Nettles are packed full of healthiness, they grow everywhere (you could say like weeds…) and yet I’ve still not managed to get into cooking them myself despite being told years ago how good they are and how easy they are to cook with. This recipe looks really simple, so I’m thinking it must be a good one for anyone looking for an introduction to wild food.

It is the best time for nettles in the UK right NOW. For the best nettles pick the young fresh green tips of the plant. Be careful not to pick from anywhere that is likely to have been sprayed with chemicals and pick as far from paths as possible (to avoid dog pee). I’m slightly gutted I can’t do this myself this year, so can someone please make it for me and let me know how it is?…

Nettle Pesto

Nettles
Mint (if you’ve got it, or other herbs, or none)
Garlic
Wholemeal bread
Cheddar
Oil

Pick a colander full of young nettle tops (you’ll need gloves). Rinse them, then plunge them into boiling water for one minute to blanch them and take the sting out of them. As soon as the minute’s up, tip them back into the colander (keep the water, it’s full of goodness and can be drunk like a tisane) and run under the cold tap to stop them cooking. When they’re cold, squeeze out the water.

Put a slice of wholemeal bread into the food processor. Add a chunk of cheese, a peeled clove of garlic and the nettles and a little mint. Blitz, then add oil in a stream. I used rapeseed oil. Keep tasting, adjusting the amounts. Hard to say how much oil, as it depends on what you are going to do with the sauce.

Sounds good doesn’t it? There’s so many other things they could be used in too. Generally you cook them in the same way as, and they taste like, spinach. So I’m thinking anything which is good with spinach must be good with nettles – quiche, pasta, omelettes, pies, on pizza, or just cooked simply with garlic. Mmm. You’ve got to give it a go! For more adventurous ’superfood’ addicts  go for a banana and nettle smoothie, the raw hit will give you maximum vitamin goodness.

Last week when I went to do my shopping at K+N in Birkenhead (top veg shop!) I saw they had a couple of crates of English tomatoes for sale at £2.99 each. £2.99!! The box was over 5kg! So that’s less than 60p per kg or about £1 less per kg than normal price. I knew it was good, but I’d never normally get through so many before they went squidgy.  And then a flash of inspiration, I remembered seeing Hugh making tomato sauce for the year from his home grown yearly glut and decided this was my chance to do the same (shame they weren’t home grown though).

This is really good. K+N probably buy from wholesale market in Liverpool, which I assume works a bit like a normal market, only bigger. Often at the end of the day you’ll get people practically giving things away, and they pass this on to their customers. Reminds me of I was walking through Kirkgate Market in Leeds a couple of weeks ago and a guy was shouting “Bag of bananas a pound! As many bananas as you can fit in a carrier bag a pound!” He had a hoard of ladies surrounding him grabbing at bananas and stuffing them into bags! So funny. I love the atmosphere in a market. Everyone shouting, people everywhere, so much going on. Imagine the staff of Tesco stood at the end of the aisle passionately trying to get you to buy their over priced ready meals and toilet fresheners. Nah, never going to happen really is it?

Obviously the bananas were unlikely to be fair trade nor would they or my tomatoes have been organic, but there is something about buying produce directly from a person with their own shop or stall that to some extent counterbalances these concerns. Although the ideal would be to shop by these principles all the time, it is not always practical, or as much fun! I remember being told as a kid “Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face”  more often than I imagine could have been necessary and it has obviously sunk in. I wonder why people kept saying this to me? What was I up to? Must have been up to no good anyway. Maybe I just remember it vividly as it’s really quite a gruesome thing to be saying to a small child. I was probably traumatised. Anyway what I’m trying to say is there is a lot to worry about when choosing what food to buy (or at least I find there is, more and more all the time) and you’d drive yourself (and other people) crazy and be likely to burn out and give up if you tried to stick rigidly to your principles all the time.

