A Veg Crumble - and great customer service!

In the run up to Christmas, Giraffe restaurants ran a daily Advent Calendar. Some days there was an offer, some days there was a competition, and some days a food or drink recipe. On one of the days, the recipe was for Cauliflower, Cheese and Leek Crumble with Hazelnut topping. I couldn't find any way of saving or printing the recipe,  and it was in a pop up window and not stored on the site, so I thought I'd have to try to make up my own version of it.

However just after Christmas, their Twitter feed asked for feedback about their Advent promotion, so I replied that I would have liked to be able to save or print the recipes. Within minutes, they had replied, got my email address and emailed me a copy of the recipe. How's that for  using social media to provide great customer service?

Because they own the copyright, I can't give you the detailed recipe here, but I'm sure you'll be able to create your own version using your own choice of veg and cheese. It's one of those meals that can be different every time you eat it. Next time I might use broccoli and mushrooms, stilton cheese and walnuts.

The cheese they used in their recipe was Jack, some of it smoked and some unsmoked, but I had Cheddar in the house so used that.

The vegetable base is made of lightly cooked cauliflower, celery (I substituted celeriac as we prefer it)  and carrots, mixed with leeks which had been braised in a little butter and water, all bound with béchamel sauce that had a little cheese added. They suggested grating the onion into the milk before infusing, then leaving it in when making the sauce, which I think worked very well in this dish.

More sliced cheese is layered on top of the veg, then a crumble topping of wholemeal breadcrumbs, herbs, a little more cheese and coarsely chopped hazelnuts sprinkled over the top. Then it is baked to heat through and crisp up the topping.

The original recipe was to serve 4. I halved the quantities but even though we're greedy and eat huge quantities of veg, we could only manage about half of it - the portions were MASSIVE!

 

 

Thinking Big!

Thanks to Santa Claus having brought me a Grand Calibur, I can now use dies and embossing folders that would have been too big to fir through my Cuttlebug. But so far the only bigger embossing folder I have is the Spellbinders Persian Splendour M-bossabilities one.

I was delighted to be able to play with it and see what delicate detail it produces. I've just been thinking back to when the only dry embossing I ever did was with a light box and brass stencil..... it would have taken many, many hours to produce something like it!

The only trouble is that such an elaborate design looks best with very little added to it, so there's not much scope for playing!!! All I needed to do was heat-emboss a greeting onto the central area and later it up onto a white card, with silver matting and a white bow to pull it all together. Anything else would have been Too Much.

This week's Make My Monday challenge is embossing so I'm playing along.

Pork chops and more - a Random Recipe

Unsurprisingly, this month's Random Recipes at Belleau Kitchen asks us to cook something from a new book we had for Christmas.

I had three books this year, all from my Mum:

The Constance Spry Cook Book - a classic that I didn't have in my  collection
Save With Jamie
James Martin- Fast cooking

When I read the details of the challenge, I'd already browsed through the first two but hadn't opened the James Martin book, so that seemed to be the best candidate to open at random - and the recipe it fell open at sounded like a real winner. Grilled pork chop with apple scrumpy mash and black pudding.

A quick look through the ingredients - cooking apples, cider, pork chops, black pudding. walnuts, spring greens (there was half a Savoy cabbage in the fridge so I used that instead) all sounded good. And then came the stumbling block. Ready made mashed potato. Ready made mashed potato. 

I went out shopping for the ingredients and I really did go to the prepared veg section of the supermarket. I even got as far as picking up a pack of ready made mashed potato (my coat collar was turned up as high as it would go and I'd scanned the car park for neighbours' cars). But I simply could NOT put it in my trolley. My hand refused to move in that direction, it would only move back towards the shelf to replace the offending item.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against ready prepared veg. In fact I'm constantly nagging my elderly Mum with her arthritic hands to give them a try. They are great for people short of time, equipment or dexterity. But when you're cooking a meal that involves several different skills and processes, they are just plain irrelevant. If you have time to peel, slice, cook and purée apples, surely you have time to do the same with a few potatoes?

