Savoury rice (with sausage)

Adapted from Jamie Cooks It Up!’s Cheesy Spanish Rice

Today’s recipe is probably not for anyone that can make a macaron successfully.  This is easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.   But I’m excited to post this because I probably eat a version of this most weeks.  And anyone can make it, even someone who has never really cooked before.  Savoury Rice or Student Rice, if you like, which is probably when I first started cooking something similar.  The recipe at Jamie Cooks It Up! is the easiest route I’ve found to savoury rice nirvana, but then I also love her blog because she is just so funny.  There are lots of good family orientated meals there.  I find it very inspirational when I’m looking to cook something that C and I will both appreciate.  This dish only requires one pot (unless you’re cooking a protein separately), it can be a main or a side and you can add whatever you like.  Endless versatility is definitely its virtue.  I’d say I usually stick with the basic bones of the dish every time: onions, garlic, pepper, long-grain rice, cumin, passata and stock.  But you can add, or swap, almost any element.  Herbs instead of spice, vegan, veggie, meaty, fishy proteins.  Leftovers, frozen veg, tinned tomatoes instead of passata, this dish doesn’t care what you add in!  It’ll just take it and be all the better for it.  I’ve gone with a sausage version this time – the sausage is also your choice.  Big or small, spicy or plain, veggie or meat.  The base recipe is vegan until you add either your stock or your protein, so make of this what you will.  I’ve added leftover roast beef and broccoli before.  I’ve added prawns and frozen peas.  I’ve added a vast quantity of mixed veg and some sriracha, or mushrooms with cheese popped on the top at the end (see Jamie’s original recipe for the cheesy version).  It’s all good.  Just remember to add uncooked meat or vegetables at a time that will allow them to cook through by the time the rice is done, which might be as early as the first step.  Double the quantities for a horde – I make it for four and save some as I’d rather not have half a pepper and half an onion sitting the fridge, but you should just go with the flow.*  And it can be done on a budget, when you’re short of time, and when there’s barely anything in your cupboard.  If you’re nervous about cooking give this a go, because just as long as you stir it a couple of times it is very forgiving. Love it.

Shredded beef soft tacos

From Gimme Some Oven’s Slow-Cooker Shredded Beef Tacos and Simply Recipe’s How to Make Corn Tortillas by Elise Bauer

What can we say about the English version of Mexican food? I guess we do a version of Tex-Mex.  Is it even possible to do an inauthentic Tex-Mex?  Mexican food that’s an awful lot of steps removed from the real thing by the time we get our hands on it.  However, that doesn’t stop it tasting really good!  I guess now I’m gluten-free I miss the soft flour tortillas that make a burrito so, so delicious.  But without dwelling on what I can’t have, I’ve gone full steam ahead and got myself a tortilla press.  Yes you can buy corn tortillas ready-made on the internet but they’re not particularly cheap, especially compared to a packet of masa harina (the flour used to make corn tortillas).  I reckon it has already paid for itself the amount I’m making and really, they are so easy to do yourself.  I follow a combination of instructions on the packet of flour and internet directions (see link above).  They are just flour, water and a little salt, although I do make them slightly larger than recommended.  It has taken a few goes to get them really good but it has been worth it.  I’m not sure they would be as easy if I were rolling them, but I just threw myself into the tortilla abyss.  He who dares wins as they say!  Corn tortillas in the stores, around here at least, have wheat flour in them because it makes them a bit more flexible.  So of course they do!  Crispy tacos are gluten-free usually, but I like a soft one, I just do.  To go with these wonderful creations I’ve made shredded beef.  I’ve opted for my favourite slow-cooking cut of shin of beef again because it is very flavourful and cheap as you like.  I actually made the filling the day before I needed it this time and reheated on the day, making the salsa, guacamole and tortillas from scratch that evening.  If you want to save time you could just buy ready-made pots of salsa and guacamole.  Nothing wrong with them, it’s just I like making my own!  I also tend to serve tacos with cheddar cheese and a sour cream substitute (either a low lactose cremè fraîche like Rodda’s, or home soured soya cream).

