Soup of the week: sweet potato gratin laksa (yes, really - it's delicious!)

Just as I am sure that the River Cottage event barn will soon rise from the ashes and be restored to its former glory, I too have created triumph from my own Hugh tragedy, albeit on a much smaller scale – all hail sweet potato gratin 'laksa' soup

Although admittedly the sweet potato gratin wasn’t a total disaster when I served it for supper last night, I wasn’t particularly relishing a straightforward re-heat for lunch. The Husband had made an impromptu reappearance after pranging his car on the way to work, but he too declined, on the basis that he still had his sandwiches. Personally, I feel that this was a poor excuse to avoid manning up, but there we go.

However, that still left me with the lunch problem - I hadn't made myself sandwiches. Soup was the only thing I could really think of. I had about a quarter of the gratin left over, maybe a little less, so I made up some marigold bouillon powder – about ¾ litre and tipped the stock and the gratin into a pan and heated it up. A quick whoosh with the handheld blender and it was looking promising, but perhaps missing something. The inspiration struck. Some of you may remember that we came away from the scout jamboree in the summer with various Dutch delicacies (and some not so delicacies), including some rather fine thai-ish chilli paste stuff. It bears the recognisable label of ‘sambal’ emblazoned in the front of the jar and some Buddhist type images. Well, this is still going strong in the fridge, and I decided that it was just what my soup needed. I was right. I added one teaspoon, then another one. Totally transformed it. It was the best soup I’ve had all week and actually made me glad that I had made the gratin last night. Whooshed together, the gratin flavours combined and with the stock, it was much less rich but still really tasty. The peanut butter/lime flavours really came out which I think was missing a little from the gratin itself because of the texture of the peanut butter. The chilli sauce really lifted it too, and the overall result reminded me of a gorgeous laksa that I had once in a restaurant in Soho in London called Melati. I am thinking that a combination of the sweet potato, plus the peanut butter/lime paste mix and some coconut milk would work as a pretty good curry. Perhaps I will try it one day.

So there you go. Not a long blog, but a happy one. Welcome to the weekend.

Not quite Veg every day - but trying: onion upside down tart and sweet potato gratin

I should really have known better – Sweet Potato Gratin. I mean, even in the photo in Veg Everyday it looks rather sickly, but somehow I couldn’t resist. I think that the root of this is a Nigella recipe that is in Feast, in the Christmas/Thanksgiving section. I mean, it can only be an American recipe – but sweet potato topped with marshmallows? I don’t think so. But this (the Nigella) recipe holds a kind of terrible fascination for me. Every year, in the run up to Christmas, when I’m considering the possibilities, I read it and I wonder what it might possibly be like. The conclusion I usually reach is “revolting” and leave it for another year.

And yet, and yet... there’s part of me that secretly wants to cook it. Just to see. So maybe that’s why I scheduled this Sweet Potato gratin out of Veg Everyday for supper this evening. I am still on my mission to reduce our meat consumption. But after roast chicken on Sunday, and then Chilli on Monday and Blue’s special Bolognaise yesterday, I felt the need to up the veg intake. True, we had the Veg Everyday onion upside down tart on Tuesday – but for some reason it didn’t really feel very veg like. It must have been the pastry. It was very good and very easy, but there’s a similar Nigella recipe in Domestic Goddess – Onion Supper tart, I think she calls it, and from memory I have to say that Nigella’s is the more comforting and satisfying.

However, back to the matter in hand. The gratin. Very easy – and fits into my Thursday meal prep requirements – no more than 30 mins prep between getting home from the school run and going back out again to take Pink to Brownies, and will cook in the oven (and thus requires no attention) so that by the time I have gone back out to collect Pink and get home, it’s ready to serve. Ideally, I would have something in the freezer to avoid the 30 mins prep, but that was not to be this evening.

 The recipe involves sweet potatoes, cream garlic and chilli and then a middle layer which is peanut butter beaten with oil, lime zest and juice – a kind of orange and brown sandwich if you will. More misgivings - Pink doesn’t seem to like any kind of orange vegetable apart from carrots, and Blue doesn’t like peanut butter – nor does the Husband much for that matter. None of us are particularly fond of ‘sweet’ savoury dishes. Meat with fruit – that sort of thing, it just doesn’t work for us. About the closest is a kind of ‘sweet sour’ thing. Nigella’s African chicken which uses apricot jam in the marinade scrapes inside what is acceptable – and even reading the recipe I knew that this would come perilously close to the unacceptable boundary, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was on the menu planner, and that aside – what else was I going to do with a kilo of sweet potatoes. But then salvation came from an unexpected source. Half the sweet potatoes had gone squishy. What to do what to do? Not for the first time was I tempted to pop in to the butcher on the way to Rainbows abd get some sausages, But no. That would be cheating. Tonight was to be a veg night. So I substituted with white potatoes and carried on.

