scone

When we were in Scotland we were treated to two nights at Monachyle Mhor (Thanks Maw and Paw R!) . It is a wonderful place : beautiful surroundings, lovely atmosphere and brilliant food. The chef is Tom Lewis who took part in the Great British Menu representing Scotland.

While everything we ate there was fantastic, it was the scones that we keep mentioning . . . isn't it funny how the little things done so well are so memorable?

The tea (morning or afternoon, or both!) menu noted that the scones take 15 minutes - arriving warm, fresh and obviously straight from the oven - complete with clotted cream, fresh butter and jam. The scones were light and had a lovely crust, fluffy yet substanital within, and tasted like they were made with good, honest ingredients and skill. I must admit that we had the scones both days in lieu of lunch ; what are holidays about if not having a brilliant breakfast, fabulous scones then a fantastic dinner?!

Once home, I tried to recreate the scones, to good effect I think, the outsides perhaps a little rougher, but looks aren't everything, right?

Scones
makes 12

250g plain flour (I use white spelt)
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter, cubed
1t cream of tartar
1t baking soda
150mL yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 210°c.
Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl and rub in the butter quickly with your finger tips. Sift in the cream of tartar and baking soda then quickly mix in the yoghurt to make a light dough. Form into the shape you fancy, either by rolling and cutting or just dolloping. Leave to rest for about 10 minutes on the bench before baking 10 minutes. Serve immediately!

Za'atar Naan Chips

Want not waste not or third time a treat?

When I made the spelt bread and was so happy with the result I immediately decided to use spelt flour to make naan to go with our Friday night curry. Brilliant : soft, tasty and oh so good topped with a schmear of garlic butter.

I had made more dough than we needed for a couple of naan, so I popped it in the fridge so I could use it on Saturday to make some flat breads for nibbling on with a glass of wine. Delicious : Served with toasted za'atar mixed with olive oil for dipping, the spelt shined through once again. However we ended up with more flat breads than we needed.

So on Sunday I broke the flat breads up into pieces and mixed them with the left over za'atar and oil (do I throw anything away?!). Baked, spread out on a sheet at 180°c, for about 20 minutes until they were crispy and golden. Such a good snack, such a good way to use up that naan dough.

Once again a cracker!

chil·li corn nib·bles

Corn and chilli, a perfect match.

A store cupboard snack, perfect for eating while relaxing. Perhaps when playing cards while enjoying a glass of wine. Or for some impromptu nibbles when cracking open a bottle of wine with some friends seem like a good idea. Or even if you aren't hungry enough for a proper meal but know you should have something to eat or regret it at about 1am when you wake up hungry.

Actually they would be pretty good for when you do wake up at 1am hungry . . .

Chilli Corn Nibbles
Enough for a good snack for a couple of hungry people

1 egg
a good glug of Tabasco
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt
white pepper
2 heaped tablespoons of flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
splash of milk
1 cup frozen corn kernels
Olive oil for frying

Beat the egg with the Tabasco, oil and the salt and pepper. Mix in the flour and baking powder and enough milk to make a thick batter. Mix in the corn and leave to stand for about 30 minutes.
Heat a frying pan to medium hot with a good layer of olive oil and fry teaspoons of the mixture until golden and crispy. Keep the fritter warm in a low oven between batches and serve with a chilli sauce.

min·i ap·ple pies

Ernest Adams, Sara Lee or Laughing Gastronome?

I have this thing where I like to make things like those that are usually bought : digestive biscuits, custard creams and most recently, those individual snack size apple pies. They never turn out exactly how they are when bought, but that is a good thing, isn't it!

The apple pies I was hoping to mimic have a cubed apple filling in a thick, sticky sauce flavoured with cinnamon, short crust pastry - often quite cakey, which I didn't want to reproduce - and all sprinkled with sugar. You know the kind. I most often see them at office morning teas and they are always disappointing, making you wish you had stuck to the tim-tams.

These are perfect to take in your packed lunch, but if you want a full size pie, have a look here.

