Free food no.1

Don't these look lovely? Perhaps not, but stinging nettles are a powerful source of vitamin A, iron, calcium, flavinoids, the list goes on... They are of course also free. What's to lose?

Cover up well when picking them, and choose the top, young leaves (they're a more vibrant green than the old ones). Now is a great time to pick them before they get too old. I got my nettles from an obliging field in Wytham.

Here I am with my nettles in a bowl of water. I'm looking for intruders, discarding tough stems, black bits and curled up leaves.

Don't throw away the bits you have discarded. I'm told that nettles left in a bucket of water until they stink is nature's own plant food. And that's free too, although I think my neighbours might have something to say about that little project...

Here are my nettles, rinsed in clean water, ready to use.

I looked up a couple of very different recipes, and so in the end decided to make a veggie soup as I would normally make it, but without too many additions as I was interested what the flavour would be.

Onions and garlic...

Add a large chopped carrot and a few sticks of celery...

Don't forget some potato to thicken...

Add your nettles, stock and simmer for about 20 mins. It's this bit that kills the sting. At this point I had to change pans because of the non-wilting surprise (see below).

Whiz it up and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice...

Voila!

The first thing to say is that it doesn't wilt like spinach; nettles are quite a lot more robust. So actually making soup like this I had too many nettles, or too little stock base depending on how you look at it. Next time I'll definitely start with a little grilled bacon for flavour. Having said all that, it is surprisingly nice and the flavour is definitely unexpected. I'll serve this up to my guests tomorrow with a swirl of cream in the bowl.

I think I'll go nettle-picking again next weekend. I want to make nettle tea and nettle omelette (you boil them for a few minutes before adding them to the egg to avoid nasty surprises).

Roasted vegetables with satay sauce

I've not made satay sauce this way before, but it is delicious.  It's somewhat on the salty side, so when you are dipping your vegetables in, just dip a toe in!  It's so tasty a little goes a really long way.

A good 'detox'  dinner!

Roasted Vegetables...

My favourites with this are red onion, butternut squash and mushrooms.  I also do a couple of potatoes. Aubergines, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes... anything in season works well!  So they aren't swimming in oil, cut them into finger-sized chunks, brush them with a pastry brush dipped in oil and put them on a baking tray covered in greaseproof paper, then into a hot oven.

...and satay sauce

In a pan, mix together 3 generous tbsps smooth peanut butter, 3 tbsps teriyaki sauce, 2 tbsp soy sauce and 5-6 tbsps water, heating gently.  Keep stirring with a metal spoon so it blends.

For maximum eating pleasure, eat with your hands, dipping each bit of veg in the sauce as you go.

Yum.

Hearty Red Bean Stew

I know I said my next post would be chocolate brownies, but I tried this last night and it was deelish. And let's face it, you'd only get fat on chocolate brownies.

Maybe I'll post chocolate brownies dependent on demand. Then maybe I can up my quota of comments (Rach, this is war).

Back to business. This recipe very kindly comes from my friend Emma.

Hearty Red Bean Stew

1 tin red kidney beans
1 tin chopped tomatoes
half a white cabbage, chopped
2 or 3 carrots, chopped (the original recipe I got from a friend had green pepper but I much prefer carrots)
1 onion, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili powder
enough stock to cover the veg
coconut milk/creamed coconut, as much or as little as you like

Fry the onion in a little oil then add all the other ingredients except the coconut. Bring to the boil and then simmer until the veg is cooked. Add the coconut and continue to cook for a further 5 minutes (Emma often make this ahead of time and then add the coconut when she's reheating it). Serve with baked potatoes, rice or crusty bread.

This is a really odd mixture of things, or so I thought until I did a little research. Apparantly the soy sauce/coconut mixture is an island (particularly Jamaica) thing, and by gosh is it yummy. Of course Jamaican recipes use black-eyed or pinto beans (along with goat...) rather than kidney beans.

I forgot to put stock in it and put in more soy sauce for flavour (just until it was salty enough). I'll try it with stock, but I wonder whether it wouldn't be better this way.

Right, all you who want to reduce your meat and up your pulse consumtion: get cooking!

Chicken Satay

Sorry, the recipes have been somewhat thin on the ground recently. I'm back with new vigour!

Anyway, this is Alex's absolute favourite. It's my corruption of a West-Indian dish a friend used to go on about.

I've given you a recipe using chicken breasts, because it's healthier I suppose and I know what the cooking time should be. But I much prefer using chicken joints. Increase the simmering time accordingly.