From a recipe point of view, it definitely works. It cooked very nicely and by the time we got back from Rainbows, freezing cold, it was ready to serve. We had it as suggested with fairly bitter salad leaves and having travelled more in hope than expectation, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The peanut butter ‘filling’ is a little cloying – and I used more lime juice than the recipe said. If I make it again I will probably use more – at least a limes’ worth. Actually, Nigella uses 2 limes’ worth in her marshmallow extravaganza. I also think that it was probably better for being half white potato – all sweet potato would I think have been too much. Blue managed slightly more enthusiasm for it than Pink, but then she’d had the benefit of biscuits at Rainbows. She happily ate her salad, picked out some of the potato to eat but rejected the rest on the basis that she didn’t like the orange. I tried to persuade her that if she ate it all in a mouthful rather than picking bits out it would be much better, but she wasn’t having any of it. And then, to cap it all, she got a mouthful of chilli. I thought I’d been careful about only a light sprinkling, obviously not. Blue had had a school dinner today rather than a packed lunch for the first time in ages, so the aching chasm wasn’t quite so aching this evening.

So there we go. Not quite ‘nul points’ but I’m not sure it’s going to make a reappearance on the menu any time soon, so sorry Hugh, but I’m sure you’ve got more things to worry about a the moment. Still, as I look at Nigella’s sweet potatoes with marshmallow extravaganza, I sense that I’m feeling not quite so compelled. And maybe next time, I’ll be able to listen more attentively to the little voice saying ‘don’t do it’ instead of forging on regardless.

Cooking with the kids?

I am more tired than I can possibly describe, having been to the pub last night and consumed significantly more wine than I was intending. It used to be that the 4^th bottle might have been pushing it. Now it seems, in my state of advancing decrepitude (is that a word?) that the 4^th glass is. Not then, the best day for Blue to be let loose in the kitchen to cook tea.

“What!” I hear – “Help in the kitchen? Marvellous.” No it’s not. Whatever impression you might have formed about me, let me just get one thing straight. It’s my kitchen. If it’s going to be messy, it needs to be MY mess. And if the food is going to taste dodgy/be burned or otherwise be a failure, it will be MY dodgy, burned and failed food. Are you scared yet? Forget any thought that I am some relaxed Earth mother, calmly and enthusiastically encouraging my children to express themselves through the chopping of onions – or whatever. The truth is that I am a horrible control freak, especially when it comes down to food – and, let’s be honest here, any food that I am going to be eating.

Recently, Blue has been clamouring for more independence, and the Husband and I are faced daily with small manifestations of this. The biggest issue so far has been whether he can walk to school on his own, and after some trial runs, where I followed a short distance behind him (but far enough behind for him to forget I was there) he does now walk to school on his own. I have my heart in my mouth every morning, particularly when I then walk Pink up to school and witness some potential hazard – twice this week I have observed smeared piles of dog dirt on the pavement and have then prayed fervently that it was not Blue who walked straight through it and on up to school, none the wiser, for he is a dreamer, and not streetwise or particularly aware.

Another area where he has been demanding more responsibility is in his own personal food admin. The other week, he decided to make his own sandwiches for his packed lunch. Now, preparing the packed lunches is one of the trials of my life. I never manage (as I intend) to get them sorted the night before, so spend 20 minutes or so every morning clutching a mug of tea and staring into the fridge trying to work out what to feed them. Sometimes, the beautiful lunchbox championed by Mr F-W will almost happen – like when I have things like pasties in the freezer, or soup – but more often than not, it’s cheese and chutney sandwiches (or, in Pink’s case, cold pasta). That doesn’t necessarily mean that I want anyone else to do it though, particularly not first thing in the morning, and certainly not on a day when the Husband had left the milk in the boot of the car, and left the car in the pub car park – so I didn’t even have my cup of tea. Anyway, that particular morning, I sliced the bread for him, assembled the more appropriate contents of the fridge on the table and tried to back off. I was doing really well until he got to the cheese. I could have wept as he hacked up the rather expensive and very delicious block of local famer’s market sourced cheddar type cheese and used nearly all of it in one sandwich. I couldn’t help myself, and just had to dive in and redistribute.