Aubergine parmagiana with spicy, cheesy polenta wedges

Spicy, cheesy polenta wedges adapted from River Cottage Veg Everyday! by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

A long time ago I was told I had gallstones.  Now these have not bothered me.  Yet.  But I was told not to eat: this, that, something else, etc. etc. etc.  I did this for all of about five minutes and then I gave up (actually it was quite a bit longer, but you know…).  Fact is I wasn’t prepared to restrict my diet.  The list had coffee and spicy foods on it – were they kidding me?!  I laugh now at that, all gluten-free and low, low lactose that I am.  I guess those gallstones are just biding their time before they complicate my life further.  However, I did always feel a bit queasy after eating something that was a bit too greasy, and fatty foods are on the no-go list for gallstone sufferers.  Everything in moderation, as they say.  But we all know how aubergines are like little sponges soaking up oil when fried.  A popular UK food columnist advises blanching aubergines when making parmigiana, and there is nothing wrong with this.  However, a lot of recipes suggest salting the aubergine ahead of cooking to draw out the juices which seems counterintuitive to blanching.  All this can be overcome much more easily in one move by using the grill.  A quick brush of a minimal amount of oil and the heat draws out the liquid while the grill adds a slight charring to enhance the final flavour.  Job done.  No meat required in this dish because aubergine has the ‘meaty’ mouth feel all by itself – I reckon even die-hard meat-eaters would go for this.  Clearly it is terribly inauthentic, but hey-ho, it’s close enough for me and it might actually be good for you!  I used to love this aubergine parmagiana with beautiful crusty bread, but the fact is the gluten-free loaves out there, although good enough for toast, have not yet made it to a starring role in my meals yet.  I got Hugh’s Veg Everyday! for Christmas and it is a joy.  The polenta wedges are a lovely alternative to bread with this.  It is a bit of a faff, because you’re making two things from scratch but I think it is worth it.  A nice crisp leafy salad on the side is very good too.

Jerusalem artichoke and carrot soup

Jerusalem artichokes are an ugly beast.  That is the joy of getting a veg box.  One week you get dirty sticks (salsify), then aliens (kholrabi), and now possibly the trickiest vegetable to peel known to man.  Anyway, they really are very good for you, with lots of vitamins and minerals.  Lots of iron, which is very good for me as I’ll take any iron I can get, and also a prebiotic called inulin.  This promotes bacteria production, obviously as a prebiotic, and is why this vegetable is renowned for its effect on the human body.  The best description I ever saw??  Fartichokes.  Genius.  But then I have a nearly 3-year-old and all bodily functions are hilarious in this house.  I’m hoping that because I got a girl this will wear off, but I do like a puerile joke even now, so perhaps this is an unrealistic dream.  The soup itself is deliciously sweet with fresh flavours.  The artichokes make it seem creamy by adding a velvet texture without the need for dairy or potato.  Although sophisticated enough to serve to guests, you’d have to pick them carefully.  The very young and the very old (who don’t care or find it hysterical) would be fine.  Your best friend the first time you meet her new boyfriend, perhaps not.  Since I sleep alone I’ve got no one to offend, so if you’re in the same position I’d recommend a cold night when the extra warm air keeping your duvet nice and toasty would be welcome. 😉  By the way, this was going to be artichoke and mushroom soup (equally fabulous) but life got in the way, the mushrooms went in some pasta, and the carrots went bendy until all they were good for was soup.  Isn’t that just the way it goes sometimes?

Jersey Royal, asparagus and poached egg salad

Adapted from a salad that Ha Ha Canteen used to serve before they abandoned their ‘core concept’