Chicken Satay (for 4)

3 or 4 chicken breasts, cut into chunks
1 large onion
a few cloves garlic, crushed
a little oil for frying
2 carrots (or 1 if they are really big) cut into small pieces
2 different coloured peppers, cut into bigger chunks
1 tin tomatoes
1 squirt tomato puree
1 chicken stock cube (and no, OXO won't do)
a good glug of lemon juice
chilli (fresh, dried, sauce, whatever. Depends how hot you like it!)
3 big tbsp peanut butter (or more...)
salt, pepper

Fry up your onion and garlic for a few minutes, and add you chicken. When it has gone white add your carrots and pepper and continue frying for another few minutes. Add your tomatoes, tomato puree, stock, lemon juice, chilli; cover with water (it looks too much, but it will thicken with the peanut butter) and simmer for 20 mins. Stir in your peanut butter, season to taste and serve with rice.

Deeelicous.

Coming soon: chocolate brownies (the best you've ever tasted).

The best houmous/hummus I've made...

... was this recipe.



Try it as a must.

And since we appear to be on something of a chick pea theme at the moment, I just wanted to let you know that soaking and boiling a huge vat of chick peas and then freezing them in small batches works really well. You can just run them under the hot tap to defrost them as you need them. Readers will remember my earlier chick pea mistake... I don't plan to go back to tinned, and given that my freezer is kept on anyway (and apparantly they function more effectively the fuller they are), I think this way uses a lot less energy than tins, even if you recycle them.

(The tins I mean, not the chick peas.)

Felafel

After my first post I was asked to put up some more recipes using pulses. Here's a great one - home made felafel. I made this for a large group of people, fried them up before they came then kept them warm in the oven. They went down a treat, despite being really odd shapes because I'm a rubbish fryer.

Actually it's because I have a phobia of deep-fat frying (yes, I shallow fry my felafel). I've honestly never done it in my life. It's directly related to learning how to put a chip pan fire out in Guides. I had nightmares for ages and to this day have to actively not think about it.

Right, if you don't have similar ailment, here's a brilliant video showing you how to fry neat little balls.

However I was appauled to see her using packet mixture! Appauled and surprised, because I think her little videos are really good.

So here's a recipe for making your own mixture. I love this kind of cooking. It smells wonderful as it all combine and mushes together. My mouth is watering...

Felafel

1 tin chick peas*, rinsed qnd drained
6 spring onions
1 egg
grated zest and juice of half a lemon
1 clove of garlic
a handful of fresh coriander (about 2 tbsp if it were chopped)
1 tbsp tahini
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch cayenne pepper (or chilli I guess for a bit of kick)
salt and pepper
oil for frying
enough flour/alternative to make it the right consistency (my recipe says '30g fresh white bread' but the first time I made this it had to be gluten free so I improvised)

fresh coriander to garnish

For the sauce

4 tbsp plain yogurt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp tahini**

Whiz it all up in a blender, leave to sit in the fridge for half an hour and then fry. Serve in pitta bread with sauce. I've given you quantities for the sauce, but it isn't an exact science and you might want to leave out the yogurt to make it vegan (funny people, those...).


(My silly sausage sister said I should put up a picture of a fire in a chip pan. What a truly horrid idea. Any readers that are interested can google chip pan fires for themselves.)

* apparantly they're called garbanzo beans in the states
** sesame seed paste

Chick Pea Casserole

Chick Pea Casserole - the ultimate in very cheap, very healthy food. Oh and it's vegan.

This recipe comes (I think with permission from) the ever great Gillian Cromar. Must check I've got her name spelled right.

1 onion (2 if it's small)

crushed garlic

a little oil for frying

grated ginger (or 1 tsp powdered)

3 or 4 carrots, chopped (more if they are small)

1 tin chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1 tin tomatoes

1 stock cube

3 tbsp worcestershire sauce

4 tbsp vinegar

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 bay leaves

hot pepper sauce (how much? It depends how hot it is silly!)

Fry up your onion and garlic, add your carrots and chickpeas and continue frying. Stir in your ginger and put in an ovenproof dish. Put all the other ingregients in the same pan, warm through and pour into the ovenproof dish. Cover and cook at 180 degrees for an hour or so. Serve with rice or something even cheaper if you are feeling poor.

It goes without saying that this is one that goes in my slow cooker. The first person I met makes this with a couple of rashers of grilled bacon (put it in with your onion at the beginning) instead of stock for flavour: both are lovely. Oh and other thing is, for goodness sake don't forget to reduce your sugar if you are using balsamic vinegar with it being so sweet.