We had more success at the weekend, though. Blue does spend a lot of time thinking about food and what he is going to eat, and had been talking for some time about inventing a new snack with chocolate and oats and fruit. I had been fairly evasive as to the possibility of actually doing something about this, but then he came home with homework on Friday which required him to write instructions of some kind. My immediate thought was recipe (why make things difficult) and i must have had a rush of blood o the head because the next thing I know, I am suggesting that we make his snack and he can write his instructions about that. In the end, we consulted a couple of Rocky Road recipes (Nigella’s – Express and Domestic Goddess) and came up with a variation involving oats, glace cherries and dried cranberries. Rather tasty it was too, and I managed not to get too het up about other people being in my kitchen.

And so to today. Another of Blue’s enthusiasms – to cook tea. He made spag bol at Cubs last week and was keen to recreate the Dolmio experience for us at home. When I ventured that he could make bolognaise the proper way (chopped onions, garlic, can of tomatoes) etc he was very put out. It was Cubs way or no way. I resisted the urge to say that it was MY way or no way. “He’s got to start somewhere” pointed out the Husband, very reasonably. Grrr.

So I dutifully purchased mince and bottled sauce. Perhaps the fact that I was practically weeping for my bed at that stage actually helped. That and the fact that, prejudices aside, making spag bol using a pound of mince and a jar of sauce is just so easy. Blue’s seriousness and concentration was totally adorable, and I managed to mostly resist the urge to dive in and take over. He did lose the plot a couple of times and get distracted, but in the main, he did a great job of browning mince and simmering sauce. He also weighed out the pasta. Pink helped by grating some cheese and putting the garlic bread (frozen from the shop) into the oven.  I managed to keep myself from interfering too much by distracting myself with Dan’s ‘One a Day’ cookies – using spelt flour, oats and toasted sesame and pumpkin seed, these could almost be health food. So easy – and so delicious. And so, in the end was the bolognaise. Not that I would ever suggest that sauce from a jar is better than homemade – oh no never, but perhaps the next time I’m feeling tired and emotional, I might just be tempted – and by managing to let Blue cook it this time, I’ll have someone else to cook it for me.

Now, about the washing up...

Mmmm Marmalade

A couple of Sundays ago, the Husband and I spent a happy evening comparing marmalade techniques and slicing up orange peel. The next day we made marmalade. We’re just so rock ‘n’ roll, it hurts.

Anyway, having used Nigel Slater’s method last year, and decided that there was too much water in it to boil off, we did some surfing and came up with a combination of Dan Lepard and Nigel Slater’s which worked pretty well. Last year’s batch of just Nigel was very dark – probably because of the additional bubbling that all the extra water took – but we liked his method of dealing with the oranges, whereas Dan’s method  involved a whole litre less water, and the resulting marmalade is more to our taste. However, when it came to putting the jars away we realised that we still had a couple of jars left over from the last lot. Plus a lemon, orange and elderflower marmalade that we made from the fruit left over from making from elderflower cordial. We only have limited shelf space, so we needed urgent marmalade recipes and Dan has obliged twice this week.

I made his marmalade flapjack from Short & Sweet on Wednesday. It’s a great and easy flapjack recipe, and the resulting bars were very yummy. I thought they might be a bit dark, partly because it uses treacle not syrup, and also because of the darkness of the marmalade, but no, they were very good. This evening, however, was the real winner. From last week’s Guardian magazine, where he writes a column – marmalade carrot puddings .: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/27/marmalade-recipes-preserves-dan-lepard

They are kind of an individual sponge pudding thing. I made half quantities, fudging it with the eggs again (the recipe says 3 medium eggs but I only had large ones - our chickens are slowly coming back in to lay, finally after what seems like months of moulting and petulance - and one small bantam egg from when we chicken sat for our neightbours), and goodness only knows what a dariole mould is, but the recipe worked fine in ramekins. The puds were a real hit, and were really really tasty.

I used dark muscovado sugar because that’s what I had in the cupboard, and I expect that a combination of light muscovado and this year’s marmalade would have resulted in a slightly lighter pudding, but the ones I made today were no less delicious for it. Blue considered the pudding and remarked that it looked just like a sort of mini Christmas pudding (it doesn’t really, at all, but I sort of knew what he meant) and inspiration struck. Forget ice cream or custard. What these little beauties taste really good with is the left over brandy butter from Christmas.

Pink soup and a not so blue Blue after all

Soup of the week is roasted beetroot without horseradish cream. I am hoping (perhaps over ambitiously) that the pink-ness of the soup will appeal to Pink and get her over her dislike of this particular root vegetable. I have to say that she enjoyed it more than the Husband and Blue when made into the beetroot variation of Hugh’s Pumpkin and Raisin tea loaf. I think I mentioned this in an  earlier post. I had over-ordered on the beetroot front and was looking for recipes to use it in. A friend had recommended the tea loaf recipe (although not the beetroot variation) so I thought I would give it a go. Hugh promises purple marbling. My version was more ‘pink flecking’, but it tasted great, and not a hint of the earthiness which I think puts Pink off. I say that it is without Horseradish cream because at the time of writing, the horseradish is still in the ground and the ground is frozen solid. Chances of extracting are virtually zero (and that’s better than the current outside temperature). That said there might be some in the freezer. I will need to investigate. The soup isn’t for eating till tomorrow so there may yet be time for horseradish cream.

