A Mediterranean Dinner by Candlelight

We've been having some late summer sun this autumn and that's meant some wonderful outside days. It seems a pity to huddle around the fire eating soup and stew when it's still possible to sit outside late into the evening, eating by candlelight in the afterglow of the day and watching brilliant stars overhead.

It looks like the best of it is over now but last night we had a last chance dinner of Greek inspired dishes, made with vegetables and herbs from the garden and served with lemon, olive oil and warm summer breezes.

The French and Runner green beans are more or less finished as green vegetables but they're still packed full of big tender beans that can be shelled out of their pods and used in stews and braises like this dish of Giant Greek Beans. These beans aren't yet dry so don't take long to cook; if you are using dried beans soak them well and cook until just tender before using as below.



Take a couple of big handfuls of mature beans without pods. Put them in a pan with just enough water to cover, the juice of half a lemon, a pinch of fennel seeds and a bay leaf. Add a couple of cloves of garlic and a big glug of olive oil and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes until the beans are cooked how you like them. I also added some young achocha pods to the pot. You could add some sliced green pepper if you like it.

Meanwhile skin some big meaty tomatoes, remove the hard cores and chop into small pieces. Add the tomato to your beans in their pot of liquid and allow to heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste. Finally add a big handful of finely chopped parsley, stir through and turn off the heat. Serve at room temperature with lots of bread for the juices.



Greek roast potatoes are just like ordinary ones cooked in olive oil with the addition of lemon juice. I par-boiled some  Pink Fir Apple but other firm roasting potatoes are fine. Coat the hot drained potatoes in olive oil and lemon juice and roast in a very hot oven for 40-50 minutes stirring after about 25 minutes. You can add extra woody herbs like rosemary if you want and a few peeled cloves of garlic tossed in are lovely.

I've been trying to get to grips with the huge list of bloggers taking part in this year's MoFo. It looks like there's some great stuff out there and I hope to be able to visit most of you at least once over the month.

My top tip, use a different browser to subscribe to the blogroll RSS in a reader under a throwaway identity. Last year I tried to put the big list into my usual reader and really messed it up. By having a separate identity in a different browser there's no chance of overwriting your usual settings, which I find really helpful. It's still possible to comment as whoever you want to be, so you're not lying to anyone.

Supper Club Tests #1

I've been testing recipes for the Supper Club dates for November.

Something I'm considering are vegetables that are salt baked; coated in a thick layer of salt and baked gently until they are tender all the way through. It sounds appealing and jacket potatoes have been done this way by some for many years but more recently other vegetables have become the vogue on tasting and traditional menus alike, familiar and yet a little bit novel, well flavoured without stretching the bravery of diner's palates much further than they're accustomed to.



I had a go with a celeriac root and a similarly sized beetroot as a first attempt. The vegetables were washed very well, grit is nasty, but the skins were left intact to provide a barrier against too much salt pervading them.

I used a deep ceramic casserole for two reasons, mainly to help hold the salty coating around the roots without having to use too much salt and also to catch any juices should they exude. I was a bit worried that the salt would attack the glaze but although it seemed as if the salt crystals were inextricably welded to the dish just after it came out of the oven it came away easily once it was cooled. 

The salt was sea salt, my favourite Sel de Guerande from Brittany. Straight from the bag it was just damp enough to cling thickly to the sides and top of the vegetables nestled on a shallow bed of more salt.

They were baked in the gas oven at about 180C-200C for one and half hours. I tested them with a knife for tenderness, smaller or larger roots will need different timings.

Carefully extract the roots from the salt. Some of the coat will break off in chunks and some will need to be brushed off with a cloth or even a stiff brush. It's all rather hot too so use protection for your hands. When all the salt is cleared from the veg. remove them to a clean bowl or board and clean up all the salt from the working area before proceeding. An unexpected mouthful of salt crystals is quite nasty. The used salt can be crumbled when cool and reused for baking.

Then you can carve your dish. It's best to peel the salty skin away and make thin cuts, either sliced or narrow wedges as desired.

This is the moment when I have to admit I was less than overwhelmed by it all. The intensified celeriac flavour was almost too strong to be pleasant, the beetroot no better that roots roasted without salt. I'm going to try again with the intention of dressing the finely sliced vegetable flesh with some sort of balancing sauce but for the moment this lovely sounding idea is still a work in progress.

It was my Birthday

and for a change I was in the UK celebrating in some of the best weather ever for the month of October, just like when I was born, a goodly number of years ago.

The weather was so wonderful we had breakfast in the garden made on the barbeque.




The family were here to celebrate with me and this is the cake...



it's a no bake cake made with pepparkakor, chocolate, raisins and for the first time ever, malt syrup which worked very well. Very rich, very good with coffee.

