Random recipe: Tofu mayonnaise

You know what gets me about fancy houses in interiors magazines? They never, ever, have anything stuck to their fridges. Oh, sure, there might be some artful magnetic chalkboard,  or a designer decal, but there are never any library book notices, or 'art' or torn-out recipes. They are neat, tidy - and soulless.

By contrast, the outside of my fridge is extremely busy (and a direct reflection of the chaos inside). Magnetic newspaper headlines, school notices, drawings, business cards for builders and a motley collection of recipes ripped from newspapers or magazines. I was just about to add another one to the pile last week when I remembered this month's Random Recipes, which celebrates those torn-out clippings. So instead of consigning the recipe to the fridge door, where it would probably be lost forever, I made it that night instead. I should really do this more often.

Tofu Mayonnaise
I knew Aaron Brunet would win Masterchef in 2013 - right from the start he had that look about him. This mayonnaise recipe was from a recent newspaper column he wrote about the pleasures of eating with your hands - in which he endorsed plate-licking. Now, I had a flatmate once who licked her plate after eating and I don't ever want to see that again, but his recipes are definitely finger-lickin' good. Aaron uses this mayo in a chicken caesar-ish wrap - I used in our Friday night fishburgers and to lie beneath some hot smoked salmon on crackers. I've now lost the clipping somewhere, but this is the recipe from memory (ish). It's dead easy, good for you and adding some fresh herbs gets rid of any tofu flavour. You should try it.

300g block silken tofu
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp Kikkoman soy sauce
salt and pepper
½ tsp pepper
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
Fresh herbs - finely chopped parsley, chives, basil (optional)

Put all ingredients, except the herbs, in a blender and blitz until smooth (I use a stick blender and a jar). Taste for seasoning and sharpness - add more salt or lemon juice as desired. If you're planning to use it all immediately, add the herbs and blitz again. Otherwise, this keeps in the fridge for a week.

Pumpkin, prune and chocolate bars

I'm sure there's a Chinese proverb about disaster being the mother of invention, or danger being the signpost to opportunity, or something like that. I'm not sure that it's often successfully applied to baking, but there's a first time for everything.

Earlier this week I stumbled upon Nicola Galloway's recipe for chocolate chickpea cookies and pretty much decided I had to make them on the spot. We got through them really quickly and I figured I could whip up something quite similar, but with pumpkin instead of chickpeas, and prunes instead of dates. So this is the result - something inspired by, but completely different to, those cookies. And it's every bit as delicious.

Pumpkin, prune and chocolate bars
These soft, slightly chewy bars are very addictive - trust me, I've consumed several in the course of writing this post. The mix of ingredients means they're a perfect fit for October's We Should Cocoa challenge, this month hosted by Hannah at Honey and Dough. The slightly random nature of how this recipe came to be also means it's a strong contender for the October edition of Random Recipes - you can find out more about the criteria for this month here.
You do need to have some cooked pumpkin lying about for this recipe - do what I do and just throw a piece in the oven the next time it's on and let it bake away untended. Then scrape the soft flesh into a container and freeze it to make yourself feel super organised when recipes like this come along.

1 cup prunes
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup mashed pumpkin (or - if you must - canned pumpkin puree)
100g butter, melted
1 egg
1 tsp pure vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Tip the prunes into a small bowl and cover with boiling water. Set aside while you get everything else ready.
Heat the oven to 180C and line a small brownie pan (measuring about 27 x 20 cm) with baking paper, leaving some overhang.
Put the rolled oats into a food processor and whiz until finely ground. Tip out into another bowl.
Drain the prunes, then tip them into the processor, along with the pumpkin, melted butter and egg. Whiz until smooth, then add the ground oats, cinnamon and baking soda and whiz again until well mixed. Add the chocolate and pulse until mixed.
Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 25-30 minutes, until set and slightly springy to touch. Let cool, then cut into bars. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Have a great week, everyone x

Random recipe: The Bees Knees

This time last year I was idling around Soho, hoping to have a drink with Mr Belleau Kitchen. Alas, our schedules did not allow it, but we're finally managing a kind of virtual cocktail hour through this month's Random Recipes challenge.

