The perfect tuna sandwich

No blog posts for ages and then, what? A sandwich? I'm afraid so. Truth is, I feel like I've lost my food mojo in the last couple of weeks. Life seems to have overtaken me; there seems to be too much going on and not enough time to do it in. I've been doing a lot of running, so I'm perpetually hungry (and tired), and spending hours in the kitchen is a luxury I don't seem to have. 

Anyway, I'm hoping normal(ish) service will resume soon. In the meantime, here's a sandwich I perfected earlier in the year, when I was on holiday, combining lots of running with lots of gardening, lots of reading and lots of sitting on our newly finished deck, thinking how life was pretty sweet.

The perfect tuna sandwich

Not surprisingly, good tuna and good bread are essential to the success of this sandwich. The absolute best baguettes I've found in Wellington are the Acme sourdough baguettes from Prefab, the best tuna is the Sirena brand (the one with the mermaid on the tin).

1 x 185g tin good quality tuna in oil, drained (reserve the oil)

2 tsp green peppercorns in brine, drained

2 tsp capers, rinsed and roughly chopped

zest and juice of a lemon

2 tbsp mayonnaise

salt and pepper

Put everything in a small bowl and mix well. Add a little more oil if necessary. Pile into a halved baguette with some crunchy lettuce. Eat immediately.

What have you been up to while I've been away?

A miso quinoa bowl for Graham Norton

One of my favourite all-time moments on The Graham Norton Show involved Graham teasing Gwyneth Paltrow about her love of quinoa. I know it's all scripted and much of that spontaneity has been manufactured by a team of writers, but watching GP squirm as Graham mocked her for including recipes for leftover quinoa ("who doesn't finish their quinoa? There's nothing left over, surely!') was a moment of TV brilliance.

In some ways, I'm with Graham - there's not much call for recipes that use up leftover quinoa in our house either. When I cook it, I have a definite purpose in mind - either this superfood salad, which I used to eat so often that I could recreate it purely from taste memory, or this fast miso quinoa bowl, which I occasionally make myself for lunch as a treat.

Miso Quinoa Bowl
This makes a substantial lunch for one quinoa lover. If you have leftover quinoa, by all means use it!

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
1 1/2 cups water
2 Tbsp white miso paste
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
a large handful of shredded spinach
1 egg

Rinse the quinoa well in running water then put in a small saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil, then let simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes. Let stand for five minutes. In the meantime, stir the miso, oil and vinegar or lemon juice together until well mixed. Stir this through the quinoa, along with the spinach. Remove to a bowl and keep warm while you poach the egg. Serve the egg on top of the quinoa-greens mixture, letting the yolk trickle through the grains. A squirt of sriracha sauce is not a bad idea, either. Serves one.

Are you a quinoa fan or do you agree with Graham's description of it as cross between couscous and cat litter?

How to make sunflower seed butter

The advent of school lunches means that we're now going through our favourite peanut butter at an alarming rate. We already ate it a lot - anyone who tells you they don't eat it by the spoonful occasionally is either a person of no consequence or a liar - but now it's disappearing like there's no tomorrow.

We are lucky in that nuts are not a banned substance at 'our' school (dogs are also banned, but they're not as good in sandwiches so it's not such a big deal), but I do feel the need to diversify our reliance on the humble peanut. And so, while scrabbling around in the pantry last weekend I found a small sack of sunflower seeds and decided to have a bit of an experiment, based on my 2011 adventures in making my own tahini.
Half an hour later and I'd made two jars of fragrant sunflower seed butter for the princely sum of $2.50. Here's how you can make it too.

How to make your own sunflower seed butter
This is really easy - all you need is a bag of sunflower seeds, a splash of neutral-flavoured oil, a pinch of salt and a food processor or blender. A fancy high speed blender would do the trick in seconds, but a regular food processor does a pretty good job in about five minutes.

500g sunflower seeds
3-4 Tbsp neutral flavoured oil (sunflower oil, if you really want to be cute about it)
a good pinch of salt (optional)

Line a large oven tray with baking paper and heat the oven to 180C. Scatter the seeds over the prepared tray in an even layer.
Toast them in the oven, watching carefully and stirring every 5-10 minutes, until they are turning golden. Don't wander off, they burn easily.
Remove them from the oven and let cool for five minutes, then tip into your food processor (carefully, so you don't lose the lot on the floor).
Add the salt, 2 Tbsp oil and whiz - it will be very noisy but will settle down and form a paste. Add the remaining oil until the paste slackens to a peanut butter-style consistency.
Scrape into jars and store in a cool, dark place. Makes about 500g.

What's in your kids' lunchboxes?

Less than two weeks in and I think I've cracked why parents get weepy about their child going to school. It's not the thought of their little darling growing up, it's the realisation that it signals the start of more than a decade of making school lunches.

As much as I know I should aspire to be the kind of 'perfect mother who turns her kid's lunchboxes into art', it's not going to happen. Especially because I am determined that lunchbox duty is a job to be shared by other members of this household who are old enough to handle a knife and go to the shops unaccompanied.

Here we have peanut butter, cream cheese and broccoli sprouts in a flatbread, some carrot sticks, a little parcel of Brazil nuts, a homemade chocolate muffin that's much more nutritious than it looks (recipe coming soon!) and an apple.

