned vegetarian, 20 years ago now, I remember people asking me whether I missed bacon? Apparently bacon is the tease/temptation that ruins many a would be vegetarian. Not me. What I always missed was a good samosa. A meat samosa. The filling for a decent meat samosa, i.e those that my gran and mum made was keema. Traditionally, gujarati style, this is made with lamb mince. Since the day I turned vegetarian, the only somosas I was presented with were vegetable based and spiced differently.

 

I therefore had to take matters in to my own hands. If I wanted keema, then I needed to make it myself. With thanks to Quorn, who in the latter part of my 20 years created a suitable vegetarian mince. I can now eat keema and a non vegetable based somosa.

 

What you will need

 

250g vege mince

1 onion

2-3 cloves garlic

Thumbnail sized ginger

8 whole cloves
8 whole black peppercorns
Cinnamon stick

2 tea spoons ground coriander

2 tea spoons ground cumin

1 tea spoon garam masala

1/2 tea spoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 table spoon of tomato puree

3-4 green chillis

2 handfuls of green peas

 

Firstly, chop the onions, garlic and ginger. Saute these in some oil until they have softened. Add all the spices and season. Cook the spices off for 1 minute before adding the tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, chillis, peas and vegetarian mince. Cook the keema for 15-20 minutes until the sauce has reduced.

 

 

Serve as part of a thali, or just by itself with rice or breads. My post on how to make rotlis is at http://gipsytoast.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/rotlis.html

 

This is a really easy and simple curry to make aswell, so midweek dinner keema, it often is. Also, not that I want to advocate this, but clearly, the vegetarian mince can be replaced for lamb mince.

 

Alternatively, this can be reduced a little bit more and stuffed inside filo pastry to make a somosa. More on this to follow. My thali is getting really big. Although, I guess it's no surprise that a lot of my cooking is Indian.

 

 

Spinach and ricotta cannelloni

We were both working at home today. I didn't miss the train journey, although I did miss the air conditioning in the office. No commute meant I had a bit more time to make dinner. I opted for a non pasta, spinach and ricotta 'cannelloni' for dinner tonight. This is a great lower GI alternative to pasta. In fact, it's blending the French (socca) with the Italian (pasta). Whilst I'm not on the Amalfi coast any time soon, I will be in the south of France in September and expect to be sampling quite a lot of socca, as one of the few French vegetarian offerings. Nice.

I have already made a reservation at Chez Hugo (http://www.chezhugo.fr/) for Gipsy Spread's birthday lunch and we are waiting to hear back from the cordon bleu chef who may cook for us at the Chateau we are renting. I will be posting poolside from the Chateau in September, don't you worry.


What you will need
250g ricotta
150g wilted and chopped spinach
1 table spoon of creme fraiche
1 lemon
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 onion
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
4-5 table spoons of gram flour
Lemon thyme
1 teaspoon English or Dijon mustard
Cheddar

 

Mix together the spinach, ricotta and crème fraiche. Season with plenty of salt and pepper, add the leaves from a few sprigs of lemon thyme, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and the mustard

 

Make a simple tomato sauce. Chop the onion and garlic and sauté until softened. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and half the same amount of water. Season, add the tomato puree and balsamic vinegar and continue to reduce for about 10-15 minutes.

 

Separately, make the pancakes. Mix together the gram flour with enough water to make a thin batter. Fry these in a pan with a little bit of oil. You will want about 4-5 pancakes They only take seconds each side.

 

Split the ricotta and spinach filling between the pancakes and fill along the middle of each. Roll the pancakes up and lay them in an oven dish side to side.

 

 

Pour over the tomato sauce. Grate over the cheddar (as much or little as you fancy) and bake for 20 minutes at 220 degrees until the cheese has melted and is bubbling. Garnish this with fresh greek basil and serve with a green salad. I had the beautifully nutty avocado in mine tonight.

You can make socca with egg white to give a fluffier pancake. Ottolenghi does this, I think in 'Plenty' and I have made his before. However, the above, really is the simplest method.

 

Leek and feta frittata

So it's getting towards that time when we need to eat what we have in the fridge in anticipation of the Ocado delivery on Saturday. Well, leeks, mushrooms and feta stood out to me, and with the combination of eggs, provide an easy midweek dinner of frittata accompanied by salad.

This decision was particularly sensible as after I had decided on dinner, Gipsy Spread texted from the train home to request that I accompany him to the local outdoor watering hole for some vin rose in this crazy crazy heat. Can you say 'bad influence'? Dinner was going to have to wait until after. Luckily I had already cooked the vegetables and only needed to add the egg mix to finish.

Gipsy Spread had some venison sausages he needed to eat. He had had some yesterday with Bill's beans, whilst I had the halloumi. For a reminder about Bill's beans, see 'Dinner in 10 minutes'.