A first post for Vegan Mofo, no logos or links today, on the road with cats which is quite complicated enough for this overheated brain.

Vegan Mofo

I'm mad, but I've signed up for this year's Vegan MoFo. My theme this year will be recipe testing for the Supper Clubs. If you'd like to blog your way through October with a lot of  very talented bloggers and me, step over to the form and fill it in. You have until the 28th September to join in, and then the fun starts!

Fry Pan Pizza

I adore pizza and, just at the moment, I'm making all my own bread so there is always a handful of dough around the place ready to go. But I'm also mean and hate to waste gas. I needed lunch and I needed it now but the loaf that was going to justify heating the oven wouldn't be ready to bake for another three hours.

Frying pan or grill pizzas aren't new but less than fond memories of the Scone pizza of Blue Peter fame mean I've always given them a miss. Sadly I can't quite track down the original from the 70s for you but the links will give you the general picture. By the way, the amount of oil in that Delia clip is horrific.

Still, I've been making flat breads for breakfast for a few days now and decided that it was but a small step from that to a flat bread with toppings, which is almost a pizza.

It's not really a recipe; fry off some onions and other vegetables in a little oil for your topping. I used tomato and courgette. When they're cooked to your liking (they get little more than warming from now on) remove to a plate, season to taste and keep hot.

Shape or roll about 200g of proved dough into a nice disk and place in the hot frying pan. You shouldn't need any more oil but use your judgement. Reduce the heat a bit and allow it to cook for a minute or two to seal the bottom. The top will rise up in bubbles.

When it does flip it over. Use a wooden spatula to press down gently on the cooking dough. With luck you should find it swells upwards into a lovely balloon like a pitta bread or khoubz. Allow to cook for two or three minutes to make sure it's cooked through.

Turn it again and then quickly apply your toppings. I had too many in the end with hummous, roasted garlic and pesto as the sauce under my cooked veggies. Next time, I'll just use the pesto by itself. A sprinkle of capers made the final garnish.

Put the lid on the pan and give the pizza a final couple of minutes on a high heat to warm the toppings and crisp the bottom of the dough but be careful not to burn it.

Eat.

**** Update My UK correspondent aka Mr. Stripey has tracked down a link to a Guardian article which references the scone pizza, just when I was beginning to doubt my own recollection, do take a look ***

Late Summer Pudding

A few lovely days of late summer means that the berries are still in excellent condition. Perfect for a traditional English dessert, the Summer Pudding.

When this delicious low fat treat is made earlier in the year red currants are used, partly for sharpness and partly because they are so high in pectin they jelly the juices as the pudding chills and add to the texture. It's too late for red currants from the garden now but the blackberries take on their role, include a few reddish ones to improve the set.

I like raspberries but I couldn't eat a whole one... to misquote the old joke. Although they are a lovely fruit with a distinctive flavour they overpower everything they come in contact with, in my opinion anyway, so add them with caution.

On the plate then, raspberries, strawberries; just a few late fruit that I saved from the slugs, blackberries - some plants are better than others this late in the season so taste them before adding too many, elderberries which need to be stripped from the bunch before cooking and rosehips. In the end I decided that preparing and precooking the rosehips was a step too far for this little dish so I left them out but added a big spoonful of last year's rosehip syrup to the pan.

The bread needs to be close textured and made with white flour. Brown bread makes a very worthy meal but detracts from the delicacy of the lightly cooked filling.

For a pudding to serve two I used about 250g of fruit. It was only just enough so if you like extra juice to use as sauce pick a few more berries for it.

Late Summer Pudding

250g mixed soft fruit (see above)
20g sugar or to taste, this was plenty for me.
Sliced white sandwich bread, crusts removed.
Rosehip syrup if you have it.
A pudding bowl which will just contain your raw fruit.

Prepare the fruit, put it in a saucepan with the sugar and syrup (if using) and enough water to cover the bottom of the pan and come half way up the fruit.

Bring to a gentle simmer, cook for a couple of minutes and then turn off the heat, cover the pan and leave to cool.

Line a small pudding basin or plastic dish with the white bread, cut to fit together closely like a jigsaw around the side. Keep a slice to cover the top.

Lift the fruit from the saucepan into the bread lined bowl with a slotted spoon, then gently spoon the juice over until the bread is well soaked and coloured all over. Put on the bread lid and spoon a little juice over that too.

Place a clean saucer or small plate on the pudding and then weight it down with a tin or a stone in plastic wrap. This consolidates the pudding and makes sure the juice is absorbed by the bread, leaving no white patches. Place in the refrigerator and chill until needed.

