Cold Night Cookery Part 2: A Tomato Tart

I recently made a list of 29 things I wanted to do before I was 29 whilst cowering in a hotel room in the middle of a typhoon in China. The list was a whistle stop tour of philosophical whimsy (#24 change somebody's life, #21 discover Buddhism) to materialistic glee (#6 buy a fabulously expensive winter coat) to travelling wonder (#25 explore the icy North) to more time dedicated to food with friends (#14 throw an amazing party for friends). With the festive season approaching my flatmate and I decided that there wouldn't be anything better than to warm our beautiful home and host our even more beautiful friends with celebration of everything: of Christmas, of Nottingham, of being happy, of being together and being in the presence of wonderful food.

With that in mind I excitedly started menu planning, I was most excited about a deliciously simple pesto tart a la my ideal man (if he was straight) Nigel Slater.

A Tomato Tart for a Room full of your lovely friends (v)

Ready rolled puff pastry (one block)
Home made or good quality pesto from the chiller (I used Tesco's finest- award winner apparently)
A variety of interesting tomatoes (I used on the vine beefy ones and little mini yellow and red piccolo) . Room temperature please. What are we animals?
Some fresh basil- torn
Some mozzarella (a variation on the original recipe)

First of all flour a baking sheet and plonk your ready rolled pastry on top. Take a moment to bask in how easy that was. Take a knife and lightly score a 2cm border around the pastry like you are carving out a pastry photo frame (where I like to display my best snaps).

Now grab your delicious award winning pesto and slather the whole lot generously in your little picture frame until you start salivating. Next slice your tomatoes how ever you darn well choose and scatter in a thin (but not too thin fashion). That sounds vague, and it kind of is. But it's OK  Now scatter over your basil with a nice twist of sea salt, fresh black pepper and dot with torn mozzarella.

Take another moment to bask in culinary smugness before bunging it in the oven on a moderate heat. Remove when the pastry around the outside has risen and is looking golden and awesome.

The tart was a roaring success, as was the party of many highlights. I particularly enjoyed the Serbian home brew, the conga line and the realization that Mariah Carey's 'All I want for Christmas is you' will melt the heart of even the most cynical hipster.

So a very Merry Christmas to one and all. May your festive season be filled with warm houses overflowing with love, happiness and bloody delicious tarts.

Cold Night Cookery: Vegetable Lasagne

If you don't like this, I don't like you

With the nights drawing in and the cold weather howling outside my window every morning I have decided to do something wild and spend more time at home. Over the last 12 months most weekends have been spent jumping on expensive trains to visit loved ones around the country. While I have enjoyed every minute of these visits, my winter plan was to spend more time enjoying my home, taking in some music, having lots of baths, writing and of course cooking.

This Friday night was a rare gem, my housemate and I were miraculously at the same place at the same time on a weekend and we also had a lovely visitor. No better time to cook my extra special vegetable lasagne.

In our household growing up we didn’t eat a lot of minced meat, my dad couldn’t really stomach it and my mum followed suit so rather than fry minced beef for our lasagnes and and chillis we either used vegetables, and later on in my childhood, Quorn.

Quorn is a marvellous thing when added to hearty meals, adding bulk and if you ask me actually tasting nicer than mince (I hate the look, sound and smell of minced beef cooking). So in my endless quest for the perfect vegetable lasagne I have finely tuned and crafted the ingredients until I have found the ultimate combination of taste, texture and nutritional value (ish, ignore the cheese).

The inclusion of the soft jarred peppers in oil is a 2012 revelation as a result of doing my weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s own jarred peppers are wonderful, slightly charred and sitting in a delicious, delicately flavoured oil that I like to keep and add to other dishes. I personally can’t have a vegetarian lasagne without a courgette or two and I couldn’t explain to you why. The jury is out about how to chop them and it depends on my mood. Sometimes I want a fine dice, sometimes I want them a little more chunky, other times I go for circular cuts to fully absorb the flavour. Tonight I’m feeling circular. I don’t usually use aubergine (or eggplant to the foreigners), tonight I feel like it. I’m probably going to layer it with the pasta after separately chargrilling it, maybe slopping it about afterwards with some olive oil and basil. We’ll see how we go.

I’ve experimented with different kinds of pastas, blindly believing that fresh is best I recently used fresh sheets to find that they disappointingly shrivelled up when I added them to the hot sauce, like they were ashamed of their long durum wheat yellow bodies (it’s Friday afternoon, it’s getting a bit abstract). So now I’m of the mind-set of screw you fresh pasta and I’m back to good quality dried stuff, sometimes I go for the green, today its traditional.

The cheese sauce is quite possibly the glue that holds the whole wonderful construction together; I obtained this wonderful recipe from my mother who can’t half make a mean cheese sauce. I understand that I’m supposed to be making a béchamel but who cares, I’m adding cheese. I’m also sprinkling the top with cheese and blobs of mozzarella. Lighten up, it’s Friday.

Finally to top it all off a lovely glass of red wine at room temperature. Pinotage should do it tonight. Ah. What a week. Oh and I appreciate I haven’t updated you on the running training for a while. Yeah..it’s going um....well....

Cheerio

HYKAEI BEST vegetable lasagne for a cold Friday night with friends

(Serves 6 or 4 hungry people)

Quorn mince (one bag)

2 onions or 3, whatever

Some garlic, diced, sliced, jarred. Whatever you have the energy to do with it

A couple of big jars of passata and a tin of tomatoes (preferably organic)

Some soft peppers in oil (I like Sainsbury’s own)

Olive oil

1-2 Courgettes and maybe a nice looking aubergine

A ball of mozzarella

Some fresh basil

Either dried or fresh lasagne sheets. I used fresh the other day and they weirdly shrivelled when I put them on the hot sauce so maybe go with some good quality dry ones

For the sauce

A block of good cheddar (just some nice mature/extra mature- nothing too extreme otherwise it will be overpowering)

Milk

Butter (real butter please not margarine). I like the French stuff

A little flour

Method

Firstly chop your onions up to a relatively fine dice, they should at least not be huge. Get a bit of olive oil going and fry until tender, adding some garlic until your kitchen starts to smell like mamas kitchen (I also appreciate the irony that Italians don’t EVER use garlic and onions at the same time). At this point add your veg, if you chopped the aubergine into small chunks add this now, you’ll probably need more oil, these things drink oil like Jamie Oliver on a slow day. Also add your courgettes ensuring that you have the heat high enough to get some colour on them all. Now it’s time to add the Quorn, ah magical, from freeze dried to mince in 0.2 seconds. Done.

Now you need to start adding your tomato based things to the mixture, either chop your peppers up or just throw them in whole adding a bit of the oil as well for good measure (not too much). Pour in your passata and tomatoes, a bit of water if you like and even some tomato puree if you want to go tomato crazy. Leave this to bubble away like a tomato sauce nightclub for a little while, use your instincts, if it starts thickening and looks awesome, it’s nearly done. Tear up some basil and add some seasoning, sometimes I add sugar sometimes not, always a bit of pepper, maybe salt. See what you think. You can EVEN throw a bit of your glass of wine in for depth of flavour.

If you are layering your aubergine like me then use this moment to fry in batches and set aside.

Right sauce DONE, set aside.

Now you are on to your cheese sauce, you need to watch this because it will cook quite quickly and then you will frantically need to construct your masterpiece (two people are better than one). First of all you need to make a roux. I never have exact measurements for this, just throw in a good old dollop of butter, a fair slice from your beautiful French stuff. When it starts to melt add a couple of heaped tablespoons of flour. I never add enough at this stage so don’t listen to me, add more. Stir until it makes a paste and now you need to add your milk whilst whisking, you can add some nutmeg at this stage if you want to be traditional. I never do, that stuff gives you hallucinations. Again this is a judgement call, it should be relatively thick now and this is your moment to throw in handfuls of salty amazing cheddar until the sauce can barely take no more.

Now to construct, layer sauce with pasta, a smidge of sauce, eggplant and repeat until you slather the top with cheese sauce. Dot with torn mozzarella and basil and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese (stop eating it). The key is to make sure all of the pasta is covered by liquid or it won’t cook.

Time to select a wine, gutsy Pinotage wins!

Put it in a hot oven, make yourself a simple green salad, cut some bread and dunk it in olive oil, and pour yourself a glass of red.

I saw you eating that leftover cheese sauce!

Bon appetite!

A Weekend in a Welsh Kitchen

The long weekend was looming and I decided to take a trip back home to catch up with family and friends. I arrived back ravenous and in need for some serious lunch, thinking that my mum would present me with her usual speciality of a mug of sugary tea, marmite on toast and a chunk of smoked applewood cheese (not that I'm knocking that lovely treat). Instead I arrived home to my mum busy grating beetroot and chopping flat leaf parsley and informing me that we're going to have the ultimate steak sandwich. What a treat.

The Welcome Home Ultimate Steak Sandwich (a la my mum/ a la Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals)

Ingredients

1 large good quality steak (rib eye or rump) quite thick
Some jarred red peppers in oil
Lots of flat leaf parsley finely chopped
3 big dollops of horse radish
A long baguette or rustic bread (we used a half baguette toasted)
A drizzle of olive oil
A splash of balsamic
Lots of salt and pepper
Some sprigs of thyme
A large handful of rocket or other peppery leaves

First you need to get your baguette or rustic bread, slice it down the middle and drizzle with olive oil instead of butter. We toasted ours so that the olive oil sank deliciously into the bread. Next get your three big dollops of horseradish cream and smear all over one side of the bread. Top with a handful of rocket and get on with your dressing.

To make the dressing upon which to set the steak simply get a few jarred peppers in oil and finely chop with the parsley adding a splash of balsamic and a nice twist of salt and pepper.

Now it's time to prepare the steak. Get your slab of beautiful meat and generously season on both sides with salt, pepper, a drizzle of good olive oil and some sprigs of thyme. Warm up your scalding hot dry pan and flash fry the steak for around 3 minutes per side before taking out to rest upon your dressing. Leave it for 5 minutes or so for all the juices to escape before rubbing the steak into the dressing and juices to coat well.

Now lift your steak up, set aside the dressing underneath into a pile and carve the steak on an angle avoiding any tough chewy bits. You should have a nice medium cut with only a flash of pink.

Assemble the delicious pieces of steak (trying not to eat it all like I did) on to the sandwich topping with your reserved dressing. Cut into three nice generous pieces.

We had ours with a simple green salad, some grated beetroot topped with parsley and feta and some large field mushrooms quickly cooked in the oven topped with a chunk of cheddar. Bloody delicious.

My Mum's Moussaka and Garlic Potatoes (Vegetarian)

Garlic potato aftermath

As a child I used to hate this dish, I thought the gooey soft aubergines looked like weird insects and the whole dish was beyond my palate. Now as a fully fledged member of the adult community I can see the absolute genius  of a simple white sauce with egg yolks that somehow tastes as delicious as if I had grated half a block of Davidstow but mysteriously contains no cheese whatsoever. The vege sauce is quick to assemble and this amount will feed 4 with some leftovers for scooping cold out of the bowl the next morning for breakfast (I'm destined to turn into Nigella).

Ingredients

One chopped white onion, lots of garlic chopped, a bag of quorn mince, oregano (fresh and/or dried we used both), lots of quartered fresh tomatos, a couple of tins of tomatoes

A couple of aubergines, sliced and salted

Flour, butter, milk and two egg yolks

A bag of small baby potatoes, whole cloves of garlic (skin on), one lemon quartered, a little oil, salt and pepper

First make your 'meat' sauce by frying one chopped onion, lots of chopped garlic and then a bag (or as much as you like) of quorn. When the quorn has some colour and the onions have softened add the oregano and chopped and tinned tomatoes with generous seasoning and leave to simmer.

Meanwhile get on with your potatoes, fill a saucepan with cold water, add your potatoes and skin on garlic cloves and boil until softened.

Now it's time to fry your aubergines, do so in batches turning often so that they don't catch. They will absorb a lot of oil, my mum uses sunflower but you can use olive oil. Some people salt the aubergines first and others don't. We do..because we love salt. When you have finished frying your delicious aubergines set them aside.

Now, get a deep oven safe dish and pour in your faux meat sauce and layer your aubergines on the top and start on your white sauce. First, make a simple roux by melting butter (or margerine to keep the fat down) and adding flour to thicken into a paste. Slowly add the milk and stir or whisk into a creamy sauce, if it is a little thick loosen with some more milk. You can add a touch of nutmeg or some cheese if you like but we don't. Now it's time to add the egg yolks while the sauce is off the heat. Stir in carefully and make sure you don't curdle or scramble. 

Pour the sauce over your assembled mousakka and bake in the oven until the top is golden.

While this is baking remove your potatoes, ensuring they are soft and heat up a little oil in a pan. Squeeze out the garlic cloves making a nice garlicky oil and squash the potatoes a bit quickly adding them to the hot oil. You can add some herbs here if you like and salt and importantly lots of delicious lemon juice. Fry until crispy and delicious and serve with salad and a scoop of delicious moussaka. 

Vegetarian perfection....

Get Well Soon Jerk Chicken

Following my epic 4 and a half journey home ready for various get togethers I was struck down with a bit of a cold, feeling like I had Bambi legs I reluctantly cancelled all my plans and decided to spend the day drinking steaming cups of tea in my pyjamas. The perk of my day was our decision to make a nice spicy chicken dish for lunch.