For July, Dom has asked us to delve deep into our drinks books and come up with a cocktail recipe. I didn't have to try very hard - when I lifted a notebook off the shelf in my office a tiny slip of paper with this recipe on it fluttered out. It's for a Bees Knees, a honey, lemon and gin cocktail that I last made for my father in a tiny flat in Hampstead in 2008. That flat has long gone from my life and, sadly, so has Dad, but shaking this up in a jam jar took me back there in an instant. If gin makes you maudlin - look, even writing about it makes me a bit blue - then rest assured you can make it with vodka too.

The Bees Knees
I remember cutting this recipe out of the Observer Food Monthly several weeks ahead of my parents' visit, chiefly because honey and gin were two of Dad's great loves. (Cigars, red wine, steak and chocolate were harder to fit in a cocktail glass.) I've rejigged the quantities a little and this amount is enough for two - or one very thirsty person. To me, this is the perfect cocktail; it's short, punchy and not too sweet.

50ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 Tbsp honey syrup - made by stirring together 1 Tbsp honey and 2 Tbsp water
100ml best quality gin (or vodka)
ice

Put all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice and shake to combine. Strain into two martini glasses and garnish with a strip of lemon rind. Serves two.

Are you a fan of the cocktail hour? What's your poison?

Treat me: Brown bread icecream

"Unlike Justice, hospitality should not be seen to be done!"

So begins 'Dining In And Dining Out In New Zealand', an absolute treasure in my cookbook library. This book, gifted by a friend with a strong sense of the absurd, has survived many cookbook culls and house moves. Written in 1973, it has stayed a strong favourite. I'm unsure if the author, Patricia Harris, is still alive, but I'd love to meet her. I imagine her as one part Margot Leadbetter, one part Fanny Craddock and two parts Delia Smith. 

Like the title suggests, the book is part-dedicated to catering at home and part-dedicated to New Zealand's 1970s restaurant scene. While none of the restaurants she recommends are still in existence, many of her recipes remain in vogue. I'm not sure I agree with her dictum that vichyssoise (first take your homemade chicken stock) is the answer to the busy hostess's woes, but the intention is well meant.

My fondness for Mrs Harris' means her book has never been relegated to my office (the staging post for cookbooks that need new homes), so it's getting a moment in the sun this month for Belleau Kitchen's June Random Recipe challenge. We were supposed to pick the recipe on page 40, but since I couldn't see myself acquiring 'five dozen rock oysters or four dozen Stewart Island monsters' for the seafood starter, I went for page 41 instead. 

Brown Bread Icecream

This comes from the 'Dinner At Home' chapter, which is full of helpful suggestions. My favourite refers to the carving of the loin of lamb: "persuade your husband to carve it as neatly as possible (if your husband is one of those "joint wreckers" I advise you to invite an experienced surgeon among your guests)". Mrs Harris suggests serving this unusual, but delectable, icecream with caramel sauce and praline, but I reckon it's fine by itself or served between two very thin slices of toasted baguette in a kind of literal icecream sandwich. No husband or surgeon required.

170g brown sugar

60g butter

125ml water

4 egg yolks, beaten

60ml milk

700ml cream

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups wholemeal bread crumbs, lightly toasted

Put the egg yolks in a bowl that will fit over a medium saucepan in a double-boiler arrangement. Put a couple of cms of water in the saucepan and set over medium heat.

Put the sugar, butter and water in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until it reaches boiling point.

Pour this syrup over the eggs and beat well, then add the milk. Set the egg mixture bowl over the water in the saucepan and stir well until it thickens (about five minutes).

Remove the bowl from the saucepan and put in the freezer to chill (about 20 minutes should do it).

When the egg mixture is cold, whip the cream and vanilla together until it is just before the soft peak stage. Fold in the egg mixture and the toasted breadcrumbs, then scrape into a plastic container. Cover and freeze for at least four hours. 

Let ripen at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving. Makes about 1.3 litres.

Have a great weekend, everyone x

Random recipe: Orange and lamb tagine

Once upon a time I used to scour charity shops and school fairs for cookbook gems, hoping to find a first edition Mrs Beeton tucked among the multiple copies of Alison Holst's Microwave Menus. While that never happened, I did come across plenty of great finds - The Silver Palate cookbooks, pristine paperback Elizabeth Davids, a Jill Dupleix that I'd always wanted and once - a brand new copy of How To Eat for 50p - among others.