Well that went off on a bit of a tangent I wasn’t expecting! Back to what I was saying. So I’d seen Hugh making tomato sauce and decided I’d do the same. The result was fantastic! Such a sweet rich sauce! The 5kg of tomatoes converted into about 2.5 litres of tomato sauce which I now have handily stashed away in the freezer for any recipe calling for a tomato based sauce. Actually it didn’t all make it to the freezer, we had some just as it was on pasta (YUM!) and another portion was used in a sweet potato, marrow and lentil stew which we had with dumplings (more about these another time – so good they deserve their own post!).

The sauce was so simple to make, I hardly needed to add anything to the tomatoes as the roasting process really brought out the flavours. When I make tomato sauce for pasta with chopped tinned tomatoes I’d normally add a bit of sugar and lemon juice, but after the roasting these really didn’t need it, they were delicious as they were. I also decided not to add any herbs as that way I could decide when I used the sauce in later recipes what should go in then. But if you decide to go for herbs from the start you can sprinkle them over while roasting the tomatoes. You could also miss the onions out if you fancied thinking about them later too.

Rich Roast Tomato Sauce

• tomatoes
• garlic
• onions
• black olives, roughly chopped
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• S+P

1. Put out all the tomatoes you have on baking trays and splash over olive oil, balsamic and dot around big chunks or whole pieces of garlic, how many will vary to taste, I used 10 (!) or so with my 5kg of tomatoes. If in doubt put more than you think, the flavour of the garlic mellows with roasting and the whole cloves probably won’t end up in the final sauce anyway so don’t panic. Sprinkle with lots of S+P.
2. Pop the tomatoes in the oven at a medium heat and cook until they are breaking down and starting to brown in places, will be about 40 minutes or so.
3. Meanwhile finely chop some onions (I used 2 normal and 1 red) and sweat the gently with a little oil in a very large covered pan.
4. When the tomatoes are ready press through a seive (if you don’t want any seeds in the sauce) or colander with smallish holes (if you don’t mind a few seeds and want to do this bit quicker) You’ll need to stir round in the colander pressing it against the edges to get all the juice out and eventually will just be left with the skins, and maybe some chunks of garlic which you then discard.
5. Pour the tomato sauce into the pan with the onions, add the olives and leave to cook through for at least ten minutes. Season with S+P.
6. That’s it! Now just eat it as it is, or leave to cool and then bag up to go in the freezer in separate portion sized containers. Hurrah!

Here’s the garlic I put in. Andy thought I’d gone crazy and insisted on taking a photo.

An estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food waste is thrown away each year to rot in landfill. This creates a toxic sludge and gives off greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. As well as looking at how to avoid wasting food by your shopping behaviour and meal planning the harm caused by any unavoidable food waste (eg peelings, cores etc) could be reduced or even eliminated by composting.

If you have a compost bin, or wormery your food scraps are converted into a valuable resource. The food breaks down and the nutrients they contained are put back into the soil as part of a natural cycle renewing the earth. It is a potent natural fertiliser that in large scale non-organic farming is replaced by polluting oil based chemical fertilisers.

Some councils run waste food collection schemes, some with more success than others. The pilot in the area I’m living now was unfortunately abandoned and for the first few weeks we were here we ended up throwing our peelings away as I imagine most other people in the area do. It was driving me crazy! I hated the waste and felt guilty every time I opened the bin.

At some point I found out the man living next door had an allotment and it occurred to me that he would no doubt be a composter and after thinking about it for a few days ( I can be quite shy) I eventually went round, knocked on the door and asked if I could bring our scraps round there. He said yes. Hurrah! And he didn’t think I was mad or try and lock me in his attic or any of the things I was worried about. It was all good. What was I worried about?! I didn’t really think you would lock me in your attic if you read this Peter, you may think I’m a little mad though now. Hmm. Maybe I am.

