Rainbow Cake

Does the colour of food make or break a dish? I'm quite a fan of colourful food, but only in the sense that its the ingredients that have made the colour - pink from beetroot, green from spinach, rich orange from chorizo and smoked paprika... On the other hand, the seemingly inevitable brown-ness of most of the curries I make doesn't put me off. 

I don't know if I've mentioned it before but there is a family story - part of the folklore of my father's childhood, in which he produced blue macaroni cheese when it was his turn to cook. No one could stomach it and he was henceforth relieved of cooking duties.

Pink seems to be following in her maternal grandfather (Grumpy, as he is affectionately known)'s footsteps with her love of artificially coloured food. I suppose it's all part of experimenting, perhaps even the same part of her that is currently fascinated by make up and leaves me silently weeping in Boots as I try and dissuade her from spending her pocket money on slut red lipstick with out using the words 'cheap' 'common' or 'tart' - she is only 9, after all...

Anyway, I'd rather garish food than garish lipstick any day over the week. 

And on that note, on Sunday, we made Rainbow Cake. 

Pink did most of it - it's a pretty straightforward sponge recipe but she needed help with all the faffing about dividing mixture between bowls. From the child who used to say, when invited to bake "Just call me when it's time to lick the bowl. Mummy", this interest in baking is one I do now find myself wishing to nurture (I make no secret of the fact that I used to hate cooking with the kids). In the wake of her setting to and producing a green nutella cake single-handedly a few weeks ago -

(flat and rather solid, but strangely tasty for all that it was a rather lurid colour), this was an opportunity to let her play fast and loose with the food colours. She was especially pleased with the rainbow stripes of cream cheese frosting across the top. We followed the recipe and used Squires Kitchen gel colours - my mum had bought a set and made the same cake a few months ago for some event; and as she was never going to make it again, she passed the colours on. 

The only deviation from the Good Food recipe was that we used cream cheese frosting which included butter rather than the simple cream cheese and icing sugar frosting in the original recipe - my mum had found this frosting quite slimy and the towers of cake had slid around a bit...

Anyway, it's pretty spectacular. Doesn't taste brilliant, but, hey. Fur coat and no knickers isn't always a bad thing...

Chicken & Chorizo Couscous

Yes, I know, I know, another chorizo recipe. But I was talking about this recipe on a Facebook group I'm part of and was looking to see if I'd posted it on this blog as an easy way of passing the recipe on, and I realised that I hadn't - or if I had, I couldn't find it. So here it is. Chicken & Chorizo Couscous.

I'm not a great fan of leftovers of cold meat, but for reasons of economy and saving the planet, it is better to buy a whole chicken and use it up scrupulously, down to the boiling of bones to make stock, rather than buying portions (although I do admit to buying chicken thighs occasionally). This dish has almost become a reason to have a roast chicken at the weekend in itself. It's a ridiculously easy and tasty midweek dish and if you are roasting a chicken this weekend, I suggest you keep back enough cooked meat, and boil up your bones, to knock this up early next week.

This is of course open to various adaptations depending on what you have in the cupboards, and I freely fiddle with quantities and ingredients. I have used tamarind paste in place of harissa, and made it veggie too. You definitely need spice of some sort, though, A bit of a kick, otherwise it's just a bit bland, especially if you're leaving out the chorizo (although why would you?). I also recommend serving with your favourite chilli sauce. Tabasco is good, as is Hot Smoky Bastard.

 And finally, seeing as how we're bring scrupulous, I believe this once came from a Good Food magazine. I can't find it on the Good Food website any more, but the index card I meticulously copied it on to (obviously when I was going through an organised phase) has the initials 'GF' by the recipe title. Anyway, I'm sure they won't mind me repeating it here.

Chicken & Chorizo Couscous

serves 6 (allegedly - but don't bank on it if folks are hungry)

350g couscous
350g cold cooked chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces
150g cooking chorizo, skinned if necessary and diced
3 medium tomatoes or equivalent cherry tomatoes, chopped up
a couple of handfuls of frozen peas
900ml hot chicken stock 
2 tsp harissa paste
generous pinch of saffron (if you have)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp olive oil
chopped fresh coriander to serve (optional - more often than not I don't have it but parsley works, or just go without).