But a year or so ago I realised I was in danger of being swamped by these dusty finds; that I didn't really need to pick up every half-decent cookbook I found and that it would be perfectly safe for someone else to buy. Then I met a woman who told me that one of the largest charity shops in Wellington gets so many books donated to it that twice a year they load up a container and take it to the tip. No, not the recycling depot, the tip. The charity can't afford to send them overseas, so they dump them. Now - there are all sorts of issues here, not least being - why don't they give them away - but it made me reconsider what I do with my own collection. I've recently decided that there are lots of books that, while I don't use them anymore, deserve better homes than being stuck in a damp charity shop while waiting to be bulldozed into landfill. I've selected both the books and their recipients carefully and it was such fun watching their reactions that I'm planning to do it again in a few months' time.

The thing is though, that all this largesse has meant that I had very few books to choose from for this month's Random Recipe challenge. The instructions from Dom at Belleau Kitchen were to select a book from the throw-out pile you're supposed to compile when spring/autumn cleaning - and in truth, I had only one. But the results were so convincing that I'm going to have to keep it!

A few years ago you couldn't move for being offered something made out of Jo Seagar's 'You Shouldn't Have Gone To So Much Trouble, Darling'. This book, which features the author up to her pearl-strewn neck in a bubble bath, was first published in 1997, then a reprinted and updated version came out 10 years later. I have the original version, which I picked up from a charity shop for $2. I bought it out of nostalgia, more than anything. It was badly waterstained and I didn't expect to ever use it, but the thing that swung it for me was the inscription on the front to the previous owner, 'Anna' - ' with much love from Momma and Poppa'. Gulp.

Lamb and Orange Tagine
Anna obviously used it her copy of 'You Shouldn't Have...' a lot - the book fell open at the recipe for lamb tagine, which has 'Excellent!' scrawled across the top in blue biro. It turns out Anna was right - though I played around a bit with Jo's original recipe to make it even more 'excellent' - or at least, a little lighter and not as sweet. I've annotated the book accordingly, all ready for its next owner.

500g lamb shoulder, diced
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, sliced
2cm ginger, grated
2 onions, roughly chopped
3 medium carrots, washed, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1 cup vegetable stock
3 large mandarins or 2 oranges, washed and roughly chopped, (including the skin)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup prunes, cut in half
1/2 cup almonds, toasted and roughly chopped
1/4 cup sesame seeds, toasted
Handful of coriander leaves, roughy chopped

Heat the oven to 160C.
Put the olive oil in a large, cast iron casserole and set over medium heat. Tip in the lamb, onion, garlic and ginger and cook for five minutes, stirring frequently, then add the carrots and spices. Cook for another minute, then add the mandarins or oranges and the vegetable stock. Stir well, then cover tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours, until the lamb is very tender. Check it a couple of times to make sure it isn't drying out - add a little water if it seems dry.
Add the prunes and stir well. At this point you can let the tagine cool completely, then refrigerate and reheat the next day. If you're planning to eat it now, return it to the oven after adding the prunes and let cook for another 15-20 minutes. Sprinkle with the toasted almonds and coriander just before serving with rice, couscous or flatbreads. Serves four.

Are you a charity shop cookbook buyer?

Treat me: Chocolate Cornflake Roughs

Some things are made for each other. Salt and caramel. Champagne and oysters. Walnuts and blue cheese. Chocolate and coconut. Then there's Random Recipes and We Should Cocoa - a match so perfect I can't believe they haven't joined forces before.

For this month's Random-Recipes-Meets-We-Should-Cocoa mash-up I had a very limited selection of books to choose from thanks to our ongoing renovations (it's hard to access the main part of one's cookbook collection when it's hidden behind a king-sized bed, two radiators and a mirror, don't you think?). Anyway, one of the few books I could reach was this handsome tome: a 1971 edition of The New Zealand Woman's Weekly Cookbook, edited by the incomparable Tui Flower.

Like Random Recipes maestro Dominic, and We Should Cocoa founder Choclette, Tui Flower is a force to be reckoned with. She ruled New Zealand food writing from her test kitchen at the NZ Woman's Weekly for more than 20 years. At the NZ Guild of Food Writers' Conference last November she was spoken of with the utmost awe, if not a slight touch of fear.

This book, though a little dated in parts, is a brilliant snapshot of New Zealand households in the 70s (and beyond). I rescued my copy from an charity shop and - while I'm unlikely to make Tui's recipe for 'Picnic Loaf' using a tin of spaghetti and sausages, among other things - I think it's a fine piece of culinary heritage. The recipe I ended up with here is another local icon. Chocolate Cornflake Roughs, or their close cousins, made with rice bubbles, were THE party food of choice when I was a child. They are very sweet, crunchy and best served very cold (ideally, without any children to share them with).

