Random Recipes & a poncy ingredient alert - Ottolenghi's Orange Polenta Cake

I was wondering how I was going to fit a Random Recipe in this month, but the blog challenge fairies were obviously smiling on me.

Dom's challenge from Belleau Kitchen this month was to get all those cut out snippets of recipe, those torn out pages, and clippings, throw them up in the air - or spread them out, or do something with them to enable you to randomly select one.

I thought I'd give it a go and see what it came up with. No obligation to complete the challenge if I couldn't fit it in or the recipe was one of the more obscure I'd cut out and kept. But as I say, no need to worry. The selection process turned up Yottam Ottolenghi's Orange Polenta Cake which I'd copied at Christmas from my brother's newly received copy of the Ottolenghi cook book. Fortuitous indeed because we had people coming for dinner, and there had to be dessert. Not that this is a hardship, you understand, but I'd already planned a moorish style chicken & chorizo casserole for the main course, so this fitted perfectly. Caramelised oranges, almonds, some orange blossom water (this is an Ottolenghi recipe after all - poncy ingredients are to be expected!).

First up, though, the challenge of sourcing the ingredients. I know there used to be a bag of polenta in the cupboard, but I must have used it up, because when I looked again, there was nothing. I couldn't get it in my online shop so sent the Husband off to do his hunter gatherer thing. The poor man went to 4 different supermarkets on 2 separate trips after work - he even went and worked at a different office on Friday in order to try different supermarkets, before ending up in Waitrose in Andover. Where, of course, they had at least 2 varieties. Anyway, he came home triumphant with an impressively artisan looking bag, plus some tahini paste and some unsalted pistachios which I also required.

While I've learned my lesson over the years that when people are coming for dinner it's wise to stick to the familiar and easy, there's always a certain amount of frisson to be gained cooking something with a little bit of fiddle factor when you have no idea how it's going to turn out and 10 people expecting to be fed. I have limited experience cooking Ottolenghi, and while it's always turned out brilliantly, I'm not in the same comfort zone with his stuff that I am cooking, say, Nigella. Add to this the opportunity for third degree burns that making caramel presents, and perhaps I should have stuck to something tried and tested, but I like a challenge.

 


The recipe was at least helpful in that it pointed out the need to thoroughly line the tin (if you're using springform, which I was) in order to prevent caramel leaking all over your oven, and as an extra precaution, I also put the cake tin on a baking sheet. A wise precaution as it turns out because even with what I thought was thorough tin lining, I did have a little bit of caramel leakage. But nothing serious.









Anyway, the recipe. I couldn't find it online to link to, but it's in the Ottolenghi cook book. Having lined your tin, you make some caramel which you use to cover the bottom of the tin.

 Next, there are oranges to zest and peel, and place on top of the caramel layer, 

before making a deliciously orangey scented batter using eggs, ground almonds, polenta along with the usual butter and eggs. The recipe also calls for orange blossom water, I forgot to put this on the Husband's foraging list, and having put him through supermarket hell in search of polenta, I didn't have the heart to fess up to needing orange blossom water, so in the end I just squeezed in a little extra orange juice. I think the random recipe rules state that you have to cook the recipe as it is, with little deviation. Well, I'm afraid that as well as missing the orange blossom water, I upped the recipe by a third to make a big enough cake to feed all of us. I hope I'm not disqualified.

 As a result of the increase in ingredients, it took quite a bit longer than the stated 40-45 minutes to bake, and I ended up covering the tin with foil to stop the top of the cake catching, but it all turned out fine. Once baked, the final nerve-wracking turnout passed without a hitch.

Ta daah!

Malted grain, multiseeded sourdough loaf - for friends

There, you see, I haven't forgotten all about bread, although I'm eating less of it in my attempt to fit into my clothes better. That's as may be, but on Saturday night we have people coming for dinner. I told you I was going to get some mileage out of this!

I love having people round for meals, although we don't do it that often. It's the opportunity to think a bit more carefully than usual about what we might eat, and an excuse to fiddle around in the kitchen even more than normal.