OK, home with the ingredients and time for a more detailed look at the recipe. 150g of sugar? Is  it a dessert? I don't use sugar at all, being diabetic, and a Stevia based substitute is fine in apple sauce, but part of the sugar was to be used for the walnuts. They were to be coated in sugar syrup and deep fried. Now, even if I had a deep fat fryer, the thought of dropping something into it dripping with wet syrup sounds terrifying. I decided to toast the walnuts instead.

The apples are cooked into a very thick apple sauce that is mixed in with the mashed potato. I decided not to open a 440ml tin of cider for the 35 ml that my half-quantity recipe used. I didn't think two tablespoons of cider would make that much difference to the dish, and I had no plans for the rest of the tin.

The cabbage was supposed to be stir fried but we ate the meal last night and I've only just spotted that in the recipe, so I steamed it.....

I'm drifting a long way from the recipe here aren't I? Well, it's actually a very simple one - mashed potatoes mixed with apple sauce, grilled pork chops and black pudding, sprinkled with deep fried toasted walnuts and served on a bed of cabbage.

And the verdict? "Okay but a bit dry. It could have done with a bit of gravy"

It's the first time I've ever cooked from a James Martin book. The cover strapline is "Really exciting recipes in 20 minutes". Well, I thought it was more of a serving suggestion than a recipe, using proper home made mash only added 5 minutes to the total time and while it was quite nice, it really wasn't exciting!

Now to read through the rest of the book and see what else catches my eye.

A thank you card

The first few weeks after Christmas is a busy time of year for Thank Yous, so it's very appropriate that my first new die of the year is a Thank You die,  in fact I won it from the Oyster Stamps Facebook page!

Sooo... on to PIN-spirational challenge #89 which is this photo

I'm not really a mugs-and-mittens kind of crafter, so I picked up on the white-with-a-hint-of-colour feeling of the photo. I'd hoped I would have a piece of card in just the right shade of jade, but the nearest I could find was this lighter green. So I seem to have meandered rather a long way from the original photo, but  nevertheless this card was inspired by it!

I'm also going to include it as a second entry to ATCAS #29 - die cuts

Pasta with Cavolo Nero

This recipe was originally inspired by one in the River Café Green book, but over the years I've adapted it and changed it so much that it bears little resemblance to the original dish. We love it, and make it every time there is some Cavolo Nero (black kale, but that doesn't sound as romantic) in the garden.

It's usually a meat free meal for us, but I brought a pack of deliciously smoky lardons back from my recent trip to France so I added those, which, I'm afraid to say, ups the already high calorie count to around 5 million calories a portion. This is NOT a dish to try right now if you've just launched a New Year diet - in fact it's a way to make a saintly vegetable gloriously sinful. Ideal for a push-the-boat-out night. You do need to start an hour or more in advance, to infuse the cream with all the garlicky goodness.

The amount I made serves two, generously, but all quantities are approximate...... use however much you happen to have.

200g pasta - I like to use Penne as the sauce oozes into the holes
200g Cavolo Nero
100g lardons, bacon scraps or diced pancetta (optional)
a 284ml carton double cream - or you could save a few calories by using half fat Elmlea as I do. I find it less likely to split when cooking, too
50g finely grated Parmesan cheese
8 cloves of garlic
¼ teaspoon of dried chilli flakes

Start by preparing the cream - tip it into a small pan. Peel and lightly bruise the garlic and add to the pan. Bring slowly to the boil and remove from heat, then leave to stand for at least an hour. Just before adding it to the dish, fish out the garlic cloves (don't worry about the skin, that will break up as you stir it into the dish). If you want it REALLY garlicky, leave the garlic cloves in the cream and give it a whizz with a stick blender, but go gently, you don't want whipped cream!

Next prepare the Cavolo Nero by removing the hard white central leaf vein then cutting the leaves across into strips about 1cm wide. I've been making this dish for years, and always laboriously cut out the veins with a knife - time consuming but, I thought, worth it. This week Mark came into the kitchen while I was doing it, picked up a leaf, made a tiny tear each side of the vein at the root end then, holding the end of the vein in one hand, ran two fingers of the other down either side of the vein.  Result - a cleanly stripped leaf in seconds! Just think of  all the hours I must have wasted by not knowing that trick!