So that was the wasted food issue sorted. Hurrah! Then a couple of days later I arrived home and found a bag of apples sitting on the doorstep. “Wow!” I thought, “What an amazingly quick conversion! Scraps to compost to apples in 3 days!” We’ve since had other things arrive including a huge marrow! Brilliant!

You may be thinking we seem to be getting the better end of this deal, which is exactly what I thought, so I made and took them round an apple pie to say thanks. It kind of grew enormous and exploded in the oven so it wasn’t the best looking apple pie ever, but I imagine it tasted the same. I think they must have liked it, they brought the plate back with a bag of potatoes! Now I’ll have to make them something else. The cycle continues. A bit like compost really.

This whole thing is brilliant, I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned somewhere. If you don’t currently compost you should. If you don’t have a compost bin you can get one really cheap from your council, more information here. If you don’t grow anything you should compost anyway, it’s a great way of reducing waste. It would take months or even years to fill the bin, unless you have a large family, and there are always lots of people who will happily come round and collect your compost if it does get full. If you don’t have a garden to put a composter in speak to people. There will probably be someone who lives near you that will take your food scraps. I promise they won’t think you’re weird for asking.

So, the moral of the story is talk to your neighbours, they’re probably nice and composting rules!

I’ve included a couple of recipes for the yummy things I’ve made with the vegetables from my super fast compost: Leek and Potato Soup and Stuffed Marrow. The stuffed marrow was incredibly tasty. The stuffing is quite rich, so the subtle fresh taste of the marrow is a great contrast and make it a great dish which stands up on it’s own as a main course. It would also be good as part of a spread if you had guests and were making a few things.

The Leek and Potato Soup was possibly the nicest I’ve ever made. The potatoes were really creamy, not sure what type they were but they were brilliant for this soup. Usually I’d mash the veg up a bit at the end of this soup recipe, but these didn’t need it. Enough had naturally worked their way into the soup to thicken it while still keeping some whole to make it a good chunky winter soup. Mmmm. Thanks again to Peter and Cathy for your generous gifts of veg!

Stuffed Marrow

• 1 Marrow
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 150g mushrooms finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 100g black olives, chopped
• 100g cheddar, grated
• 150g brown rice (cooked)

1. Cut the marrow into slices about 1 inch thick and then scoop out the fluffy seedy middle bit so you have a marrow ring. Arrange the marrow rings on baking trays.
2. Heat the oil in a frying pan and gently cook the onions and garlic until soft, then add cumin and coriander powder and cook for a further 2 minutes.
3. Add the mushrooms and parsley and cook for a further 5 minutes then stir in the cooked rice and chopped olives.
4. Pack the mixture into the marrow rings, top with grated cheese and put in the oven at 180c for around half an hour, or until the marrow is tender and the cheese is golden brown.

Leek and Potato Soup

• 1 oz butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 250g potatoes peeled and cut into 1.5cm cubes
• 1 large leeks, or 2 smaller ones, sliced
• 1 1/2 pints of stock
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley chopped

1. Melt the butter in a large pan and gently fry the onion until soft, approx 10-15 minutes.
2. Add the flour, stir round and leave to cook through for a minute.
3. Add the potates and leeks, cover and leave to sweat, stir occasionally to check it is not sticking. If it starts to stick just pour in a small amount of water and stir to unstick anything from the bottom.
4. After around 5 minutes add the stock. It should be just upto the top of the vegetables, you might need more or less depending on the size of leeks, potatoes etc.
5. Bring to the boil then simmer for around 20 minutes or until all the veg are tender. Add most of the parsley and stir.
6. If prefered you can mash the soup a bit at this stage, or even blend it up if you want a smooth soup. I prefer it a bit chunky.
7. Serve garnished with a bit of chopped parsley and maybe a little swirl of cream. Yum.