This recipe is a bit vague and can be adapted, you can add different amounts of savoury or sweet depending on your taste. The addition of pineapple juice cranks the sweetness up ten notches so if you aren't into that sort of thing then omit.

I'm not really into chilli heat but do crank it up for this, I loved the spicy note in the back of my palate mixed with the sweetness. Mmmm.

We served it as some bizarre French bistro fusion with some crusty baguette and a few buttered new potatoes. Rice and peas would be a nice accompaniment if you fancy being a little bit more Caribbean. Whatever you like really, now if you'll excuse me I'm going to get back to feeling sorry for myself.

Ingredients

3 chicken legs skin on (or you can use breasts, whatever you fancy the most)

(For the sauce) A teaspoon of all spice, as much rum as you can handle, a drizzle of honey, pinch of fresh or dried thyme, two scotch bonnet chillies (if you can handle it), nutmeg, garlic 5 spring onions chopped

A teeny bit of fresh pineapple juice

Season your chicken legs and pan fry until golden (watch your hands those things go a bit nuts!)

Whizz together all the other ingredients using a blender and pour over the chicken

Place in the oven for around 25 minutes until gooey and saucy.

Delicious

Pre-gig Hawaiian Chicken

After enough sleep to revive Margaret Thatcher and hardly leaving the house I was starting to feel a little better. My parents had purchased me a ticket to go and see 1960s band The Zombies for the evening before heading back to Nottingham the next morning. We decided on a nice light early dinner, scouring the cupboards my mum decided to make something that I hadn't had for about 15 years, her own recipe Hawaiian Chicken.

Ingredients

3 chicken breasts or a whole chicken or shredded up cooked chicken
Half of a fresh pineapple ideally or tinned if you can't be bothered to chop
Some diced cooked ham
A tin of sweetcorn

Pineapple juice (not too much)

An array of diced peppers, I used little sweet ones and big ones
Some fresh chillies as hot as you like
A diced white onion

Season and pan fry your chicken until crispy and delicious. Remove to a large baking dish and add your onions and peppers until soft and releasing a nice liquid. Add in your pineapple and pour over the chicken reserving the sauce in the pan. Now it's time to add to your sauce, pour in the pineapple juice adding a little touch of cornflour if you like to thicken. Taste and season, we added a little more salt at this stage. Pour over the sauce and bake for about 15 minutes. When it's done stir in some sweetcorn with a little butter and chopped ham into fluffy white rice and serve.

So after a weekend of abysmal weather, about 5 pounds heavier and not doing very much apart from cooking I had a wonderful time. I learnt that Nuts in May is one of the funniest TV shows of all time ('I want to see the zoo she said I want to see the zoo'), 'Do you want to come and see my etchings?' is a sexual come on and Psychedelic 60s music is back.

Also, as you can see I got my wish...1am post-gig cheese on toast with my mum. I love you Wales, goodbye for now.

Home sweet home

Have your Tofu Steak and Eat It: Best Vegetarian in Nottingham

Nottingham in Spring

Spring has well and truly sprung in Nottingham, the once barren trees are sprayed with beautiful pink blossoms, Britain seems to be undergoing a mysterious 'heatwave' spurring ridicious newspaper headlines ('Britain swelters under 19 degree heat') and the fields are full of painfully cute lambs bouncing around making me not want to eat them. With that in mind I have turned my altruistic attention to vegetarian food.

The last few years seems to have brought a new wave of vegetarians into my life. They are everywhere, ordering salad and nut roast and introducing me to new concepts like tofu, tempeh and facon and...um carrots (I'm a little new to this vegetarian thing).

I love my new vegetarian possy and I do concede that it is a very healthy way to live ones life especially if an odd bit of fish is consumed here and there. That said I will never say no to that rare steak but I can finally see the appeal of not hurting our fuzzy friends and packing more vitamins and minerals into your diet as a bonus.

So it's time to put away the steak knife and pick up the organic lactose free soya protein (is that a thing?) in my tour of the best vegetarian eats in the city.

Alley Cafe
Cannon Court, Nottingham NG1 6JE
http://www.alleycafe.co.uk/ (this link sometimes doesn't work, that's how laid back it is)

Tofu-licious

I love Alley Cafe, for many reasons but the main one being when I visited they had an 'awesome burger' on the menu which I attempted to order only to be very politely turned down because 'the burger was so awesome it sold out'. Touche Alley Cafe touche you have won me over.