Now cook the pasta according to the pack instructions, adding the Cavolo Nero to the water for the last 30 seconds (this timing is for young, tender leaves straight from the garden. Allow a minute or more for coarser shop-bought leaves)

While it is cooking, fry the lardons in their own fat until cooked and crispy, then pour in the cream and add the chilli flakes and heat gently.

 

Drain the pasta and Cavolo Nero then return them to the pan and tip in the bacon and cream mixture and the grated Parmesan and mix well.

 

Serve

I'm joining in the Pasta Please challenge at The Spicy Pear and Tinned Tomatoes (with apologies to Jacqui for the lardons!)  

 

 

What to do with left over ham

I keep on talking about our New Year's Eve ham - what a bargain it turned out to be!

Our family tradition is to all get together on Boxing Day for a meal of baked ham, parsley sauce new potatoes and absolutely any veg as long as they are completely different from those we had with Christmas Dinner. So early in December I'd spotted a nice 2.5 kg gammon joint - perfect for 7 of us with leftovers- at half price, snapped it up and popped it in the freezer.

However my granddaughter in France sprang a surprise on us by being born almost a month early. I think she didn't want to miss Christmas! So I went over to help them out for a few days and the ham stayed in the freezer.

I came home in time for us to have it on New Year's Eve, but this time there were only 3 of us, and while the two men tried manfully to eat as much as possible, there was lots of it left over.

First of all we used the biggest slices for ham, egg and chips. Not a fancy meal, but delicious - especially with home made tomato ketchup!

Then pasta with ham, mushroom and tomato sauce. For this, I shopped an onion and fried it in a little olive oil, then added some sliced mushrooms and cooked until they softened. Then I added diced ham, a little dried oregano and a few chilli flakes, and a small tub of home made tomato sauce from the freezer. It needs to be simmered until the ham is fully heated through, then mixed into pasta and sprinkled with grated Parmesan.

Next came ham and leek flan

And finally, ham and potato hotpot, a dish from The Pauper's Cookbook by Jocasta Innes. The bacon and potatoes are layered and covered with white sauce and baked until they form a rich, creamy, comforting fusion.

Ham and Leek flan

Our New Year's Eve ham yielded several more meals, as I mentioned on Monday  one of which was a ham and leek flan.

I put this together from an 18cm pre-baked  shortcrust flan case (I make shortcrust in batches and freeze one or two flan cases so there's always one to hand they are such a useful basis for a clear-the-fridge meal), left over ham, one lonely leek, some Parmesan saved when I'd grated too much for the previous night's pasta and eggs, milk and a little butter. Apart from the eggs and milk, the quantities are just "whatever you have"!

Preheat the oven to 180C, 160C fan, gas mark 4, 350 F.

First of all, slice the leek very thinly, wash and dry it then fry slowly in a small knob of butter until very soft. While it is cooking, dice enough left over cooked ham to cover the base of the flan case  into pieces, about 5 mm cubes, and scatter it over the base.

Spread  the cooked leeks over the ham.

 

Beat together eggs and milk with seasoning. For an 18cm flan case, you will need 2 eggs and 150ml milk. Pour carefully into the flan case.

Sprinkle over the cheese - I happened to have about 2 tablespoons of finely grated Parmesan but  Cheddar, Emmenthal, Stilton - whatever you have in the fridge that will grate or crumble - would work. Leeks LOVE cheese!

Bake in the pre-heated oven for around 30 minutes, until the custard is set and the cheese browned.

I like to cool it slightly before eating, and eat it lukewarm. I served it with a little green salad and a "remoulade-ish" dish of grated celeriac and carrot dressed with a mixture of 3 parts mayonnaise to 1 part Dijon mustard and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Most of the ingredients used in this meal were odds and ends from the fridge that were left over from the Christmas and New Year gluttonyfest, so I'm joining in with the No Waste Food Challenge at Elizabeth's Kitchen and because I've added leeks to the flan and made the celeriac salad a feature of the meal, I reckon it's a double whammy for the new Extra Veg challenge at Fuss Free Flavours and Utterly Scrummy