Macaroni con funghi

Hello again! The long delay hasn't been because I've died due to mushroom poisoning, rather that the season has progressed from potatoes and courgettes to fungi and tomatoes pretty much seamlessly and it's still stretching my ability to come up with something fresh and interesting.



My days are spent rendering tomato products and drying and freezing various fungi for the winter. Today I had a big pot of tomatoes that were becoming passata and some mixed varieties of mushrooms - chanterelle, sheeps' feet and parasols - to preserve.

It seemed hopelessly Italian so for my supper I had to include some pasta. Start the pasta first, if it finishes cooking before the sauce is ready, drain and keep warm but it should all come together about right.



The sauce was made with a clove of garlic and a small onion (or use a shallot) chopped fine and softened in plenty of olive oil. When this starts to smell delicious add your prepared mushrooms and stir them around in the hot pan so that they cook and take on the caramel sugars of the onion. Add a couple of ladles of hot fresh tomato passata, salt and pepper to taste and allow to simmer down for a few minutes.

Add the drained pasta to the sauce, toss well, sprinkle with some fresh green basil and serve.

Puff Ball Puff

I'm sorry it's been so quiet around here. Mostly it's because I'm just eating what's growing and cooking it as simply as possible. There are only so many ways of displaying a plate of potatoes, beans and courgettes before everyone falls asleep from boredom, the eater included.

Anyway, after the heat came the rain and that has proved to be ideal conditions for the Giant Puff Ball, currently known as Calvatia gigantea in botanical terms. Before I get too bored with these as well, and regular readers will be aware of my ambivalence to all things mushroomy, I thought I'd show you a typical presentation.

The Giant Puff Ball is a robust creature and can be chopped up and used pretty much as you would use a soft tofu or aubergine in any of your favourite dishes but I particularly enjoy them sliced and coated in a thin batter before pan frying. They also make damn fine tempura if you're in the mood for a Japanese theme.

Here the cooked slices are served with a garden salad of onions, tomatoes, mild chilli pepper, golden purslane and basil leaves. No need for dressing because of the oil already on the puffball puffs and just a bit of salt and lemon juice to bring out the flavours.

If you get the opportunity do try them, they're really quite special.

First of a New Season

We've been eating new potatoes from the garden for several weeks now but one of the varieties of potato we grow is chosen because we think it makes especially good chips. The variety is British Queen. Potatoes for making chips are usually fully mature and conditioned before use which can mean waiting until September or October before the spuds are fit but we decided to have a go with our just grown and barely legal tubers. It worked surprisingly well.



Making delicious full fat chips is pretty simple, prepare potatoes, make nice chunky chips, cook once in hot oil to cook the flesh through, then remove the chips to drain, reheat the oil and pop them back to crisp and brown. See full instructions here.



With them, because we are on the continent after all, we had real home made vegan mayonnaise.

We've always bought it before, the Plamil version for preference, one or two other less pleasant ready made alternatives but it actually took a post on David Lebovitz's blog to show me how easy it was to make this for ourselves.

You absolutely must have a good quality blender to make this but if you have that essential it's pretty easy. I've made it a couple of times now, the first time using some cereal milk, the second a small pot of soy yoghurt. Both worked just fine, so the liquid you start with isn't too significant, and you could probably experiment with whatever you have to hand. I have used grape seed oil and a mixture of grape seed and olive oils. I think all olive oil would be too strong a flavour for most purposes although if you were making aioli it might work.


80 - 100g chilled cereal milk, soy milk or soya yoghurt
20 ml lemon juice
1 clove of garlic
pinch of white pepper if liked
150g vegetable oil in a small jug with good pouring lip
Salt
Herbs or seasonings to taste


Put the milk liquid, lemon juice and chopped garlic in the blender and give it a 30 second whizz to combine, then with the motor running add the oil very, very slowly through the lid into the blades. Try to add just a few drops at a time to begin with and then a very thin slow stream so that the whole process will take several minutes to add all the oil. The mixture will begin to thicken and may make gloopy explosions as it does so don't be alarmed. When it's thick, stop the motor, scrape the mayonnaise out into a bowl and add salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp. for this quantity), extra chopped herbs and a touch more lemon juice if you like it.