But, crumbs, it's hard to get my head around. I remember from my own childhood that all I wanted for a long period was luncheon sausage and tomato sauce in my sandwiches (the tomato sauce was Mum's homemade one, in my defence). I recall my mother inserting all manner of 'interesting' things in my lunchbox: a pork pie (unsuccessful), nut-flavoured yoghurt (a disappointment) and - very occasionally, those triangles of plastic cheese (then, my idea of heaven). Nearly 35 years later, I still remember the shame at finding two used teabags in my teal-coloured lunchbox. My little friends Bernie and Jean-Anne ran to the staffroom for help - where the kind Mrs Wilson pointed out that, in fact, they were dried figs. Such things were rare at Atiamuri Primary, where other kids got little packets of crisps and shop-bought biscuits, or sandwiches wrapped up in the blue and white paper that the Sunday bread came in. Some even went home for lunch, returning with slabs of freshly baked Maori bread slathered with butter. There were probably others who had little for lunch and even less for breakfast.

Of course, that's a far cry from what kids eat today - at least, if you believe everything you read. Pinterest is full of weird charts, which seem mostly designed for dieting adults ('this snack is only 100 calories' etc) and I feel thoroughly depressed at my culinary and parenting skills whenever I read Amanda Hesser's Food 52 blog on what she puts in her twins' school lunches.

Obviously I spend more time worrying about the contents of their lunches than I do about the weeds in my garden...

So I'm very grateful for Nicola Galloway's advice on healthy school lunches, which is just about the most useful thing I've come across in the last couple of weeks is (and there's a great cracker recipe in the post too). The basic message is not rocket science - kids need a balance of 'good' carbohydrates, protein and fibre to keep them sustained and alert, just like adults do.

I'm not sure what the magic ingredient is that makes them actually eat all their lunch at lunchtime ("I didn't eat it Mum, I was too busy") but it is getting eaten (and then some) for afternoon tea so I must be doing something right.

So tell me, please, what do you put in your kids' lunchboxes? There are only so many more peanut butter and sprout sandwiches I can make this week...

UPDATE: I've just created this Easy Tasty Lunchbox Ideas Pinterest board to collate some ideas. Check it out - and let me know if you'd like to contribute!

Treat me: Anzac Bread

Have you ever heard the expression, 'an army marches on its stomach'? Whoever was in charge of provisioning the Antipodean soldiers in World War One certainly hadn't. Researchers now believe poor diet was one of the contributing factors to the doomed Gallipoli campaign due to be commemorated in Australia and New Zealand tomorrow.

Not only were the hapless Anzacs on a hiding to nothing in terms of their strategic position and lack of equipment, they were given the most basic of rations and suffered greatly as a result. Like the song says, war - what is it good for?

I'm not sure that modern Anzac biscuits are that nutritionally sound either, but they surely rate highly in terms of improving - even in the short-term - one's psychological state, especially when consumed with a good cup of tea. Ending (or even starting) the day with a bowl of Anzac Biscuit Ice cream offers a similar emotional health benefits. But if you're looking for something a little more wholesome, then this easy Anzac-inspired bread could be just the ticket.

Anzac Bread
This is bread for beginners - there's no kneading and very little hands-on effort required at all. Mix the dough before you go to the dawn service and it will just about be ready to stick in the oven when you get back.

350g strong or high grade flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
50g rolled oats
50g desiccated coconut
1 tsp dried yeast
20g butter, cold
1 Tbsp golden syrup
325ml warm water

Put the flour, oats, coconut and yeast into a large bowl. Grate in the butter and then stir vigorously to mix it in.
Add the golden syrup to the water and pour into the bowl. Mix well until a wet, sticky dough forms.
Cover with a damp tea towel or plastic bag and leave in a warm place for three to four hours, until the dough has risen and nearly doubled in size.
Turn the oven to 210C. Grease a standard loaf tin (about 21 x11 cm) and line with baking paper.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and deflate it by pressing with your fingers until it forms a rectangular shape that's slightly narrower than the length of the loaf tin. With the short side closest to you, carefully fold the bottom third of the dough into the middle, then over again. You should have a loaf shape sitting in front of you. Carefully transfer this to the prepared loaf tin.
Let rise for 30 minutes, until it is puffy and an indent stays when you press it with a finger. Slash the top with a sharp knife, dust with a little flour and put in the oven.
Bake for 35 minutes, until risen and golden brown. Let cool for five minutes before you turn it out of the tin. Leave it on a rack to cool completely.

Have a great weekend, everyone x

Fried egg crumpets

About 20 years ago, when I had just moved into my first flat, my flatmate Geoff specialised in what he called 'egg windows' - a fried slice of bread with an egg in the middle of it.

Geoff's dad, an army major, had showed him how to make them when he was a kid and Geoff was a total pro. Then an architecture student, he cut the 'window' out of the bread with exacting precision, and he had the timing down pat. Alas, that was probably the apex of his cooking skills. His other memorable culinary moment was the time he came home drunk, put a tray of oven chips on to cook and fell asleep on the sofa. We were saved by the neighbours calling the fire brigade, but the chips were not so lucky.