What you will need
1 onion
3 leeks
8-10 mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
4 sundried tomatoes
1/4-1/2 packet of feta
4 eggs
1-2 table spoon of cream or milk
Nutmeg
1 tea spoon mustard
Lemon thyme

Firstly slice up all the vegetables up. Saute the onions, leeks and chopped garlic in oil for about five minutes before adding the mushrooms which will not need as long to soften.

Seperately, mix together the eggs, cream, nutmeg and mustard.

When the vegetables have softened, spread them evenly around the pan and pour over the egg mix. Add the sliced sundried tomatoes to the pan and crumble over the feta cheese and the leaves from several sprigs of lemon thyme. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook the frittata on a medium heat, until the edges appear to have cooked and browned, then place under a medium grill or in the oven for 10 minutes until the top has browned and the frittata is cooked through. An inserted knife should come away clean.

 

I served ours with a salad and Gipsy Spread of course had his venison sausages. He has stated that he prefers the Waitrose ones to the M&S ones, in case you were wondering.

On a further note, I was very impressed with the Waitrose mushrooms I picked up in Petersfield, which were locally sourced in Hampshire and which gave off hardly any water. They were extremely meaty and robust.


There are clearly going to be leftovers which will be great for brunch with a slice of bread or for a work lunch with a fresh green salad. Lucky for me I'm working from home tomorrow, so brunch it is.

Rhubarb crumble

I had been visiting mother in law Spread the other weekend and as one often does in the countryside, I happened upon some fresh rhubarb for sale. I couldn't help myself but buy some. I didn't want to over complicate this very earthy and honest fruit. I therefore made the good old english classic dessert of rhubarb crumble.

What you will need
4 sticks of rhubarb
2 tablespoons of castor sugar
50g brown sugar
50g butter
100g flour

Cream, custard or ice cream to serve

This is really a small portion for two, I don't think we eat dessert because we are hungry, but rather that we want a taste and I therefore always err on the side of smaller portions for dessert. If you are cooking for four, just double the ingredients.

Cut the rhubarb into 1-1.5cm pieces. Add these to a non stick pan with a couple of table spoons of water and two table spoons of castor sugar. Cook the rhubarb until it has soften for about 5-10 minutes on a low-medium heat.

Transfer the rhubarb to an oven dish.

Make the crumble by blending the butter, flour and brown sugar together between your fingers and thumbs. They should look like bread crumbs.

Spread the crumble over the rhubarb and then bake in the oven at 210 degree for 20 minutes until the crumble has browned. I served this with fresh double cream.

It reminded me of one of the best ice creams I have eaten in this Country. It was a rhubarb crumble ice cream we purchased from a street seller in a small Cotswold's village. It seemed to be a family affair, with mum, dad and two children in attendance.  The rhubarb was fruity and tart in the ice cream and the crumble crisp and crunchy. I would love to try it again.

Chili sin carne

Originally, a meat dish, chili con carne lends itself well to vegetarianisation. It is often made simply with more beans, but I like the flavour and texture combination I get with Quorn mince. I also use the same combination of spices when I make my frijoles refritos for stuffing in tacos. However, today I had mince in the freezer, so I opted for the grown up nacho-style chili option; with the hope that this food of a hot nation, might function to cool us both down during this heat wave.

What you will need
250g vege mince (any brand will do)
1 tin of kidney beans
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
1 tea spoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 teaspoon of chilli powder
2-3 green chillies
½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon of ground cloves
1 onion
2-3 cloves garlic
2 ripe avocados
1 lemon
Fresh coriander
Sour cream and chives
6 Corn tacos

Cheddar optional

Chop the onion and fry off with the garlic until softened and browned. Add all the spices and cook these off for just a minute before adding the mince, chopped green chillies, tinned tomatoes, kidney beans and tomato puree. Add the same amount of water as the tin of tomatoes and season. Cook this for approximately 20 minutes on a medium heat to reduce and cook through the mince.

I add half a teaspoon of this – which really gives this chilli a kick. This is the hottest stuff I have come across and I would recommend keeping a jar in the fridge if you like it hot, as I do. Otherwise, add extra dried or fresh chillis for more heat.
 

Whilst the chilli is cooking, I extracted the flesh of two avocados and blended with the juice of half a lemon, seasoned and stirred through some fresh coriander.

Just before serving, place the corn tacos in the oven to heat through until they have crisped up. This takes about 10 minutes. See the instructions on the packet.

Haphazardly break each of the tacos into four large-ish pieces. Place these on the plate and pile the chilli on top. Serve with the guacamole and sour cream with chives (I think I have previously mentioned we are growing these). Cheddar is optional, but Gipsy Spread must always have cheddar with his chilli.

Get stuck in with your fork and fingers to bring on the chili sweats!