On Toast...

I've written before about my love of things on toast. Since opening Cook House I have been working on my repertoire. It has become a staple menu item, changing topping week to week, depending on what's in season, what I've spotted in books, magazines, or on my travels. I came home from Mallorca with a couple of Sobrasada in my suitcase last week. I'm not entirely sure that's allowed, so don't tell, but that made up last week's toast; the spicy chorizo type paste that is specific to the Balearics spread on hot toast, topped with creamy homemade ricotta, good olive oil and some dressed pea shoots.

We're talking about an open sandwich in basic terms, I find it a lot more interesting than thinking of sandwich fillings however, and find inspiration from around the world. Everyone has their own variation whether it's called a taco, a pizza or pintxo...

These are ideas more than recipes... You're looking for balance; think sweet, salty, bitter and sour and see where you end up... 

Smoked Leeks on Toast with Whipped Feta and Black Sesame

I was inspired by the Trial Shift boys, when they took over Cook House for a pop up event a few months ago; I found them cooking their aubergines in the embers of my stove. Kicking myself that I hadn't thought of using the stove myself (why did I not?!), as soon as they handed the keys back I stuck some leeks into a roaring fire, totally incinerating the outside. When removed and left to cool I then carefully removed all the black outer edges and tore off ribbons of soft sweet smoked leek into a bowl and mixed with a dash of extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt.

I served this on toast with feta cheese whipped up with some Greek yoghurt and extra virgin olive oil until it takes on the consistency of cream cheese. Spread onto toast, leeks piled gently on top and scattered with toasted black sesame seeds. The sweet smoky leeks with the salty cheese and toasted nutty sesame is delicious, this is probably my favourite invention so far.

Carrot and Lemon Pâté on Toast with Feta and Pea Shoots

I have been making a carrot, lemon and yoghurt pâté for a while now. I discovered it when I was putting together a vegetarian middle eastern style mezze supper last year. I made tons of different Lavosh crackers topped with different seeds and herbs and wanted lots of tasty colourful dips to go with them.

Chop 500g of carrots into large chunks and roast at 200˚C with about 6 cloves of garlic still in their skins and lots of olive oil until the carrots are soft, about 20 minutes. Then pop the garlic out of their skins and blitz with 2 big spoons of yoghurt the zest and juice of half a lemon and a pinch of salt. It's a lovely sweet dip with a rich hint of roast garlic and sharp lemon.

Sprinkle with crumbled feta or goats cheese, and top with a pile of dressed fresh pea shoots or rocket. The rich sweet pâté is delicious with the sharp salt cheese and fresh shoots.

Whipped Feta on Toast with Pear, Pea Shoots and Toasted Seeds

The whipped feta base mentioned previously is good with lots of toppings, as it's so salty and tart my favourite is something a little bit sweet. I've found a popular menu item to be fresh sliced pear, with pea shoots or rocket and toasted seeds, sometimes hazelnuts or a bit of chopped mint too.

I have tried it with pickled grapes and mint too, delicious; sharp, sweet and tasty. I also tried sliced blood oranges with toasted walnuts, normal oranges would work too, that was a pretty good brunch dish I think...

Or you could try fresh peppery radish with mint, black pepper and ricotta. Or ricotta, slow roast tomatoes and toasted cumin seeds... Or crushed peas and broad beans with lemon, mint and crumbled goats cheese... We're in a good season for lovely fresh toppings so I'll keep working on my repertoire...

Blood Orange, Walnut and Ricotta Salad

London was awash with blood oranges last week; every menu we turned to was doing something with them. Margot drizzled them over an impressive looking cheesecake, The Clove Club served them with a delicious goats curd and emerald green fennel granita, Quo Vadis had them with campari or a fennel salad, and Spuntino in a sprightly salad with walnuts. We ate so well, as you might have gathered... I would highly recommend all of the above if you are dining out in the big smoke any time soon...

So instead of filling my bags with the wonders of Liberty jewellery department, which I really wanted to do; I filled my handbag with blood oranges from a delightful little shop called Leila’s near Rochelle Canteen, and brought them all the way back to Newcastle. I realise this is not the most sensible way to shop, but I was worried I wasn’t going to find any in Newcastle and I had Valentine’s diners to feed...

This is a very simple little salad, but very tasty. To serve two for lunch or four as a side, take a bag of watercress, spinach and rocket, one or all varieties will do. I made a little dressing of extra virgin olive oil, cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, a tiny bit of maple syrup, salt and pepper, shake it all up and dress the leaves well.

Peel one blood orange and slice thinly, they are so beautiful inside, each one different; then toast a large handful of walnuts and mix both through the leaves. Finally top with some crumbled ricotta. A delicious addition to my salad repertoire if I do say so... The warm toasted walnuts are delicious with the sweet rich orange, creamy ricotta and peppery leaves. I’m on the lookout for more blood oranges to carry on enjoying them while the short season lasts...