My new student is flying! Last week we made this amazing roast vegetable lasagne. I’d never made a roast vegetable lasagne so I was a little nervous about how it would turn out, but all went to plan and it was very tasty indeed. I’m a little worried I could be out of a job soon though, apart from putting together the recipe and a bit of advice on making sure the cheese sauce was smooth, she did the whole thing. Gonna have to do something really tricky next time or I’ll be out!

It could probably do with a bit more cheese, there wasn’t quite enough saved for over the top, I like it  when you get a nice crispy cheesy topping. It still got 8 out of 10 Andy points, so a potential 9 I recon with this adjustment.

Roast Vegetable Lasagne

• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• Olive oil
• 1 red onion, cut into chunks and separated
• 1 aubergine, cut in half and sliced
• 3 courgettes, sliced
• 1 red and 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and sliced
• 15 mushrooms, sliced
• 2 x 400g tinned tomatoes, chopped
• 2tsp paprika
• 3 tbsp oregano
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 8 lasagne sheets
• 8oz cheddar cheese, grated
• 2 oz butter
• 2 oz plain flour
• 1 pt milk
• nutmeg

1. Pre-heat oven to 190°C, Gas Mark 6. Put onions and vegetables in roasting dish, splash with olive oil, S+P bake for 20 minutes, until beginning to brown on edges. May need to do in two separate dishes as quite a lot of veg.
2. Put cooked veg in a big pan, add the tomatoes, paprika, oregano, garlic, S+P and bring to the boil. Turn to simmer and leave for 10 minutes or so while you are making the cheese sauce.
3. For the cheese sauce. Melt the butter, then stir in the flour and cook for 1 min.
4. Gradually stir in the milk, just a little at first to break the flour mix.
5. As thickens add ¾ of the cheese, and stir through until all the cheese melts. Do not allow to boil.
6. Place alternate layers of vegetables, cheese sauce and pasta sheets in an oven proof dish, finishing with a layer of pasta then cheese sauce. Grate over some nutmeg and a sprinkle of black pepper. Top with cheese and bake for 45 minutes, until golden brown.

This is something I’ve never made before but probably eaten a couple of times in the past. However I didn’t really know much about what was in it. Well it’s actually pretty simple. Basically it’s mashed potatoes and flour for the gnocchi and it’s best served with a simple tomato sauce for which you just need an onion and some garlic.

And luckily for us we have a lot of potatoes in the UK in October. Which is sort of why I chose to make this meal. It’s actually based on a recipe from a book called the Boxing Clever Cookbook.  This was produced a few years ago by some of the people involved in the EarthShare CSA scheme.

Here’s a lovely recipe for a quinoa salad I got from Scrumptious a random food blog I stumbled across while wondering what to do with the jar of quinoa that’s been sitting in the cupboard for well over a year. I’ve been a bit scared of these small grains ever since I saw them, not sure what to do with them, how to cook them, what they would taste like blah blah blah, but it turns out they’re pretty easy going little chaps and they assisted in making this very tasty, hearty but fresh tasting salad. Apparently it’s very good for you too. A ‘Super Grain’ no less. Wooo. I wonder if that’s a bit like Super Gran. There’s only one letter in it, must be. Maybe super grains turn you into Super Grans?!

Now, I said I got the recipe from a blog, but what actually happened was I’d seen it and decided I was going to make it after I’d been to the shops, then got part way through and realised I was missing several of the key ingredients, so I would say this was influenced by rather than a direct cover of the original. I’d also intended to make it with goat’s cheese rather than feta, but was quite surprised to find that the (non-organic) goats cheese was almost twice the price of the organic feta and promptly changed my mind.