I'd forgotten all about Geoff, egg windows and the fire until I saw Maya Adam show how to make what she called 'Egg in a hole' as part of the Child Nutrition MOOC run by Stanford University. Here was the egg window, transformed into a fast, nutritious breakfast for a child. It was genius. But even more genius is my fried egg crumpet - a fast, nutritious(ish) and utterly delicious anytime meal for everyone. Here's how to do it.

Fried egg crumpets
One of these might do for breakfast, but I think you need two for lunch. The holey nature of the crumpet means it soaks up a) butter and b) egg, so there are lots of textural contrasts - soft, silky egg and crunchy crumpet edges. Add something green on the side and you might even be able to call it dinner.

You need:
An equal number of crumpets and eggs - let's say two per person
A good knob of butter and a splash of olive oil to stop the butter from burning
A heavy frying pan with a lid
A round cookie cutter or small glass (about five cm in diameter)
Salt and pepper
Sriracha sauce or some other spicy condiment
Grated Parmesan, optional

Cut the middle out of the crumpets with the cookie cutter or glass. You can eat the middle bit as a cook's perk now, or toast it to eat later, or (sacrilege!) throw it away.
Melt the butter and oil in the heavy frying pan over medium-high heat. Put the crumpets in, holey side down, and cook for a couple of minutes, until golden. Flip over and let the smooth side cook for a minute.
Carefully crack an egg into the hole of each crumpet. Don't worry if some spills over the sides, this is no big deal. Put a lid on the pan and cook, covered, for about three minutes, until the egg white is set and the outer edges are getting nice and crunchy. Carefully flip over to cook the other side until it is just set to ensure a runny yolk (obviously cook it for longer if you prefer egg yolks to be firm).
Transfer to a plate and sprinkle with salt, pepper and grated cheese, if using. Dollop on the spicy sauce and enjoy!


 

Instant carrot and tomato soup

I know I shouldn't complain, but living in a building site is starting to get me down. The fact that I also have to work in one (my office building has been yellow-stickered and I'd rather not take my chances of surviving if it collapses), is adding insult to injury.

Working from home certainly has its advantages, but I struggled to find any today thanks to the bitterly cold wind turning the place into an icebox. Then I remembered that I could make myself something warming and restoring for lunch in between phone calls and emails and life seemed a little brighter. Here's what I did.

Instant Carrot and Tomato Soup
This soup is inspired by - but unrecognisably different to - one in Soup Glorious Soup by Annie Bell. Hers involves carrots and scallops; I like to think of this one as a simpler, humbler relation. It's an excellent rescue remedy for cold days when it feels like there's nothing to eat (and it only takes 20 minutes to make, most of which is hands-free). This amount makes enough for two, but is easy to scale up as necessary. Don't try to scale it down - just freeze the leftover amount for a rainy day. And for more vegetarian soup-y ideas, you might like to check out the links at No Croutons Required (though it's ok to add croutons if you want.)

500g carrots, washed, peeled and roughly chopped
1 x 400g tin of whole peeled tomatoes
400ml (approx) good quality stock or water
salt and pepper
cream, creme fraiche or yoghurt, for swirling

Put the carrots and whole peeled tomatoes in a medium-sized saucepan and set it over medium heat. Using the tomato tin, measure in the stock or water. Cover and bring to the boil, then simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. When the carrots are soft enough to collapse at the prod of a fork, remove from the heat. Blitz to a puree with a stick blender or in a food processor (the latter is faster but involves more washing up afterwards), then season with salt and pepper to taste. Reheat until starting to simmer, then serve with a spoonful of cream, creme fraiche or Greek yoghurt swirled across the top.

Do you work from home? What do you make for lunch?

Middle class coleslaw

I am a terrible snob. I'm not proud of this shortcoming but since there's no point in denying it so I may as well be bold. I know I am a terrible snob because I once told someone that his mother made white trash coleslaw. In my defence, he said (and did) much, much worse to me. And that coleslaw was disgusting - tinned pineapple, cabbage, carrot and condensed milk dressing - so I don't think I was completely out of line. Plus, his mother used to look at me like I was something she'd trodden on. Harrumph.

Anyway, that's all ancient history and I'm over it, truly. But earlier this evening, when rustling up an impromptu salad to go with the remainder of Monday night's roast chicken, I realised I was essentially making coleslaw too. Not posh coleslaw, not even an exotic Asian-ish one. Is there such a thing as a middle class coleslaw? I think I've just made it. But in good news, this is a coleslaw that transcends all barriers. Young, old, rich, poor, we can all eat and enjoy with impunity. But if you even think of putting tinned pineapple in it you deserve to choke on each mouthful.

So good to eat, so hard to make look good to eat!

Middle class coleslaw
This is the sort of thing you whip up in 10 minutes while wearing your running kit and making increasingly firm requests to your daughter to get out of the bath so you can get into it. Quantities are approximate - this much makes enough for four. Any leftovers are good in a lunchbox the next day.