This is possibly my favourite warm salad ever.  I could eat this until the end of time it is just so good.  Simple ingredients but a wow when combined.  Showcasing the best of British Spring produce, with the asparagus and Jersey Royals.  I love the creamy potato with a touch of butter, the fresh asparagus, the salty cheese and the runny yolk of the egg all silkily oozing over everything.  It is just lush.  I wait all year for this salad and then I eat it until I think I’ll never want it again, but then it’s over.  For another whole year.  And this year, with the weather being so odd, I’ve had to wait longer than usual for those Jersey Royals.  But here they are.  For reference purposes Ha Ha used to be a canteen style eatery and bar, overly expensive fried egg and chips, breakfast and the papers on a Sunday.  They were astoundingly successful.  But somewhere it went wrong.  They changed to Ha Ha Bar & Grill and became a bad gastropub, serving reheated ready meals instead of the freshly cooked things they were so good at.  Shame.  Also for reference, if you’re in the (mostly) South/South-West of England and/or South Wales and you spot a Loungers bar, (they all have different names but my ‘locals’ are the Alto Lounge and the Bosco Lounge), you’ll find they’re resurrecting the old canteen style that Ha Ha used to do so well.  So I hope you enjoy this warm salad as much as I do.  It’s an oldy but a goody.

Rhubarb fool

Ah dessert recipes.  You wait ages for one and then all of sudden two come along at once.  Well it was last week I posted the rhubarb crumble, but since we’re still working our way through Mount Rhubarb, here’s another recipe to get that glut down.  This has a very summery feel to it though.  Whereas the crumble is all nights drawing in early and afternoon walks in the rain, a fool is bright rainbows and picnics in the park.  I’ve gone for a coconut cream base, so inevitably this flavour is in the finished dish which isn’t entirely traditional.  However, I’ve also added vanilla which pairs very nicely with rhubarb.  Be careful with this dessert as it is very easy to eat rather a lot of it!  Also, please feel free to adjust the sugar content to your taste buds.  I’m sure as many of you will find this super sour, as will find it super sweet.  It also depends on how tart your rhubarb is, so taste as you go and adjust as necessary.  Also, please remember the coconut cream will need chilling overnight in its can, so you need to start this the day before you need it (or just always keep cans in the fridge as a matter of course, in case of dessert emergency!)  As the rhubarb will also need to be chilled, this is a perfect dinner party recipe as you can prepare this the day before, chill the coconut cream, and then whip and assemble the two into the finished dish when you need it.

Strawberry, banana and chocolate milkshake

Here in the UK it is National Vegetarian Week (today until the 26th) so in honour of that I will not be posting any meat recipes this week.  Veggie all the way baby!  To that end here is the first of this week’s treats.  I’ll try and mix it up a bit and not just give you all cakes and biscuits, I promise.  It is also school half-term next week (in this bit of the country at least) and there’s a long weekend coming up.  I feel everything has aligned for the purpose of milkshake!  We’ve gone back to gloomy weather but I’m going to do my absolute best to force out the sunshine with recipes designed for better weather.  Sunny indoors if nothing else.  This recipe is also so easy it is barely a recipe at all!  But if you’ve suddenly got marauding kids to deal with, a relatively healthy drink that is also a treat might be just the thing.  I’m using chocolate coconut milk drink here because I was curious to know what it was like really.  I regularly buy the plain version but I wondered how the chocolate one (it has cocoa and a little extra sugar in it) compared.  It is quite nice and not at all coconuty but quite thin, like skim cow’s milk.  Nice enough on its own but better as an ingredient in my opinion.  I’ve also used frozen banana chunks as they thicken up when blended so you get a luscious milkshake without resorting to fake thickeners which I can’t bear, or ice-cream which will be quite sugary.  Remember to pop some ripe bananas, chopped into chunks, into the freezer the night before you need to make this unless you keep some around anyway.  I find if I’ve got a glut of over-ripening bananas and I’m all done with banana bread, then I can still avoid waste by freezing the bananas in chunks for using in milkshakes, or just on their own whizzed up in the blender as soft ice cream.  I’ve therefore usually already got some in the freezer ready to go.  As for the strawberries, well I just can’t tell you how excited I am that the British strawberry season has started!  I have noticed that the punnet sizes are smaller (227g not 250g as they used to be) and I bet the price hasn’t changed.  Price rises by stealth are a big thing at the moment.  Anyway, I digress.  I got 3 packs for the price of 2 today, which would be no bargain if any went to waste.  Not likely in this house though!

