Plum and cinnamon slice

Another one from Hannah Miles' Cakes and Cookies book. I made it the other week to take to some friends and since a) it was a success and b) the pastry was on offer and I got 2 blocks, I've made it again :)

Ingredients

• 500g block puff pastry
• 4 tbsp ground almonds
• 1 tbsp icing sugar
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 100g marzipan, chilled in the freezer and then grated
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 10 plums, halved and stoned
• 55g flakes almonds
• 2 tbsp clear honey
• milk for glazing

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Roll the pastry out to 20 x 30cm, 5mm thick and place it on a baking tray. Score a line 1-2cm from the edge, without cutting all the way through the pastry.

Mix the ground almonds, icing sugar and oil into a smooth paste. Spread it inside the lines on the pastry and sprinkle on the marzipan and the cinnamon. Place the plum halves on top, drizzle with honey and sprinkle with the almonds. Brush the edges of the tart with the milk.

Bake for 25-30 minutes - the pastry should be golden and the plums tender. Leave to cool on the tray and then cut into eight.

So, how did it turn out? I love this recipe. The plums are soft and the pastry edges and almonds are crispy, the sweet marzipan and honey pair up well with the slightly tart fruit, and the cinnamon gives it a lovely autumny warmth. On round 2 I put cinnamon in the ground almonds/sugar mixture, and also some extra oil to make the paste easier to spread (about half a tbsp is enough). I needed more than 10 plums (a dozen - and then I had to creatively flatten them to take up more space!) but even slightly underripe ones sweeten up perfectly.

Pork with parsnips and fennel

Waitrose Kitchen magazine, October 2010.

Ingredients

• 3 parsnips, peeled, cored, cut in wedges
  
• 1 med-large bulb fennel, thinly sliced
  
• 12 shallots, peeled and halved
  
• 2 pork neck steaks
• 200ml low-alcohol cider
• few sprigs thyme
  

Method

Place the vegetables in a roasting pan with the cider, and roast at 220C for 5 mins.
Place the pork on top, season, and roast for a further 30 mins at 200C.
To serve, place the meat on the veg and pour over the juices. Serve with steamed vegetables (we did savoy cabbage) or salad.

Comments

The roasted parsnips were a little dry. Next time I would spray with oil before roasting, or baste in the cider. The shallots were lovely and sweet, though.
The pork was tender but needed a bit of oomph. I was thinking of mixing some wholegrain mustard with a little cider and maybe even marinading them for a few hours. Maybe honey too, but the cider is pretty sweet. I don't know why they specified low-alcohol cider; perhaps I would try another one next time.
Apple wedges could go nicely in the vegetable mix as well.

Chicken and vegetable one pot

Dinner the other night was kind of based on this recipe for one-pot chicken pilaf from BBC Good Food - but with so many tweaks it's only a distant cousin really.

I did at least use chicken thighs! Veg-wise I used green beans, broccoli, onion and mushrooms. All fine, but I also chucked in brown rice rather than white... which needs more cooking... which pulps the veg a bit, sadly. Next time, part cook the rice first. Rather than a bog standard curry powder I used garam masala, turmeric, and crushed coriander and cumin seeds.

Otherwise, a great one-pot dinner, easy to double up.

Breakfast bars - easy, flexible, healthy, tasty....

...and not just for breakfast! I love these, and make lots of different variations depending what's in the cupboard. They are great for taking along on walks and for re/fuelling before or after exercise. They're about 200 cals each if you make 16 and are relatively low in refined sugar and fat.

Ingredients

• 2oz/60g butter, at room temperature (or less, or even none)
  
• 2oz/60g light brown sugar (or less, depending on fruit/juice used)
  
• 6oz/180g porridge oats (regular work better than jumbo)
  
• 6oz/180g Grape Nuts cereal
  
• 8-12oz/240-360g dried fruit, nuts and seeds*
• 2 medium eggs, beaten
  
• 8oz/240ml fluid (cold black or herbal/fruit tea, milk, fruit juice). May need a little more when mixing but start with this much.
  
• 1 good teaspoon mixed spice or other spice

*I've used pretty much anything here! Big fat sultanas, dates, apricots, figs, mango, cranberries, cherries (dried or even glace), candied peel and preserved ginger; pumpkin, sunflower, poppy and linseeds; flaked almonds, chopped walnuts, pecans or any other nuts; chocolate chips (just a few!). Just not all at once...

Try matching the fruit and nuts and spices to the fluid used. Cranberries and sour cherries (soaked in red grape juice or red fruit tea) and mango (orange juice) all go well with dark chocolate chips, and there's always classic date and walnut (apple juice or tea). You might want to reduce the amount of sugar if you are using sweet fruit and soaking it in sweet juice like orange or apple.

Method

Ahead of time if possible (1hr or more - overnight is ideal), place any dried fruit to soak in the fluid, to plump it up.

Grease a baking dish approx 9" by 9" (or use silicone without greasing). Oven to 180C.

Mix all dry ingredients together. Add the eggs and the fruit with its soaking fluid. Mix, pause to let the fluid soak into the oats/grape nuts, then if needed add more fluid until a moist and spreadable mixture is obtained. Add the butter (if using) in little dots, a few at at time, and mix well.

Put into the pan, spreading into an even layer, and bake for about 25-30 minutes until firm and springy in the centre. Cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes and then on a rack. I cut a 9" x 9" panful into 16 squares and find it cuts more easily when cool.

Oat cookies and cranberry bread

I've been watching the Great British Bake-Off, and am feeling inspired to do something a bit more than the same old breakfast bars (although I still love them!). Might have to try some classics this week!

Spiced syrup oat cookies from Hannah Miles' Big Book of Cakes and Cookies. It's a pretty easy to remember:

Ingredients

• 115g each of butter, caster sugar, plain flour and oats
• 1 tsp each of baking powder, mixed spice and cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsb golden syrup

Method

Cream the butter and sugar, and beat in the egg and syrup. Sift in the dry ingredients and add the oats. Fold in, mixing well.

Divide into 18-25 balls, spread between 2 baking trays, leaving spreading room. Press down a little if you want - my mixture was quite soft and didn't need this.

Bake 12-15 mins at 180C/350F. Larger cookies will be domed and more cakey in the middle, smaller ones will be flatter and crispier.

These are tasty cookies but I'm not sure I would identify them as having syrup in if I didn't know. I wonder whether melting the butter would allow you to use more syrup and less sugar (maybe with a touch more baking powder to compensate for the lack of air from creaming).

Update 18th Sept: A different method:
Melt the butter with 60g of sugar and 6tbsp syrup. Allow to cool. Sift dry ingredients (except oats) together, pour in cooled butter/sugar/syrup and mix well. Add oats and egg and mix again. Cool further in fridge to firm up. Dollop onto baking sheets (I used silicon liners so no greasing) and bake. After 12 minutes mine were a bit too brown on the edges, and they had spread more than the other method, but taste more syrupy. I suppose they are flapjack biscuits!


On to the cranberries...

I've had bargain fresh cranberries in my freezer since the new year. Time to do something with them. I went for cranberry bread from Jared Folkmann - I think I have made it before, but I didn't blog it (tut tut!). I've converted the amounts into metric (cups of butter - not useful!).

Ingredients

• 360g (3 cups) plain wholemeal flour
• 300g (1.5 cups) sugar ( ised half golden caster, half light muscovado)
  
• 2.25 teaspoons baking powder
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 0.75 teaspoon baking soda
• 170g (0.75 cup) butter
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1.5 teaspoons orange peel, grated
• 270ml (1.125) cups orange juice
• 300g (3 cups) fresh cranberries, chopped

Method

I deviated from the original recipe because I wasn't sure about "cutting" the butter/sugar together. I creamed the butter and sugar as best I could (as with a lot of North American recipes, there is quite a lot of sugar), adding the eggs to loosen it and beating well. I sifted in a cup of the flour with the other dry ingredients, mixed it, then added in the other 2 cups alternating with the orange juice to keep the mixture workable. When it was mixed I stirred in the cranberries, and added some candied mixed peel I had lurking in the pantry. The cranberries were frozen and made the mixture really stiffen up, but it actually made it easier to portion out - I was able to get 15 muffins and a loaf out of the mixture.

The recipe says to bake for 1 hour (or so) at 180C/350F. I had an idiot moment and set my oven to grill... (duh) but the muffins were on the shelf below and they had 25 mins on grill and another 20 in the oven "proper". The cake had the 25 mins of grilling, got a bit toasted on top, and was then covered in foil and ovened for another 45 minutes - It's OK, a bit dense, but tasty enough and I'd do it again with the oven set properly :)

Butternut squash with lentils and feta

This was surprisingly tasty given the utter lack of seasoning, spices etc. It was thrown together while I was doing other things.

Wash and halve a butternut squash (no need to peel) and scrape out the seeds and some of the flesh (save for another recipe).
Place it on a baking tray at ~150C for ~1h-1h30 depending on size.

Finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic and an onion.
Fry slowly until well softened but not browned (use water once the oil is gone), about 20 minutes.
Add a can (drained) of green lentils and heat through (about 5 minutes)
Add half a pack of Feta, cubed, and mix in.

Take the squash out of the oven and add half the lentil mix on top of each.

Eat.

Gooseberry meringue pie

After the lovely local gooseberry fairy made a surprise doorstep delivery, I thought I should do something more interesting and summery than a crumble or pie. I found this:

Gooseberry meringue pie (Waitrose recipe)

Meringue
3 egg whites
175g caster sugar

Filling
900g cooking gooseberries, topped and tailed
150g caster sugar
3 tbsp cornflour
3 egg yolks

As ever, I made a few edits. I only had 550g gooseberries, so I cut the sugar for them down to 100g. I should have also reduced the eggs to 2, which would have had a knock-on adjustment of the sugar in the meringue to ~180g. As I failed to make this adjustment, there was a bit much filling for the case.

Oh yes, the case was another adjustment as it was too hot to faff about making pastry/I don't have a pie tin, so I bought an 8" sweet pastry shell from Waitrose. However, it wasn't really wide or tall enough for this recipe (thank goodness I didn't have the full 900g of gooseberries!) so it came out looking all meringue with some gooseberry overspill. Moral: make your own.

1. Put the gooseberries in a pan with 2 tbsp water and 150g caster sugar. Cover and gently heat, stirring, until tender. Some will stay whole; some will become mushy. Strain the mixture through a sieve, set the gooseberries aside and put the strained liquid back into the saucepan. Simmer this until it has reduced to about 200ml. Mix 5 tbsp of this reduced liquor with the cornflour, until smooth. Pour into the saucepan and add the drained gooseberries. Bring to the boil and stir to thicken. Add the egg yolks and stir well to combine. Remove from the heat immediately.
2. Pour the mixture into the pastry case and leave to cool. With an electric whisk, beat the egg whites in a large, clean bowl until you have medium peaks (when you hold up the beaters the mixture should be firm but the peaks just slightly droop over). Add 1 tbsp caster sugar and beat this in, then continue in the same way, whisking and adding the sugar until you have a stiff, glossy mixture. Spoon this over the tart, making sure that you cover the rim of the pastry and don’t leave any gaps. Bake at 190°C/gas 5 for 25 minutes.

No edits to the method - wow!