1/4 of a cabbage - Savoy if you're posh, ordinary if not, shredded
2 carrots, peeled, then grated
2 ribs of celery, destringed, then finely chopped
100g tasty cheddar, grated
1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)

For the dressing:
1 clove garlic, mashed to a paste with a pinch of salt
2 tsp Dijon mustard
a good pinch of sugar
4 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
8 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Make the dressing first. Put the smashed garlic, mustard, sugar and vinegar in a screw top jar. Screw on the lid and shake well. Add the oil, reattach the lid and shake again until emulsified. Taste - add a little more oil or vinegar to suit. It should be slightly on the sharp side to balance out the cheese.
Put the cabbage, carrot, celery and cheese in a salad bowl and toss together to mix. Sprinkle over the caraway seeds, if using, then pour over two-thirds of the dressing. Toss well, adding more dressing if necessary. Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate until needed.

Are you a food snob? Does it get you into trouble?

Spinach and garlic hummus

On Friday a master gardener is coming to visit. I have asked her not to be shocked and horrified by the state of my garden, but I've since realised that I am constantly shocked and horrified by it, so it's unfair to expect her not to be. At least the landslide in the back garden is a talking point; the less said about the neglected state of what we call 'the allotment' the better. But, as I discovered in the weekend, there are things growing down there where the wild things are. I have terraces of parsley, proud rows of rainbow chard and a transplanted bay tree (which would not have survived the slip if it hadn't been moved). But before I discovered these things I found a big bag of baby spinach in the fridge that needed to be used before I could harvest our greens in good conscience. This is what I did with it.

Spinach and garlic hummus
If your children - or other members of your household - are resistant to eating their greens, this may convert them. If it doesn't, then there's all the more for you. I ended up throwing in some parsley, because we have it in such abundance at the moment we could start selling it at the market. Actually, there's an idea...

2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
7-8 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
a pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
100g baby spinach (most of one of those bags you get from the supermarket)
salt and pepper
a couple of juicy lemons
a couple of handfuls of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

Put two tablespoons of the olive oil in a high-sided frying pan and place it over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until just beginning to turn golden. Tip in the chilli flakes, the spinach and the chickpeas and saute for a couple of minutes, until the spinach wilts and the chickpeas colour slightly. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, along with the juice of one lemon, five tablespoons of olive oil, a good pinch of salt, some black pepper and the parsley. Whiz, stopping to scrape down the sides of the processor as necessary. Taste and add more oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper if needed. Scrape into a bowl and drizzle with oil before serving. Store any leftover in the fridge, well covered, for a couple of days.

Throwing in the parsley also means this hummus makes the cut for Lavender and Lovage's Cooking With Herbs challenge (you can read more about that here). If your garden is looking a little bare and you need any encouragement to get out in it, watch this. I can't wait to see it.

Beetroot, caraway, fennel and feta

I've just been looking through my photo files and realised there are a lot of beetroot recipes in my blog. I hope I'm not boring you. If you don't like beetroot, look away now. But if you do - and you recognise the allure of finding lovely fresh beetroots with leaves attached at the market, plus the fact that with a couple of beetroots in the fridge you can make a perfectly good salad when it seems there's nothing to eat - then read on.

Beetroot, caraway, fennel and feta salad

If it wasn't for the shirt-staining potential of this vibrant number it would make the perfect al-desko lunch. It's got crunch, fresh flavours and nuggets of salty, creamy feta.

500g fresh beetroot (two medium beetroots)

100g feta, diced

1 Tbsp caraway seeds, lightly toasted

1 Tbsp fennel seeds, lightly toasted

1/2 cup baby gherkins, sliced

juice of 1 orange and juice of 1 lemon

2-3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil

Shred the beetroot (doing it in a food processor is SO much easier than struggling with a grater) and put in a bowl with the gherkins and half the seeds. Shake the orange juice and oil together, taste and add a little lemon juice for sharpness. Toss through the beetroot. Just before serving, top the salad with the feta and sprinkle over the remaining seeds. Drizzle with a little more oil and serve. Makes enough for two as a lunch salad or more as a side.

What's your favourite thing to do with beetroot?

Elizabeth David's potato bread

"Any human being possessed of sufficient gumption to track down a source of fresh yeast - it isn't all that rare - and collected enough to remember to buy at the same time a pound or two of plain flour, get it home, taking a mixing bowl and a measuring jug from the cupboard, and read a few simple instructions can make a decent loaf of bread."

So wrote Elizabeth David in Queen magazine in 1968, railing against the dearth of 'decent bread' then available for sale in England. For the most part, I agree with her about breadmaking being simple and enjoyable - which was why I was so disappointed when her Potato Bread didn't turn out so well.

Elizabeth David's potato bread

Bread is the theme for this month's Random Recipes challenge and after a few off-piste experiments of my own lately (honestly, beetroot bread IS really good), I was thrilled to land on 'At Elizabeth David's Table' when randomly selecting the recipe. This is a really beautiful book, compiled by Jill Norman (David's long-time editor), a kind of Technicolour dreamcoat version of the original humble paperbacks.

However, I think the recipe for potato bread needs a little tweaking because it's almost inedibly salty. (I'm sorry, Mrs David, but it is!) Being an obedient follower of both Elizabeth David and Dom of Belleau Kitchen, I stuck to the recipe very faithfully, but next time I'd halve the salt.