Chocolate Cornflake Roughs
As much as I respect and admire the work of Tui Flower, I've updated her 1971 recipe to reflect the contents of a slightly more modern pantry. The original recipe specifies 'crushed coconut biscuits' - in New Zealand that can only mean the delectable Krispies (which now even come in a chocolate-dipped form). If you don't have a similar biscuit, I suggest something like a digestive or chocolate wheaten. Hey, you could even use these. If you're not a fan of coconut oil, any light, neutral oil will work. Don't forget to use the best cocoa you can for an especially rich flavour. For that birthday party touch, use cupcake cases instead of a lined tray.

1/2 cup icing sugar
3 Tbsp cocoa
90ml coconut oil, melted
a drop or two of almond essence
1 cup cornflakes
9 coconut biscuits (as described above), crushed to make about 1 cup of crumbs.

Line a tray or a large platter with baking paper and set aside.
Sift the icing sugar and cocoa together into a bowl. Beat in the coconut oil and almond essence, then add the cornflakes and biscuit crumbs and stir until well combined. Drop spooonfuls of the mixture on the lined tray and leave in a cool place to set. Makes about 12.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Random recipe: Russian Salad

It's not often that I reach for the vodka bottle on a Sunday lunchtime, but when you're making an iconic Soviet salad in a half-functioning kitchen, needs must. When that salad is a melange of cooked vegetables and hard-boiled egg bound with a sour cream-enriched mayonnaise - and you're making it while your daughter clamours for her lunch and your husband is attacking the counter-top with a hack-saw - you're more than justified to pour yourself a large glass. At least, that was my excuse.

Actually, I blame Dom of Belleau Kitchen for driving me to drink. This month's Random Recipe challenge asked us to cook something from a Christmas present cookbook - and since I didn't get any cookbooks for Christmas (sob!) I chose the Salat Olivier described in Anya von Bremzen's memoir, Mastering The Art Of Soviet Cooking.

If you have even a slight interest in food, family, social history and the absolute craziness involved in growing up in Soviet Moscow, this is a must-read. Von Bremzen's own story of growing up in a communal apartment in Moscow (she and her mother fled to the US in 1974, when she was 10) is swept up in the epic history of 20th century Russia. It's the sort of book that you want to read out loud to other people - like Heston Blumenthal's quote on the front of my copy says, it's 'heartbreakingly poignant and laugh-out-loud funny'.

He forgot to add that it also has recipes - and the Soviet party classic, Salat Olivier, is one of them. First invented by a French chef 'who wowed 1860s Moscow' with an over-the-top platter of grouse, tongue and crayfish tails with potatoes, cornichons and a secret Provencal sauce, it morphed over the years into a rather more proletarian combination of vegetables and chicken bound together with mass-produced mayonnaise. Now can you see why I was reaching for the vodka?

Salat Olivier
I took some liberties with Anya's recipe, leaving out the suggested white crabmeat or crabsticks that her mother usually used in place of the traditional poached chicken or beef. I also used homemade mayonnaise rather than Hellmann's and lightly cooked frozen peas rather than the tinned variety. Anya's mother Larisa, who plays a key role in the book, insists that the key to success is chopping everything into very fine dice.
Truth be told, I don't think I'll make it again - that diced potato, carrot and pea mixture reminded me too much of boarding school mixed frozen vegetables - but the tangy, creamy dressing was eat-out-of-the-bowl gorgeous.

3 large waxy potatoes, cooked, peeled and diced
2 medium carrots, peeled, cooked and diced
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and diced
3 large gherkins, diced
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
4 spring onions, finely sliced (white parts and some green)
1 1/2 cups peas, blanched and drained
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
4 Tbsp dill, finely chopped
salt and pepper

Dressing:
250 ml mayonnaise
80 ml sour cream
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp white vinegar
salt and pepper

Put all the salad ingredients in a large bowl and stir together gently. Season well with salt and pepper.
To make the dressing, put all ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together until well blended. Taste and adjust the seasoning - you want it to be quite tangy and zesty.
Fold about two-thirds of the dressing through the salad - add more if necessary - and transfer to a cut-crystal bowl to serve. Serves six as a side dish. Vodka optional, but advised.