I had far more success on the root veg front this week with the swede and potato pasties out of Veg Everyday. Blue is continuing to lobby for more meat back on the menu, and looked particularly cheated when I advised him that the pasty did not contain meat. I had tried to avoid actually spelling this out to him, but he likes to know where he stands so his questions became more specific as my answers became more and more vague, until he eventually pinned me down. “What is in the pasties?” (this on the way home from school) . I told him. “Oh”. Then “I thought when you said ‘pasties’ you meant like those ones you cooked with meat in them.” Oh dear.

Despite my recent saga with Sainsburys over packets of bought puff pastry, I pushed my pastry boundaries and made the rough puff for these little babies (the bought stuff is for a Hugh onion tart, culled from Sarah Raven and included in Veg Everyday). I think I have made a sweet variation of this before out of Domestic Goddess, and used it to make a lovely tarte tatin type pud. Actually, I think the other half of the pasty that I made for that is languishing somewhere, unloved and unlabeled at the bottom of the freezer. I have a vague memory that almond danishes were on the cards at one stage. I must re-investigate.

Back to the pasties, though. This pastry is really easy and I write as a pastry-phobe. I am getting better with practise, and it’s experiences like this that boost my confidence. It all worked, and rolled out brilliantly. You have to do lots of rolling because the butter starts off as cubes in the flour, and you have to roll it out, fold it over itself and then turn it a quarter-turn, and do it again - 5 times.

first rolling!

cubes of butter - the unrolled dough

I made double quantities, which gave me 4 large pasties and then 6 smaller ones to go in lunchboxes, and there was plenty of filling (just a tiny bit too much in fact).

unbaked

If you’re interested, I did add the ‘optional’ cheddar. For me, cheese is never ‘optional’. But then, I am not a ‘swede-purist’, unlike Hugh (that’s what he calls himself – it’s there in print.). I was very gratified to see that Pink had eaten her pasty almost before I had sat down, faffing around as I was trying to do 100 other things. She had another half, too, Blue pronounced it ‘pretty good actually’ and they both wanted to take a cold one in to school for lunch today.

baked!

I’ve had a mad cook this evening – over the course of today (well starting last night) I have made some loaves with my newly revived sourdough starter following the River Cottage Bread Handbook’s method (‘My Sourdough’). It’s looking pretty good, although I think my starter (and so sponge) was a bit sloppy so the dough was similarly. Not good for the stress levels trying to do a first knead at the same time as you should be walking your small daughter to school with the dough showing no sign of becoming smooth and satiny. In the end I just had to say b******s and leave it to rise. Still - apparently no harm done. I retrieved the second half of the cookie dough that I’d squirreled into the freezer last week and baked some more cookies – I was interested to see if this ‘freeze half the dough’ thing would work – well what do you know, it did! And as the oven was on, I managed too roast the beetroot for the soup – or was it because I’d planned the roast beetroot that I baked the bread and the cookies. I can’t remember, but now the oven's off, the kids are in bed and it's G&T time. Happy Friday!

Use by – schmooze by – but don’t let that stand in the way of a good complaint!

I have to say that I don’t hold much with ‘Use by’ dates. I understand that in our unbearably litigious culture, food producers have to cover their backs, but growing up as I did where the breakfast norm involved scraping a layer of mould off a jar of homemade jam proclaiming that it had been made at least 3 years previously, my approach tends to be more of the ‘see if it tastes OK’ variety. None of us have died.

However, even I balked when considering the apparent use by date on some puff pastry that I’d ordered in my delivery from the supermarket yesterday. Yesterday was 1 Feb. The Use by date was not only 31 Jan, but 31 Jan 2010. I couldn’t quite believe it. 2010. Really? I mean that’s pushing it, even for me.