Margot Henderson's Turkish Coffee Cake for a 3rd Birthday

I only noticed at the last minute that my blog is three years old today, but fittingly I had a cake ready to tell you about, and what is a birthday without cake... It doesnt even seem that long ago that I first sat down and chatted about squid but here we are 179 posts later... And we have cake, and Margot Henderson cake at that...

Margot Henderson has become a bit of a role model slash hero of mine over the past year or so. I don’t quite know how it began really; I have always been a huge St. John fan, restaurants, books, recipes... and I had read snippets about Margot, Fergus Henderson's wife. Then I went to a wedding last summer where she did the food, and it was perfect. JUST what I wanted, exactly how wedding food should be, terrines and salads to start, and then chicken pies to share, the pastry was just heaven, golden and suety, I can still remember it quite clearly, even through the haze of endless negroni’s. Really simple but incredibly well done. It brought everyone together in a lovely way that only pie sharing can do, the whole table got on like a house on fire. Hands down the best wedding food ever, there was fois gras in the terrine, how could it not be the best wedding food ever.

And then I read more about Margot and realised that she pretty much does everything I aspire to do... She puts together beautiful looking suppers, caters and has a little place called Rochelle Canteen where you can go for breakfast or lunch during the week, a base for all her catering. And it is all un-fussy, simple, delicious, very well thought out food that I want to eat every day, and hope to emulate in some way as time goes on. I’m going there for lunch on Friday and I couldn’t be more delighted. Her book is my most recent favourite; I am gradually getting through her stories and recipes; lovely beetroot soup with porcini, calming celeriac soup, bloody amazing sticky ginger cake and this Turkish Coffee Cake, which is just a revelation.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and mix 100g of wholemeal flour, 100g of plain flour, 250g of soft brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander and 1/2 teaspoon of ground nutmeg in a large bowl. Then add 175g of butter cut into little cubes and rub it through the mix until you have a large breadcrumb mix; this always gives me really sore crampy hands, which doesn’t bare well for the future, I may be arthritic and unable to bake one day I fear... Then take half of this mix and press it into the base of your cake tin. This gives a lovely crunchy base to the cake.

Then add to the remaining mixture 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, 250ml of sour cream, 2 beaten eggs, 60g of chopped walnuts and 4 tablespoons of espresso coffee and beat it all together. Pour this into the tin over the base mixture, and bake for 30 minutes. It is ready when it feels firm and springy to the touch, I perhaps slightly under baked mine, my oven is being a bit temperamental at the moment. I’ll just have to suffer the hardship of making it again; and eating it again... it’s tough. It is so tasty, very moist from the sour cream, caramelly and full of cinnamon, with a lovely crunchy base, very unusual...

Beetroot Salad with Rocket and Walnut Pesto

I've renamed my evening meal Salad Club, Experimental Salad Club on some nights, like tonight... It's totally normal to brand your meals surely...? Chicory, celery, cambozola and honey, I think it worked? Pea, broad bean, pesto, goats cheese, bacon and croutons, bit odd? For my birthday last week we ate a whole pig, a lovely friend gave me some fois gras, there was a venison pie, then the Ouseburn Festival Feast kindly provided me with black pudding rolls, scotch pies, chicken liver parfait and other meaty delights. I desperately need a bit of salad time and this beautiful sunshine makes it even more apt... Salad and sunshine are great friends.

I've been delving into my Ottolenghi Jerusalem book and the Polpo book, a recent favourite, and finding all kinds of delicious salady type treats. I served up two of them at my latest Supperclub on Saturday, a Radish, Fennel, Mint and Ricotta Salad, but I thought you might be a bit sick of radishes so I thought I'd tell you about the Beetroot Salad with Rocket and Walnut Pesto. I'm growing my own beetroot at the moment but it has got a little way to go before it is ready yet. I'm quite proud of it already, I always feel pretty proud of a root vegetable, it amazes me every time I pull one up, that I, me, actually grew it?

This is quite simple, once you know how long a beetroot takes to cook (I didn't, we ate at 10pm). Simply bring your beetroots to the boil in plenty of water with a big splash of red wine vinegar. This will serve 4 to 6 depending on hunger levels. I used 550g of beetroot, big tough as old boots ones and they took about an hour to cook. They need to be tender and the skins coming away easily. I hope my little fells in the allotment will be a bit more tender and speedy to cook. When they are done leave them to cool and then peel and cut into small chunks.

 

To make the pesto, wizz up a bag of rocket, about 70g, 60g of walnuts, 35g of parmesan, 2 cloves of garlic, ¼ teaspoon of salt, black pepper and a big glug of olive oil, using a food processor. I have also tried it with a mix of almonds and pecans which was very good too. There you have your rocket pesto, this is a world away from pesto you get in a jar at the supermarket, so tasty and well worth the effort. It's pretty easy and can be used for loads of other things.