I won't try to ape Elizabeth David's inimitable recipe-writing style here, but here are the basics. She uses "a minimum of 20g salt" - I suggest 2 tsp is ample. Saltiness aside, it's lovely bread.

125g mashed potato (about 1 medium potato), warm and dry
500g strong white flour
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
20g salt
150ml warm water (use the potato cooking water, if you remember)
150ml warm milk

Put the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl (or the bowl of a freestanding mixer). Add the potato, rubbing it in as if it were butter. Alternatively, use the paddle attachment on your mixer. Add the warm milk and water and mix well, then, knead until soft and springy (or use the dough hook). Grease the bowl with a little oil, then return the dough to it. Cover with a teatowel and leave in a warm place to prove until nearly doubled (David says this will take 'rather longer' than usual, possibly because the salt is doing its best to slow down the yeast).
Knock the dough back and knead lightly, then shape and put into a well-greased 1.5 litre loaf tin. Cover again with a damp cloth and let rise until the dough reaches the top of the tin (about 30-40 minutes).
Bake at 220C for about 40 minutes, 'taking care not to let the crust get too browned or hard'.

Are you an Elizabeth David fan? Which is your favourite of her books?

Shocking pink beetroot bread

Do not adjust your screen: this bread really is THAT pink. I've been having a little bit of fun in the last couple of weeks, experimenting with adding vegetable purees to bread dough. I told the Small Girl I was going to do a magic trick and waved my 'wand' (a wooden spoon) over the teatowel-wrapped loaf while chanting the following:

Ala kazam, ala kajink

Make this bread purple-y pink!

As you can see, it worked a treat. Unfortunately she wasn't that keen on eating it - and I admit, the colour is pretty arresting - but the bread is lovely. Here's how to play the same trick at your house.

Beetroot bread
Last year when I interviewed the lovely Ruth Pretty for work she showed me her prized collection of Time-Life 'Foods of the World' cookbooks and recommended that I look out for them. I think she cast a good spell over me, because I went through a particularly good period of finding gems in charity shops or on Trade Me immediately afterwards. One was a Time-Life Bread book, sadly not from the same edition as Ruth's, but edited by Richard Olney and absolutely loaded with amazing recipes and bread knowledge. There's a recipe dating from 1654 in the book that uses pumpkin, which inspired me to try beetroot. The 1654 recipe uses a lot of yeast and lets the bread rise for hours - I just adapted my normal recipe and it worked out fine. This makes a very springy, soft loaf. The beetroot taste is discernable, but not as shocking as the colour might suggest. A tablespoon of fennel seeds would be a nice addition, especially if you're going to eat the bread with salmon and cream cheese.

500g beetroot, topped, tailed and halved
500g strong white flour
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
60-90ml warm water

Prepare the beetroot first. Boil it for 20-30 minutes, until easily pierced with a knife. Drain, then puree in a food processor or with a stick blender. Set aside to cool. You can do this well in advance, but the puree should be at room temperature when it comes to making the bread.
Mix the flour, yeast and salt together in a large bowl, then stir in the beetroot. Mix well, adding a little water, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Lightly oil the worksurface, then tip the dough out onto it. Pick up one side of the dough, stretch it up, then bring it down again on top of itself. Repeat from the opposite corner. Do this another three times, then scrape the dough from your hands and walk away. Leave the dough to rest for 10 minutes, then come back and repeat the pick up and stretch process again. Then leave it again for 10 minutes. Do this process once more, then scoop the dough into a well-oiled large bowl. Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until nearly doubled.
Heat the oven to 200C. Tip the dough out onto the bench and knock back gently, pressing it out into a rectangle. Roll this up into a large baguette-sort of shape, or shape to fit a large loaf tin. Leave on a lined tray (or in an oiled tin) for 25 minutes, then bake for 30-35 minutes. Tip onto a rack to cool completely before slicing.

Random recipe: Feta + radish salad

I'm always amused at the ways Dom of Belleau Kitchen comes up with to entice people into joining his Random Recipes challenge each month. For April he's decided to enlist the help of an interactive 'thingummydoodah' to make the process simpler (because nothing is more tedious - or frightening - than counting your cookbooks, right?)

For once the gods of Random Recipes smiled upon me and the thingummydoodah chose Fiona Beckett's Cheese Course. There are no prizes for guessing the focus of this lovely book, which looks at wine and cheese matching (or whisky and cheese matching, if that's your thing), designing cheese boards and choosing cheeses for entertaining, along with a generous handful of recipes.

 It's not exactly spring in New Zealand at the moment (though it is unseasonably warm and it is definitely raining a lot) so I was really hopeful that the book would fall open at Fiona's delicious macaroni cheese recipe (with crispy wafers of Parmesan scattered throughout so no one misses out on the crunchy bits). But as we eat a lot of feta, cucumber and olives in our house, landing on this recipe was surely a sign from the cheese gods.

Feta, cucumber and mint spring salad
Fiona says this recipe comes from London restaurant Ransome's Dock, which in turn adapted it from a dish at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. She's given me her kind permission to reproduce it here. Don't quote me on this but if you're on Dr Michael Mosley's 5:2 diet, it strikes me that this salad offers quite a lot of bang for your calorie buck.

2 mini cucumbers (or about half a telegraph cucumber)
6 radishes
2 handfuls of rocket
a small handful of fresh mint leaves, finely sliced
150g feta, broken into small pieces
10-15 small black olives

Dressing:
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
a squeeze of lemon juice
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To make the dressing, put all ingredients in a lidded jar and shake until well combined.
Cut the cucumbers in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds with the tip of a teaspoon. Slice lengthways, using a mandoline or vegetable peeler, until you have a pile of wafer-thin slices. Slice the radishes thinly on the diagonal.
Put the cucumber, radishes, mint and rocket in a bowl and toss together with the dressing. Add the feta and toss lightly again, then scatter over the olives. Divide the salad between two plates and serve with crusty bread. Serves two as a light lunch.

Random recipe #25: Bermuda Salad

I felt very old last week. First, I saw a group of new university students moving into their hostel accommodation and realised I looked like one of their mothers. Second, I got out of bed and put my neck out. Third, I saw several copies of Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook in charity shops.

She was more hippy than hipster, but Mollie Katzen ruled the vegetarian school of eating in the late 1970s and 80s. She was part of a collective (it was the 70s, remember?) who ran a restaurant in Ithaca, New York devoted to good, wholesome food. The hand-lettered Moosewood Cookbook, first published in 1973, reflected that ethos (instead of a table of contents it has a 'table of contentment') and went on to become one of the 10 best-selling cookbooks of all time, according to the New York Times. The food, though a little dated in parts, is not unlike that in Ottolenghi's Plenty, so if you see a copy in a charity shop, snap it up.

Moosewood Bermuda Salad
All that said, I felt a bit nervous when my hand fell on the book's cracked spine when I was searching for a contender for February's Random Recipe challenge. I thought of some of the book's less appealing recipes, like Stuffed Cabbage or White Rabbit Salad (cottage cheese, apples, seeds) and wondered how I would sell those to my dining companions. In the end though, the benign gods of Random Recipes - or at least the beatific Dom of Belleau Kitchen - smiled upon me and we ended up with this gem. It looks a bit messy, but it tastes delicious. Don't tell Mollie's crew but we ate it with a roast chicken and it was a very happy match.

125ml apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
lots of freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
125ml extra virgin olive oil
500g green beans, topped and tailed
2 red onions, thinly sliced
1 cup grated cheese
two handfuls fresh parsley, finely chopped

Put the vinegar, salt and pepper and garlic in a large bowl (the serving bowl, to cut down on dishes) and stir well. Whisk in the olive oil. Add the sliced onion and set aside.
Steam the beans until just tender. Drain, then add to the marinade. Stir well and let cool, then cover and refrigerate for at least three hours before serving.
Ten minutes before you're ready to eat, take the salad out of the fridge. Toss through the parsley and grated cheese just before serving. Serves four.

The instructions in the book are very explicit: "This is a COLOR SALAD. Don't substitute white onions or cheese or you'll lose the scheme. Okay?" You're also supposed to serve it on a bed of red cabbage leaves for added wow factor. I didn't. As for the cheese, the book specifies colby (ugh!) but we used tasty cheddar. Feta or Parmesan would be good too. The final instruction is to "Garnish Lavishly" with eggs, tomatoes, olives, sprouts, lemon slices or orange slices. You can take a book out of the 1970s, but you can't take the 1970s out of the book.

Do you have the Moosewood Cookbook? Do you still use it?

Treat me: Instant biscuits

I won't bore you with the details but I have felt very addled this week. Maybe it's been the heat. Maybe it's because in the last few days our household was knocked sideways by sickness: one of us was sick, one of us was sick of work and one of us was sick of doing everything. Harrumph.
Anyway, I started making some biscuits one night and accidentally over-softened the butter to the point where it turned to a golden pool in the bottom of the bowl, a bit like the tiger in Little Black Sambo. Furious with myself, I decided to proceed anyway and cheered myself up immensely by realising that it is entirely possible to make really, really good cookies really quickly this way. Result!

Instant Cookies
The curious thing about these biscuits is that although they are extremely quick to make, they disappear almost as fast. Why is that, do you think? Use whatever dried fruit combination you have to hand, though I must recommend glace cherries for that retro touch. I'm now wondering if you could speed up the process even further and use oil instead of butter... does someone want to try it out for me?

150g butter
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup almonds, roughly chopped
1/2 cup glace cherries, halved (or quartered, if they are especially plump)
1/2 cup dried apricots, diced
1/4 cup mixed peel
finely grated zest of one lemon

Heat the oven to 180C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
Melt the butter in a large pot. Add the sugar and remove from the heat.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the butter mixture and stir well, then add the nuts, fruit and lemon zest.
Roll tablespoons of the mixture into balls and place on the prepared baking trays, leaving a little room for spreading.
Bake for 15-18 minutes, until golden. Leave on the trays to cool for five minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container when cold. Makes about 18.

Have a great weekend, everyone x

Parmigiano and prosciutto

This might sound strange, given I earn my living by tapping away at a keyboard, but one of my resolutions for 2013 is to spend less time online. It's so easy now to get caught in the interweb that some days I feel I spend more time interacting with virtual life than the real thing. That doesn't mean I'll be giving up entirely - I mean, I have this blog to feed, delectable things like this to marvel at and a shoe habit to maintain - but I want to spend more time doing things that don't require a broadband connection. Pottering about in the kitchen with friends over the holidays was a good reminder of the benefits of actual reality.