You could also add hot chilli sauce and more garlic to make a rouille type sauce or chopped capers, gherkins and herbs for a sauce tartare. Just use your imagination.

If the worst happens and the mayonnaise fails to thicken, perhaps because you added the oil too quickly, then pour the curdled mess back into the jug. Put 80g of cold milk or yoghurt in the blender and start again, adding the jug contents very very slowly as if it were just oil. This classic rescue formula works, I've done it!

Intermediate Interval Separating

So I'm really sure the WHOLE WORLD would like to know what it is that I eat on those days when it's not good enough to blog about.

Here we have a prime example - casually entitled Rat Charlotte it is a tempting combination of 3 day old leftover ratatouille and some pain de mie, the French equivalent of Mothers Pride, manipulated in a classic manner.

I don't know why it is that I can't make food in portions for one person, or when I find myself with far too much to eat at any one time I don't just throw the excess away immediately. Something in my frugal guilt laden upbringing just keeps me hanging on, resenting it and yet eating it although driven to the point of anorexia.

You might make this yourself, some evening when you've no money, little other food and in desperate hunger but really, if you were me, now, you'd be better off if you didn't.

It was o.k.

Beano

Beano is on the other blog!

Sweet Caramel

I read quite a lot of non-vegan blogs. Omnivores still eat vegetables and sometimes the techniques used on meat can be subverted to more suitable foods.

This recipe on Sunflower Food Galore is something that appealed to me, so that's what I made for my dinner tonight. It's a sweet and savoury flavour, rich with garlic and pepper. Delicious.

Instead of the chicken in Sunflower's recipe I used a very firm tofu, the sort of vacuum packed longlife product which is all that's available in supermarkets here. It worked well because it was strong enough to withstand the two cooking processes needed.


True garlic and elephant garlic compared.

In the garden I've been growing elephant garlic. Technically it's not a true garlic but a leek, however it looks like garlic and smells like garlic, it's just much much bigger! For cooks, it isn't perhaps as pure a garlic flavour as it might be but it has the advantage of making nice large slices and freshly picked the sugars in it caramelise rather beautifully. It seemed the obvious candidate for the dish.

250g firm tofu
Sesame oil
Garlic (use plenty!)
30g sugar
30g soy sauce
150g water
2 tsps white vinegar
Black peppercorns - about a dozen, crushed
30g roasted cashew nuts (optional)

Slice your tofu into pretty shapes, I made triangles but cubes or batons would be just as good.

Fry them off in a little sesame oil. Keep the oil hot so that the tofu takes a good colour then remove to a holding dish. Put your sliced garlic in the hot pan for just a minute or less to colour without burning. Scrape the garlic and any remaining oil onto the reserved tofu.

In the pan, sprinkle the sugar and allow it to melt over the heat. Watch it carefully, it will start to turn quite quickly and you don't want it to burn. When it's nice and golden brown remove the pan from the heat and add a little water from your measured quantity. It will splutter and spit like mad so hold it away from you and swirl the pan so that the hot sugar dissolves - it might solidify a bit but should stir back in.

Put the pan back on the heat, add the soy sauce, vinegar, pepper and the rest of the water. Bring to the boil and return the tofu and garlic to the pan. Allow to simmer for a few minutes while the gravy reduces and thickens to about a third of the original volume. Add the cashew nuts if wanted and swirl in the sauce.

Serve with rice and other vegetables if you like.



A housekeeping note: I'm still having many more spam comments than real ones. I've no desire to help Asian Babe sites publicise their tacky goods. If it goes on, and Google have been no help over this, I might just ditch the blog. It's all rather depressing.

Day of the Bastille

Breakfast for Supper

I'm not averse to taking supper dishes for breakfast but tonight I decided to reverse the theme and have what most people would call breakfast food for my evening repast.

This is just a fresh fruit variation of the old Bircher-Benner oatmeal dish.

