Aubergine & Eggplant

Banana cake bars & cocoa brownies

My mums group meets once a week for coffee in one of our houses, on rotation. Clearly that means there is a mild, unspoken baking competition going on every week. Baking something with a little monkey around is a bit of a challenge, but these two recipes were fairly simple to knock out once they're in bed. 

I wanted something different, less utilitarian than your average banana bread. I love banana bread, but I wanted something cakier, sweeter, more like a treat and less like I-have-three-blackening-bananas-on-my-counter. Of course, that was also the case, but you know. I highly recommend the Banana Bars from My Baking Addiction blog, with the cream cheese icing. In the photo, you can see one piece with sugared rose petals on top and one with hundreds and thousands. 

The brownies are truly an easy bake from the always-reliable Smitten Kitchen - super fast and requiring practically nothing you probably don't already have in your kitchen. Helpfully using cocoa and no actual chocolate, you can make this in one bowl. I've made them twice, once in a non-stick bakeware and once in a bendy silicone 'dish'. The silicone doesn't transfer enough heat to totally cook the middle, so I won't do that again. It still worked though.

The mums preferred the Banana Bars - as you can see!

Pancake day is tomorrow...

Just a reminder of my epic post on pancake-making technique for all your Shrove Tuesday needs.

Blog Aid for Haiti - buy the cookbook!

I've made a few small donations through Paypal and other ways, but this is such an excellent idea I had to share it. Twenty-seven Canadian bloggers have contributed to the Blog Aid cookbook, with all proceeds going to the Canadian Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. On its day of release, sales of the cookbook raised almost £6,000. If you buy a copy before the 12th of February, the Canadian government will match the amount donated. So please visit Blurb and buy either the softcover (£13.67) or the hardcover (£27.69).

[image borrowed from Everybody Likes Sandwiches]

New Year Pantry Project

I have three cans of chickpeas in my cupboard. I don't even like them that much. What happens is I plan to make falafels from scratch but then baulk at the last minute... I've done this three times, forgetting each time that I already have a can (or two) of chickpeas in the cupboard. I mean, why would I? I don't even like chickpeas.

Multiply this by many, many recipes I've not gotten around to making, or random impulse purchases (Christopher likes water chestnuts doesn't he? I'm sure I'll think of something...), and my cupboards are full to bursting with unrelated things I have no idea what to do with.

I'm not one for resolutions, so I'm couching this in the language of a new project instead - I'm going to try and use one of those dusty cans or jars at least twice a week. Crucially, also, I'm not going to buy anymore jars or tins. (I think I'll exempt canned tomatoes and lentils from this or I would go crazy).

There are jars of artichokes, the aforementioned chickpeas, butter beans, capers, pitted olives, half a bag of ground almonds... it goes on and on. It's not that I don't know what to do with these things - I do. It's just having the discipline to do those recipes instead of whatever interesting thing I've just read about on someone's blog today. 

Two eggs, over medium

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Pathologically so. When I get particular about a meal, or a food, or a drink, it means I will attempt to make the Perfect one every day until I get the method down pat. I did it with pancakes, though to be completely honest I only made them once a week. But once a week for the better part of a year. 

Yes I know, it really is that bad.

For three months now I've had two fried eggs and toast every day for breakfast. I love fried eggs with runny yolks and I denied myself for the nine months I was pregnant. Now Elliot is out in the world and I can enjoy runny yolks with abandon.

But to be clear about this, I don't like runny whites. The absolute perfect fried egg, to me, is what they call 'over medium' in diners in the Old Country. It's a variation of over easy, where the egg is flipped once after its initial landing on the grill - over easy means the white is barely set and the yolk is entirely liquid. My fried egg nirvana is a yolk with a ring of just cooked yellow holding in a disc of yellow goo. The white should be firm, preferably with those yummy crunchy edges. 

So every morning, I attempt two perfect fried eggs. As I'm usually on my own with my four-month-old son and small terrier, the likelihood of me getting it right more than once a week is low. But I (usually) enjoy the challenge. This morning, as evidenced above, was one of the best pair of fried eggs have had in ages. 

[Note: Yes I know those eggs in the photo are not over medium, but sunny side up. I find my best yolk consistency is achieved by putting two tablespoons of water on the pan and covering with a lid briefly towards the end of cooking, rather than attempting a perilous flip which could end in broken yolks and tears.]

 

Happy Christmas

Best wishes to all of you and may all your cooking adventures today and in the new year go exactly as planned and turn out better than expected. xx

Oven Temperatures - Precision is the key

Lifehacker, a terrific blog to have in your Google Reader, posted this incredibly informative video on how to get the best out of your oven by the editor of Cook's Illustrated. Where should you put a pie? What's the real 'middle shelf'?

Crispy Vegetable & Noodle Soup

 

I've always appreciated the concept of soups: the way they fill you up with relatively few calories, their all encompassing meal-in-a-bowl nature and the ability to accommodate all the odds and sods from the fridge or the vegbox.

I dislike soups for equally persuasive reasons, however. The tendency to be slimey, the lack of chewing involved and, often, the lack of umami flavour.

So this Crispy Vegetable & Noodle Soup covers all my dislikes of the soup genre, and manages to include cabbage. Which is incredible because I really don't like cabbage. The solution to the sliminess is to fry the veg in a mixture of butter and garlic oil and not adding them until just before serving - they stay crispy, and get a bit of brown crunch adding a bit of the all-important umami. I've included noodles because I love noodles, but this soup would be more virtuous and would hardly suffer without them. It took me all of 30 minutes to make, including having to run and settle the Monkey back to sleep twice in the middle of it. 

Crispy Vegetable & Noodle Soup
(serves 2 moderately hungry people, one starving person)

2 leeks, sliced
1 small courgette, sliced into coins
1 small head of broccoli, chopped into small florets, stalked chopped into small chunks
1 corner of a small cabbage, chopped into thin strips (chiffonade)
1 stock cube (I used chicken, but veg is fine if you're looking to stay vegetarian) or a pint and a bit of proper homemade stock you have in the freezer because you're a better person than I am
60g fine egg noodles (I like Manischewitz)
1 tbsp butter
garlic-infused olive oil
Small handful of flat leaf parsley, torn

1. Put about a pint and a bit of water on to boil in a medium saucepan, and drop in the stock cube, or get your homemade stock boiling.

2. Heat the butter and olive oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat and add the leeks. 

3. Turn up the heat under the frying pan and add the courgettes and broccoli, ladling in some stock if the pan dries out - this is for lubrication only, you shouldn't have any liquid sloshing around in the pan. Toss the veg often, you should be getting some colour on them now. 

4. The stock should be boiling, add in your egg noodles. The Manischewitz package says they take 8 minutes or something to cook, I find it's more like 4 minutes. Regardless, boil until they are just about ready but not quite - remember they're going to sit in hot liquid for awhile.

5. Add the cabbage to the frying pan, and toss in another spoonful of stock. Everything should be getting a bit brown and wonderful now. Pull it off the heat once the cabbage is bright green with some brown bits.

6. Tip some of the veg in a soup bowl, pouring the stock on after. Sprinkle with the flat leaf parsely and serve!

Grandma Lena's Chicken Fricassee

My Grandma Lena was one of those people who churned out masses of food every time we visited, and I loved it all. The Jamaican hostess in her I suppose. She made me toast that was like warm bread soaked with butter and spiced cakes that were complicated with allspice and cloves. I don't remember her main courses as well, except for this one because my mum got the recipe and made it at home.

It's deceptively simple this one, the end result tastes like there should be about four more ingredients than there are. If you can't get hold of scotch bonnet peppers, don't worry, it's not critical. You must use chicken thighs though - breast meat doesn't work here. We've found that skin-on thighs go a bit slimy, so it's best to skin them first. Finally, this isn't a quick recipe, so make sure you've got a good hour and a half free.

Grandma Lena's Chicken Fricassee
(serves 2)

6 chicken thighs - boneless or bone-in, preferably skinless
4 medium onions
handful of fresh thyme
olive oil
1 scotch bonnet pepper, whole
Half pint of chicken stock

1. Chop the onions into half moons, and add to a medium frying pan with some olive oil on medium-low heat. A cast iron pan is best, but I don't have one at the moment and use non-stick - it's fine. Cook them down gently until you have a sticky, brown mess.

2. Add the thighs flat side down and turn up the heat a bit to brown them, flipping after a couple minutes.

3. Add the chicken stock, scotch bonnet pepper (DON'T pierce it, we're going for flavour here, not heat) and the fresh thyme to the pan, and turn down the heat. Leave it for an hour, flipping the chicken every so often to keep it moist. 

4. Serve the thighs with the gooey onion gravy on top immediately, with rice, mashed potato or noodles. 

 

Quick Roast Lamb Leftovers Solution

Just over a month ago I had my first child. Which is lovely and magical and all those things, but it also means the time available for cooking has shrunk to five to ten minute windows that can be interrupted at any time. Researching, prepping and fussing over finnicky recipes is out, for now. Anything I can bung in a roasting tin for long periods of time with some veg is featuring heavily on the family menu at the moment. Which is great, but it also means there are odd bits of meat leftover - not always enough to recreate the meal as a rerun for two people.

So, inspired by a Donna Hay recipe I couldn't quite remember, I threw together this quick dish. You could use any leftover roast - chicken, beef, pork. In this case, I had a chunk of roast leg of lamb. It's nothing earth-shattering, but the combination of textures makes it something a bit more than the average stuff-in-a-tortilla thing.

Quick Lamb Wraps
(serves 2)

Leftover roast meat of some sort, cut into bite-sized chunks
Hummous
1 each orange & yellow peppers, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and finely grated
4 flour tortillas
Olive oil

1. Heat a pan over medium heat, and add a small quantity of olive oil, whatever you need to keep things from sticking, but no more. Stir fry your meat so it colours a bit, but be careful not to overcook it. 

2. Add the peppers to the meat for a moment or two - we want to keep the crunch in the peppers, so don't go overboard. Turn off the heat.

3. Heat the tortillas in the microwave by putting them on a plate between two pieces of kitchen paper for 20 seconds. 

4. Spread each tortilla with a tablespoon of hummous, then the meat and peppers, and top with the grated carrot. Roll up and eat!