Then simply mix the beetroot pieces with the pesto, you might not need it all, and add a handful of rocket and some toasted walnut pieces. The beetroot is soft and sweet and tangy, delicious with the fresh creamy pesto. A delicious new way to eat beetroot for me and a regular new addition on the Salad Club line up...

Stilton, Walnut and Honey Chicory Cups

It's started hasn’t it... The decadent Christmas onslaught of eating and drinking. I've had to print off a wall-chart of December to keep track of everything going on, most of which seem to be eating and drinking in different locations at all hours of the day... I've already had a work Christmas party which basically involved hours and hours of wine, I’m still feeling the after effects; another drinks party in the country, more civilised this time... and I have four more parties before the weekend even begins... I need to eat fruit and sleep lots to last the distance I think... 

I like the amount of tradition at this time of year, everyone seems to have little things set in stone that they always do and places they always go, different from each other. I like to invent new traditions too, Christmas Eve Eve supper is one of mine, by the fire in the house. Twixmas is another, a few friends and family over for a lunchtime drink and bite to eat between Christmas and New Year.

I'm looking forward to it all though, it's lovely seeing lots of friends and being all festive. I have food plans for some more potted pheasant, some smoked pheasant terrine, pickled grapes and roast duck. Some Christmas hot toddies and a few new canapés too. I'm going to read recipe books and watch television and cook, I'm quite excited...

These are my new favourite seasonal canapé, I think I have persuaded myself they are healthy because they aren't something balanced on fried bread, or something stuffed in a mini Yorkshire pudding... A little chicory cup laden with Stilton, honey and toasted nuts. Do not underestimate a canapé in a salad cup, they are really, really delicious! And they have the added bonus of being very simple, you just toast some nuts, sprinkle some Stilton and drizzle some honey... easy!

Simply toast some walnuts in a dry pan until they begin to brown, 50g will make about 20 canapés. Then divide 3 chicory heads into separate leaves, you can use red or white chicory, both are delicious. Roughly crumble about 50g of Stilton equally between the leaves. Then top the walnuts and Stilton with half a teaspoon of honey per leaf. You can add a tiny pinch of rock salt too if you fancy... The bitter chicory is delicious with the creamy cheese, sweet honey and toasted crunchy nuts, simple but amazingly tasty...

 

Orange, Ginger and Walnut Cake

I was asked to judge a cake competition last week, at my old school Central High; I was quite honoured. They were looking for one girl to go forward to a national baking competition, to represent the whole school. I wasn't informed how many cakes there might be, or that it was open to the whole school, so was a little bit overwhelmed to arrive and be told I was judging sixty nine cakes...

Myself and Kate Emmett of Cake Poppins Bakery fame had the huge task of tasting every single one of them, all lemon victoria sponges, a Mary Berry recipe that she has created specially for the competition. We were judging on taste, presentation and technique. It was quite good fun to start with; I like lemon cake, most of them were pretty decent cakes, with only one or two disasters in the taste department, still not sure what on earth was in those ones... I made sure I said things like 'this one's a good bake' and 'I think this might be over worked' or 'too much raising agent here' to pretend that I was actually taking part in an episode of Great British Bake Off, or simply that I had some idea about baking in general...

It was all going well until we got about three quarters of the way round when it became pretty hard work. We were tasting tiny, tiny pieces, but even with that in mind it was difficult not to be overwhelmed by sugar, icing, sweetness... My head started to spin and I'm sure my sight went a bit funny... We did select some worthy winners in the end, a few of the cakes really stood out, so hopefully those girls will do us proud in the next round!

Inspired by the girls efforts and also just because I opened the paper and saw this Dan Lepard recipe and wanted to eat it straight away, I have also been baking... It is quite a simple cake to make and full of delicious sharp zesty orange, tangy ginger and warm toasted walnuts. It is not too sugary sweet, just a tasty slice of cake to have with your afternoon cup of tea. You could probably convince yourself it was acceptable for breakfast too, I did...

To start line a 30cm long loaf tin with baking paper and pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Then grate the zest of 5 oranges and keep the oranges and zest to one side. Add 225g of caster sugar to a pan, with 150ml of juice squeezed from the oranges and bring it to the boil. Remove it from the heat and add 100g of unsalted butter and leave it to melt. Taste it at this point, it tastes bloody lovely!

Leave the mix to cool slightly and then add the zest from the oranges, some grated fresh ginger, a piece about 2-3cm long, and 75ml of double cream. Then beat in 3 free range eggs followed by 325g of plain flour and 3 teaspoons of baking powder.

Finally spoon a third of the mix into the tin and add a handful of chopped walnuts evenly over the top with a sprinkling of cinnamon, then add the next third, more walnuts and cinnamon, then the final third and top with more walnuts and cinnamon. I used 100g of walnuts in total, I'd maybe use even more next time... Then bake for 50 minutes in the oven. It is delicious and actually gets better day by day. The crunchy sweet top with toasted walnuts was my favourite bit...

Wild Garlic Pesto

I'm enjoying this little heat wave we're having in Newcastle, albeit through a window, but enjoying it all the same. I took it as an opportunity to become a forager at the weekend. My foraging career to date has mainly just been for blackberries, actually perhaps that's all. I once ate some wild watercress in the Lake District but that's about it... So I've decided to be a bit more adventurous. I found a lovely recipe for Wild Garlic Pesto, so I set out in search of the wild garlic. You can smell it before you see it, I have caught wafts of it from various gardens and parks around Jesmond, you just need to keep an eye out...

Jesmond Dene is over run with it at the moment, but I found a lovely little patch in Gosforth Park, a quiet spot in the woods, far from the weeing dogs of Jesmond Dene, which does slightly put me off... I probably wasn't that prepared in ballet pumps and a dress so might have to rethink outfits on future trips, I ended up with soil in my shoes and twigs in my hair... but with a carrier bag full of bright green leaves.

You mainly find wild garlic in shaded woodland areas, identified by its wafting garlicky aroma. It has long wide green leaves that look a little like lily of the valley and it grows in Britain from late winter, into spring. The patch I found were young small leaves, perfect for cooking. Unlike normal garlic it is the leaves that you eat, not the bulb, and it has a much milder taste than the strong garlic bulb which some people find over powering, though I love it... The leaves get a bit thicker and woodier when the plant flowers, towards the end of its growing season, so now is probably a good time to go in search of some.

You can wilt it as a green leaf, as you would spinach or stir into a sauce with cream and shallots, chop it into a creamy risotto, blend it into a home made mayonnaise or wilt through a stir fry. I've been looking at lots of recipes for it and will have to get experimenting while the season lasts. For my first attempt I decided on a pesto, it keeps for months, so is a good way to preserve it for use through the summer.

Simply blitz 75g of wild garlic leaves, washed thoroughly, in a food processor with 2 shallots, 50g of walnuts, 150ml of extra virgin olive oil, a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of sugar. You can add 50g of parmesan also if you like also, I didn’t this time around.

So far this week I have enjoyed tagliatelle with the wild garlic pesto, and even more delicious, a chicken salad with a pesto dressing loosened with a little more olive oil, manchego, crunchy little gem lettuce, pancetta and pine nuts. It has a lovely mild garlic taste, but is fresh and green at the same time, my favourite pesto I've tried so far for sure...

Chocolate and Walnut Fudge Brownies

I don't bake or make anything sweet often enough, but sitting on the sofa on a misty, rainy Sunday afternoon watching cookery programmes I suddenly found myself rummaging around my messy cupboards to see if I had the right ingredients to produce a batch of chocolate brownies. Lorraine Pascal was just finishing off some oreo cookie ones, I had roughly the right stuff... Coupled with the fact that we forgot someone’s birthday at work last week... there really was no better option than a spot of baking. Chocolate and walnut brownies with a hint of fudge. Lovely.

I tried making a smaller amount than I will tell you to use, due to having to cobble together ingredients I had in the house, but it all got a bit complicated when I didn’t have a baking tray small enough and had to rummage round slopping chocolate mixture from one to another in a panic stricken way... Which is why it ended up a brownie in a tart tin, which I don't think is traditionally quite correct... So I'll revert back to the amounts I should have actually used...

Grease a baking tin with butter, the tin will need to be about 20cm by 25cm, and then line it with grease proof paper. Melt 250g of unsalted butter in a pan on a low heat. While it is melting grate 200g of 70% dark chocolate, turn the butter off when it is fully melted and stir in the grated chocolate to melt. This is easier than faffing about with bowls over pans of water I think...

Break 3 free range eggs into a large bowl and add 275g of caster sugar, then beat them together until creamy. Now stir in the chocolate and butter mix until everything is thoroughly mixed together. Stir in 3 heaped teaspoons of cocoa powder, then add 125g of self raising flour and a pinch of sea salt and mix that in well with a metal spoon.

Toast a handful of walnuts in a dry pan until they begin to brown, chop roughly and add to the mix, I also added a handful of chopped fudge. I would have added some chunky chopped up chocolate pieces instead of fudge, but didn’t have enough left over from the mix... and then bake for 20 minutes at 180°C. They are ready when a knife or a skewer comes out moist with a few crumbs on it. Finally leave them on a wire rack to cool and cut into squares.

Lovely warm, lovely cold, I even like the crusty bits round the edge that looked a little burnt... I'm going to bake more. It's decided.