From Cabbage to Cake

The theme for tonight is seasonal fruit and veg.

It’s that time of year when the allotment is overflowing and market smells amazing.  The shear quantity of beans and raspberries going into the freezer at the moment means I occasionally find all my baking trays are sub-zero and covered in crop.

This occasionally means being a bit repetitive with cooking, such as the okonominaki sneaking its way back onto the menu to help deal with the cabbage glut.

As you might have noticed, we freeze quite a lot of our produce.  Green beans, runner beans and broad beans all get blanched and frozen.  This means I have to move fast and intercept if I want them for anything else.

Just as a note; we do pick our runner beans much earlier than most the ones we see in the supermarket.  The younger beans freeze better and aren’t as fibrous.

So I wanted 500g of fresh runner beans, and we had about 450g.  So clearly going out in torrential rain to pick that remaining 50g worth of beans was totally worth it.  (Actually what happened was I’d picked some during the week and Dan was convinced that, with all the sunshine and rain we’d been having, the stalks would be heaving with beans again.  So we went out, in a total downpour, to gather together what turned out to be a very meagre handful of beans.  Fortunately this meagre handful was required to make the weight.  Otherwise we’d have both have been very soggy and very annoyed.)

This is a recipe for some Spiced Runner Beans with Chicken Skewers.

You’ll need about 400g of chicken breast cut into inch cubes.  Crush a tsp of cumin seeds in a pestle and mortor.  Finely grate about two inches of ginger and crush two garlic cloves.  Coat the chicken in a mix of a tsp. tikka/tandoori powder (or curry powder of your choice), 4 tbsp of yoghurt, some chopped mint, and about half the cumin, ginger and garlic.

Let that marinade for about 10 minutes, then thread on skewers and cook under a grill or on a barbecue.

In the meantime heat about 2 tsp of groundnut oil in a frying pan, then add 1 tsp of mustard seeds (ideally black, but not essential) and the remainder of the cumin.  Cook until the mustard seeds start to pop.

Add in some chilli (we used two fairly spicy red one, but your mileage will vary), 0.25 tsp of turmeric, and the last of the garlic and ginger.  Give it a good stir then add a splash of water and 500g of shredded runner beans. Then stir fry the whole mess.

Serve with chapattis, some sunshine and good glass of white.

We also made two cakes.  One for Dan to take on trial with him, and one for me to take to work.

Sadly we have to pictures of my cake, because, although it wasn’t our best Victoria sponge, it was our first crème patissiere and it did involve an epic quest to get fruit.

The fruit in question was gooseberries.  In season and British we foolishly thought everyone would have them.   But no.  Wall to wall strawberries because Tennis, but no gooseberries.

The market didn’t have them.  Tescos didn’t have them. Aldi/Lidl didn’t have them.  Sainsburys claimed to have frozen gooseberries, but were lying through their bright orange teeth.

In the end Waitrose saved the day (of course), although they had hidden them among the grapes rather than with the rest of the soft seasonal fruit.  Clearly all small round green fruit goes together.

The other cake was much simpler.  This was an Apricot Buttermilk Cake and there was no shortage of apricots on the market, so we got some good ripe ones.

This is a very easy tray bake, although ours came out a bit soggy on the bottom layer.  Cooked, but slightly soggy.  We think it was the apricot juice.

Fortunately the cake has a ground almond base so soggy came across as frangipane-y.  Oh, yeah. Totes deliberate.

So here goes it.

In a reasonably sized food processor combine 200g self-raising flour, 150g ground almonds and 200g golden caster sugar.  Once mixed add 175g softened butter, 142ml buttermilk, 3 large eggs (beaten), a tsp vanilla extract and the finely grated zest of one lemon.  Again pulse to combine and that’s your cake mix!

Pour into a lined deep baking tin (ours was about 22cmx22cm) and level off.  Halve and stone six apricots, then arrane the apricot halves on top of the cake, cut side up.  Drizzle with 2 tbsp of honey and scatter with 50g of flaked almonds.

Place in an oven at 170°C (ish) and cook for 40-45 minutes.  Let cool for 20 minutes.  Then feed to a large collection of burly engineers.

Feel slightly smug when their only complaint is “some of the flaked almonds aren’t attached to the cake”.

Fire & Rice

So a slightly longer pause than originally planned.  I did indeed journey in the land of the Americas.  Where two of the three states have Weather that is definitely capitalised.  And then I got sunburnt in Chicago of all places.

We also went on a bit of a jolly in Maderia and ate a lot of meat and fish.

And then even more meat and fish.

The extended pause has been for two reasons:

1. Dan is on trials and it is considerably less fun cooking alone and for just yourself.
2. I’ve been dieting. And yes, before you all start, I do.

I’ve been roughly following the Matt Roberts Fat Loss Plan, which seems pretty sensible in both calories in and calories out.

I say roughly because:

1. I’m not going to cook single portions every night, so there has been some considerable multiplication of recipes going on.
2. On those rare occasions Dan is home, we want to cook something more exciting (see below).
3. Matt Roberts cannot be trusted with either nutmeg or dried mushrooms. Just no.

But we’re going to gloss over all that tedious, repetitive diet food and just focus on the more exciting stuff we’ve cooked.

Because of the lovely weather a lot of it has been on the barbeque, and some of it has involved entertaining.

Just for us we did a Mustard, Thyme and Ginger Spatchcock Chicken, served with some cumin, lime  and chilli sweet potatoes cooked in the coals.  The sweet potatoes were taken from a Jamie Oliver clipping and are one of the nicest ways to add carbs to a barbecue I know.

Since it was the first barbecue of the season, we were a little rusty on technique and we didn’t quite get the coals hot enough.  As a result I think we smoked the chicken more than we grilled it.  Tasty, but not quite what we originally intended.

The following weekend we did Tuna Steaks with Chermoula.  Chermoula is a North African fresh herb and spice mix, and what we didn’t slather over the tuna steaks, we tossed with some new potatoes.

Big meaty fish of the barbecue is lovely, and this was definitely a better meal than the previous week.

We became a bit more social the next week, by barbecuing something mostly inspired by Tandoori Chicken for a couple of guests, C & N.  We then followed it up with some freshly made pumpkin and ginger donuts.  Because Dan wanted to.

It is impossible to make a small batch of donuts so the neighbours did well out of this one as well.  And the next morning Dan discovered you can slice a slightly stale ring donut in half, fry it next to the bacon and eggs, and take the breakfast sandwich to the next level.

Another week, another barbeque, although this time in Sheffield.

We provided the meat (and the Dan) for a surprise birthday party.  We supplied some traditional burgers and sausages (gluten free from M&S), some chicken drums in a miso sauce, and some soy sauce and honey marinated ribs.

That last one is a classic in the Lowe household, and is really bloody simple.  It is really just ribs chucked in a mix of honey and soy sauce.  Quantities depend on what you have and what you feel like.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the food (although I hasten to point out Lily didn’t get to the tongs until after Dan finished cooking)

Away from outdoor cooking and smoke we also used up some of the cabbage on the allotment and made okonomiyaki.  We’ve made this before, but using a different recipe.  This time we used one from the Guardian, and it beat the Yo Sushi recipe hands down.

Definitely getting bookmarked.

Finally, and most recently, we ventured into Vietnamese Summer Rolls.  These are deliciously light and gentle rolls, usually consisting of some protein, some crunchy veg, some herbs, a little flavouring (lime and fish sauce often) and some very fine rice noodles, wrapped in rice paper wrappers and served with a chilli and soy dipping sauce.

We made them with beef steak, radishes and spring onions.

Other than the initial fiddle of working out how best to manipulate the rice paper, these were surprisingly easy to make.  And what I had initially planned as two days lunches got scoffed in one sitting.

We’ll be making more of these.  Mostly because we like them and want to play with the flavours, but also because the rice paper only came in large quantities and we’ve still got loads left.