Dolmades - stuffed vine leaves

Thanks to George, for a lovely evening making and eating dolmades. George never uses vine leaves kept in brine, so dolmades have a limited season in his house. The leaves he uses are not so palmate, they look more like a plain tree leaf, and he tells me that the grapes are small, red, and very sweet, so I think he may have a currant vine. The word currant comes from the French, raisin de Corinthe, or Corinthian grape. Whatever kind of vine it is, the leaves are less veined, and a better shape for wrapping the stuffing. I discovered that fresh leaves also have a slightly lemony taste, which really adds to the deliciousness of the dolmades.

Full recipe coming soon.

the vine leaves were blanched with boiling water

the stuffing is a mixture of beef and pork, with rice

the extra stuffing filled some tomatoes

marinaded chicken

Throwing together a marinade for chicken for an evening meal, I stumbled on something rather delicious. The principle is simple, to combine sweet, salt and sour to tenderise and flavour meat. It went down very well, so here is what went into it:

2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 sachet of wasabi
juice of 1/2 lemon

Add to sliced chicken breast or thighs, cover and leave for at least two hours

Cook on grill or in pan, about two minutes a side - you can thread onto a skewer if you are grilling, it helps make turning it easier. Once cooked, cover and wrap to keep it nice and juicy.

Eat with rice and salad

Summer Tart - easy and no rolling

Reading a recipe in the paper for an apple tart, I realised it was time to make the family recipe, alcoholic, no need to roll the pastry, just press it into a well buttered, or even better, lined tart tin and load up with fruit. The alcohol in the pastry keeps it crisp and gives it a subtle flavour, which you can use to enhance the fruit. Calvados in the pastry goes fantastically well with apples (no surprise), but so does rum. Use a strong alcohol! The recipe is here.

  

Beet leaf tart - and kitten finding own amusement

butterbean houmous

couldn't wait to eat it

Quickly made, butterbeans mixed some of the cooking liquid, together with a tablespoon of tamari, garlic, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. Yum

RECIPE

half a tin of butterbeans (around 200g)
1 tbsp tamari
1 clove garlic
handful of parsley (leaves only)
olive oil
lemon juice (from half lemon/1 tbsp)
pinch of salt

Method

I use a stick blender, but you could mash the beans with a fork, or use a liquidiser instead. If you are using a fork, remember to chop the pasley and garlic really fine, otherwise you'll end up with parsley in your teeth and surprising lumps of garlic every few mouthfuls. DON'T go mad with the blender, the beans may become a bit chewy.

• drain the butterbeans, keeping back a little liquid
• put butterbeans, garlic, tahini, roughly chopped parsley, a couple of slugs of olive oil and blend until smooth, no longer
• add some liquid if it becomes a bit dry
• taste, and adjust salt if you like

amazing olive oil made by friends

you are unlikely to find a better olive oil than the one we received from Paula, Kevin and Alice

Cassis cake

success, this is two hours later...

Our blackcurrant bushes gave some delicious fruit this year, not tons of fruit, they are just established, but the  currants were plump, round and wonderfully black. I cooked them up in a pan with just a little sugar and tried them with yoghurt, but the flavour was very strong. So I decided to try them in a cake, just stirred into a basic sponge mixture. Result? Delicious.

I lined a large tart tin, and treated it like pudding, because I knew the fruit would sink, and I thought it might be a fall-apart-a-bit kind of a cake.  It worked, because it wasn't too tall, and didn't fall apart, however in a deeper tin I don't think it would work. So stick to a big tin, or halve the quantities and use a smaller tin.

If you don't have home grown fruit, use some frozen berries.

RECIPE

see how the fruit sinks through the cake mix

for 10"/25cm tart tin

Ingredients

mugful of blackcurrants or berries 

heaped tbsp sugar

cook on low heat for around 20m, don't allow to burn

four egg sponge ingredients (it's a clue)

set at 200C

4 eggs
250g each sugar, self-raising flour, butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
tsp vanilla

I use demerera sugar

• Mix the lot together thoroughly
• pour mixture into lined tart tin
• spoon fruit mixture on in five big puddles and stir through quickly with spoon handle (don't mix completely, you're just marbling the mixture)

• cook for 30m and check
• ready when skewer comes out clean
• leave to cool completely before removing from tin

Date and Walnut loaf

Chickens and date and walnut loaf

Cranks date & walnut loaf

adorned with honeyed yoghurt and fruit salad

Cranks was the first vegetarian restaurant in London, on Carnaby Street in 1961. I used to go to the one next to the Craftsman Potters shop, with my mum in the 70s, getting the full strength 70s dose of varnished pine, wholemeal everything and salt glazed earthenware. The food was laid out under the heating lamps you now mostly only see in motorway service stations. But then I don’t go to hotels much, or all-you-can-eat buffets. Oh, and they had a salad bar. It was jolly tasty stuff, and introduced me to the joys of red cabbage coleslaw. Now, in a moment of clarity, I have purchased the Cranks Recipe book via the estimable ebay. It is a gem.

