Jo Wheatley Home baking

Over the weekend Luke and I usually have a quiet day as he needs a day of calm or the week wears him out.  Sometimes it's a simple day of just reading and lounging around.  Other days may be cuddled up watching films.  Or his favourite is baking with me.  Which is my preference most days to. After a trip to the shops for a few bits with Luke on Thursday we came home with Jo Wheatleys new Home baking book. To keep Luke a bit quiet while I was busy I gave him some post it note style stickers and this is the amount of things he wants to bake from the book! 

I don't want to give the recipes away but we baked cheese share and tear style bread.  Which made 2 generous loaves.  The rolls we filled with a mix of Gruyere ad mozzarella cheese, and the light fluffy bread was gently flavoured with fresh herbs and garlic.As you can see from the next few photos it went just as the book said it would and was really easy.

Ours was a little more brown than the book but it still got an honest to God compliment from my 20 year old son.  Usually I have to ask and I get an 'it's ok' from him while everyone else is being complimentary.  Well in this case he went off with 2 of these still warm rolls and felt the need to text me about they had melted cheese in them and they were great! Well words to that effect I won't give you the actual phrase.  Before the kids had polished off the first rolls they were already asking if I can make these again a lot please. All I can say is I share the kids enthusiasm and these would be great as a side dish for many meals or even taken to a picnic. Great one Jo

In between the bread rising and the stages we made a batch of Oat, Raisin and Pecan cookies from the same book.  Older son doesn't like nuts but I had made one cookies that had no bits in and both boys are happy munchkins and I will be making more variations on this soon. I also took a few round to a friend on Saturday  who liked them to.  So definitely another winner from this book :o)

Vegetable quiche

Once a fortnight I get a fruit and veg box delivered and it feels like Christmas opening the box and discovering what delights are in the box and then spending the rest of the fortnight finding new recipes and ways of cooking things a little different to break the monotony. All good fun for me and healthy eating to, well mostly ;o)  Although I get a fruit and veg box I spied on my travels the first English asparagus of the season while I was out, so rushed home with it to see what else I had to go with it.  After looking as what we had to use up I decided to make a quiche. 

While blind baking some shortcrust pastry in a 20 cm/8 inch tin, I assembled 8 cherry tomatoes and halved,  took the woody ends off the asparagus and blanched in salted water for 2 minutes.took a bag of spinach which i washed then poured the boiling asparagus water over it in a colander and it wilted, drained thoroughly and squeezed it dry and chopped when cool enough to handle.  Grated 1 fat clove of garlic and crumbled 1/4 block of feta cheese. 

I took 3 large eggs which i seasoned and whisked in 2 large tablespoons of creme fraiche. Think ours was low fat, which I used as didn't have any cream. Worked well enough so use what you have on hand. And stirred in the grated/crushed garlic to the egg mixture.

As you see once the pastry was blind baked I put all the veg in best I could, started with the spinach sprinkled over the base, which must be dry or you will get the dreaded soggy bottom! Then the asparagus and fitted the rest over best I could.

Before adding the egg mixture and making sure the oven was at gas mark 4/180 degrees I placed the tin on a baking tin.  My quiche/flan dish is loose bottomed so didn't want to take the risk of anything coming out of the bottom if it leaked.

After 35 minutes it had a slight wobble but not much in the centre and did look a bit more brown than this picture shows but was looking and smelling great

We left this to go just warm before taking it out of the tin and serving it with some new potatoes with mint and a little butter, and a little side salad.  

I was surprised this went down so well as the feta didn't have the usually cheesiness I grew up with in a quiche, but the veg shone through so well I honestly didn't miss it. And will remember this for that last bit of feta in the fridge no one seems to want to eat.

Hash

On Sunday we had a lovely shoulder of lamb with salad, pitta, hummus and a few extra bits,  it was delicious.  Although we all ate well there was a fair bit of lamb left.   Now for some reason I kept thinking of corned beef hash out of The American Diner cookbook I have and decided to follow the recipe kind of for that using lamb.

We started picking the lamb off the rest of the bone and leaving it in bite size ish chunks,  peeled 4 medium ish potatoes and cubed and boiled until just tender but still firm then drained and set aside.  I actually peeled 5 potatoes but my granddaughter thought these were fab and kept coming out in the kitchen to demand yet another piece of cooked potato.

I chopped an onion and fried until soft in a big knob of butter.  When softened and sweeter but not brown I tipped in the potato and lamb mixing well with some pepper and smushed it down a bit.  I turned the heat up to medium and now and then when the bottom got crusty and crunchy I turned it over with a spatula and mixed it round a bit.

Ok, it doesn't look pretty but was smelling great already.

See the crusty bits? They may look burnt but they are flavour explosions ;o) I carried on like this for a while but I still wanted a mix of soft meat/potatoes and slightly crunchy crusty ones to.

Once I had got a good ratio of crispy and soft I made a few wells into the mixture and cracked in some eggs. and left to gently simmer in the pan with a lower heat for 5 minutes or so.  I then put the pan lid on for 5 minutes although I would do a little less next time for more oozy eggs. 

Not looking the best pan of food I have to admit

With some peas and tomato sauce for sauce lovers it was a lovely meal.  I might of added bread and butter for people with bigger appetites but we didn't need it.  We had almost decided on using the lamb for shepherds pie but very glad we didn't. I suppose it is not much different to bubble and squeak but with no vegetables. 