Biscuit Basics

Warning: this post could potentially make you very fat.

When Rach asked me to do a post on 'Biscuit Basics' it took me a while to realise what she was going on about.  Then it dawned on me: on holiday in Dunquin, Ireland last summer I made biscuits every day.  This is because no sooner would they be out of the oven than they'd be gobbled up by my greedy family and they'd be demanding more.  There were no scales and no recipe books in the house we were  staying in, and the nearest little shop was a half hour drive away.  Necessity is, as they say, the mother of invention, so it was time to improvise.   I should start by saying that the one thing we had a steady supply of was butter, without which you'd be fairly stumped (but not entirely - see below).  But all other biscuit ingredients, I believe, can be conjured up by rooting through cupboards and being adventurous.

Here's a good basic recipe to get you started.  You can't go wrong.  I certainly recommend following this or another recipe closely until you've got a good idea of mixture consistency and how much they spread during cooking (the following recipe won't too much but others will) before you start to play with it.

Simple Biscuits

250g butter at room temperature, plus a bit more for greasing

125g caster sugar

300g flour (my recipe states it should be self-raising; I don't think it makes a scrap of difference)

Grease a couple of baking trays.  Put the butter in a large mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon to soften.  Beat in the sugar then stir in the flour.  This is where you get to roll it out and use your favourite pastry cutter (or just an upturned glass) or if you're like me you'll just roll it into small balls and flatten with the heel of your hand (or a fork for a pretty pattern).  Bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until golden.

Now, in a perfect world, you'd always have a recipe to follow for whatever kind of biscuits you want to make, and scales to hand.  But if not...  Here are my personal favourite additions/corruptions:

Mixed spice: Always, always have some in your cupboard (or separate pots of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, but remember mixed spice also contains cloves).  Rach's favourite were mixed spice biscuits when we were kids, and I used to have a fabulous recipe (that was in one of those great brown 60s recipe books) that I of course can't find now, but a spoon of the stuff is always a yummy addition, and particularly good with brown sugar or...

Golden syrup: remember to use less sugar!  And be careful to bind them well or leave plenty of space between them on your baking tray as they'll spread more during cooking.

Cardamom: I list this seperately because unlike all the other spices I like in biscuits it isn't included in 'mixed spice' you can buy in one jar.  Also delish in rice pudding incidentally.

Oats: a healthy addition!  Lovely texture and will stop them spreading too much during cooking.

Custard power: you may laugh, but the ones that got the highest accolade in Ireland were made with oats and a tiny bit of flour (because I ran out) and flavoured with custard powder I dug out the back of a cupboard.

Flour: well, obviously.  But do try using brown flour and any kind of flour to hand really.  It's not like you need them to rise or anything.  There are of course loads of gluten-free alternatives you can use.

Peanut butter: my preference for all cooking is the one with bits in.   This is the only substitute for butter that I can think of.

Vanilla/Almond etc essence: I recently made brownies (which I'm afraid you do need a recipe for) with almond essence in them and they were delicious!  A principle worth carrying over.  A nice idea if you are using coffee is to have two doughs of different colours, roll them both flat, brush one with milk and put the other on top.  Roll the whole thing up and chill for 30mins, then cut into slices and bake for stripy spirals!

I won't insult your intelligence by listing things like dried fruit, nuts  and chocolate.  Please do leave comments if you have any more ideas!

So I hope its clear that you can make biscuits, even fancy ones, from things you have lying around in your store cupboard.  No need to rush to the shops in a panic.  And a top tip:  a run of home made biccys can easily and quickly made into a posh dessert by adding a dollop of ice-cream/yoghurt/mascarpone; fresh or stewed fruit (kept on standby in my freezer); chocolate shavings or a dusting of icing sugar etc etc.  The list of possibilities is endless....

Soup by accident

Every wednesday I make a big vat of soup, because an unspecified number of people turn up for lunch. As I generally go shopping on wednesdays, this is a true make-do-with-what-you've-got/don't-waste-old-veggies soup. This week's was really yummy, so here's the recipe below. I didn't use any stock because I didn't have any, hence why I sweated out the celery with the onions and garlic (along with using lemon juice or balsamic vinegar depending on your other ingredients, this is my top tip for bringing out flavour). I figured chilli and coconut would give it a full enough flavour on top of that, and I was right!

1 large onion, chopped
few cloves garlic, finely chopped/crushed
a few sticks of celery, chopped

a bit of butter
2 carrots, chopped
1 large parsnip, chopped
handful red lentils
1 big potato chopped
chilli sauce

creamed coconut

salt/pepper/lemon juice

Sweat out the onion, garlic and celery in the butter.  Simmer the whole lot together (I leave soup in the slow cooker on high for a morning) and whiz (I mean use one of those hand-held food processors- I'm aware that in various parts of the country this word means pee).  Technically I suppose you should put your creamed coconut and seasoning in last. 

And before anyone accuses me of not being thrifty because I use creamed coconut, I buy it from the chinese supermarket where it's 40p a packet.  I think I only use about a 1/3 of a packet in this.  So ner.

Comfort food

Here's a stolen idea, with a tip thought up entirely by yours truly. Ahem. Jacket potatoes filled with red lentil dahl covered in grated cheddar cheese.

This is so yummy you won't believe it, but the best thing is that it takes about 5 minutes to cobble together (and that includes getting the potatoes in the oven) at which point you can go out for an hour and a half and come back to instant food. It does worry me that I should use a word other than 'dahl' as this is probably a totally unorthdox way to eat it, let alone make it (done properly, you'd stir the onions, ghee, mustard seeds etc through the lentils once they're cooked). But doing it in the slow cooker (my tip!) means you don't have to watch the stove, and the lentils don't break up during cooking.

Incidentally, I always have plenty of red lentils on hand in my kitchen. An incredibly cheap source of protein, they also don't need soaking as other pulses so you don't need to have planned ahead. On a hot stove, they'll cook in only 15-20 minutes. Buy them from an indian shop instead of the supermarket for extra thriftiness, and always buy in bulk as they'll keep forever.

Cheat's Red Lentil Dahl

Red lentils

Onion, chopped

Garlic, finely chopped/crushed

Butter to fry

Curry powder or mixture of spices to your taste (in this I like more body and less chilli)

Vegetable stock

Salt

Lemon juice

Fry the onions and garlic in butter, stir in the spices, and put in the slow cooker with lentils and very hot stock. In my slow cooker (which is small and hotter than Rach's) it cooks to perfection in an hour and a half. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.

Put in jacket potatoes (maris pipers are well worth the extra pennies!) and cover with lots of cheese.

Yum.

Sorry, I have never weighed anything for this recipe and have no idea of how much I use of anything. So: don't be afraid of using plenty of red lentils, but do be aware that they swell up and absorb plenty of liquid (they'll need covering in stock).

Ok Rach, your turn.

Photo by Justin Cormack

Let's start at the very beginning - pastry.

Where to start?  I feel my first post should be something that encapsulates our reasons for starting this blog, wows you with our domestic insight or at the very least is truly original.  But I get nervous at the very thought of having to live up to such great ambitions, and so here's just what I was doing this afternoon.  It's not original, it's not all-encompassing, but this is something that will save you time, money, and from having to eat rubbish.

I was making pastry (recipe below).   Have you seen what goes into shop-bought frozen pastry?  Truly disgusting.  Make it in big batches and then freeze it in quiche/pie size balls so next time it just needs de-frosting and rolling.  Make jam tarts with leftovers (use up jam that you've had to scrape mould off - it's going in the oven at 200 degrees so don't worry!).  But here's the best bit: instead of faffing with baking beans, put your rolled pastry in it's dish into the freezer until it's gone hard.  Then you can either bake it blind just like that and it won't collapse (as long as your oven is properly pre-heated) or just stuff your filling in and bake it all together.  Something about the very cold to the very hot means that it will go crispy on the bottom.   Brilliant.  All credits to my friend (who has to remain nameless until I've asked her!) for this fantastic tip.

Here's a piccy of dinner just before being popped into the oven, compiled by my brother-in-law using my pastry and eggs from the chickens in the garden.  Scrumdiddlyumptious.

Basic Shortcrust Pastry

Essentially, you need half the amount of fat to flour, and a little water.  Easy.  The following amounts will line a flan dish to feed 4-6.  Sweet pastries will add more butter, egg yolks and sugar, but this is good for starters.  

75g butter (well chilled)

150g plain flour

2 tbsp (roughly) water

Cut the butter up and rub into the flour until it's like fine breadcrumbs.  Sprinkle the water over and mix gently with a table knife.  Add more water as needed a little at a time until it starts to bind.  Stick  your hand in the bowl and gather into a ball, kneading very lightly.  Roll out using a bottle if you haven't got a rolling pin on a floured surface.  

The above picture is goats cheese and grilled pepper quiche, and was cooked for about 40 minutes at 200 degrees.