The cupboard of doom

I distinctly remember methodically dusting my bedroom bookshelves and my set of Little Golden Books - including inside the front covers - when I was five or six, in a bid to impress Father Christmas. I'm sad to say the habit has left me (we do have a duster, but it is most often used as a makeshift cricket bat) and Santa would be passing me by if dust-free shelves were part of the criteria.

The part of my house I am most ashamed of is my pantry. In my defence, it's not really a pantry at all. We think it was our house's hot water cupboard, long since repurposed. I need to stand on a chair to access the top shelf and even then I can't reach to the back. Every now and then I would diligently go through it and tidy things up, but in the last month or so it has turned feral.

Don't believe me? Check this out....

On the top shelf - at least, as far as I can reach - there are things that will really hurt if they fall down in an earthquake and hit an unsuspecting bystander on the head. I'm talking bottles of wine, about a third of a bottle of Pimms, a large bag of baking soda (for cleaning) and a box of knock-down Spiegelau wine glasses I bought at the Guild of Food Writers' conference. Don't ask me what's behind them, I can't bear to look.

The middle shelf is devoted to moderately heavy and breakable items - things like tinned tomatoes (surely one of the best inventions of the modern world), golden syrup - plus pasta, about four different sorts of rice and sundry blocks of chocolate that I have bought for some specific reason, then forgotten about.

Everything else goes on the lowest shelf. Here lie bags of dried fruit, nuts, oats and flour, a box of oils and vinegars and all sorts of spices except the one I am looking for at any one time. And more chocolate. A rack on the inside of the door currently holds all the things I use least often, such as an unopened packet of gelatine, various food colourings (for play dough experiments) and some homeopathic remedies. I should really move them, I know.

There are two reasons for me coming clean about this. One is that delightful Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked me to reveal my pantry for his December Random Recipes challenge (it's not called random for nothing) and two, I have just signed on the dotted line for our new pantry, which will take shape in early January.

As previously mentioned, we are having a sort of Clayton's kitchen makeover - the new kitchen you get when you're not getting a new kitchen. This involves new doors for the 1980s joinery, the total destruction of the current pantry and the rebuilding of a new one. I'd like to say it also included a new oven and an induction hob, but we'd like to be able to afford food in 2014, so we're stopping there.

Anyway, my new pantry will have six (six!) shelves, with room at the bottom for a 20kg sack of flour and a box of wine. I was quite keen on getting some of those fancy pull-out shelf things, but for now we're keeping it simple. That's a fancy way of saying it's much cheaper to have ordinary shelves. And after coping with two shelves that I can't even reach the back of, six ordinary shelves sounds like pure luxury. Best of all, it's being made by a man called Mr Darling. I am really looking forward to him coming to deliver the pantry and being able to say, 'Oh Darling, I love it!'

Do you have a gorgeous, Pinterest-worthy pantry - or is it more like my cupboard of doom?

Treat me: Yoghurt Banana Fool

It's not exactly on the scale of Grand Designs, but we're currently planning a few changes here at chez Kitchenmaid and as a result, my office (aka the room of doom) is piled high with cookbooks destined for new homes. At least, I think they're destined for new homes. I'm so horribly sentimental about some of them that I can't bear to think of them languishing in op shops, unloved or (worse) discovered by the people that gave them to me to start with.

In the meantime, I negotiate my way past a pile of them every time I go to my desk. When '100 Dishes For Two' fell on my toe yesterday, I decided it was fate. I was going to choose a recipe from it for this month's Random Recipe challenge, then find it a new home. I think it was a joke present when we got married, along with 'Cosmopolitan's Guide For Living Together (Married Or Not)', which I have recently regifted to a newly shacked-up friend. I was thinking I could regift '100 Dishes' to her two, but on reflection I think this is the only decent recipe in it. Love may be blind, but it still has a sense of taste.

Yoghurt Banana Fool
This is very simple and surprisingly delicious. It also makes an excellent treat for breakfast, not least because you can pull it out of the fridge with a 'here's one I prepared earlier' flourish. Quantities below serve two - well, what would you expect from a book called '100 Dishes For Two'? - but can be easily multiplied.