I love a walnut loaf, and, to revisit an old subject, I have eggs to use, thanks to our very own chickens. So I gave the Date and Walnut loaf a try. I’ve just eaten the last slice. I wrapped it up and let it sit for three days before tasting it, or, if you want the truth, I hid it. Cake doesn’t last long around here, and I wanted to see what it was like when it sat for a while. The answer is: delicious.

three trying to lay at once

This cake is made entirely with wholemeal ingredients, and although the name is date and walnut loaf, it tastes wonderfully of orange. I can’t recommend it enough. Some of the walnuts are included in the mix, and some are scattered on top. You get a lovely orangey crumb, with bits of fudgey date the occasional crunch walnut fragment inside the cake and lovely toasty walnut on top. The Cranks recipe recommends it with butter, but for me it is heaven without accompanied by a nice strong cup of tea.

You’ll see that the ingredients are all based around the 3 eggs,  50g of fat, per egg and the same of dates and sugar 100g of flour and 25g of walnuts. So if you want to make a teeny loaf just add that to a third of the juice and zest of an orange. Or make a very very orangey version.

I use an electric whisk.

Recipe: Date and Walnut loaf

Set oven to 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

Line a 500g/1lb loaf tin

Ingredients

·         150g/5oz Butter or Margarine

·         150g/5ozDark brown sugar (muscovado)

·         3 Eggs, beaten

·         1 Small orange, grated rind and juice

·         150g/50z Dates, chopped and stoned

·         75g/3oz Walnuts, chopped

·         300g/10oz Wholemeal  self-raising flour

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy

Beat in the eggs one by one, then stir in the orange rind

Fold in the dates, and half the walnuts and the flour

Add the orange juice last

Spoon the mixture out of into a lined 900g/1lb loaf tin

Level the surface of the mixture and scatter the rest of the walnuts over the top

Bake for 1 to 1 ¼ hours, until risen and golden brown in a coolish oven 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

If you can, leave for a few days before eating

how to use thirteen eggs

despite a coffee spillage, still looks good

The chickens have been laying very well, four eggs a day since the days started getting longer. One day it was five, however the next day only three, so that balanced out. Despite a soft shell issue, which means two eggs have been lost this week, that still makes a hell of a lot of eggs. 7x4=28 after all. So, 26 eggs in one week. I haven't managed to flog any (didn't really try), so today saw me baking. Carrot cake which needs 3 eggs, tart a l'oignon also three, plus two for the pastry, and tortilla which used five. Here are some pics.

If I fill the pan full it takes ten eggs and at least eight potatoes, and then I can't turn the tortilla over, as it's too heavy.

slightly low, but I can't lift the pan if I fill it full

carrot cake, with a hole from which a walnut got nibbled

I used a long loaf tin for the carrot cake. It would have been better to leave it to sit for a day.....

cake-meets-trifle

Traditional sponge cake is light and fluffy, with a fine texture, small bubbles. Tales abound about the best method to get the right result. Fillings in WI style versions include jam, or jam and cream. I recently savoured a family version made by Layla which had chocolate buttercream as well as cream teamed with strawberries in the sandwich, with cream and strawberries on top, together with shavings of white chocolate. That was very acceptable... I'll check if she took any pix before the ravening hoards disposed of it.

Cake-meets-trifle is a lemon sponge sandwich, filled with raspberry jam, whipped cream and strawberries. I sometimes use raspberries inside too, but they are very juicy and squash easily. The lemon sponge has lemon zest and lemon juice in it, which gives a wonderful tang that contrasts wonderfully with the soft and sweet filling. Sometimes I just dust the top with icing sugar, and sometimes I put more cream on top with some more fruit. If the cake is chilled it holds together better when it is cut. All in all, this is my most requested cake.

The original recipe I used was an all in one sponge, ideal for a food processor. I don't use one at the moment, so I have gone back to following the traditional approach, creaming the butter and sugar together, then adding the eggs and beating them in one by one, followed by the flour. I used self-raising flour, and add a little more baking powder to add a bit more lift. The zest is added to the butter, and the lemon juice is added right at the end.

Ingredients

zest of 1 lemon
200g  sr flour
200g fat (butter or margarine)
200g sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
juice of 1 lemon

raspberry jam
double or whipping cream
punnet of strawberries

Method

Heat oven to 160 degrees

grease and line 2x8" cake tins 

• cream sugar and fat with zest
• add eggs blending one by one (add spoonful of flour if mixture splits)
• add sifted sr flour blend, adding lemon juice as you go
• spoon mixture dividing evenly between two lined tins 
• bake for 20m and check by inserting a skewer, cake is ready when skewer comes out cleanly and the cake is drawing away from the sides
• whip cream, cut strawberries in half, removing leaves
• when the cakes are cool, remove from tin, peel off lining paper, spread jam over base sponge, spoon cream on and lay cut strawberries on top, lay top sponge on top
• sprinkle with icing sugar if you fancy it

this quantity makes a good size cake, if you want a monster cake use 8" tins and double the quantities