I'm doing some dippy, mezze type things for a starter - going to give some Pistachio Dukka a go, and may be re-run the Cambodian Wedding Day dip that was such a massive hit a few months ago. There may also be some hummus involved - lemony, ordinary, and beetroot and walnut. These will all be courtesy of Hugh F-W and the wonderful Veg Everyday which I'm still finding hugely inspirational.

To go with of course, I need bread. I could do flatbreads on the day, but however impressive, the thought of flinging dough and flour around at the last minute to make them fresh (which is when they are best) when I could be hustling the kids into bed, hoovering the dog and trying to find some matching cutlery serenely sipping a G&T as I apply the final touches to my make up (does anyone do that? Please let me know if you do!) is not appealing to me at the moment so I am breaking out my sourdough starter to make some proper sourdough bread for the occasion.

This is as opposed to the yeasted loaves I've been making, which I wrote about a couple of months back. This method uses no dried yeast, and just uses the starter as the raising agent. I'm following the method that I learned on my fantastic River Cottage Christmas baking course taught by Aiden Chapman, when we made a delicious cranberry and orange loaf using this method. It is as easy as can be - barely any kneading, more loving stirring, then some folding, over the course of a few hours. The dough can then be proved in the fridge for up to 3 days - and indeed Aiden recommends this to allow the dough to develop more flavour. On the Bread course, we didn't have the opportunity to test this out but the bread was still mighty fine.

A word of warning now, though - If you've got people coming for dinner on Saturday and don't have a sourdough starter going, you're not going to be able to join in I'm afraid, but for easy instructions on making a starter, the post I wrote is here. May be next time. And while we're talking about time, you will need to be able to tend to your dough once an hour over a 5 hour period. The dough can then sit in the fridge for 3 days (as I said above) ready to be baked as you want it.

As my starter had been languishing in in the fridge for a few days, I got it out on Tuesday, got it up to room temperature, chucked half of it away. added some more flour (I used rye) and water to get it going, gave it a good stir and left it to do its thing till Wednesday morning.

For 500g flour, you will need 10 g salt, 125g of your starter and 325g water. You can add in any extras you want.

Malted grain, multiseeded sourdough loaf

1kg malted grain flour (I had some Doves Farm in the cupboard)
20g salt
100g mixed pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds
250g sourdough starter
650g water

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir together. Combine the starter and water, and then carefully mix into the dry ingredients.

Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave. Yes, that's right, no kneading required!

An hour or so later (actually, I ended up leaving mine for closer to 2 because I had to take the kids to school and walk the dog), literally all you need to do is remove the tea towel, and fold the dough over on itself, then press gently back into the bowl.

Cover and leave for another hour, when you fold the dough again and leave for another hour. Each time you do this you will see that the dough is getting smoother and more coherent as the gluten develops

After the last fold. leave the dough for 2 hours, then tip the dough out on a floured surface and shape it into a round. Leave for 20 minutes.

If you have a suitable proving basket, use that. As I wanted to make one big loaf and my proving basket isn't big enough, I lined a bowl with a tea towel and chucked some flour around liberally.

 

 then shape the dough into a tight ball and pop it in your basket/bowl.

 
At this point you need to leave your bread to prove for at least 4 hours but you can put it in the fridge for up to 3 days to develop the flavour.

When you are ready to bake, if the dough has been in the fridge, get it out and bring the dough up to room temperature.



After 2 days in the fridge

Pre-heat the oven to 220C, and put a baking sheet in to heat up. As with the yeasted loaf, have some semolina to hand to dust the hot baking sheet and also a sprayer bottle with some water in (or a bowl of water to splash round with your hand). You'll need a sharp knife nearby too.

When the oven is at temperature, bring out the baking sheet, dust with semolina and carefully tip the dough on to it. Slash the top of the dough with your sharp knife and get it all back in the oven. The quicker you can do this without sustaining third degree burns, the better... Bake the bread for 20 minutes, then turn it in the oven and bake for another 15 minutes before doing the tap on the bottom thing. if it's sounding hollow, your bread is baked.

Leave to cool on a rack for as long as you can bear before slicing and eating.