I rang the call centre. They were terribly sorry. Could I hold? I could. Although I could probably have asked them to call me back. Anyway, it didn’t take long for them to return. Could I confirm that it really said 2010. I said I could definitely confirm that it did. I had to check – it’s not unheard of me to have misread something like that, but no, it definitely said 2010. I held again. A short time later, she was back. They were terribly sorry about this. They’d like to offer a refund and a £15.00 voucher as a gesture of good will. And the store manager (of the store where the shopping came from) would like to call once she’s investigated. Would that be OK? But of course. It’s about the MOST inconvenient time of my day. I have nothing better to do – after all, I have a load of shopping to put away, tea to cook, reading to be heard, tables to be battled with, spellings to be dragged kicking and screaming from under a fridge magnet to be implanted into Pink’s mind , chickens to put to bed, another hour or so of work – you get the picture.

Anyway, she called. “We’re terribly sorry” she simpered.”2010 is the batch code.” “Rather an inconvenient batch code, seeing as how it sits right under the date.” I remarked. And then “But even so, today is 1 February - this says 31 Jan. That was yesterday. Surely this shouldn’t have been sent out. There wasn’t even a ‘short shelf life’ warning on my substitutes sheet.” I should say that I wasn’t cross  - after all, I had the refund and the voucher under my belt – just interested to know what she would say. Pink was doing some silent cheerleading in the corner – “Go Mummy! Go Mummy!” – I hope I’m teaching her a valuable life lesson. To give her her due, she was totally accepting of that. I love being right. “Can we deliver you some more? Free of charge?” But of course.

And the original pastry? In the freezer. After all, it was only one day over its use by date. I’m sure it will be fine.

Fajitas and Flapjack

Compared to last week which was a veritable feast of vegetables, this week’s menu has so far been far more functional. Last week, I managed Veg nearly every day. On Wednesday, working his way rather laboriously through Hugh’s stir fried sesame cauliflower (served with noodles as a main course rather than a side dish) Blue asked, rather accusingly, if I was trying to turn us all into vegetarians. Poor Blue. He’s not a fan of cauliflower, and we did have rather a lot of it last week. Fortunately I was able to tell him that the next day it was going to be African Chicken (out of ‘Kitchen’ by Nigella –  one of my recipes at the moment). “Yyeessss!” he said, but quietly. He knows when he’s treading on dangerous ground!

African chicken aside, we ate mainly out of Veg Everyday, and the Husband and I certainly enjoyed it. The kids were less convinced, but they enjoyed the twice baked potatoes, and Pink loved  all the cauliflower. My favourite so far was the leek and chestnut risotto that we had on Friday evening. Very delicious. So pleased I over ordered on the chestnuts at Christmas!

This week, however, has been a bit more hectic and so far, less veggie. The kids were out for tea on Monday and the Husband wasn’t due back till late – and after a 4 hour drive back from Wales, during which pies were likely to have been consumed, I really couldn’t be bothered. I spent most of the day eating toasted sourdough bread and nutella (it’s cold, OK – I need the extra plumage), and then decided that as I had all the ingredients, I would make some soup. I went back and redid Hugh’s Fennel and Celeriac delight – this time with the orange zest that I didn’t have when I made it the first time. It does make a difference. We had chilli on Tuesday and fajitas this evening. It did cross my mind to make the tortillas myself, using the recipe out of the River Cottage Bread Handbook, but I managed to retain a grip on reality (and my sanity). I noted the mention in the recipe of sticky dough. The alarm bells rang and I heeded them. Trying to knead sticky dough with the kids milling around as well as trying to put away the Sainsburys delivery, and also, cook the rest of the tea, could well have resulted in serious injury to someone – possibly the Sainsburys delivery man on this occasion – and reason prevailed. It’s not often this happens.

I’d obviously decided that life was too easy though, because, seeing how the oven was on anyway to warm up the (recently delivered) tortillas, how about I just make some biscuits? Fortunately, Short & Sweet just seemed to fall open at the Marmalade Flapjack page. Now, I’m a sucker for a good flapjack and am always up for a new recipe. So far my favourite one is in the Camper Van Cookbook. Somehow, all others that I’ve tried either crumble up (which is lovely on breakfast but not so good when you want something with your cuppa) or so completely rock solid that not so much as a jackhammer would break it up – although I have had some limited success with Nigella’s ‘Soot’s Flapjacks’ out of Domestic Goddess. Anyway, back to Dan. It’s a quick melt, stir, bake recipe, and apart from soaking the raisins in boiling water for 10 mins, needs no prep. It uses treacle instead of syrup, and dark soft brown sugar, and I did wonder if it would be a bit ‘dark’ generally, given that

Recipe Junkie’s 2011 vintage marmalade is also on the dark side. But I needn’t have worried. Very delicious flapjacks indeed. A little on the crumbly side, but Dan does flag it as a possibility, so I was watching, and definitely edible. They may be a little on the dark side for Pink, but Blue, who likes nothing more than a piece of good dark gingerbread or fruitcake, is going to love it!