Another note on the missing ingredients, the original was fairly heavily based on parsley and mint which  I tried to get from the supermarket at the end of the road. I’d already walked the half hour there and back to the other shops and it had started pouring down so I reluctantly decided to see if I could pick the herbs  when I went to get the feta.  The only fresh herb they sold was basil. In my opinion another pointer that they don’t really care about food or their customers. Grrr. Shouldn’t really be shopping there in the first place, but it’s the only place within walking distance I’ve found where you can buy organic milk, cheese, eggs etc. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, enough whittering on, it all worked out fine in the end. Maybe one day I’ll make the other too and do like a taste challenge. Here’s the recipe, thanks to Juno for the inspiration…

Quinoa, Beetroot and Feta Salad

For the salad:

• 2 beetroots peeled and cut into smallish wedges
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water
• 8 cherry tomatoes, quatered
• 3 spring onions, finely sliced
• 5 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander
• S+P
• 100g feta cheese in small cubes

For the dressing:

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp chilli powder
• 2 chunky cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp tahini
• 1 tsp English mustard

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the the beetroot in a roasting tin, add a drizzle of oive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and toss well to coat. Place in the oven and bake for about an hour or until tender right through.
2. Put the dried quinoa into a sieve and rinse well under cold running water. Now put the quinoa, water and salt into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the quinoa is fluffy and tender. Drain off any remaining water (there shouldn’t really be much/any) and leave to cool a little.
3. In the serving bowl put the tomatoes, spring onion and coriander.
4. Whisk together the dressing ingredients.
5. Now tip the warm quinoa into the salad bowl, pour over all but 2 tablespoons of the dressing and toss well to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Top with the beetroot slices and feta.
6. Shake the remaining dressing over the top of the salad.
7. Allow to stand for 30 minutes to allow the flavours to develop.
8. Serve at room temperature with hot pita bread.

It really is so easy to make and far, far tastier than the gloopy gunk that comes in tins. Years ago when I was working I used to eat tinned soup quite often and Marzena, a Polish girl who came to work with us was astounded that you could actually buy soup in tins. “Soup comes in tins?… Really?… I can’t believe it…. but why?”. At the time I thought she was bonkers, now I feel exactly the same (about the soup/tin thing, not her being bonkers. Although actually she is a bit).

Most simple soups follow the same basic idea, cook your onions off in a a little oil, or butter (nicer), add the chopped vegetables, cover to sweat for ten minutes or so, then cover with stock and leave to simmer until all veg are soft and then blitz it, maybe add a bit of cream. Lovely jubbly.

While I’m on my soup frenzy I’ll put the recipe up for anything I make that turns out to be of particular yumminess, starting with these two, sweetcorn chowder and onion soup. Sweetcorn chowder was given 9 out of 10 no less. A pretty impressive score as the critic has said he never gives a ten.

Sweetcorn Chowder

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 sticks of celery, sliced
• 8oz of potatoes, 1/2 chopped, 1/2 small cubes
• 1 large carrot, small cubes (1/2 cm or so)
• 1 x 340g tin sweetcorn
• 1 red chili, finely chopped (or to taste)
• 1 1/4 pints of water
• 1 red pepper finely chopped
• 1 green pepper finely chopped
• 75ml double cream
• S+P

• fresh coriander to garnish

1. Heat the oil and cook the onion and garlic over a low heat until golden (approx 15 mins).
2. Add the celery, half the carrot, the chopped potatoes,  half the sweetcorn, the chili, cook for two minutes then add the water and bring to boil.
3. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, then zuzz.
4. Add the chopped peppers, cubed carrot, potatoes and the rest of the sweetcorn. Simmer for 10 more minutes.
5. Stir in the double cream, add seasoning and serve garnished with chopped coriander.

Onion Soup

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 700g red onions, finely sliced
• 400g shallots, finely sliced
• 1 heaped tbsp plain flour
• 2 tsp mustard
• 2 pints veg stock
• 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 3 tbsp greek yoghurt
• S+P

• grated cheddar to garnish

1. Heat the oil and gently fry the red onions and shallots over a really low heat for about 40 minutes until golden and caramelised. Do not cook too quickly, or let burn. The sweetness will come out better the as these turn golden after slow cooking.
2. Stir in the flour and mustard and cook for a further 2 minutes before adding the stock and thyme.
3. Bring to the boil and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Pick out the thyme and allow to cool just a little before adding the yoghurt and seasoning.
4. Serve with a little cheddar grated over.