Parmigiano e prosciutto alla Bess
This was one of the things lovely Bess whipped up for our New Year's Eve feast. Her brother, a chef who divides his time between Martha's Vineyard and New Zealand, taught it to her and in an ideal world, I'd be at your place making it for you. Instead, invite someone over to your place and show them how to make it.

a small block of Parmigiano Reggiano (or best local equivalent)
a packet of prosciutto (or best local equivalent)
extra virgin olive oil (I have been using this delicious fennel-infused Wairarapa oil)

Lay the slices of prosciutto on a flat plate. Grate over the cheese, then drizzle with the oil. Serve with glasses of prosecco (or best local equivalent). Cheers!

What foodie trick have you learned in 'real life' lately?

Easy honey bread

Have you resolved to be more organised in 2013? Me too. Well, sort of. I like to think I am easing into things (which is why it has taken me until January 7 to write my first post for the year). I've decided my style of organisation is going to be all about Doing Things In Advance. I'm not sure how that's going to roll with my life's general theme of Doing Things At The Last Minute, but I have found a bread recipe that seems to encapsulate both.

Easy honey bread
If you made a resolution to make more bread in 2013 - or you want to encourage someone else in your household to make it - this is a good place to start. There's no kneading or complicated rising procedures involved, just a bit of planning, because you need to start this the day before you want to eat it. You can do that, can't you? Use the most flavoursome honey you can as it really makes a difference.

For the sponge:
120g bread flour
1/2 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp honey
150ml warm water

To add the next day:
350g bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast
250ml warm water
3 Tbsp olive oil

Put the flour and yeast in a large bowl. Dissolve the honey in the warm water, then stir into the flour until well mixed. Cover with plastic and leave overnight or for at least eight hours.
The next day, add the flour, salt and yeast to the mixture and stir well. Mix the oil and water together and add, stirring until combined. Cover again and let rise until tripled in volume (about two hours).
Line a baking tray with baking paper and dust with flour. Turn the dough out onto the tray and dust the top with flour. Let rise again, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Bake at 220C for 15-20 minutes, until golden.
This is best eaten hot out of the oven, but it's also good toasted the next day, topped with feta, honey and lots of black pepper.

How are your resolutions going so far?

Random recipes: Fields Of Greens

In these days of wine and Roses* eating proper food can seem like a real luxury. It was with some relief then that I pulled Fields Of Greens from my bookshelf for December's Random Recipes.

We were supposed to select a recipe at random from cookbooks received last Christmas but I didn't get any (sob!) - but I remembered getting Fields Of Greens for Christmas about 17 years ago. The book, written by Annie Somerville, is a cornucopia of recipes from the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San Francisco Bay and focuses heavily on produce grown at its adjacent Green Gulch Farm. The amazing thing about is that the recipes haven't dated at all and the eat seasonal, eat local ethos is probably much more fashionable and mainstream now than it was then.

My copy, scarred by being left on an element, naturally falls open at page 314 where there are detailed instructions for making an organic sourdough starter. But the week before Christmas is no time to be nurturing a new life, so I flipped through until I found something more seasonally appropriate. As it turns out, it couldn't have been better.

Grilled New Potato Salad with Cherry Tomatoes, Summer Beans and Basil
Potato salads are high on my list of foods to avoid, thanks to the disgusting ones we had at school. I've rarely found one I liked, except the baked potato one in Forever Summer, but this one is a keeper. I didn't grill the potatoes, discovered at the last minute that we were out of beans and had hardly any basil, but it was still delicious. I think it would be perfect with cold ham on Boxing Day - it's substantial but not stodgy and full of appropriately festive colours.
The recipe below is the way I made it - to do it the Greens way you grill the potatoes after roasting them.

800g-1kg new potatoes, halved lengthways
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
250g green beans, topped and tailed
250g cherry tomatoes, halved (unless they are tiny)
a handful or two of salad greens (something crunchy, like baby cos, and peppery, like rocket)
a good handful of black olives, stoned
handful of basil leaves

Vinaigrette
2 Tbsp Champagne vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)
6 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, crushed

Heat the oven to 200C. Put the potatoes on a baking tray and drizzle with the olive oil, then season with salt and pepper. Bake for about 35 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are golden and cooked through. Set aside to cool.
Blanch the beans in boiling salted water, then refresh under cold water and drain well.
Make the vinaigrette - put the garlic, vinegar and salt in a small screwtop jar and shake well, then add the oil and shake again. Taste and adjust sharpness as necessary.
Put the potatoes, tomatoes, beans, olives and vinaigrette in a bowl and toss gently. Arrange the salad greens on a serving platter and let the vegetable mixture tumble artistically on top. Scatter with the basil leaves and serve. Serves four.

What books are on your Christmas wishlist this year?

 
* I haven't really been eating Roses, I promise. But is it just me or is there a lot of chocolate around at the moment?