Snack Size Apple Pies
Makes 12 patty pan size

Shortcrust pastry
100g butter, chilled and cubed
200g flour
a good pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten
cold water

Filling
1 tablespoon butter
3 Granny Smith Apples, peeled, cored and cubed
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cornflour, slacked with a wee bit of water

Caster sugar for sprinkling

Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour with the salt, then forming a dough with almost all the egg, saving some for brushing the pies before baking, and enough cold water. Leave to rest in the fridge for an hour while you make the filling.

Melt the butter then add the apples, cinnamon and sugar, stirring together well. Cook on a gentle heat until the apple is tender, then thoroughly mix in the cornflour slurry and leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180°c and put a baking tray in to heat.

Roll out the pastry and using suitably sized cutters, cut 12 sets of tops and bottoms to fit a 12 hole patty pan. Line the holes with the larger circles, divide the filling among them, brush the edges with a little water then lay over the tops. Crimp the edges together with a fork then rest in the fridge for 10 minutes. Brush the tops with the reserved egg from the pastry and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15 minutes.

gri·ssi·ni

Finally - crunchy grissini!

I am quite proud of myself - I have finally achieved something I have been wanting to successfully do for years : crunchy grissini!

You know those bread sticks that come in little packets at certain Italian restaurants, that you can sometimes buy in bundles at specialty food shops? (The only time I ever see them is at the Kirks sale - and I can't walk past them.) I just love them. I have tried and tried to reproduce them at home, but mine have always been too soft. You would not think it was so hard to produce a dry bread, would you? None of the recipes I had found, in books or online, have resulted in the dry, crumbly sticks for which I hanker. I have tried changing the recipe and the preparation, but finally I have discovered that the answer lies in the baking.

Grissini
makes 12 long ones

225g bread flour
15g fresh yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
Luke warm water

Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water and mix in 50g flour to make a soft dough. Leave for 15 minutes to start to bubble. Mix in the salt and the rest of the flour, adding enough warm water to make a good dough. Knead well and leave to double in size for an hour.

Divide into 12 pieces and roll into thin sausage shapes as long as your baking tray. Cover with a damp tea towel and leave again in a warm place for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 250°c.

Put the grissini in the oven and turn the oven off. Keeping an eye on them, and test one after 20 minutes, turning the oven onto 100°c if you think it is necessary.

As pictured above, I served the crispy, crunchy grissini with prosciutto, mortadella, salami and mozzarella for a wonderful antipasto.

car·a·way and black ses·a·me seed bis·cuits

Just right with a glass of wine on a sunny Sunday afternoon!

Last Sunday, Jules came round for a glass of wine in the last of the sun - it was so nice to finally meet him properly. He lives just up the road ; we knew we were neighbours and have bumped into each other a couple of times, but last Sunday was the first time we have sat down and started to get to know each other.

I made some little biscuits flavoured with one of my favourite things - caraway seeds. These biscuits are savoury and crisp, nice to nibble on with a pre-dinner drink. Caraway is such a soothing flavour, tasting like seed cake that Gran used to make and like Gripe water I remember having as a child! Black sesame seeds are just a bit nuttier than regular sesame seeds, and I think have a bit of an aesthetic advantage over the white ones in a biscuit like this. I made them in quite a rough elongated oval shape, but they could be cut out with a biscuit cutter if a tidier shape was wanted.

Caraway and black sesame seed biscuits
makes about 48

2 cups of plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
60g chilled butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons of caraway seeds
2 tablespoons id black sesame seeds
1/2 cup chilled water
salt

Mix the flour and baking powder in a food processor then add the butter, processing until crumbs form. Add the seeds and pulse briefly. Add the water a little at a time with the motor running until the dough just starts to come together. Turn out onto the bench and press into one mass, taking care not to knead the dough.
Divide into two logs, wrap in plastic and rest in the fridge for half an hour while the oven is preheating to 180°c.
Cut slices from the logs then roll out as thinly as possible to an elongated oval shape, or roll the dough out thinly and cut shapes with a biscuit cutter. place on a lines baking sheet and sprinkle with a little salt. Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden at the edges.
Cool on a rack.