Take a handful of, ideally organic, rolled large oats as simply processed as you can find and soak them for 12 hours (this was overnight in the Swiss Alps) in water or non-dairy milk. I used an oat based milk this time. If you want to have dried fruits in your cereal, raisins or chopped apricots for example, put them in with the oats overnight.

In the morning, grate an eating apple complete with skin and mix it into the soaked oats. Add other fresh fruits and if you like a few chopped nuts or seeds, then top with a couple of teaspoonfuls of soft dark sugar and some more milk to taste. Eat immediately, slowly and enjoy your meal.

French Breakfast

Had the family visiting for the weekend. Lots of cooking and drinking, not much time for blogging. They've all gone home now.

And now I'm on my own again, with only the cats for company, there's no excuse for failing to share my meals with the bloggyverse again. I give you breakfast!

Actually, I'm not so far subsumed into French culture as to breakfast on a cup of strong coffee and a Gitanes merely. I also had bread and jam.



And I made the jam myself. From apricots.

This is not the entrée to a scholarly exposition on bottling; full of arcane tips from the WI on extracting the pectin, dire warnings of botulism from inadequately prepared jam jars or comfortable intimations of middle class smugness. I chopped up the fruit, removed the stones, applied the commercial jam sugar and stuck the stuff in bottles. You can read up about that sort of stuff anywhere, even on the back of the sugar packet which saves buying books.

But I would recommend you try it, because fresh apricot jam is a step or two closer to heaven even than bought apricot jam and that's pretty damn good.

Smashing Radishes

I went to the supermarket and there were bags of vegetables, at the end of their shelf lives in huge quantities for tiny prices.

I bought a bag of three huge bunches of radishes, perfect because the recent hot weather has driven all the home grown crops to seed, a huge bag of peas in the pod, ideal because I was so late planting this year my peas are still flowers and a bag containing about 5kg of ripe bananas, a crop that the Normandy weather usually precludes. And all for less than 5€.

Most of the bananas are still fit to eat out of hand, unless you are one of those who prefers their fruit green. With the rest I have frozen some for ices and made banana oat bread, recipe to follow another day.



With the peas, I made Penne con Piselli and just like before it was a little bit ugly where the yoghurt separated but the flavour was fantastic. And with the rest of the peas, yes, there were that many, I made fresh pea soup with fake ham I found in the BioCoop in Coutances. An ideal meal for the second hottest day of the year, if I say so myself.

But it was the radishes that really challenged me.

When I arrived home from the shops it was still before breakfast so we had the first handful chilled in cold water with golden crispy fresh baguettes, salt and vegan marg. But, whisper who dares, vegan marg. is no substitute for real butter in this situation. I'm sorry, I know we all pretend that the ersatz are good enough but not for butter and radishes. Not for this girl. And butter is off, obviously.

So with the, not inconsiderable, remainder I resorted to an idea that I'd read about years ago. It was either Claudia Roden or Madhur Jaffrey that gave me the idea of a smashed marinated radish dish, ideal as a snack or appetiser.



Clean and trim your radishes and then smack them smartly on the head with your rolling pin. You're not aiming to make pulp, just crack them a little to increase the surface area and allow the flavourings to penetrate the root. The picture gives you the clue.

Then marinate your radishes briefly in a flavouring of your choice. This is easiest if you put the smashed radishes into a clean jar with a lid. Pour in a little marinade, close the lid and shake well. Leave in the fridge for about an hour, shaking occasionally and your radishes are ready to serve. They will keep for a day but lose their crunch and begin to be sad if you wait longer than this. The radishes exude their juices so you end up with far more liquid than you start with.

I tried a sprinkle of salt with the juice of a lemon which gives a clean flavour. Add green herbs for variety, or omit the herbs and add some cracked coriander and black peppercorns.

However our favourite was a much more oriental mixture of equal parts wine (or rice) vinegar, soy sauce (about a tablespoon of each) and a teaspoon of sesame oil with a finely sliced clove of garlic and about the same volume of grated ginger root.

And I don't seem to have a picture of the finished product. Wonder why that was?