Unmould the pudding onto a serving plate and serve with vegan yoghurt or cream. Serve any reserved juice in a jug on the side and have a little fine sugar available for any guests who like it sweeter.

Experiments

One of the recipes I thought I'd try out for the autumn was this recipe from 101Cookbooks , Olive Biscuits, because sweet salty combinations are intriguing and taste enhancing. I followed the recipe pretty exactly simply veganising it by substituting a good vegan margarine for the butter. Although things looked promising oven troubles meant I burnt the first batch and undercooked the second.  Worse than that, I didn't really like what I tasted. It was too sweet, too greasy. I needed to rework the recipe (which I'm sure is fine with butter) to compensate for the different properties of the vegan margarine.

Into a tin they went, because throwing them straight away seemed such a waste, and it wasn't until a few days later that I went back to the tin in search of something to have with my self indulgently sweetened coffee. I found no Speculoos but tentatively tasted the almost stale olive cookies and was almost blown away. Against the (I must admit tremendously) sweet coffee they were fantastic.  So, the effort of reworking them seems worthwhile and I'll be returning to the attempt when I'm back in the UK with a reliably controlled oven.


While he was here Mr. Stripey bought me a food processor, quite an addition to this largely unplugged kitchen. It's already been useful for rapidly slicing big black radish for our favourite pickle but I thought I'd give it a test on runner beans. Unlike french beans these are usually prepared by slicing and an essential part of any British kitchen is one sort or another of patent bean slicer. I've never seen one in France and slicing the beans by hand was painstaking and tedious work, especially for one.


Of course, the processor is equipped with nothing that would produce the long slivers of vegetable normally used but the speedy reduction to fine pieces that it did give was inspirational enough.


Gratin of Runner beans with Garlic and Sherry Vinegar

Handful of runner beans per person
Tomato passata
Garlic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Sherry vinegar
Stale bread for croutons

Slice the beans finely.

Heat a little oil in a saucepan and add the garlic, finely sliced. How much you use is up to you, I suggest lots.

Allow the garlic to cook without browning then add the sliced beans stirring them around to coat in the oil, then add three or so tablespoons of passata, just enough to moisten the beans and salt and pepper to taste. Put a lid on the pan and set over a low heat for five to ten minutes. The beans should be cooked but not mushy.

In the meantime, make tiny croutons from your bread, use about 1 big slice per person. I used the crusts from a summer pudding (of which more later) but any bread you like will be fine. Fry them quickly in a little more oil until they are brown and crispy.  Keep warm until the beans are done if necessary.

Finally put the beans into a serving dish, sprinkle over sherry vinegar to taste (good sherry vinegar is divine) and top with fried crumbs. Serve immediately as a side dish or light lunch.

Pfffft!!!!

 
Tofu Tomato Fried Rice.

Hello again. It's been a while.

What happened is that the Stripey man had a bit of a health scare (still not resolved, but currently comfortable, thanks) and he's been over here with me, holidaying and taking taking things easy. He went back yesterday, hence the now traditional shot of rice based comfort food taken for my first solo meal.

By the way, the fried rice was pretty damn good, I think the trick is to really let the onions caramelise before you add anything else and use a touch of white pepper in the seasoning. While he was here I was anything but Florence Nightingale but I did cook up three nutritious meals day, all low fat, and during the period managed to resample quite a lot of the back catalogue of recipes I've built up here.

Anyway, we must look to the future and the rest of the year for me is bounded by the new aspiration to become a Supper Club host and cook. It seems like an easy way to get started in the restaurant business, you just open up your dining room to an unsuspecting world but I've discovered that a good deal of the preparation involves things I've struggled to avoid all my adult life, like marketing and a responsible attitude to costs!

Things have progressed, I'm now able to sell tickets via WeGotTickets and I've made a new web site/blog to deal exclusively with the dates, menus and information for the Stripey Cat Supper Club . It's looking a little bare there yet but it will blossom over the next month, promise!

But the most exciting part has to be the cooking. I must really discipline myself to perfecting the new recipes I plan to put on the menus in November. I won't be publishing them here, not yet anyway, but the essential extra time in the kitchen should have enough culinary overspill and kickbacks to have plenty to blog about in a personal capacity. That's the plan anyway.

Tonight's simple dinner

Swamped with courgettes at the moment, trouble is if I stop to eat them up the beans will overwhelm me.

These are really basic fritters, just sliced courgette dipped in a flour and water batter and shallow friend in peanut oil with a drop of toasted sesame seed oil added.

Served with rice, brown would be more wholesome but white basmati was good and a dipping/pouring sauce of soy sauce mixed with rice vinegar with shreds of ginger and garlic.