Chocolate beetroot cakes with cherry frosting

Adapted from BBC Food’s Chocolate Beetroot Cakes by Jill Dupleix and My Darlings and Me’s Cherry Blossom Cupcakes

It has come to my attention that I’ve posted cookie recipes, and big cake recipes, and refrigerator cake recipes, but the individual baked cake department is a little empty.  Luckily the veg box provided beetroot this week, and I didn’t do a roast at the weekend or they would have been consumed already.  Time for little chocolate cakes me thinks!  As I’m sure you know, the chocolate masks the taste of actual beetroot in these, although it does provide a depth to the chocolate flavour that’s quite moreish.  Plus, we also know gluten-free baking can be a little dry so recipes with fruit, or vegetables, in the mix are already helping us out by providing moisture and some binding.  I’ve gone with cherry frosting here because I love the chocolate cherry combination.  Cherries are possibly my favourite fruit, although raspberries and strawberries are right up there.  The icing is a lovely delicate pink colour in contrast to the dark chocolate of the muffin.  I also think this cake might be ‘the one’ for C’s robot birthday cake in June.  The iced chocolate traybake I made previously was very light and I suspect it would collapse under the weight of thicker icing and/or candles.  The beetroot in this makes a firmer cake, but because it is moist and a bit fudgy I also think it won’t fall apart as soon as you look at it.  If your beetroot isn’t already cooked (you could use up leftovers here if no strong flavours were used in the original cooking), then the quickest way to cook your beetroot is to boil it.  You should allow an hour for this: 30-40 minutes of simmering, and 20 minutes of cooling before you can handle them.  Of course you can absolutely do this ahead of making the cake, and the puree will keep covered in the fridge for a few days.  See the note at the bottom of the recipe for more detailed instructions.  If you haven’t tried a chocolate beetroot cake before, and find the idea a bit unappealing, I urge you to give it a go.  I’m sure you will be very pleasantly surprised by the results!

White asparagus and black salsify soup

She makes a soup that’s not orange!  This week my veg box contained white asparagus and black salsify.  Fancy right?  White asparagus perhaps tastes a little more delicate than the usual green and is produced by restricting the light the plant gets.  Poor little thing.  Black salsify is a root vegetable, but you don’t eat the skin and although it starts off all gnarly, dirty and black, once you’ve peeled it off then the flesh underneath is as white as, um… asparagus??  The two have been compared in flavour, but although they’re similar they are different and complementary.  I bet you’re thinking, “if I had something like white asparagus I’d gently pan-fry it and serve it by itself.”  Normally I would agree to a pared down no-nonsense approach, but I didn’t get delicate little fingers of asparagus, I got giant fat thumbs of the stuff.  And I’m no magician!  So choppity-chop and in the soup they go.  Salsify is supposed to taste like oysters, but that doesn’t mean it tastes fishy.  Oysters don’t taste particularly fishy to me either – rather they taste fresh and slightly metallic (in my opinion).  This soup ends up delicate but earthy.  It’s lovely with hot buttered toast.  Very comforting on a day when winter seems to have returned here.  We were forecast snow flurries last night despite having already had the paddling pool out in the garden just a couple of weeks ago.  I just have no idea what’s going on with this weather!

Pear, apple and rhubarb crumble

It’s been a while since I posted a true dessert or pudding recipe, rather than a cookie or a cake you could eat for dessert which is a bit cheating.  I’d love to make a crumble top with chopped nuts, and that day will come.  The thing is that with a toddler around it is not often I make things without her in mind.  I will let her eat crunchy peanut butter occasionally now, but a crunchy nut topping while she is so young is not so good.  Read at your peril the top five things a toddler can choke on!  Scary stuff.  Our lovely neighbours gave us some rhubarb from their garden the other day – it is rather prolific once it gets going and I get the feeling they may be all rhubarbed out already.  I also had a couple of cooking apples laying around and some pears that where staring to get wrinkly.  After C’s refusal in the last few weeks to eat dates, we’re now ‘yes’ to dates and ‘no’ to pears?  I’d suggest perhaps she is fickle but maybe it’s her secret ploy to get me to make cookies and crumble?? Hmmmmm…….