Upon my first visit to Alley Cafe with a gang of work buddies with the awesome burger sold out I was forced to go for an alternative and ended up getting the tempeh burger dished up in an organic bun with loads of veg, house made coleslaw and the best sweet potato wedges I have had in a long time with a nice dollop of chutney. I took a glance around the room, people were smiling, knitting, eating delicious looking pizzas. There was great music playing, the bar staff looked energised and full of their 5 a day. I had a bucket 'o' hoegaarden (anyone else think it looks like a bucket?). This place is like the holy grail.

For my second visit I dragged my accidental starved vegetarian food and quirky cafe lover KM and attempted to stun his hunger senseless with some vegetables stat. I changed tactic slightly by getting the bean burrito which was slathered in cheese and full of delicious non-meaty beans (though this time a tad dry).

My revived dining partner ordered tofu steak on a bed of sweet potato mash and some oddly delicious tomato based gravy. The tofu was slightly charred giving it that authentic Burger King taste, I'm not really selling it here but trust me, it was delicious. Our meal was washed down with some German beer and some organic lager which was deliciously tasty. As we ate a girl in camel boots casually sketched the scene, a hapless couple tucked into some wine and frosty probably post-marital tension (we reasoned they were working on their relationship discord by eating hemp seeds, is there anything hemp seeds can't do?), a big gang of nerdy students arrived to order pizzas and occasionally stare at ladies backsides to the gentle soundtrack of Bob Marley. Lovely atmosphere, great food. A real find.

So in conclusion, visit Alley Cafe do it now. The place is so awesome it might sell out.

Cafe Roya (aka Flying Goose)
33 Chilwell Road, Beeston NG9 1EH
http://www.caferoya.co.uk/

I have recently moved to Beeston and I'm just a little bit in love with it, aside from being full of Asian groceries and local farm fresh produce the place really feels like a community and I get the sense that it's full of some really good hidden foodie finds. My trip to Cafe Roya confirmed that suspicion. My work friend and fellow Beeston lover LM arranged a little Beeston dinner at the Flying Goose, confusingly Cafe Roya by night.

The place is tiny and beautiful, filled with candles and two other tables of happy vegetarian diners. As soon as I spied the simple menu I knew that I was in for a special treat. It was simple, seasonal and divided into a three courses with only a few options for each. True to form and being a sodium rather than a sweet lover I decided to have a starter rather than a dessert and picked the haloumi skewers with caramelised onions and a shredded salad with lemony yogurt. It was absolutely delicious, I could have happily licked the plate.

The beauty of fried cheese

Second course was a no brainer, if pie is on the menu there is a 95% certainty that I will order it. This wasn't just any pie, the homemade egg washed crust was crisp and perfect and it was packed with delicious porcini mushrooms and topped with a light gravy and rich Irish Colcannon packed with spring onions and butter. I actually think this might be the best pie I've ever had. Wow, I'm losing my mind someone get me some steak.

There is always room for pastry

 The best bit about Cafe Roya is the atmosphere, book your table at the right time and it's yours for the evening, service is relaxed the wine is amazing and well priced. It would be a great place to take a special someone for a night of relaxed vegetarian dining.

So I will be back, and please please make that pie again.

Spanky Van Dykes
17 Goldsmith Street, Nottingham NG1 5JT
http://www.spankyvandykes.com/

I'm absolutely addicted to Spanky Van Dykes, for many reasons. The first being the fact that they had the balls to call themselves such a kinky name, second for the great music and the third for the food. I'm slowly working through the meaty menu including southern fried chicken and goats cheese beef burger but every time I go the vegetarian food catches my eye.

So this time I decided to do something shocking and order a hippy burger (I'm not being smart, that's what it's called). The burger was great, washed down with a Brooklyn Beer and some double cooked chips I was in heaven. I want to go back to try their hangover veggie breakfast and if I can muster up the energy to go dancing on a school night I'd love to top it off with a visit to Lust for Life for some nostalgic beats.

So that ends my mini tour of my favourite vegetarian eats thus far. For the future I am very excited to soon visit Ecoworks in St Annes a roaming vegetarian kitchen set on allotments and I shall be ordering their veggie box for some homemade healthy eats .Rumour has it that they also produce beautiful fresh and interesting food including weird Beetroot cakes that I just have to add to my 'to masticate' list.

http://www.ecoworks.org.uk/

So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to chomp on a carrot, frolic in the meadows and indulge in some guilt free lamb stroking.

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog only a few innocent soya beans