Random recipes #22 : Picnic Eggs

After the horror that was October's Random Recipe, I was a bit wary of taking part this month. But considering we were having a quiet weekend at home (apart from shrieking at Downton Abbey), I figured I could cope with another disaster. Then I opened page 38 of '250 Ways To Serve Eggs' - sample recipes: Egg And Liver Ring, Egg And Liver Salad, Pickled Eggs - and nearly passed out.

This book is one of my most recent acquisitions and, dodgy recipes aside, I am very proud of it. I bought it, along with its 23 companion volumes, for a dollar (thanks, Trade Me!) about two months ago. These books are edited by the Culinary Arts Institute and they are a fantastic snapshot of American food culture in the 1960s and 70s. There's not even a whiff of social change in these pages - it's all about ways to show "the alert homemaker" how she can "add interest and delight to the family menu". Some of the recipes are hideous - Body Building Recipes For Children is especially revolting - but there are some surprisingly good things too. Like this recipe for Picnic Eggs, which I turned to after I recovered from reading p38.

Picnic Eggs
Did you know that if you Google 'how to boil an egg' nearly 11 million results come up? How did people learn these things before the internet, do you think? I wish the cooks at my high school had been able to access it - the hardboiled eggs they made were cooked for so long the yolks had turned to dusty grey powder and the whites nearly bounced.
There's a great method here - from a Le Cordon Bleu chef, no less - but his egg still looks a little dry for my liking. I used a Ruth Pretty method when cooking these eggs - bring a pot of water to the boil, add salt, then add the eggs, one at a time. Lower the heat so the water isn't boiling so ferociously, then cook for eight minutes exactly. Drain the eggs, bash the shells a bit in the pot and leave under cold running water until cool enough to handle so you can shell them. This gives you eggs with perfectly soft-but-not-runny yolks.

4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved lengthways
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dry mustard
a pinch of cayenne pepper (Togarashi Shimchi would be nice here too)
1 tsp vinegar
1 Tbsp very soft butter

Gently remove the yolks from the eggs and put them, along with all the other ingredients, in a small bowl. Mash together until smooth, then spoon this mixture back into the whites. Either serve immediately, or, if going on a picnic, press the halves back together and wrap carefully in greaseproof paper (twist each end so it looks like a giant sweet). Coriander flowers look sweet (and taste good) as a decorative touch.

For more about Random Recipes, you need to see the nice man at Belleau Kitchen. For more fun with eggs, you can have a bit of fun playing spot the difference between a boiled egg and Heston Blumenthal.

How do you cook boiled eggs? And have you ever seen volume 25 of the Culinary Arts Institute series, 500 Ways With Cocktails? I am desperate to complete my set...

Blue cheese, pear & walnut scrolls

Last week I struggled to get motivated in the kitchen. I looked at cookbooks, I read blogs, I stood on a chair and peered into the recesses of the pantry and still nothing worked. Then, on Friday morning, while I pushed the Small Girl on a swing in the sunshine and made that weird small talk you make with other parents at playgrounds, I had a flash of inspiration. We raced home - as fast as you can race with a three-year-old who has an elastic concept of 'this is the last swing, ok?' - and by afternoon tea time these delicious scrolls were cooling on the windowsill.

Blue cheese, pear and walnut scrolls
Don't be put off by the instructions here - I've specified the 'fold and leave it' method of kneading but you can do it whatever what you like. I've come to think of this way of kneading as the Pilates of breadmaking. Vigorous kneading is a bit like step aerobics - you get all sweaty and red-faced - where upon this method achieves the same, if not better results by using muscles you didn't know you had. Or something like that. Perhaps it's too early in the morning to be mixing bread and exercise metaphors.

400g strong white flour
100g wholemeal flour
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
50g butter
150ml milk
300ml hot water

For the filling:
2 ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced
150g firm blue cheese, diced
150g walnuts, broken into quarters

1 egg mixed with 1Tbsp water - for egg wash

Put the flours, yeast, salt and sugar in a large bowl and stir well. Grate in the butter and rub through with your fingers. Mix the milk and hot water together - it should be tepid - and pour in to the dry ingredients. Mix well to a soft, sticky dough, then cover and let sit for 10 minutes.
Tip the dough onto a lightly oiled worksurface and fold it in on itself, one corner at a time. Cover with the upturned bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. Repeat this twice more, then wash and dry the bowl before greasing it with a little oil. Return the dough to it, cover with plastic and let rise for about 80 minutes.
Don't clean the worksurface, you'll need it later.
Grease a 30cm round cake tin and heat the oven to 200C.
When the dough has risen, tip it out onto the worksurface and press it out to a rectangle about 1.5cm thick. Scatter over the pear, blue cheese and walnuts, then roll up tightly, as if making a Swiss roll or sushi. Slice into rings about 2.5cm thick - you should get about eight or nine - and place them in the tin, allowing about a finger space between each one. Set aside for 30 minutes to rise, then brush gently with the egg wash. Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the scrolls are golden and your house smells wonderful.

This is my entry for November's #TwelveLoaves project, a baking challenge run by Lora at Cake Duchess. This month is all about baking with apples and pears - and I think apples and another cheese would work equally well in this bread. Apples and feta, maybe? Pear and Parmesan?