2 small bananas
2 Tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
25g roasted almonds, finely chopped
4 pieces of crystallised ginger, finely chopped
150g Greek yoghurt
3 squares of dark chocolate, finely chopped

Mash the bananas, caster sugar and lemon juice together in a small pot. Bring to the boil over gentle heat, then simmer, stirring often, for 10 minutes, until the bananas are caramelised. Set aside to cool. Fold in the nuts, ginger and yoghurt, then divide between two stemmed glasses. Sprinkle the chocolate over the top and chill for at least 30 minutes, until ready to serve.

Have a great weekend, everyone x

Treat me: Lemon poppy seed biscuits

Remember our neighbours with the amazing lemon tree? They have gone on holiday and their lemon tree is taunting me with its golden globes shining through the fence. It's been so windy lately I've been expecting the lemons to blow over to our side of the fence, but so far it hasn't happened. In the meantime, I've been accepting gifts of lemons from friends on the other side of the harbour and using them with reckless abandon.

So when Dom's Random Recipe challenge for October asked us to use a local ingredient I figured lemons would be it. Then I stumbled - actually, properly stumbled - over local cookbook Alice In Bakingland on the dining room floor and the perfect lemony recipe leapt up at me.

Lemon and poppy seed biscuits
Alice In Bakingland is the first book from one-time New Zealand's Hottest Home Baker finalist and self-taught baking whiz Alice Arndell. It's such a sweet book - I've described it to friends as a Pinterest cookbook because everything is so pretty (that's also to do with the great photos by Murray Lloyd). But it's also extremely useful, with lots of useful, everyday sorts of recipes alongside the glamour ones and a whole batch of handy hints. I'm forever indebted to Alice for sharing the information that one cup of plain flour equals one cup of high grade less two tablespoons. I'm also very grateful for her allowing me to reproduce this lovely recipe here.

2 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar
finely grated zest of two lemons (I actually double this to make it super lemony)
2 Tbsp poppy seeds
180g cold butter, cubed
1 egg
1 egg yolk

Put the flour, salt, sugars, lemon zest and poppy seeds into a food processor and pulse briefly to combine. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the egg and egg yolk, and process until the mixture clumps.
Tip the dough out onto a large piece of plastic wrap and squeeze together. Form into a log that's about 5cm diameter, wrap well and chill for at least two hours, until the dough is very firm.
When ready to bake, heat the oven to 180C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
Slice the dough into 1/2 cm rounds and put on the prepared trays. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges just start to brown. Cool on a wire rack. Makes about 36.

Have a great weekend, everyone x

Treat me: Butterscotch bars

Have you ever made Snickerdoodles? Me neither. But not through lack of trying. Yesterday I was all ready: I had the recipe, the ingredients, the time. I couldn't wait. But neither could the phone call that came as I was measuring the flour at the same time as taking part in a complicated game involving jumping over dolls and jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Unfortunately that meant that something went awry (and I don't just mean the puzzles). Rather than ending up with a dough soft enough to roll in cinnamon and sugar, I had a crumbly mixture that had disaster written all over it. Undeterred, I pressed it into a tin and baked it anyway - and it turned out remarkably well, if I had been experimenting with shortbread. But since I was supposed to be making something for September's Random Recipes challenge, there was nothing for it but to turn back to the Doubleday Cookbook  (vol. 2) and flip through the pages again.

Butterscotch Bars
My Doubleday Cookbooks, published in 1975, belonged to my mother. They're American, but less dated than my ancient copy of The Joy of Cooking (and my struggles with that have been well documented here before). After Snickerdoodlegate I had my doubts about this recipe, but it's brilliant. It takes less than 10 minutes to whip together from fairly basic ingredients, making it the perfect go-to recipe for when you suddenly remember you need to make something for afternoon tea. The bars are sweet and chewy and very moreish. I've de-Americanised the recipe's measurements and converted them to metrics - hopefully this will help if you find yourself interrupted in the measuring process.

75g butter
175g soft brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
100g walnuts/pecans, roughly chopped

Heat the oven to 180C and line a 20cm square brownie pan with enough baking paper to overhang the sides.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan, then remove from the heat and add the sugar. Stir well, then leave it for five minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla, then sift in the dry ingredients. Add the nuts and stir until mixed.
Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the batter is beginning to pull away from the sides. Leave to cool completely before cutting into bars. Makes 16.