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160 fan.

Combine the couscous, chicken, chorizo, tomatoes and frozen peas in a large dish.

Stir the harissa paste spices and olive oil into the stock, then pour the spicy stock mix over the couscous mixture and stir together.

Cover the dish with foil - or, if it has one, a lid - and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Fluff up with a fork before serving.

It really is that simple, and believe me when I tell you it's utterly delicious. If there are leftovers, they are great cold, the next day for lunch.

Raspberry Trifle

Trifle features a lot in people's food memories either positively or negatively. It seems to bring on fairly extreme reactions, a little like tripe or marmite, and I find it odd given that it's a sweet dish, with basically most of the greatest food elements (although granted no bacon) known to woman: cake, a splash of liquor, custard, cream, almonds, jelly or some kind of jamminess, and yes, if you like, some fruit.

My own trifle memories are of the Christmas day variety. Sherry trifle was always on the table, my Granny's contribution (if my memory serves me well) to the festivities whether she was running the main event or she brought it over to ours. There was, I seem to remember, a kind of illicit thrill to the consumption of something with alcohol in it, a hesitance on my parents' part to allow me to have too much.

I've steered away from trifle myself, not from any dislike, but perhaps a reluctance to try and replicate that which is an integral part of my memory when the originator of said trifle is no longer here to pester for the exact contents. Much as I enjoyed it, I can't actually remember what went into Granny's trifle, excepts for a whipped cream layer sprinkled with flaked almonds. Flaked almonds are one of my most favourite things in the world - anything almondy really ( my love of marzipan is well documented on these virtual pages).

I've availed myself of Nigella's deconstructed lemon trifle from Domestic Goddess a couple of times - essentially a very drizzled lemon loaf cake which you slice onto a plate and smother in a lemon syllabub type thing and raspberries. It's very good, but not really trifle.

Anyway, as I was explaining the other day, we had some of the Husband's colleagues over for a BBQ - the weather gods smiled on us as did the BBQ gods, and all was right with the world. I'd dug out some Good Food mags for pudding inspiration and when Blue saw this recipe, there was little chance I was going to be able to make anything else. He begged, he pleaded, he sustained the campaign for several days. He won.

I made the original recipe first time round, making double the custard and using that to sandwich together a Swedish Summer Cake (also a Nigella). As an aside, I made the Summer Cake before, following her recipe for custard (it's in Kitchen - it's worth buying the book for that recipe alone), but found the custard very runny - pornographically so. This custard is a thicker affair, and worked well. Also, I wimped out and only sliced the cake into 2 layers, not 3, but I was well pleased with the results.

But back to trifle. So I made the cherry trifle, and very easy and satisfactory it was too, but I wanted to see what it would be like with raspberries (need you ask?). Raspberries are one of my favourites - they are also Pink's favourites, and after indulging the boy's cherry dreams, I thought I'd suck up to her a bit.

Yes, I made the madeira cake, and yes, you make the custard - you could buy both, even Mary Berry in the original recipe countenances the possibility - but actually, I'm finding less and less time to tinker in the kitchen, and this was a welcome excuse to shut myself away, fiddle about, make a mess and create something lovely. And that is as good a reason as any to make this.

And just one point about the custard. I'm all for skin on custard, but not here when you want to pour it over the trifle later. I will argue the toss with you.

Raspberry Trifle

50g caster sugar
50g cornflour
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs plus 1 yolk
400ml full fat milk
200ml double cream

450g raspberries
340g raspberry jam - as good quality as you can afford
450g Madeira cake - you can buy this, or make your own - I used Nigella's fantastic recipe from Domestic Goddess which will make more than you need, but that's no hardship.
100ml raspberry liqueur - chambord or the like, or use some decent dry sherry
5 large amaretti biscuits
300ml lightly whipped double cream

Make the custard first. Combine sugar, cornflour and vanilla in a mixing bowl, then add the eggs & yolk and whisk together till smooth. This is important - get the lumps out of the way at this stage.

Pour the milk and cream into a large pan (large enough to take everything in it) and gently heat - but don't let it boil.

When the liquid is hot, pour over the eggy mixture and whisk vigorously till all combined, then rinse out the pan to remove any scum.

Put the pan back on a gentle heat and pour the custard back in, then stirring continuously, bring back up to heat until the custard has thickened and is smooth. If the custard looks like it's going lumpy at ay stage during the heating process, just keep stirring - it should smooth out again.

Pour the custard into a jug and put a piece of clingfilm pressed onto the top of the custard to stop skin forming while it cools down.

Put about 400g of the raspberries into a small pan with half the jam and gently heat up till everything softens and melds together. Stir occasionally just to make sure it doesn't stick and burn - do keep the heat low. After about 10 mins remove from the heat and allow to cool a little.

Slice your madeira cake up into 1cm slices, and sandwich the slices together with the rest of the jam - we're talking generous smothering here.

Lay these sandwiches into the bottom of your trifle dish (this recipe calls for one around 20cm in diameter and quite deep), then splash the alcohol over, ensuring all is covered.

Pour and smooth the raspberry jam sauce over the cake, then break the amaretti biscuits over the top in quite big pieces.

Smooth the cooled custard over this, then lightly whip the cream and spread over the custard, Decorate with the reserved raspberries  you could also sprinkle some chopped/flaked almonds over the top too...

Cocon-oaty slice

Children for tea after after-school activities?

Tight schedule which means you have to get back out of the house at 6.30?

Lots of stuff in the cupboards to eat up and a desire to make a 'pudding' that isn't just yoghurt?

That was me this evening. We have had a regular after school date on a Monday with another family for the last couple of years. Our children are the same age, and the girls have done choir after school, and the boys, football, then at 6.30 the boys went to Cubs. We have alternated each week having them after school, and then delivering the boys to Cubs, meaning that every fortnight, you get hordes for tea, but the other week, you get an extended day to 6.30...

The boys have moved up to Scouts recently, on a different night, but we've kept the Monday arrangement in place.

Today is the last time we'll do it. The last Monday of choir and football for my kids before we head west. And while there was no Cubs, the boys were off to get their 'silver' Chief Scout awards. I wanted to make something nicer than just fishfingers for all of them.

So we had toad in the hole, followed by Cocon-oaty Slice, a creation heavily based on a Good Food recipe I found, which I've never made before. I was sceptical, I have to say. No flour, no fat, just dessicated coconut, some extras and a couple of eggs. A real storecupboard standby.

Notwithstanding that I didn't have enough dessicated coconut, and reassured by the helpful reviews on the website, I had a go with what I had.

My harshest critics (the massed ranks of small people) pronounced it rather good. "1 million out of 10" - and that from one that is not my child.

Cocon-oaty Slice

100g dessicated coconut
30g flaked almonds, crushed up in your hands
70g porridge oats
100g sultanas
200g white chocolate chips
50g caster sugar
2 large eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a tray bake tin (approximately 20 by 30 cm) with greaseproof paper.

Mix everything together really well and press into the lined tray.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or so, the cool in the tin and cut into bars.

Beef & Beetroot curry - and the balance of power between garden & kitchen

Pickled Chillies. Some like it VERY hot.

The Husband, as you know, is the grower of vegetables in our house. I am involved in executive decisions at seed buying time, and he gets on with the growing and the harvesting. The Husband does a lot of pickling - this year gherkins and chillies - and chutney making, but the day to day use of vegetables is down to me.

Sometimes, I get it wrong. This is not an untypical conversation:

Him: "Please don't use the shallots like you normally do."

Me: "???"

Him: "Well, just like another oniony thing. Can you use them like shallots?"

Me: "???"

Him: "So, don't just slice them up because you haven't got any onions. Use them in recipes that use SHALLOTS".

Me: "Oh".

You see, I am sure I do appreciate a good shallot when it's needed - whole in a casserole, or in a pot roasted chicken dish that I do sometimes, but I am guilty as charged: I'll be scouring the kitchen to pull together whatever it is I need, and if the recipe calls for onions, but there are only shallots, well, shallots will have to do. 

And then, to add insult to injury, when he actually wants shallots for something, there are none left. 

I am a bad person.

However, after the shallot conversation, I have been slightly more wary of how I utilise the produce from the allotment and the  garden.

Beetroot, for example, has been something that doesn't get much beyond being boiled or roasted and then eaten as part of a "pull it all out of the fridge on to the table and pick out the best bits" weekend lunch. Occasionally, it gets grated raw, or turned into a hummus type thang, but not much more than that. This is how we eat beetroot. 

We have decided to give back the allotment and create more growing room in the garden, and so we're currently making sure we get the last bits of this year's veg before handing it over. This has included some extra beetroot that we weren't counting on. 

With some trepidation, I suggested a curry - I had some braising steak, and I knew that I'd seen a recipe for Beef & Beetroot Curry somewhere before, which has been playing on my mind. I don't normally consult the Husband about the menu, but given the reaction to the shallot (mis)usage, I felt it was only right and proper. After all, I haven't been aware of any beetroot in Rick Stein's recent (fabulous) series on Indian cooking, and a quick persual of the indexes to my Madhur Jaffrey books reveals only a beetroot chutney.

As it turns out, beetroot works quite well in a curry, adding an earthy depth. Unfortunately, it doesn't give you a vivid pink or deep purple plateful (disappointing when you see the curry paste that you make with it), but, if you live with a beetroot hater, you don't really know it's there. I can attest to this, because Pink, who is an avowed hater of beetroot (what was I saying about not having fussy children...) ate this - AND it had a green chilli in - one that escaped the pickling pot... 

Beef & Beetroot Curry

serves 4

200g cooked beetroot (if you buy it, don't get the stuff in vinegar) 
'top thumb joint' piece ginger, chopped 
1 large garlic clove 
1 whole green chilli, seeds and all 
small bunch flat leaf parsley 
3 cardamom pods 
1 tbsp tomato ketchup 
1 tbsp treacle 
1 tbsp ground cumin 
1/2 tbsp ground coriander 
1 tsp fennel seeds
 pinch ground cloves 
fresh ground black pepper
1 tbsp sunflower oil 
500g braising steak cut into big chunks 
1 onion (not shallots), chopped 
1 beef stock cube made up to 250ml stock with boiling water
flaked almonds to sprinkle (toast them if you have time - I forgot)

If like me, you're making this in a slow cooker (and why wouldn't you, marvellous thing that it is), turn the cooker on to low to pre-heat.

Make a paste by blitzing the beetroot, ginger, garlic, chilli, parsley, cardamom, ketchup, treacle cumin, coriander, fennel seeds, cloves and a good grind of black pepper in a food processor.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and brown the beef in batches, returning them to the slow cooker crock pot once browned.

Once all the beef is in the slow cooker, add the chopped ONION to the pan and fry for a few minutes, then add the paste to the pan and fry for about 5 minutes more, till you've got all the beefy bits scraped up from the pan and it all smells fragrant. Tip in the stock and bring to the boil then tip over the beef, put the lid on the slow cooker and leave for 8 hours or 
overnight.

Serve with rice and poppadums (and, in our case, cauliflower and broad bean curry) with the flaked almonds sprinkled over the top. You could add in some chunks of cooked beetroot at the end as suggested in the original recipe, but we'd eaten all that we left for lunch...

A Tale of 2 Traybakes - or more things to do with apples.

If you've read this relatively frequently over the last few weeks, you'll have noticed that I'm quite preoccupied with the contents of the veg patch, the apple trees and all the free food that's around this time of year. Not that I'm not grateful, but it happens all at once, and then there's a mad panic to get things harvested and preserved for the colder months to come. I love it, I really do, but sometimes I think I am secretly a squirrel...

The other thing that has happened is that the Husband had to have an operation last Tuesday. It was unscheduled, although not life threatening - I'll let him tell you all about it over a beer sometime - and suffice to say, our pace of life has slowed down considerably. It's been LOVELY.

For example. Instead of whizzing round in 45 minutes flat, I spent nearly 2 hours out with the dog yesterday morning, ostensibly giving him a really good walk, but actually collecting blackberries and generally enjoying all that early autumn has to offer in the way of nature. If you've been paying attention, you'll remember that the dog is too badly behaved to be off the lead when I'm not concentrating on him, so he spent most of the time with a look of quiet indignation on his face, while I scratched and stung myself to blackberry heaven and made a mental note of where the really good sloes are this year.

 

Back home with about 1.5 kilos of blackberries, I wasn't really sure what to do with them because I already had pudding covered for Sunday, and I couldn't face jam, so hit upon the idea of making up bags of blackberry and apple mix to freeze and then whip out at a moment's notice for almost instant crumbles. I didn't make up the whole thing because I don't have enough dishes to consign too many to the freezer, so I used my usual crumble dish, filled it up with sliced apple and blackerries, a sprinkle of sugar, and then bagged it up accordingly. My dish takes 500g sliced apple, 250g blackberries and 40g demerara if you're interested.  I tossed the apple slices in lemon juice too, to stop them going brown. You can freeze crumble topping too, but I didn't go that far yesterday.

The other thing I did this weekend is have the opportunity for a really good cook up - fish pies (Friday night's dinner and also 2 in the freezer), a lovely casserole for supper using up some celeriac from the allotment, and not one, but 2 tray bakes to take some of the apples off my hands. Both were from the Good Food website, and both are worth a share, although one more so than the other. 

It's also a been a good exercise in what they think the cake should look like as opposed to what it turmed out like...

So first up is Toffee Apple Squares.  These are calorific and delicious, but I think probably take rather more effort than they have to. I say this mostly because you could manage the topping with a can of caramel rather than boiling up the condensed milk with sugar and butter (and also because I wasn't concentrating and burnt the sugar the sugar in my pan caught and added a rather interesting - but not entirely unpleasant -  'cinder' flavour to mine...). Also, I think the quantity of sauce is probably far too much. I mean, I have a pretty sweet tooth, but I used about half the resultant fudgy caramel sauce (we ate the rest on ice cream - mmm) and it was just right. 

I also signficantly reduced the amount of nuts in the topping, limiting it to a sprinkle of flaked almonds. A lovely treat, nonetheless.

The second is this Apple and Date Squares recipe. This is absolutely what you want to make for your kids to take to school and feel smugly virtuous. Apple, dates, oats - and utterly delicious too. It was really quick to make, although my apples took longer to mush down than the recipe suggested, but definitely one to make again. Pink raved about it after school today too - "Mummy I really LOVED the flapjack". 

Bask.

Almost Autumn? Blackberry & Apple Cake

Much as I love the summer (well, a decent summer, one where the sun shines, and it only rains about once a week) my favourite season is Autumn. All that mists and mellow fruitfulness, the tang in the early morning air that hits the back of your nose, days still warm, but nights getting cooler. When I was working in London, I used to love the warmer days of early Autumn, escaping from the office for lunch in St James' Park, where the softer sun made the buildings of Birdcage Walk and Horseguards glow.

Pumpkin soup in the making...

Now that we're ensconsed in reasonably rural Hampshire, it's not just the glow of buildings that heralds the change of the seasons. Blackberries and sloes in the hedgerows, the pumpkins, frankly, enormous in the veg patch, massive spiders patrolling the corridors of the house (we're talking spiders so big, you can hear the plop when they hit the pavement after you chuck them out of the windows), spiders' webs festooning the apple trees - and wonderful apples.  We're lucky to have cookers and eaters in the garden, and this year has been a good year.






This weekend has been the first for a long time that we've been at home on a Sunday. Although we had a beautiful autumnal morning, the rain showed no mercy and by lunchtime, was firmly set in, good for nothing but a wet dog walk and homework. Fortunately, roast pork was on the menu for dinner - with apple sauce made with the cookers, and for pudding, Blackberry & Apple cake, inspired by a recipe I've read many times in Good Food, but have never got round to making, crumble always prevailing. This is a little more effort than a crumble, but well worth it. 

Apples & spiders' webs. Autumn is on the way

juice of half a lemon

2 large, sharp eating apples

150g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for the tin 

130g soft light brown sugar 

3 large eggs, beaten 

50g ground almonds 

100g self-raising flour 

100g blackberries 

1 large pinch cinnamon  

2 tbsp demerara sugar

 icing sugar, for dusting 

Butter a 23cm springform cake tin and line with greaseproof paper.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Put the lemon juice in a bowl, then peel and core the apples, slice each apple into 12 and put the slices into the lemon juice. This will stop the slices discolouring while you make the rest of the cake.

Beat together 125g of the butter with the sugar till pale and fluffy, then slowly beat in the eggs, adding a little flour if the mixture starts to curdle.

Once all the egg has been incorporated, beat in the rest of the flour and the ground almonds.

Stir in 2/3 of the apple (16 slices), and the blackberries, then scrape into the prepared tin. Arrange the remaining slices of apple over the top, then mix together the demerara sugar and cinammon. Sprinkle this over the top of the cake, followed by the remaining 25g of butter, cut into thin flakes. Bake the cake for 45-50 minutes till a skewer (or whatever you use to test a cake) comes out clean.

Leave to cool till warm. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

The cake is moist and tasty enough to eat just as it is - but it would go just as well with cream, creme fraiche - or custard as the weather gets colder. Just make sure you get plenty of blackberries in the freezer!

Chocolate Courgette Cake

My friends, it's time for me to leave you for a while. The RJ summer holiday is upon me (it's been a long time coming)  combining the heady weekend that is CarFest South, followed by a week on the mid-Wales coast (don't say a word). But I couldn't leave you without one last courgette-y flourish.

Peeking out from the tin - don't be shy now!

The southern venue for CarFest - the brain child of Chris Evans, raising money for Children in Need - is literally on our doorstep at the fabulous Laverstoke Park Farm.  As 'local' residents, we were lucky enough to get first dibs on tickets, and most of our friends will be there. It'll be almost like a village fete, but with everything on a much bigger scale. The kids are looking forward to the bouncy castle city, sing along Jungle Book, the Dancing Diggers, Keane & Scouting for Girls. The Husband is looking forward to the cars, the aeroplanes and The Wurzels. I'm looking forward to fantastic food generally, the Best of British Tent in particular, a silent disco, and the various musical delights of Texas, Keane, Amy MacDonald, Scouting for Girls and Jools Holland. Nothing edgy or out there (we're not talking Glasto, Reading or the Isle of Wight here) but hopefully brilliant family entertainment. And as you can see - something for everyone.

By the way, after my rant about the Great British Bake Off, earlier this year, I thought it was only ethical and right that I refrained from entering Cakes v Pies which will be judged by no less than Mary Berry & the Silver Fox himself, Paul Hollywood. Besides, moral highground aside, I'd like to have a couple of drinks and a boogy and not have to worry about soggy bottoms...

That's not to say there isn't cake knocking around the RJ house this weekend. We have 2 lots of friends coming to stay with us for the weekend to join in the jollification, and with the recent rain we've had, the courgettes have put in some more action. There was only one thing for it.

Chocolate Courgette Cake

The original recipe got mixed reviews on the Good Food website - as I read down, I felt excited that I would be producing a culinary marvel, and then as the reviews continued, I felt less encouraged, but I made my own tweaks, and soldiered on to produce what I think is a pretty good cake, especially considering it used up 2 courgettes. You might think the addition of custard powder is a bit random, and indeed it was. I didn't have enough cocoa, and then I thought it might make the cake a little less chocolatey if I added in some custard powder as a substitute. In the end, well, I'm not sure if it added anything or just made up the measurement. Give it a go and see what you think.

One caveat - I'm not entirely sure my scales were working right when I made this (which is one of the reasons why I've included the link to the original recipe), but this is what I think I used...

It's not a beautiful looking cake in its unadorned state, but looks aren't everything, as I've said before, and once slathered in some chocolate icing, well, does it really matter?

350g self-raising flour 
35g cocoa powder
15g custard powder
1 tsp mixed spice 
250g caster sugar
500ml grated courgettes (measure by volume in a measuring jug, but it's about 2 medium courgettes; if using 1 overgrown one, peel first and take out seeds)
175ml vegetable oil 
3 eggs  
160g toasted unsalted pistachios roughly chopped

100g dark chocolate
50ml double cream

Line a 23cm cake tin with greaseproof paper.

Combine the flour, cocoa powder , custard powder, mixed spice and caster sugar togeter in a bowl.

Squeeze the grated courgette to get the liquid out, then mix together with the vegetable oil, and eggs.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then stir through the pistachios. Scrape the (surprisingly thick - which is why I wonder about my scales) batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for between 45 minutes-1 hr till a skewer comes out clean.

Not a partcularly attactive cake...

  When cool, make the icing - break the chocolate into a bowl, then heat the cream till hot but not boiling. Tip the hot cream over the chocolate and stir till melted and combined. Leave the icing to cool and thicken up, then spread over the cake.

but with icing, who cares??

Enjoy.

Inspired by the Scouts & a little deception - yes really - Courgette Pesto Pasta Bake

Well we're back on the courgettes I'm afraid, after a brief respite over the weekend. Courgettes and weetabix, would you believe.

I'm in school holiday fug, now that scout camp is over and the kids are back home having spent a week at my mum's - trying to juggle work and make sure the kids have a good time as well as getting their dreaded 'holiday scrapbooks' slowly filled up so that they have something to take back with them in September. While I'd like to stand back and just let them get on with it (or not), I know that Blue in particular would leave it all till the last minute and then want to do it all at once, find the task impossible and collapse, sobbing, about how he can't possibly go back to school because he hasn't done his scrapbook. All nonsense of course, but I can't get away from the need to gently (and frequently) remind him that little and often is probably the way to go. Beyond that, of course it's up to them. I am (mostly) way passed the point of it being 'my' holiday homework. 

But back to the courgettes.

I had 3 sneak up on my over the weekend, so took inspiration from a recent Good Food recipe which I saw in the mag, but looking online now, it has 2 fairly damning comments after it. Good job I'd already fiddled with the ingredients and added parmesan into the mix. Garlic would probably be good too, possibly some chilli.It's very, very easy and the kids ate it, which for now, makes it a winner.

The smoke and mirrors involved was rather impressive. "What are we having for supper?" "Pesto Pasta Bake" "??" "Mmm well you like pesto, it's got basil and pine nuts and parmesan in it " (I can rather smugly report that Pink gets very excited about high end ingredients like this). "Ooo goody". Come the actual meal - "Has this got ... COURGETTE in it?" (adopts outraged tone at possible deception) "Ah but it's grated - you like grated courgette." "Oh yes." Eats food. 

The mind boggles.


I didn't have any bread in the house and no breadcrumbs in the freezer so I had to improvise for the crunchy topping. Eventually I was inspired by the scouts. Yes really. One of the activities we run on camp is a 'patrol' Ready Steady Cook night where we give each patrol (that's about 6 scouts) them some basic ingredients, and then a small sum of money (and a trip to the supermarket) to supplement and cook an original recipe which will feed them all. We judge on things like it actually all being cooked and tasting reasonable - nothing higher than that, but we get some really great results. This year, the standard was particularly high (stop sniggering will you) and the overall winner really surprised us by stepping away from the usual stir fry/chilli type meals and making turkey nuggets and chips with a tomato dipping sauce. They were brilliant. The killer ingredient was crushed up cornflakes mixed with some fajita mix to coat the pieces of turkey. Inspired.

I didn't have cornflakes or fajita mix, but I did have some 'whole wheat biscuits' in the cupboard. Great for breakfast and when you're out of superglue, it turns out crushed up, they also make a passable crunchy topping for a pasta bake.

Courgette Pasta Bake

serves 4 hungry people - you coould probably get away with 300g of pasta

400g pasta
250g courgettes, grated
150-200ml half fat creme fraiche
150g pesto
2 'whole wheat biscuits'
25g parmesan or other hard cheese
olive oil

Pre-heat the oven to 180

Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling water till al dente, reserve a ladleful or so of the cooking water and drain.

While the pasta is cooking, grate the courgette, and mix it with the pesto and creme fraiche and plenty of salt and pepper. Stir it all into the pasta with the cooking water, and add a little more creme fraich if you think  it needs it.

Tip into a baking dish, crush the while wheat biscuits over the top, finely grate the cheese over that (or you could crush the cereal into a bowl, stir the grated cheese through and then sprinkle that over the top - hindsight is a wonderful thing)

Drizzle with some olive oil and bake for 20-30 minutes till crunchy on top.

Tomato & Chickpea Bake for the uninspired

So I bet you're all there producing delicious home cooked food for your nearest and dearest, loving it all, floating round the  kitchen, listening to the birds tweeting outside (no 140 character restriction for them), feeling like all is right with the world. 

Tell me you are, because I am most definitely not.

Yes, I am still stuck in a rut. Struck with kitchen paralysis. Needs must, however, and we all have to eat, so at the weekend, I gathered together my not inconsiderable stack of back copies of June Good Food, and worked my way through them, noting down any recipes I liked the look of - even in an "abstract-not-sure-I-can-be-arsed" type of way. For good measure, I did the same with Lorraine Pascale's Fast Fresh & Easy Food, which I got for Christmas and haven't really looked at, and also with the Leon Family & Friends book (ditto, although this one has at least made it to bedside reading).
   


The idea was that once the veg box arrived this evening, I could finalise a meal plan based on the recipes I had bookmarked, finalise an online shopping list (already full of the monthly supermarket staples such as washing powder and dog poo bags), get myself down to the butcher's tomorrow, and then just cook my way back into the groove. That's the idea, anyway. Instead, I'm writing this. But I will sort out the shopping soon. Honest.

Obviously, in the absence of the veg box till this evening, I have been making do. This evening's meal came courtesy of what was on offer in the Co-Op (tomatoes), what was in the garden (lots of parsley & thyme) and this recipe in Good Food June 2009...

Tomato & Chickpea bake

2 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion
1 courgette
1 tsp harissa paste
800g tomatoes, peeled & de-seeded (if you can be bothered)
Some sprigs of thyme, leaves only
fresh ground pepper
400g can chickpeas, drained
big bunch of parsley, chopped
4-6 slices of decent crusty white bread - baguette or similar
50g finely grated cheese

Pre-heat the oven to 200C

Heat 1 tbsps olive oil in a large pan and chop the onion and courgette quite finely. Add to the pan and cook on a gentle heat for 8-10 minutes, then stir in the harissa.

Add the chopped tomatoes and about 200ml water, half the thyme leaves and a couple of grinds of pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 8 minutes, then add the chickpeas and cook for another couple of minutes. Stir in the chopped parsley, and tip into an oven proof dish.

Brush the slices of bread lightly with oil from the remaining tablespoon. Mix together the cheese and the rest of the thyme. Lay the bread over the chick peas and tomato mixture, then scatter over the cheese and bake for 15-20 minutes till the cheese and bread are golden

The kids (and the Husband) had it with sausages. I just had it as it was. You might want to add some Tabasco, or other chilli sauce (or just increase the harissa, depending on the palates you are catering for).

As my blogging mojo has disappeared somewhat with my cooking mojo, I am attempting to get myself back up there by linking this up to a few blogging events.

All the parsley and thyme put this squarely in Herbs on a Saturday territory, and June's challenge is hosted by Karen herself on Lavender & Lovage. 

Bookmarked Recipes also applies here, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes, even though I suppose I haven't really cooked what the recipe was at all.