It’s a couple of months since we were there now, here is a little post about our stay at Plan-it Earth in Sancreed, which is pretty much at Land’s End in Cornwall. I think I might have mentioned it before, it’s a seven acre small holding which runs eco-education courses and has two yurts for holiday rentals. We’d gone there wwoofing, intending to stay for just three days, but ended up staying over a week. It was a really great place. We learnt loads and had a great time. As an added bonus for the first couple of days we were able to stay in this lovely yurt before the next guests arrived.

The first day there was a bit of a downpour and we spent most of the morning weeding the polytunnel, dashing out into the garden to pick artichokes and redcurrants in any dry spells. Rachel kindly suggested that due to the inclement weather we might like to do a few jobs in the house. Andy did some work on the website and I helped prepare the artichokes we’d picked, which I have decided are an evil vegetable. Spikey and tough, we spent over two hours hacking away at them to use in some kind of potato and artichoke broth type thing. It was very tasty, but you can’t really trim them down without wasting most of the vegetable which means when you eat it you end up picking the tough, half chewed bits of stalk out of your mouth and get covered in sauce.  Not a recipe I’ll be trying again. They are however delicious just cooked simlpy whole and served as a starter. Boil them for around 40 minutes then pick the leaves off individually, dip them in butter then scrape the flesh off with your teeth. The inside heart it the tastiest bit, but you’ve got to be careful to get rid of all the “choke”, another evil little treat the artichoke has hiding at it’s centre.

Summer Fruits Pudding

This was a recipe for a Delia Smith cookbook they had. I like Delia, her recipes are always good, traditional, no nonsense and work well, or they were until recently when she appears to have gone a little mad with her supermarket time saving fake food book, but nevermind, just ignore that one and you’re safe.

800g mixed summer fruits, we had redcurrrants, logan berries and strawberries, I think you can use any berries, but maybe try get something a bit sharp or it could be too sweet.

150g sugar

8 slices of nice white bread

A lightly buttered 1 1/2 pint pudding basin

Put the fruit and sugar in a pan over a medium heat for 3-5 minutes, until the sugar has melted and the juices start to run, it will look a like fruity massacre like this:

Take the fruit off the heat and line the bottom and sides of the pudding basin with the bread, take care to overlap it so there are no gaps which the fruit juices could run out of.

Pour in the fruit, apart from about a cupful to keep for sauce later, and then cover the top with bread slices too.

Put a weight on top to squash the bread down, something fairly heavy, and put it in the fridge overnight.

Just before serving tip it out onto a plate and pour over the remaining juice and serve with thick cream.

Don’t laugh, but here’s what Delia’s version looks like… maybe I need more practice. I’d cut the crusts off if I did it again.

:

I’m going to really miss the chickens. They’re so funny. The way they walk is ridiculous, and the way they run even more ridiculous. It’s as though their head is attached to their legs by a string through their body and it wobbles backwards and forwards faster the faster they go. They hear you coming out of the back door and if they’re not already there by the time you have got outside they’ll come racing across the yard sliding to a stop by your feet. Bwoooooooaaak! Can’t wait until I have some of my own.

Despite their cheeky bean eating behaviour I’ll also miss the cats. In fact I’d rather they were eating beans than their habit of bringing various animals in for us. They seem to have been brought up with great manners and like to eat them at the table. The sound of the cat eating my beans was much more enjoyable than the sound of it crunching through a mouse’s skull. Still they are very cute and seem to like hanging out with us on an evening, which is nice.