Have a great weekend everyone x

Random recipe: Shiraz bi buqal

Regular readers of Belleau Kitchen will know that the proprietor, Dom, has been unwell recently. Rather than let a bout of illness put him off the boil, he's gone and given this month's Random Recipe challenge a 'happy and healthy' theme, extolling participants to rummage through their diet or health-related cookbooks in order to come up with something nourishing to share.
Given that I don't own any diet books, unless you count Victoria Moore's 'How to Drink' (a sort of guidebook for those who wish to pursue an alcoholic liquids diet), I instead turned to my latest find - a battered paperback called 'Wild Blackberry Cobbler And Other Old-Fashioned Recipes' - that I found at a charity shop for 50 cents. This book, first published in 1985, has recipes from Greek and Roman times through to American dishes of the 18th and 19th centuries. It's written by Katie Stewart, one-time 'cookery editor' of The Times and it's a brilliant read.
I wasn't sure a random flick through would turn up anything that Dom would consider 'happy and healthy', but I was wrong. According to Katie Stewart, the old Persian recipe from which this dish comes described it as "an excellent relish which both awakens and stimulates the appetite". If that's not happy and healthy, I'm not sure what is.

Shiraz bi buqal
You have to admit, 'shiraz bi buqal' sounds a bit more exotic than plain old 'cottage cheese with fresh herbs' - and whatever you might think of cottage cheese, it sounds more enticing than the ancient Persian equivalent of 'coagulated milk'. It's all in how you describe it, isn't it? So this then, is a mix of fresh, onion-y leeks and celery, fragrant mint, crunchy nuts and soft curds. It's good on a slice of hearty bread or with some decent crackers and perhaps a dried fig or two.

250g cottage cheese (the best sort you can get, and most emphatically NOT the 'lite' version
3 thick slices of the white part of a leek
a handful of celery leaves
6 mint leaves
1/4 tsp dry mustard powder
salt and pepper
12 walnut halves, roughly chopped

Finely chop the leek, celery leaves and mint leaves together - if you have a processor with a mini-bowl, now is one of the rare times it comes in handy. Stir into the cottage cheese with the mustard and salt and pepper. Pile this mixture into a small serving bowl and top with the walnuts. Serves two as a lunch accompaniment or four as part of a platter of delectable titbits.

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?

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.

Treat me: Energy Balls

I do apologise for my absence this week. Is it just me or has someone put 2013 on fast-forward? One of my reasons for not blogging this week is that I haven’t cooked anything. Truly, I haven’t. Well, I’ve made porridge and toast, but that’s about the size of it. Thank heavens for my lovely husband. I’ll share one of the amazing things he made for dinner next week, if I can pry the recipe from him.

In the meantime, here’s something I didn’t cook yesterday. After last week’s chocolate fest (why cook proper meals when you can eat cold dog biscuits?) I have been craving something that doesn’t give me palpitations when I eat it. These tangy little balls are the answer. I’m making a double batch to take to work next week, because something tells me I’m going to need them.

Apricot Energy Balls
I absolutely love these. I'm not sure where the recipe is from - the ingredients were written in shorthand, followed by 'whiz' (in longhand, it's quite hard to work out otherwise) on a Post-It I found stuck to a phone bill. I figured the random nature of this find made it just the ticket for March's Random Recipes challenge (about which you can read more here). Having eaten quite a few of these in the last day or so I think good quality apricots are essential. You need really tangy, flavoursome ones or there's no point.

100g dates, roughly chopped
100g dried apricots, roughly chopped
80g walnuts

40g seeds (sesame, sunflower, pumpkin)
60g desiccated coconut
2 Tbsp honey
more seeds - about 1/2 a cup - to roll the balls in

Put everything, except the extra seeds, in a food processor and whiz until it is a slightly crumbly paste that sticks together when you press it with your fingers.
Roll large teaspoonfuls into balls, then roll them in the seeds to coat. Store in the fridge in a covered container. Makes about 20.

Have a great weekend, everyone x

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?

Random recipe #24: Barbecued ribs

For this month's Random Recipe Dom instructed us to get someone else to choose a recipe from their collections. I called on my sister-in-law Lucy - yes, two Lucys, married to identical twins, no, they didn't find us at a dating agency - to do the honours and she did me proud.

"I picked the Leon cook book because you gave it to me and it is one of my favourite books. I honestly just let the book drop open and the lucky page was 226... Love me tender ribs."

I'd forgotten all about giving her the Leon book, even though I remember introducing her to the tiny Leon on Carnaby St years ago. It's been a long time since I made anything from the book myself, but I couldn't believe I'd missed these ribs.