Vanilla extract

Being the keen baker of cakes that I am I love to use a decent vanilla extract. But some of them can work out expensive even for a small bottle. Especially when you have a budget, So a bit of thriftyness was required.  Our local wholefood shop sells some really nice but reasonable priced vanilla pods.  I use them then stick them in a jar of sugar resulting in vanilla sugar for baking with or even in coffee mmmmm :o)

But while waiting for the kettle boil I realised there was a fair bit of vodka left in the bottle on the kitchen side, and though it's great to drink I probably wouldn't be drinking it any time soon.  So I went and found a jam jar,  Then I went and bought 2 fresh vanilla pods and added them cut in half and split to the jar with about 3 dried ones from the sugar jar.  As you can see it doesn't look particularly wonderful however.........

Give it a few gentle shakes and a few hours and the vanilla starts to infuse into the vodka and starts going that classic brown colour we are used it.  Bit weak and wobbly now but I will give it a week and see how it is then. 

Really simple and I bet it would make a welcome gift for any foodie in a small cute bottle maybe. 

Quick gnocchi and chorizo side dish

Friday night I was clearing out the vegetables that needed using up and roasted them in the oven with some dried thyme and lots of Garlic,  I also topped with some herby halloumi in the last 10 minutes. But to turn this into a meal with a bit of pizzaz and make it go far enough for 4 of us I opened the fridge and pondered.  Some things are always almost in my fridge, one of them being Chorizo and the other that vacuum pack of chorizo, cheap and cheerful.  

Nigella Lawson once showed us how to turn gnocchi into tiny roast style potatoes by frying them in oil in a pan or in the oven.  Very quick and surprisingly good.  So the brain started ticking  that if I fried off the chorizo until the lovely oil leeched out I could use that delicious oil to then fry the gnocchi in.

Although I didn't get them fully crispy and crunchy because I would of reduced the chorizo to black lumps, they still came out very light and fluffy with mostly crunchy outsides and mildly flavoured with chorizo. Just a few minutes on each side and stirred a few times made an easy and fast side dish.

Although thinking now I should of fried the chorizo until crispy and removed it with a slotted spoon and added it back at the end.  It's funny how your brain can go dead to these simple ideas when you have a toddler clinging to your leg screaming because you have just told her she cannot kick the cat anymore!

Such a colourful meal we had with so many tastes and textures.  And for a vegetarian version of the gnocchi I am going to try it with some smoked paprika soon I think. 

Low fat fruit tea loaf

At the moment I am going through a phase of really looking at what I have stashed away in my kitchen and trying to use it.  At some point this year we are going to have a new kitchen fitted, which means the less that is squirrelled away in the cupboards the better. So the other night I had a yearning for an old fashioned sultana loaf like we used to have when younger.  I have no idea who made it as it wasn't my Mum but I do remember fruit soaking in strong tea and I made these before.  The recipe? who knows? So I did my classic hunt the Internet via google, Look up at least 5 recipes and cobbled together a recipe with what I actually have.

So I started Tuesday night taking 250 g of dried mixed fruit with peel and soaking it with  250 ml of tea made with 2 tea bags, a LARGE glug or 2 of Malibu and a splosh of orange blossom water.  The Malibu and blossom water didn't end up being tasted so I think it's a case of either the tea or the booze in future.

So this murky unpromising looking bowl was left overnight in the microwave (saved cling filming it) until the next morning where it then started to look more plump and luscious than blurgh

Into the fruit mix I cracked into and beat in 2 medium eggs.  In a bigger bowl I added 

250g self raising flour 

100g caster sugar 

1 teaspoon mixed spice

Stirred these together to combine then poured in the fruit with all its liquid into the flour mix and stirred until combined and no white spots of flour were visible in the bowl.  Placed it all into a 2lb lined loaf tin and in the oven at gas mark 4/180 for 50-60 minutes.  

Mine caught a little on top but not enough to interfere with the taste

The outside was slightly chewy but crispy to.  Strange  but good.  Inside was moist and very light. On day 2 it is still moist and same textured despite having no fat in it other than the egg yolks.  

It may be low fat, but do you know what? It is really really good with a good slathering of butter.  But at least you won't feel so guilty ;o)

My son is already suggesting using dried apricots and dried pineapple in this so it is one we will play with again as it is going down well.  And anyway to get extra fruit into the kids has to be good I think. Much better snack than a chocolate biscuit

Ham hock revisited

After cutting most of the meat off for the linguine dish I spent a few minutes picking off rest of meat. Quite a large handful of bits were left.

Usually Friday is pizza day but just lately it's been a bit 50/50 and after a week of feeling yuck just really couldn't be bothered. So opened the fridge and there's the ham and a small chunk of cheese left, tomatoes and a cucumber. Foraging in freezer found oven chips so add some eggs and we have an omelette and a meal kids loved and more importantly a quick, easy tasty meal.

All I did was crack 6 eggs in a bowl, add the finally chopped ham and the cheese in sort of flat slithers and seasoned with pepper. Fried off gently in butter and finished under the grill. Not the gourmet 'proper' way of doing omelette but how kids like it.

So to date one ham hock has given 6 portions of food :-) and stock still to use.