I think we’ll both be sad to leave tomorrow. We’ve had a great time, what a lovely place, and what lovely people for trusting us to look after it despite the fact the really don’t know us at all, very grateful to them we are. I couldn’t imagine that kind of thing having happened in Manchester. Anybody else in need of a friendly pair of house sitters feel free to contact us. This is my kind of job. Just pottering around doing very little for a week. Nice.

Here’s the recipe for the quiche I made last night. I was worried after an attempt some years ago that it would go horribly wrong somehow, but it was really easy and incredibly tasty. Andy was making some very strange faces and noises while he was eating it.

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Quiche

For the pastry:
6oz plain flour
3 oz butter
pinch of salt

For the filling:
1 small head broccoli
8 eggs
1/2 pint milk
100g blue cheese
150g mature cheddar
black pepper

Mix all pastry the ingredients together, rubbing the flour into the butter until it is like fine breadcrumbs. Then add a tablespoon of water and mix it together. Add a tiny amount more water if necessary to bring it together. Not too much or it will go sticky. Put this in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190.

Line 25cm quiche dish with pastry. Line the pastry with silver foil and fill with baking beans. Bake for 20 minutes covered up , then remove the foil and bake for another 5 minutes.

Lower the oven to 150

Put the broccoli into boiling water for 3 minutes, drain and put in the pastry case.

Mix together the eggs crumbled or grated cheese, milk and pepper and pour them into the case with the broccoli.

Bake on the bottom shelf of the oven for 35 minutes until golden brown. The quiche will begin to rise up a little and should feel fairly solid to the middle. Well not like rock hard, just not sloppy eggs.

I realised it’s been a while since I actually wrote a recipe on here, and that being one of the main reasons for the blog I thought it was time I did. So here’s a run down of what we had for dinner last night, using the things bought from the market that morning which I’d written about yesterday and also a few eggs from the chickens in the yard. Thank you chickens.

On the menu last night was:

• Pan con Tomate
• Tortilla
• Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms with Roasted Garlic
• Beetroot and Broad Bean Salad

Pan con Tomate

Really simple, just relies on good quality ingredients. Get some really nice thinly sliced bread, ciabatta, or a baguette type thing is good, ours was homemade (woo, get you). Toast the slices of bread. As you eat them rub the surface all over with a raw garlic clove, then drizzle with virgin olive oil, then rub with really ripe juicy tomato. Then eat it. This is one of my favourite things to do with a meal like this. We’d tried it in Spain (surprise) last year and have been hooked since.

Tortilla

This takes a while, maybe even allow about an hour or more altogether. Since I have nothing to do (woop!) this is fine by me. Even when I was working it was still well worth it. I prefer to cook the tortilla even slower than is probably really necessary as I’m sure it makes things taste nicer. Also this time I was cooking on a Rayburn which is definitely not a cooker for someone in a hurry. Perhaps they ought to be installed in houses throughout the country to force us into the joys of slow food.

1 onion, thinly sliced
3 potatoes, thinly sliced
6 eggs, beaten
olive oil

Heat the oil in a frying pan, not really sure how much it is, but it’s quite a bit, probably about 1/2cm on the bottom of the pan. Basically it needs to be enough to well coat the onion and potatoes and a bit more, so if you need to add extra, tip some more in.

Stir in the onion and potatoes so all are well coated in oil, put a lid on the pan and leave to cook over a low heat (erm no temperature control on my cooker as far as I could see, but it was pretty slow on one side anyway). Cooking on gas I’d put it as low as possible and let them sweat and slowly cook through, stirring round every ten mins or so for about 40 minutes. I think. I’ve never actually timed it, it may be longer. You can tell when it’s ready though as you can try a potato and if it’s cooked it’s cooked. Some little bits might stick to the bottom and onions go caramelly and a bit brown. This is good. They taste nice, just make sure you don’t let it get too stuck, scrape around when you stir.

Pour in the eggs. Again keep the heat low. Now you just leave it. The eggs will cook through, hopefully without burning and you don’t stir anymore from now. I always end up pushing the eggs away from sides a little bit as I just can’t leave it alone. You don’t need the lid on anymore.