Orangey Chocolatey Chilli Truffles - for a dinner party, and in aid of Fairtrade

It's really amazing the lengths I will go to in support of a cause that's dear to my heart. Take this evening, for example. Now as some of you may know, I am trying to lose weight, but here I am, selflessly showing you another wonderful thing to do with Fairtrade chocolate and spices.

We have people coming for dinner on Saturday night, and as I can't bear to turn my blog into a catalogue of my weight loss (or not) I will be majoring heavily on the additional tinkering in the kitchen this event has allowed me. Like making chocolate truffles.

Do, by all means, say if you'd rather I show you how to make a mushroom souffle omelette (with dill - I know, you can barely contain yourselves) with less than 200 calories, but secretly we all know what you'd rather read about- and, let's face it what I'd rather write about.

When the Fairtrade Foundation included a bar of Green & Blacks Maya Gold in the package of goodies they sent me for Fairtrade Fortnight, I had an inkling that it might taste delicious melted down with cream into truffle chocolates, but alas it also tasted delicious on the sofa in front of NCIS one evening when I was home and the Husband wasn't, so instead, I took advantage of Fairtrade chocolate range stocked in our local Co-Op, and purchased some of their Ghanaian dark chocolate with spices and orange oil.

Add to that some more dark chocolate, cream, cloves, cinammon, allspice, a pinch of chilli flakes and some Cointreau and, my friends, you get something that is so much better than the individual components. I know some people might say why bother to make chocolates, but I say when they taste this good, it is no bother whatsoever. The quantities here make lots, but each little mouthful is very rich and even a pig connoisseur such as myself would only be able to manage a couple at a time. They also keep brilliantly in the freezer so all you need do is get a few out as you need them. And I won't tell you that in fact they need hardly any defrosting, so you could just take one as the fancy came over you, dinner party or not.

Chocolate Orange Chilli truffles

300g Fairtrade dark (70% cocoa solids) chocolate
200g Fairtrade orange spiced dark chocolate
200g Fairtrade dark (50% cocoa solids) chocolate
400ml double cream
10 cloves
pinch of dried chilli flakes
good pinch of Fairtrade ground cinammon
good pinch of  ground allspice
30g unsalted butter, cut into quite small cubes
2 tablespoons Cointreau
25g Fairtrade cocoa powder
25g Fairtrade hot chocolate powder

Grease a 20x20 cm tin and line with clingfilm. You'll also want a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper for the final freeze.

Break the chocolate into pieces in a large bowl.

Grind together the cloves, chilli flakes, cinammon and all spice with a pestle and mortar. Pour the cream into a large heavy based pan and add the spices. Over a gentle heat, bring the cream to hot, but NOT boiling (you can err on the side of caution here - see later), and then pour over the chocolate.

Stir it all together to melt the chocolate. If it doesn't melt completely, put the bowl over a simmering pan of water to complete the melting, then stir in the butter and the Cointreau, and pour the whole lot into the prepared tin. Make sure it spreads out evenly, then put the tin in the freezer for 1-2 hrs.

After the mixture has chilled, bring it out of the freezer.

Sift the cocoa and hot chocolate powder onto a large plate. You can dust a board with some of the sifted cocoa/hot chocolate then turn out the truffle mixture and cut into squares. Resist the temptation to make the squares too big - honestly, you're after little morsels of dark deliciousness. Toss the squares in the cocoa/hot chocolate mix, and put them on the lined baking sheet.



All ready for the freezer -
but there appears to be one left

When all the truffle squares are coated and on the baking sheet, cover and pop them all back in the freezer until needed. After an overnight in the freezer, you could move the truffles into a freezer bag and retrieve your baking sheet in case you needed it.

Oops - now where did that go...





I'm linking up with the "One Ingredient" for March challenge which this month is focussed on Chilli. There's not a lot of chilli in these beauties, but enough to give some warmth underlying the orange and spices. Altogether delicious. One ingredient is hosted alternately by Laura at http://www.howtocookgoodfood.co.uk and Nazima at  http://www.franglaiskitchen.com . This month, it's Laura's turn and you can see more recipes in the linky here

Last night, Good Food saved my life...

A bumper issue - you'll see why!

Well, actually, most nights for the last couple of weeks, Good Food has been my saviour. That and jacket potatoes. I have been busy, busy, busy doing lots of things. The day job, the children (book day costumes, times tables etc), and also, quite exciting, some other bits and pieces . It's all been a bit of a roller coaster and I'm loving it, but it's meant that I haven't spent as much time and effort on what we're going to eat.





You see, one of the things that motivates me to cook different things is the boredom that crashes around me when I make the same things week in and week out. Meal planning helps me with this, but recently, when I've been tired and thinking about other things then tried to work out what we're going to eat I have found my mind is a blank, apart from a little voice screaming "No! Not Cottage pie AGAIN!".  

I have a large, and ever expanding collection of recipe books, and with more time on my hands, I'd happily spend hours flicking through, deciding what we're going to eat, but this hasn't been an option recently. That's where Good Food has come into it's own. I blow hot and cold about any magazine. I find that if you get more than a few issues, you start noticing things coming back round again. I've had a subscription to Good Food on and off for the last 10 years at least, but I'll have it and then leave it for a year or so. Some months are good, some are not so good. Every couple of years, I have a clear out an only keep those issues with recipes that I know I've cooked and will cook again. I'm pleased to say that I'm in a subscription year (a Christmas present) because the March issue has really saved me - it's certainly on that'll survive the next cull.

The first article that caught my eye was dedicated to 5 meals for under £25 - a working week's worth of main meals with no thought (and very little effort) required. What I really liked was that the meals involved cooking from scratch, but were quick and easy. This was going to be a post about cooking those meals specifically and whether or not it did cost me less than £25. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.  I didn't cook them in the order they specified. I made my own garlic bread, too (rather than using a dough mix), for the tomato soup with tear & share cheesy bread, and I didn't keep track of the cost. And anyway, my reliance the March Good Food mag has gone way beyond that one article and so this blog post has become my way of passing on all these brilliant meals to you. 

And don't worry that it's too late and the April edition is on the shelves already. (I know - it's ridiculous, isn't it, that we're less than 2 weeks into March, but I've had my gripe about that before, so I won't repeat that here) All these recipes are online so I've added in the links. Don't say I never do anything for you.

We loved Pasta with ham and Minty Pea Pesto - a kind of jazzed up macaroni peas.

very green - and very delicious

Piri Piri chicken with spicy rice (well, it turned into Reggae Reggae chicken because I had a half used bottle of Reggae reggae sauce in the fridge) was very popular, 

Loads of veg in that rice

and the Creamy Fish Curry was the perfect thing to finish up some disappointing white fish fillets lurking in the freezer. 

The only recipe that didn't work so well as far as I'm concerned was the Black bean beef meatballs with stir fried noodles 

but then I hadn't clocked that the recipe only required 300g mince, and I kind of fiddled around and added in too many breadcrumbs so the end result was all a little dry.

Tomato & harissa stew with cheddar dumplings   

was also a great success - particularly the dumplings, which were pleasingly cheesy but not at all heavy and appeased the courgette haters amongst us... 

Yes, yes, spot the out of season courgette. So shoot me

The Beef & Bacon meatloaf - sneaky secret ingredient half a box of stuffing mix - was a huge hit too, destined to be a regular 'quick fix' on our menu, I think (in so far as anything turns up regularly)

Meatloaf worthy of a packed lunch

Blue forewent roast for school dinner the next day JUST so he could have meatloaf sandwiches with the left overs - praise indeed. The sausage & fennel meatballs with lentils made a delicious Saturday supper, and sausage & stuffing toad in the hole with onion gravy, using up the other half of the pack of stuffing from the meatloaf, was just the ticket on a wet and rainy Friday night.

So there you have it - these were all pretty quick to knock up and very easy. Apart from the Chinese meatballs, I would make everything again. I commend each and every one of these recipes to you, and say thank you, Good Food!

Friday night's gonna be alright - at The Wellington Arms

It's exciting times here. Exciting but busy. For various little reasons, I have been up early and going to bed later than usual. Come Friday evening, I was just about ready to sink onto the sofa and stick my head in a bottle of wine, but it was not to be.

'Dinner with the boss' - the Husband's boss and his new wife, to be precise, has been on the cards for a few months. A 'thank you' to the Husband for his hard work, and to me for putting up with the travelling, the last minute changes of plan, the general embuggerance factor that his work adds to our lives. There are plenty of bosses who wouldn't even recognise this, let alone do something about it, and, let's face it, it makes a change to be appreciated.

Various dates for this happening had been selected then discarded for various reasons, but 8th of February suited him and us. Sorted.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Husband brings the subject up. "We have to book somewhere". That's him using the 'royal we' to mean ME. I have never met the Husband's Boss. I have formed a picture of him in my mind based on snippets from the Husband. I am not quite sure what picture he might have had of me in his mind, but it is to him that I served, via the Husband, the nipple cakes.

Hard to know, then, what sort of place to book. The Husband gave me vague parameters, which basically set me somewhere between Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons (not so far away from us) and Nandos in Basingstoke.

Let me tell you that last night, there was not enough Origins GinZing in the world to make my tired eyes look instantly alive. The Husband and I were both shattered, but we girded ourselves and headed out. 

We got a little bit waylaid by the twisty lanes in the dark and didn't make it quite as early as we'd hoped. The Husband's Boss was already there by the time we arrived - they'd had been there for some time, as the delights of the Premier Inn, Basingstoke (where they were staying the night) had not held them enthralled. We were all tired - on a Friday night, I don't think any of us were at our best - but if the conversation flagged occasionally, we need not have feared, for the venue and the food - my goodness: AMAZING.

The Wellington Arms in Baughurst, on the Hampshire/Berkshire border, has been on my secret list of places I'd like to have dinner for quite some time. It has been voted No.2 in The Times 'Best Places to Eat in the Countryside', and Jason the 'Best Pub Chef' by the Good Food Guide. The accolades that drift gently across their website come from people such as Giles Coren and Diana Henry. A couple of friends have recommended it, and they make the chutneys that accompany the Hampshire tapas served at our friendly local wine merchants.

Having discarded both Le Manoir and Nandos as options (for very different reasons), I don't think I could have picked a better place. Physically, it's a very pretty pub (oak beams, Farrow & Ball, crackling fires). They keep bees and chickens, sheep and pigs and most of the veg comes out of their own kitchen garden. Ingredients that they don't produce themselves are sourced as locally as possible (local farms, local produce, fish driven up from Brixham). Totally fabulous. The atmosphere was relaxed, so when our own conversation faltered, the chatter and sounds of other people enjoying their evening carried us on. Having been unable to resist the lure of a couple of quick tweets before the evening, when we arrived, Simon, one of the owners, discreetly enquired who was the Recipe Junkie. I like that. I like that someone has taken the trouble to put 2 and 2 together. Wonderful, gentle hospitality.

You'll appreciate that taking photos of the food would not have been appropriate, so I didn't and you'll have to conjure up some mental pictures here. What I can say, in no uncertain terms, is that is that it is utterly to die for.

I had an amazing twice baked cheese souffle (a friend who's eaten there before had recommended it, and the waitress said that it had been on the menu since the place had opened) followed by mussels in coconut milk and yellow curry with fantastic thick cut chips. Not perhaps taking advantage of the locally sourced meat, but I had a real hankering for the mussels and I wasn't disappointed.They were creamy and the soup was fresh and full of chilli and coriander. The souffle was filled with leeks and was creamy and cheesy but not at all heavy or stodgy.  I had a brief flashback to a cheese souffle I once served up at a dinner party, and cringed. The Husband had an Ox tongue terrine which I didn't try because I just can't do tongue, but I have it on his good authority that it was delicious, followed by a steak. Both the Husband and Boss had the steak. One was rare, and the other was medium, as requested. I tried the Husband's rare steak and it was that 'melt in the mouth' thing that people talk about. Really really luscious. The puddings looked fantastic, but I couldn't fit one in. I was contemplating trying, but then I saw that they did handmade truffles as an option. So a really good hot cup of coffee and a heavenly dark chocolate truffle and I was more than happy. Husband's Boss had a treacle tart which was so amazing that he bought another one to take home with him.

It was truly fantastic. Didn't stop me being as tired as a dog, but I was thoroughly cheered by the time we left. Thank you Simon, and Jason, for a wonderful meal. We'll be back.