It has been an exciting week in other ways too :

On Monday I met up with Bea as she passed through Wellington - it is so wonderful to meet someone who so nice and is turns out to be just like she comes across in her blog, La tartine gourmande!

Barbara emailed me to say that our blogs were mentioned in the latest NZ House & Garden - so hello to everyone who have found their way here from there!

Also, NZ Blogging by Post - the Easter Edition is under way - I am looking forward to putting together my parcel to send this week, and of course waiting excitedly for the mail the week after!

kou·ra for kai in kai·kou·ra

What a way to start a holiday!

Koura (Maori for crayfish) for kai (Maori for food) in Kaikoura (first stop after Blenheim on a South Island of New Zealand odyssey).

As you drive into Kaikoura you start to see sheds and stands selling freshly cooked crayfish, and I ask you - what can you do but stop and get one to eat on the roadside overlooking the Pacific Ocean? I only wish we had a bottle of delicious New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to complete the picture.

The crayfish are lined up screaming "pick me, pick me!". They look so wonderful : brightly coloured and obviously freshly caught and cooked. The only question is - do you want gravy? - as the koura is cut in half and placed on a plastic plate with some lemon and lots of serviettes.

As as we are back from our tour of the South, I can't wait to get back!

cour·gette brus·chetta

In four easy steps :

1. Thinly slice some courgettes in a little olive oil until very soft and caramelised.
   
2. Toast some slices of sourdough until crisp and golden, then rub with a raw garlic clove.
3. Pile the courgette on top of the toasts and drizzle with a little peppery and flavourful extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.
4. Eat in the sun with an icy, opaque, pastis.

beetroot and brazil nut relish

Beetroot is a guaranteed way to add a bit of pink to a meal, shocking though it is! Beetroot can be happily included in many meals, contributing not just colour but also sweetness and vitamin C and antioxidents among other benefits.

I think the best way to cook a beetroot is to wash gently, taking care not to damage the skin, trimming only the leaves, then wrap loosely in foil and roast for an hour or two. Sometimes I add some salt, pepper and olive oil, but only if they are within reach. After cooling enough to handle the skin comes away easily and then the purple globe is ready to be introduced to many a recipe. A newly found favourite of mine is :

beetroot and brazil nut relish
flexible ingredients, flexible quantities, flexible servings

Purée the roasted beetroot with some garlic. Add some brazil nuts ; the more nuts the thicker and more substantial the relish will be. Season with redwine vinegar, salt and pepper. Leave for a few hours for the flavours to develop. Serve with bread and cheese, roasted meats, felafels and pita, anywhere some bright pink relish would be welcome.

kidney bean hum·mus

As I was spring cleaning the cupboards the other day (I do seem to do this alot!), I found two packets of kidney beans that I just had to use up - they had bean(!) there much too long. I was hunting through the cupboards looking for some chickpeas I thought were there so I could make hummus. No chickpeas, so there was nothing for it but to make kidney bean hummus. I could only imagine the pleasing pinkness that would result!

I soaked both packets overnight in cold water. Then drained and rinsed and boiled for 10 minutes to get rid of the phytohaemagglutinin, before simmering for 40 minutes or so until they were tender. I used some of the cooked beans for a kidney bean curry (wonderful - recipe to come), some went into the freezer to add to something else sometime, and the rest turned into hummus. I struggled with what to call this because hummus means chickpea - no-hummus hummus, kidney beannus, but in the interests of resisting silly names and because you know what I mean kidney bean hummus it is :

kidney bean hummus

2 cups cooked kidney beans
4 cloves of garlic
juice of a lemon
2 tablespoons of tahini
half a teaspoon of cumin
salt and pepper

Puree the beans and the garlic in a blender or with a stick blender, I don't find a food processor works very well making it grainy. Of course a pestle and mortar or a potato masher are not out of the question either! Add the remaining ingredients mixing well adding more or less as you like, and perhaps some water if it is too thick but lemony enough. Serve as you would hummus. This freezes well too.

kip·per pâte

A packet of kippers needs to be cooked all at once, especially when you have you use the boil-in-the-bag method because the microwave is no longer an option (since it caught fire). But that is all good when there is also a bit of left over cream cheese and some horseradish in the fridge.

And that gives you all the ingredients for kipper pâte :

kippers
cream cheese
horseradish

Just blend together to your taste and serve with toast : hot buttered, grilled pita or what ever you might like to use to make a fabulous nibble from a load of leftovers.

Just the way I like it!

four ways with cro·sti·ni

When I saw that Bron had chosen bruscetta and crostini as the theme for Hay Hay Donna Day #4 I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try out something I had been thinking about for a while.

I quite often make crostini as a way to use up the last bit of a baguette or ficelle. Having crostini in the cupboard is a great thing, they keep so well and make a brilliant snack with a bit of whatever is kicking around in the fridge to call a topping. More and more often I will use part of the dough when I am making bread to form into a ficelle just so I can make crostini.

I usually just make the crostini plain, but why not experiment with flavouring the toasts themselves as well as with the toppings? Why not indeed?!

So I give you four ways with crostini and some suggested toppings :

Plain - Slice a ficelle or baguette and brush or spray both sides with olive oil. Spread out on a baking sheet and bake at 180°C for about 10 minutes, turning over half way through, until golden and crispy. Top with - lightly crushed pieces of peppered mackerel.

Garlic - [my favourite!] Make as for plain, but when they are cooked rub a clove of garlic over the pieces. The garlic will grate onto the crostini, leaving a wonderful garlicyness. Top with - onion jam, half a black olive and a bit of anchovy fillet.

Mushroom - Make as for plain, but sprinkle the oiled pieces with some dried mushroom powder before putting in the oven. Top with - a paste made from mashed feta and some yoghurt with a few drops of truffle oil on the top.

Spiced - Make as for plain, but sprinkle the oiled pieces with a mixture of spices before putting in the oven. Top with - mashed leftover kumera made in the style of hummous with a bit of tahini and some more of the spice mix used on the crostini.

I was a little late with this so the round up is already done - I'll try better next time!

sweet lab·neh

And now for a sweet verison! So simple to describe with the details already covered.

Step 1 : Take some thick strained yoghurt and mix with some liquid honey, warmed to make it runnier if you like.

Step 2 : Roast some walnut pieces by poing boiling water over them and leaving for 10 minutes, draining and then roasting in a hot oven for a few minutes until they are golden.

Step 3 : Peel and slice a kiwi fruit.

Step 4 : Assemble to mouthful size, with a slice of kiwi, and blob of sweetened yoghurt and a sprinkle of walnuts.

Lovely and light and healthy. Just the thing for getting over the indulgences of a holiday week!

spic·ed lab·neh

Since I make yoghurt, I like to use it in place of other dairy products where I can. I strain the fresh yoghurt through a coffee filter paper to drain off the whey, leaving it for varying lengths of time to produce different thicknesses. This is essentially labneh, or yoghurt cheese. Only straining the yoghurt briefly makes a thick Greek style yoghurt and leaving it for a good 24 hours gives a good thick cream cheese substitution. Somewhere in between lies what I use for sour cream.

I wanted to make a light but tasty nibble to take advantage of the baby carrots and radishes in the vegetable box. I wanted something that had some body but nothing too rich or heavy. And I wanted to use some more of the Balmain & Rozelle spice mix ; just the thing to mix with some thick strained yoghurt and serve with the vegetables.

Spiced Labneh

1/2 cup thick strained yoghurt
2 teaspoons (approximately) of your chosen spice mix. This could be garlic and fresh minced herbs, a favourite sauce, a selection of dry spices or for the easiest option a preblended spice mix.

Mix the yoghurt well with enough of your chosen flavour to suit you. Leave to rest in the fridge for an hour or so, then serve!

This could be served as a dip for crudités, or served as composed bites as shown in the photo above.

po·len·ta, pine nut co·ri·an·der mad·e·leines

There has been a Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand, signed in 1835, prior to the better known Treaty of Waitangi, which was signed in 1840. The Declaration of Independence of New Zealand was signed by Maori chiefs and the official representative of Britain in New Zealand to declare an independent state with the United Kingdom as protector.

It also appears that it was signed in the hope that it would make the British people living in New Zealand better behaved! And for the United Kingdom to declare sovereignty before France! Very altruistic of the British Empire, what?!

So, to be philosophical, in order to appreciate the independence we now experience in our respective countries we must search for memories of lost times [Is that too obvious a reference to Proust?!]. So my recipe to celebrate independence is one for polenta, pine nut and coriander madeleines.

Who knows, if the British hadn't beaten the French to the post, we might have been eating madeleines instead of ANZAC biscuits!

Along with Independence, the ingredients for Paper Chef19, as hosted by Kevin of Seriously Good are :

Corn
Pine nuts
Ground coriander

I made the madeleines like this :

Polenta, pine nut and coriander madeleines

25g butter, melted
1 small egg
salt
20g polenta
25g pine nuts
1 scant teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon flour

Put a medeleine tin in the fridge to made brushing with butter easier.
Beat the egg with a pinch of salt until the consistency of mayonnaise, about 5 minutes in an electric mixer.
Grind the polenta, pine nuts and coriander seed until fine. Do this in stages, perhaps by pulsing the machine to stop it from forming pine nut butter.
Push the pine nut, polenta and coriander mixture through a sieve over the now beaten egg and sieve over the flour. Fold in gently, but thoroughly. Fold in all but a teaspoon of the melted butter.
Put the mixture in the fridge to rest for at least an hour.
Brush the madeleine tin well with melted butter, chilling the tin stops the butter from just pooling in the bottoms.
Take the madeleine mixture from the fridge and let come to room temperature for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 220°c.
Put teaspoon dollops of the mixture into the tin and bake for 3 to 5 minutes or until firm.
Turn out onto a rack to cool.

Serve as an hors d'oeuvre with a glass of dry sherry and indulge the involuntary memories of the independence of your country!

Addendum : These go really well with a good garlicky guacamole.
After finishing taking the photos and writing up this post we ate the madeleines and decided to make a guacamole to go with them to use the perfect avocado sitting on the shelf. Lovely. Corn and guacamole are always a good combination.

edamame

I hope you too are lucky enough to find a bag of frozen edamame while you are getting your groceries, then you can also enjoy a most delicious treat.

Edamame in
Boiling water. Salt!
Two minutes to go.

Quail eggs and spic·y salt

Quail's eggs seem so elegant. Small, yet perfectly formed and presented in a beautiful package. I have wanted to serve lightly hard boiled quail's eggs as finger food before a special meal for some time. So I finally did!

They were simple : simple to cook and simple to serve. But they were slightly tricky to peel and eat. I think that perhaps they are more conducive to sitting around, perhaps outside, killing time with friends, wine and food, rather than as predinner nibbles. You need somewhere to put your glass while you are peeling and somewhere to put the shell before dipping. I know I could have peeled them, but then the beautiful shells would have been lost. However, I am dying to make mini-scotch eggs with them soon!

We boiled the quail eggs for 2 minutes and served them with a spicy salt made by dry frying some left over curry spice mix until fragrant and mixing with some salt.

beet·root horse·rad·ish dip

This is a very special recipe to me. Not because it is ground breakingly new, very clever or difficult. It is special because I feel like the mother of this dish. I had a hand in [almost] each component. Might sound silly, but all of you who have started on the continuum of gardening, stepped on the path of bread-making, entered into the world of bacterial fermentation, you will understand.

To put it another way, I quote Neil of the Young Ones :

"First we sow the seed, nature grows the seed and then we eat the seed."

He knows what I mean.

The ingredients are :

beetroot - grown in my small urban garden, harvested and put in the oven to roast within about 10 minutes.
horseradish - grown in my small urban garden, pulled out, peeled and grated within about an hour.
yoghurt - made the day before from the seed of a batch I have had for a long time.
salt - from the South Island, but I do not know when harvested.
pepper - indigenous to Java (not so far away), grown and harvested I do not know.

The dip was made like this :

beetroot and horseradish dip

beetroot
horseradish root
yoghurt
salt and pepper

Wash the beetroot, and trim the leaves making sure not to pierce the skin. Wrap loosely in foil and bake at 180°c for 45 minutes to an hour or until the beetroot is tender.
Leave until cool enough to handle then peel off the skins.
Put the beetroot through a mouli or blend.
Peel and grate horseradish to your taste - the fresher, the less you will need ; jarred may be substituted if necessary.
Stir in enough yoghurt to make the consistency required.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with crudités, create a canapé or spread on bread for wonderful hors d'oeuvre.

pro·sciut·to fig and sage wraps

Finger food - oh yes, I do like finger food. Something that is easy to eat while doing at least two other things - drinking and talking, and at times, listening too.

I think perhaps proscuitto is the omnivore hors d'oeuvre maker's best friend. Is there much that does not benefit, in the finger food arena, from being wrapped in proscuitto? Fruit, cheese, fish, vegetables, bread or indeed just proscuitto all by itself.

Proscuitto is air dried ham - a specific, well known type is Parma ham, being from Parma, Italy. Many countries make a form of raw air dried ham, with perhaps Italy the most celebrated. It takes a long time to turn crude pork into proscuitto ; first the washing, then the salting, then the rising and the drying. There are no synthetic chemicals involved in the production of proscuitto , just salt, air and time. Proscuitto is most often sold in very thin slices with pure white fat streaking down the side of each slice.

The combination of fig and sage wrapped in proscuitto was not difficult, but was a new one for me. It is hard to be specific in the quantities, but rest assured that any left over proscuitto will not go to waste (see above).

I made the proscuitto fig and sage wraps like this :

proscuitto, fig and sage wraps

Fresh figs, quartered
A small sage leaf per fig quarter
Proscuitto strips

Lay a sage leaf on each fig quarter and wrap with a strip of proscuitto. The amount of each ingredient is only dependant on your taste. Place on a grill pan seam side down.
Grill for about 10 minutes or until the proscuitto is crisping and turning brown and delicious. Turn over part way through. The figs will become wonderfully sticky, sweet and caramelised - just perfect with the salty-savoury proscuitto.
Serve immediately.

pork rillettes

Rillettes are something I can only sometimes resist ordering when I find them on a menu. I love pâté and I love the meatier coarser rillettes. Yet, until now I had not made them myself - I don't know why ; they are straight forward, much easier than pâté, however they seem to be much more impressive on a "you made this!" level.

I decided to make a foray into the world of rillette making because I had some pork belly that was intended for sausages, but I didn't feel like making sausages. I wanted to make something that we could have during the week for lunch or an easy dinner - rillettes it was. Several of my cook books had a recipes for rillettes, but I ended up making a blended version of them all. I didn't have any pork fat, but I thought that the belly seemed fatty enough, and I wanted to cook the rillettes in the oven to make it easier on me!

This is how I ended up making them :

Pork Rillettes

500g piece of skinless and boneless fatty pork belly, cut into one inch chunks
100 mL of dry white wine
8 peppercorns, lightly crushed
8 juniper berries, lightly crushed
2 bay leaves
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and bruised
a generous grating of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Mix all the ingredients except the wine and put in a terrine or covered ovenproof pot, then pour over the wine. Bake covered in the oven at 140°c for 4 hours stirring once or twice, until the pork is very tender and cooked to perfection.
Strain the liquid from the pork pressing on the pork gently to help this along, keeping the liquid. Put the pork on a plate and shred with two forks . Remove the bay leaves, but the peppercorns, juniper berries and garlic will have been magically assimilated into the pork, or near enough so just pick out any bits you think you should. Taste the pork and add more salt and pepper if necessary. Pack tightly into small pots (or indeed one large one) pour over the reserved juices - the fat will form a layer on the top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least a day.
Serve with baguette, gerkins, radishes, lettuce and some red wine for a delicious, satisfying and easy week day meal.

This amount will make two ramekins full with a bit left over to eat on the day you make them, and allowing for the mouthfuls that you will have to try while you are shredding!