Barbecued pork ribs
I took some liberties with the Leon recipe - I couldn't get baby back ribs but just asked the butcher to saw some up, which he did while telling me a story about playing Father Christmas at a children's party. "I got out of the car and there was a huge scream, then I realised it was because of me!" But I digress. I simplified the sauce a bit and did the final cooking on the barbecue. If it's not barbecue weather at your place, finish them off in a hot oven. Either way, these are super simple and delicious. The amount below is enough for four adults with some side dishes, though two Flintstones could probably devour them by themselves.

1kg good quality pork ribs
1 x 200g tin of chipotle sauce (I used the La Morena brand)
4 Tbsp honey
90ml  red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp Chinese five-spice
1 tsp dried chilli flakes

Put everything except the ribs into a large dish (big enough to hold the ribs in one layer) and mix well, Then add the ribs, turning to coat in the sauce. Cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge to marinate overnight.
The next day, heat the oven to 120C. Line a shallow roasting dish with foil and put the ribs on top, fitting them in like jigsaw pieces so they form one layer. Carefully pour the marinade in (between the ribs, not on top of them) and top it up with water so the liquid comes about halfway up the ribs.
Sprinkle the ribs with salt, then cover the dish with foil or a lid and bake for about five hours, turning occasionally. At this point, you can let the ribs cool until you're ready to eat - in the fridge for a few days if necessary.
When you're ready to eat, fire up the barbecue or heat the grill. Grill the ribs, basting with the sauce, for about 15 minutes, until they are piping hot and sizzling. Eat with your fingers, flatbreads, black beans and a cold beer.

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...

Treat me: Triple Chocolate Bagels

I've been thinking about making chocolate bread all year, ever since my triumph in the sandwich making contest (for which a lot of the credit must go to this delicious stuff). The November edition of We Should Cocoa - in which the theme is bread - has finally made me do it. If you fancy the idea of a dense, chewy, chocolate-studded bagel for brunch tomorrow, here's how to make it happen.

Triple Chocolate Bagels
Credit where it's due: these chewy, chocolatey bagels owe something to Dan Lepard's recipe and something to my own ingenuity. (And something to Nazima at Franglais Kitchen, this month's We Should Cocoa host. Thanks too to Chele and Choclette for their continued WSC inspiration.)
They taste like they've got buckets of chocolate in them but it's really quite a modest amount. Use the very best cocoa you can - once you've tried the good stuff, the supermarket variety seems very bland. If you are using the latter, I'd bump the quantity up to six tablespoons and maybe increase the water content accordingly. See how you go. These take about two and a half hours to make, from getting the flour out to sitting down with one in your hand.

500g strong white flour
4 Tbsp good quality cocoa - I used this one (you can buy it in 5kg sacks, imagine!)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
350ml warm water
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
100g chocolate - a mixture of dark, milk and white - chopped

Put all the dry ingredients - except the chocolate - in a large bowl and mix well, then tip in the water and vinegar. Mix it to a dough, then cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave it to sit for 10 minutes.
Tip the dough onto a lightly oiled bench and scatter the chocolate over the top, then fold the dough 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 an hour. Don't clean the work surface, you'll need it later.
Tip the dough out onto the bench and cut into 10 pieces, each weighing about 80g. Roll each one into a ball and place on the greased bench. Cover with a teatowel and let rest again for 15 minutes after you shaped the last one.
At this point, heat the oven to 220C and line a baking tray with nonstick paper. Get a large pot of water, sweetened with a few generous tablespoons of golden syrup, boiling on the stove.
When the proto-bagels have had their 15 minute rest, take the first one you rolled into a ball and poke your finger through it. Stretch it out with your fingers - the hole should be about 2cm - then drop it into the boiling water. Poach it for 30 seconds on each side, then remove with a slotted spoon and place on the waiting tray. Repeat this process with the remaining bagels. You can poach up to three at a time, depending on the size of the pot, but any more than that gets unwieldy. The chocolate might get a bit sticky, but don't worry about it.
When all the bagels are poached, bake them for 25 minutes. Let cool on a rack, then split and eat with lashings of cold cream cheese and good jam. These bagels also freeze and toast well, though I suggest slicing them in half before freezing to make thawing easier.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I'm going to spend mine coaxing my tomato plants to grow and thinking about Christmas...