After some time (20 minutes?) you will see that it looks as though the cookedness of the eggs is near the top. The whole thing will be quite firm all the way through, with just the top needing a little a little heat to brown it off. At this point I would usually do some fancy two plate manouver to flip the tortilla and return it to it’s pan to be cooked on the other side. This time however I was a little worried about the non non-stickness of the pan and also thought I might throw egg all over the kitchen, which isn’t mine, so just popped it in the oven for a little bit. You could also probably just put it under the grill for a few minutes too, sure that would be fine. And that’s it.

This makes a huge tortilla, which serves about 6 people, but Andy ate all of it that night. Only joking. We kept the rest in the fridge which you can then have for breakfast, or lunch as I did. Saving the effort of cooking another meal or 3. So really it doesn’t take that long. 1 hour divided by 3 meals = 20 minutes. Coolio. More time for sitting in the sunshine.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms with Roasted Garlic

This is dead easy and quick to prepare. Very rich tasting. Not sure it’s that good for you, but who cares, I’m not eating it every night. This is quantities for 2 people, any more and I think you’d be sick, although you’d want to keep eating them.

8 mushrooms
Blue cheese (I used Danish, but any will do)
3 big garlic cloves, cut into thirds
Butter
Breadcrumbs
Black pepper

Pull out the stalks from the mushrooms and arrange them in an ovenproof dish.

Fill the centres with blue cheese.

Put the chopped garlic around the mushrooms with dots of butter.

Sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and black pepper.

Put it in the oven at about 220 for about 25 minutes until breadcrumbs start to brown.

This was really really nice. As well as the mushrooms being mega, maybe the best bit is the scrapings of breadcrumbs and roasted garlic from around the dish. Mmm mmm mmm.

Beetroot and Broad Bean Salad

For some reason I’d been led to believe that cooking beetroot was a difficult task and that the only possible way to eat them was from a big jar of pickled vinegariness. For that reason I’ve not really eaten them since I was about 12 until recently when I discovered it was all lies. Beetroot are easy to cook and taste so much nicer cooked this way than pickled. You can even just roast them like a potato. It’s crazy. Who’d have thought it. You can roast a vegetable other than a potato. Wow.

1 beetroot per person, peeled and cut into chunks
Broad beans
A hard cheese, I used the Cornish Yarg we’d just bought but I think something like pecorino might be better
Olive oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Lettuce leaves

Prepare the beetroot and put it in a pan with about a tablespoon of oil and a couple of balsamic vinegar and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and let it boil fairly rapidly until cooked and the liquid is reduced. This will take about 40 minutes. You may need the lid on to steam the beetroot of the liquid is going down too quick, or take it off if you need it to reduce more. Eventually all you want to be left with is cooked beetroot and a little thick tasty sweet juice.

The broadbeans need podding, dropping into boiling water for 2 minutes and then shelling. They don’t then need to be eaten by a cat, as half of mine were. I couldn’t believe it. Shelling broadbeans is such a mission I get Andy to do it. The salad was nearly ready to be put together, I’d turned my back for two minutes and the cat was on the table gobbling them down. AND when it saw me see it instead of stopping it started eating faster so it could eat as many as possible before I got close enough to shoo it away! And then after dinner the cat acts all sweet and meows and wants to curl up and sleep on your knee so you think it’s so cute you forgive it. Humph. Very cunning.

Anyway, back to the recipe. When the beetroot is cooked and the beans are out of their shells, arrange the lettuce on a plate, pile the warm beetroot on top, lay thin slices of cheese across (however much you like) and top with the broad beans (or what’s left of them if you have a cat. Grrr). You can drizzle any remaining juice from the beetroot over the salad.

The Beetroot and Broad Bean Salad (with less than the intended quantities of beans):

The cat that ate the beans lounging on my knee after dinner: