Monday's pasta and cheese

There's no picture of our Italian dinner,
but here we are in Rome.

Matt, my husband, had been mentioning on and off about recreating a pasta dish we had in Rome last year: cacio e pepe. This translates as cheese and pepper and was on offer in lots of the restaurants around where we were staying. A quick internet search (we made use of the free Wi-Fi®* in our apartment) revealed that it literally consisted of loads of grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper. This was something I wasn't keen on spending my touristical Euros on in a restaurant when we could quite easily rustle it up ourselves – especially as the apartment also came with black pepper. So we bought some spaghetti and the suggested two types of cheese (pecorino and grana padano if memory serves me correctly). There was a lot of cheese, but we like cheese. And we had ourselves a very simple and delicious dinner.

But we are not on holiday and thus such a super cheesy dinner was out of the question when normal diet rules apply. But I had been thinking about macaroni cheese a bit recently. I haven't had macaroni cheese for years. Rather than a pure macaroni cheese (which is probably on the too cheesy end of the spectrum) I decided to incorporate some spinach which wasn't going to keep much longer. And rather than macaroni I actually used whole wheat pasta bows. So it wasn't really going to be much of a macaroni at all.

I started off by making a white sauce in one pan and sweating a chopped red onion in another. The onion was easy – I have a lot of practice. The white sauce on the other hand might be a problem, my success rate is variable. I was feeling kind of optimistic because I had seen a TV cook make one the other day so had a new trick up my sleeve. I started off with a big dollop of butter (maybe I would have more success if I weighed it), melted this and then added about the same volume of plain flour. As I have deduced I cooked this for quite a while to avoid raw flour taste in the sauce – I think it is now called a roux. Once I thought the roux had cooked for long enough I added some milk – here's the new trick: the TV cook had used boiling milk. Now to me the concept of boiling milk is very worrying (visions of extreme mess in the microwave / all over the hob) but I was prepared to heat it up a bit. So I blasted my first cup of milk for 30 seconds on high to make it a bit hot. On adding this to my roux the whole lot thickened immediately. None of the tedious whisking for ages that I'm used to. I did the same with a second and third cup of milk and ended up with what looked like a rather nice white sauce.

But I wasn't after a nice white sauce, I was after cheesy spinach goodness. The cheese went in first – about half a standard size block of strong cheddar (or low(er) fat imitation in this instance), along with some ground nutmeg and black pepper. And then I tipped in my now sweated onion and the spinach. I used the whole bag of spinach which might at first seem a lot (it was 3+ colanders full) but it cooks down to a fraction of this volume. While that cooked a little bit I boiled the pasta (to save on washing up I used the same pan as for the onion).

 

It was all happening surprisingly quickly now. I tipped the cooked pasta into an oven-proof dish and poured over the spinach / cheese sauce and mixed it all up. That would probably have been enough, but for a few extra vitamins I added some cherry tomatoes, for a bit of extra texture I sprinkled over some breadcrumbs, and then just because I grated over a bit of parmesan.

 

It went into the oven at 180ºC and baked for about 15 minutes. The outcome was just as delicious as the cacio e pepe. Maybe not quite as simple, but definitely more nutritious. And it made an excellent reheat Tuesday lunch.

 

*Matt is happy to provide an explanation of why this is a registered trademark.

Sunday's sponge pudding

Inspired by a popular television baking programme I had half an intention of baking pretzels this weekend. Saturday was mostly occupied with a trip to a local historic house (where I had a lovely sandwich). We had an invitation to Barbara's, my mother-in-law, for Sunday lunch plus I needed to do a little bit of clothes shopping (this is not an inappropriate use of the word need) and wanted to swim in the afternoon so thought I might be pressed to get all the aspects of pretzel making fitted in. Instead I offered to take a pudding for lunch. This is rarely an offer refused by Barbara.

 

For some reason I decided that I wanted to do a pudding with marmalade. The reason might be that we have just a small amount of marmalade left in a massive jar taking up a lot of space in the fridge. After a quick skim of my recipes I decided that it would be a sponge pudding – there were other options but these were too complex for me today. I was just about to start and Matt, my husband, suggested I investigate what other preserves we had that needed using (I have a habit of acquiring lots of delicious jam from my mum and then when I get a new one forgetting about the old ones). So instead of marmalade the pudding would now feature orange and cranberry jam.

 

I chose a steamed sponge pudding recipe, but usefully it gave options for microwaving. 4 minutes in the microwave was much more appealing than over an hour steaming. The sponge recipe was very simple:

• 100g butter (I used butter substitute)
• 100g caster sugar (I substituted 30g for golden syrup)
• beaten together (I really don't know what I did before I had my electric hand whisk)
• 2 eggs
• beaten in one at a time with 20g self-raising flour each
• Another 60g self-raising flour
• folded in
• 25g of chopped mixed nuts
• because sometimes I think it's nice to have bit of texture in the sponge

(The recipe also listed 30ml milk in the ingredient list but didn't say when to put it in, so I left it out.)

 

Then it came to assemble the sponge with the jam. I searched for a pudding basin, I was convinced that I had various sizes acquired from my mum, but couldn't find any, even with Matt's help and he's very good at finding things. So obviously a pudding basin is something I am yet to acquire and for now I would have to use a microwave-proof dish. I greased this very thoroughly – the last thing I wanted was a stuck pudding – and then put in a layer of jam. Pleasingly (for Matt at least) I was able to use up the jam. And topped it off with the sponge mix. Since it was in a stable dish with a lid I thought it was a reasonable risk to take to transport it to Barbara's and cook it there when we were ready.

 

Matt went ahead to his mum's with the pudding while I undertook my necessary shopping trip (which was successful thanks to a lovely lady in a popular high street store). On my way to Barbara's I deviated to get some custard, this should have been a relatively straightforward task but I dallied over what type to get: fresh or long life, full(er) or low(er) fat. I decided against fresh as I wasn't sure that people would definitely want it. The low(er) fat option actually wasn't much lower fat than the full(er) fat option and the energy saving marginal when you consider the rest of the pudding. So I went for the full(er) fat option. Some people might think that I should make my own custard but to be quite honest it seems like and absolute palaver and the stuff you can buy seems very good to me. (I developed a big taste for tinned custard when I once had a housemate who worked at the local custard factory and we apparently had an endless supply – it makes a very satisfactory pudding heated up with a spoonful of jam.

 

We had a very delicious lunch, including some fabulous roast potatoes. I love roast potatoes. We gave our dinner a good quarter of an hour to go down before I resumed my pudding cooking duties. The recipe had suggested that I needed to microwave it on low for 4 minutes. Which I did and it looked like nothing had happened at all. So I cranked it up to medium and gave it another 2 minutes – we had some action but the skewer test indicated it still had a way to go. So I cranked it up to high for another 2 minutes. This was risky, but I was getting impatient. I suppose one of the problems with microwave cooking instructions is that microwaves come in a variety of wattages – for example our high is 1000W, whereas Barbara's is 750W so “low” is not going to be quite the same.

 

Fortunately my combination of low, medium and high appeared to be successful – as indicated by a skewer test, you don't get any of that “golden brown” thing in a microwave. We had to wait just a few minutes longer while it cooled (and thus shrank) in the dish so that I could turn it out. This was the most nerve-racking part, you have to be assertive with the pudding. Further success – it was transferred jam side up to a plate. And with the jam side up the absence of the golden brown thing doesn't matter so much (not that I'm ever really one for making things look that good). Matt and I did have ours with custard (it was the right choice), while Barbara had hers condiment free. And as she remarked, I enjoy making puddings and she enjoys eating them. 

Sunday's fish pie

Matt, my husband, had declined my offer of roast dinner. Wisely because roast dinner would probably have consisted of bean burgers, roast potatoes, peas and gravy. So I would have to be a bit more imaginative. Whilst ferreting in the freezer earlier in the week I had noticed a disproportionate amount of smoked fish. I tend to buy this (and other fish) when it's reduced and then freeze it for use when we fancy it. One of the things I like to make is fish pie, but in the absence of any plain white fish and only a massive side of salmon (which I should have chopped up before freezing but is now going to have to be deployed when we have lots of people round sometime) this wasn't an option in the traditional sense. What I envisaged instead was something with the smoked fish (2 of the 4 fillets) and tomato. There was also half a tin of sweetcorn, half a punnet of mushrooms and some spring onions that needed using up. I wouldn't normally buy spring onions but they were on offer so were effectively free with the celery (not deployed in this creation) that I had brought. So I decided to add the mushrooms and sweetcorn to the tomato / fish mix and to make some sort of fancy mashed potato to go on top of it all.

This had the potential to use a lot of pans, something that I generally strive to avoid. So I spent a few minutes working out how to reduce my pan usage. I got it down to a wok, a saucepan and an oven-proof dish. Unfortunately I had used my multifunction hob / oven dish for the previous day's curry and hadn't yet washed it up, otherwise this would have reduced my pan usage by a third.

Strategically, I started off cooking the chopped spring onions in the wok while the fish defrosted in the microwave. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of smoked fish aroma emanating from the microwave every time we used it for a number of days subsequently. I am yet to discover the way around this – apart from of course to be more organised and get the fish out the freezer earlier so that it can defrost naturally. I was reminded of one of the reasons why I don't buy spring onions very often – they were so full of mud and required a disproportionate amount of washing for their small volume.

Spring onions to one side – they would go in the mash. I replaced them in the wok with the mushrooms and once these were cooked down (and I never cease to be amazed just how much they do cook down) I added a tin of plum tomatoes which I chopped a little bit with my wooden spoon. While that heated up a bit I prepared the fish. This mainly involved deskinning it, which is relatively easy as long as you have some good soap for afterwards so that you're not afraid to tackle to quite assertively.

The fish went into the mushroom / tomato mix and I put the potatoes on to boil. I am of the opinion that lots of the goodness in a potato is in its skin. Therefore unless you are an exceptionally honoured guest or the potatoes have particularly grotty skins you will find that my mash has the added texture and flavour of the skins which I leave in. In posh restaurants I think they call this crushed potatoes, really it is just slack mash. I stirred the sweetcorn into the mushroom / tomato / fish mix and then had to wait for a while until the fish was cooked and the potatoes were ready for mashing. Rather than twiddling my thumbs I grated some strong cheddar that I decided would augment the mash rather nicely.

I finished off the mushroom / tomato / fish / sweetcorn mix with a tablespoon of crème fraiche (it seemed like a good idea) and lots of black pepper and transferred this to my oven-proof dish. I mashed up the potatoes with the spring onions and cheese (this smelt amazing in itself and I would have been quite happy just to eat this for my meal) and then carefully applied this on top of the mushroom / tomato / fish / sweetcorn mix. There was a little bit of mash left over but I didn't mind – I would look forward to eating it as reheat.

The whole thing went into a hottish oven (the standard 180°C for when you don't really know what temperature you should really be using) for about 20 minutes and I cooked a little bit of broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables but not one of my favourite spellings) to go with it. The smell coming from the oven was (even if I say so myself) amazing – that wonderful combination of smoked fish and cheese I think. And when it came to eating the smell lived up to the expectations that it had created - a delicious alternative to a slack roast dinner. This is definitely one that's going to be recreated, hopefully with fewer pans next time.

Saturday's carrot cake

My intention had sort of been to make Christmas cakes / Christmas puddings today. Enough of an intention that I had got as far as calling my mum to ask for recipes. She agreed to email me. But I didn't have enough of an intention to purchase a slow cooker for the puddings, especially when it transpires that mum has two spare ones (who needs two spare slow cookers?) and I'm going to see her in a few weeks so can acquire one of these then. And it appears that I am a little premature for Christmas cake (up to 4 weeks in advance the recipe says). So it was off with the Christmas baking and on with the carrot cake.

I have often thought about making a carrot cake, ever since Matt, my husband, bought me a food processor a couple of years ago. You may wonder why the advent of a food processor would mean that I would think about making carrot cake. Well, one of the things that has always put me off before is the amount of manual carrot grating that I had envisaged. Since getting the food processor the thing that has been putting me off making carrot cake is my mum. Her carrot cake is so good that I really think I don't stand a chance of living up to it and all who eat it (who have previously tasted hers) will be disappointed. I have however made a number of successful batches of carrot muffins and was feeling confident enough now to extend my skills to a full on cake.

I've had mum's carrot cake recipe written on a scrap of paper since my university days but decided that rather than a direct comparison I'd try something different. So I selected a different recipe from my box. As well as carrots this also featured sultanas (also in mum's) and coconut which I thought sounded nice. In the end it turns out that for the required 175g of grated carrot you only need 2 carrots – so maybe I could have managed the manual grating after all. It was a pleasingly simple recipe: beat together 75ml sunflower oil and 100g dark brown soft sugar (I used light brown as this was all there was in the cupboard). Then beat in 2 eggs, then stir in everything else.

Unable to resist I decided to add a few more ingredients – as well as the carrot, 100g self-raising flour, cinnamon and nutmeg, 50g sultanas and 50g desiccated coconut, I also added 50g chopped dried apple (I've had carrot and apple soup before which was very nice). I tried to chop the apple in the food processor but it was having none of it (maybe I was using the wrong attachment) so had to chop manually. Then I got a bit worried that there wouldn't be enough moisture to deal with all the dry ingredients so I added a tablespoon of ginger syrup (I've been looking for a use for this since I used the balls of stem ginger in a big gingerbread).

Then you just pour it into a “prepared” 18cm square tin and bake at 180ºC for about half an hour (maybe just under – keep an eye on it). One thing that I have never got the hang of (to be honest I haven't ever really tried very hard) is lining cake tins. With square tins it isn't too bad though – I just stick a bit of greaseproof paper in it and poke a bit at the corners. The worst that happens is slightly untidy corners. I think that before I make Christmas cake(s) using lots of (relatively) expensive ingredients I should try to learn how to line the tins properly. Perhaps mum will have some tips.

In terms of icing I take after my mum i.e. we'd rather not. I was positively amazed that she had full on decorated a cake for my 30^th birthday. So something I could do to increase my chances of a good carrot cake taste comparison would be to ice this one. In general I don't really like the taste or texture of icing but I do like the cream cheese one traditional with carrot cake. In the absence of any oranges in our house, or in the local shop, I made do with the zest of a couple of clementines. Despite assiduously (wow, that word just came to me, I hope it's the one I'm after) sticking to the recipe (apart from the clementine substitution) the icing seemed to be quite runny but it tasted really nice (it would have been remiss not to test it) and I was loath to change the taste with the addition of more icing sugar. Once the cake had fully cooled I transferred it to my chosen tin (one that had previously contained biscuits celebrating a rather big wedding from last year) and spooned over the icing. The trick is to put the cake on the lid of the tin then you don't have to do any manoeuvring to ice or serve it. The icing did pour over the sides quite a bit but I wasn't too bothered, I just cleaned it up with my little finger.

We resisted until after our curry to try the cake out. And I must say I wasn't disappointed. Matt described it as having a good cakiness about it. I was particularly pleased by the apple which I think gave it a satisfying tanginess. Must try it out on my mum.

Saturday's curry

You might have noticed that it's been a bit quiet on the slack lasagne front recently. That's for two reasons:

1. We've been on holiday – to France. We ate out a lot, and self constructed meals consisted mainly of bread and cheese and a bit of salad.

2. Other than being on holiday I've been eating a lot of jacket potatoes. These have mostly been consumed with cottage cheese, beans and cheese, or tinned sardines; as you can appreciate there's little blog material there.

On return from our holiday we ordered a big top-up from an online retailer. This was mainly successful but resulted in an extreme over supply of mushrooms. I had selected two packs of the cheapest own brand fresh mushrooms and one pack of dried mushrooms. The delivery driver informed me that the mushrooms had been substituted with premium own brand fresh mushrooms and even showed me what I was now getting. I was initially delighted as this appeared to be a £1 bonus in the mushroom stakes for us. However on further unpacking it transpired that we had been sent the premium fresh mushrooms instead of the dried mushrooms and I was now in possession of 4 punnets of fresh mushrooms.

Now I like mushrooms (and apparently they are very nutritious), but I was going to have my work cut out to use all these up before they turned into a horrible slimy mess. The first punnet (cheap ones) went into a sausage casserole. I hadn't planned to make a sausage casserole because I was catering for a visiting German friend. She's not a typical German so I thought that she might not want sausages. But she did (they were veggie sausages though which I think might be a blasphemy to many Germans), and this was a great use of 350g mushrooms. The next punnet (posh ones) were the main feature of a risotto. Half of the next punnet (posh ones) went onto a pizza (courtesy of Matt, my husband). Which left us with half a punnet of posh mushrooms and a whole punnet of cheap ones. Having eaten mushrooms for 4 days consecutively I wasn't particularly fancying more, but they had to be used or I would risk the slimy mess.

The solution would be curry. I love mushrooms in a curry. The usual would be mushroom,sweet potato and chickpea but I was going to try something slightly different: mushroom, sweet potato and vegetarian “chicken style” pieces. (I don't usually go for meat replacement options much (apart from the mince which I think is fab) but had a few lapses into carnivorism in France (they can just about cater for vegetarians these days but not yet pregnant vegetarians) and since then have found myself fancying that sort of “meaty” taste.)

As usual I started by sweating off a couple of onions (although I heard on the TV that they don't always use onions in India because it displeases the Gods). Usually one onion might do but one of these onions was slightly old and had a slight pickled aroma about it until I peeled off a good few layers and the other had that weird thing where you get a second layer of onion skin a few layers in. At the same time I also added a good lot of fresh ginger that I had finely chopped (maybe about an inch off the piece of ginger root) and a tablespoon of special curry powder. Sometimes I make up my own spice mixture but we have recently replenished with a fantastic product called “Magic Mix”. This is a big pot of a blend of spices which we discovered at a market in Cornwall a few years ago, where we had a taster and met the lady who runs the company. Since then it's become almost as much of a staple beside our hob as a pot of vegetable stock powder. It has no chilli or ginger in it so you add those (and anything else you fancy) to taste.

Next I added chopped sweet potato. Sometimes I chop it big but today I chopped it small. That cooked for as long as it took me to prepare the mushrooms. The remainder of the posh punnet (they were already going slimy) and half of a cheap punnet (still in perfect nick – and they have the same expiry as the posh ones). I added them to the pan along with the “chicken style” pieces. I was a bit concerned as I could smell burning but on closer inspection this turned out to be some grime on the hob ring rather than anything bad happening in my cooking. Once that had cooked down a bit (usually signified by juice release from the mushrooms) I would usually add a tin or two of chopped tomatoes. Today this would be impossible because the pan was already at capacity. So I just added enough boiling water to cover the contents – essential to ensure adequate cooking of the potato – along with a spoonful of branded yeast extract and then left it on a low heat while I got on with other things.

The problem with adding water is that it ended up a bit too liquidy so after a while (once the potato seemed soft) I chucked in a handful of lentils, mainly for the purpose of thickening but with the added benefit of protein and fibre, and left it on a low heat again. Unfortunately I forgot to turn the hob off when we went out for a swim, we could take a gamble and leave it but this would risk a horrible mush on our return. Fortunately Matt was in a chivalrous mood and dropped me off at the pool while he headed back to rescue the dinner. (He joined me about after about a quarter of an hour and as I'm a bit slow at the moment we did the same number of lengths.)

Upon our return it was already time to think about eating (it's the season for my favourite TV dancing programme so I didn't want to be faffing about in the kitchen while that was on). To me it didn't look like we had much rice left (Matt was cooking the rice) so I got it in my head that we should have something else to go with the curry. I had a quick look at recipes for typical “Indian” breads and decided that chapatis were significantly more achievable than naan in the available time. Even then it would be cutting it fine and I would have to take some short cuts, this was risky as I had never made chapatis before but at least I had nothing to compare them against.

So I mixed 115g wholemeal plain flour with 90ml lukewarm water (in which I dissolved a pinch of salt) and then kneaded. I skipped the “resting” phase and went straight to the forming phase – rolling out to 4 very thin discs (I rolled some cumin seeds into two of them). Then I cooked them in a hot frying pan (no oil required) until they started to get bubbles in them.

It was all ready in the nick of time (and it was a treat of Saturday night dancing). The curry itself was rich and spicy, possibly better for the absence of tomatoes. In the absence of chilli I “hotted” mine up with some lime pickle and we both enjoyed some mango chutney and some of our brother-in-law's delicious home made runner bean chutney. The chapatis were a great success – I can't believe I've never made them before.