Easy Pea-sy!

I've been away a bit this week. Horrid hotels and train food have left me wanting quick, comforting home-cooked food. I appreciate for many people this is code for 'take-away' but I have an aversion to take-aways and find cooking a relaxing exercise in itself, so this was not the solution I was looking for.....

Time to investigate the freezer! I always have petit pois in the freezer. They are great standby for lots of dishes:

• pureed to serve with scallops
• mixed with nuts, oil and cheese to make pesto
• mashed with garlic and oil to make a bruschetta topping
• combined with lemon and pecorino to make a silky, fresh tasting risotto

So frozen peas, a need for comfort and the contents of my cupboards resulted in this concoction....Pea Soup served with Pea & Pancetta Muffins.

All of this is very easy, from cupboard to table in 30 minutes! It's also comfort food without lots of calories (pancetta and a small amount of Cheddar are the 'naughtiest' ingredients).

Pea & Pancetta Muffins
Makes 8

225g Plain Flour
1tbsp Baking Powder
Pinch Salt
80g Pancetta with Herbs (I used Salisbury's cubed pancetta)
225ml milk
60g cheese (I use a mature Cheddar for best flavour)
100g petit pois (frozen)

• Preheat oven to 180c/GM4
• Line a muffin tin with 8 squares of greaseproof paper (optional - you could just oil the tin)
• Pan fry pancetta on a medium heat until cooked
• Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and cheese
• Whisk eggs and milk and add to flour
• Add frozen petit pois and pancetta
• Stir gently to combine
• Divide into 8 in a muffin tray and bake for 20-25 minutes

Pea Soup
Serves 4

1 onion
400g petit pois
1 clove of garlic (crushed)
500ml vegetable stock
2tsp olive oil
Cream to serve (optional)

• Finely chop onion and gently sweat with garlic and oil for 5 minutes until softened
• Add petit pois and stock
• Simmer for 15 minutes
• Blend with a stick blender/liquidiser
• Serve (with cream if you wish....!)

...and there you have it! I now feel full and relaxed...though there is an empty bottle of wine in the kitchen, which may have contributed!

General food chit-chat

Really excited about the next post at the weekend 'Marshmallow Mayhem' - how to make homemade marshmallows!!!

Interview for Britain's Best Dish is on Saturday at 9a.m. Fingers crossed that feedahappylife food will be on a TV near you soon!

As ever, anything suggestions as to what you want to see here, let me know at helen@feedahappylife.co.uk

Much love,
Helen

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Tasty Pastry!

I should drop a bombshell now...

I'm not really a great cook. I know I have a food blog and that I spend an awful lot of time thinking about food, cooking food and now writing about it, but I have as many failures as I do successes! My biggest issue is pastry.

Pastry is a bit of a sore point.

I don't understand how something so simple can be so complicated! It's either too dry, or too short, too warm to handle or too wet to roll! Argggh! However, given that I have books dedicated to pastry and you can have a career in just being a pastry chef, maybe it's not so surprising after all!

So, I'm facing my fear and my pastry issues. Pie by pie and tart by tart! Starting now with the humble quiche...

I'm starting with a pretty basic pastry recipe, taken from the tomb of all things good and foody, Nigella's "How to Eat" (I love, love, love this food bible!). Following Nigella, I combined the ingredients below in my blender - I'm quite sure a purist would combine everything on the kitchen surface with their fingertips, but it's a work night and speed and tidiness are more important than pastry rules (such rebellion is, quite clearly, the root of my pastry rubbishness!).

Shortcrust Pastry (according to Nigella)

• 120g plain flour
• 60g butter (cold)
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon yoghurt (or lemon juice or creme fraiche)

When it's all combined, you need to chill it for about 30 minutes. Whilst this was happening I prepared a few fillings and the basic eggy-mixture for the quiche:

• 150ml cream
• 150ml milk
• 3 eggs

Pastry cooled, I split it in half and added grated Parmesan to one half and chopped rosemary leaves to the other (this is because I forgot to do it pre-fridge!). This addition was a little experiment on my part to make the pastry a bit more exciting. After which, I rolled it out to fit my little tart tins. Big tip here... To save putting flour all over your surfaces, roll your pastry between two large pieces of cling film. It also makes it easier to lift and keeps it cool.

I added it to my greased tins, pierced with a fork and chilled again for 10 minutes. Then, they were covered with baking paper, filled with baking beans and popped into the oven (160c) from 10 minutes. Another tip.. if you've not got baking beans, you can use uncooked rice or pulses to weigh down the pastry. I've read that you can use old holiday money too as this is a good conductor of heat (obviously the coins and not the notes!).

I then took them out and added my different fillings. To the Parmesan pastry I added a medley of blanched spring vegetables (courgette, pea and broad bean)....

 To the rosemary pastry I added sweet potato and goats cheese......

 and caramelised onions and grated mature cheddar to the other.....

They were topped-up with the eggy mixture and popped into the oven for 15-20 minutes.
Another tip...if you're making a larger quiche it might need a little longer, so pop tin foil around the pastry edge after 20 minutes to stop it browning. Then, they were prised from their little tins and served!

All this took about 90 minutes, which admittedly is quite a lot of effort on a school night! So, whilst I will continue with my adventures in pastry, next week I'll be changing tack and featuring a blog entry called 'Hasty Pastry' where I'll sin and use the ready made version and see what the result is (time gained over taste lost maybe?!).

Next entry will be posted at the weekend and focus on my Friday night dinner with friends featuring a vegetarian food, fit for non-vegetarians too!

Thank you for reading.

Helen x

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Spring Feasting!

The bank holiday has given me lots more time to cook, hoorah!

With friends coming over for dinner before an evening out on Monday, I had the perfect excuse to put the cooking wheels in motion. Everything feels super fresh at the moment and I wanted to capture that in the menu. So, we had a mixed crostini platter with pea and mint puree, avocado and lemon and chargrilled peppers for starter, followed by lemon and pea risotto with cod and gremolata for main and a trio of lemon puddings for dessert.

Starter and main were super easy (you can get all those together and cooked in less than 1 hour), pudding is a little but more effort (most of mine was done the day before), but well worth it! If you only make 1 thing that I ever write about, I would really recommend the lemon sponge. I've had the recipe since 2002 and it never, ever fails! Everything goes into the mixer in 1 go and then into the oven (so easy!) and it comes out beautifully moist.

Crostini are always a fail safe starter. For my platter I sliced 1 ciabatta, drizzled with olive oil and toasted in a hot oven (190c) for about 10 minutes. Whilst it was cooling, I pureed 2 handfuls of defrosted petit pois with about 6 mint leaves and a glug of olive oil. Then I mashed 1 avocado with the juice of 1 lemon and some salt for the second topping and finally I mixed chargrilled peppers with olive oil and some balsamic vinegar for the third (you can make these yourself really easily - e-mail me if you don't know how - or just buy a jar of them ready prepared). When the ciabatta had cooled, I heaped spoons of each topping onto the toasts and that's it!!

For the risotto, I made a basic white risotto (use a medium heat to soften 1 finely sliced onion and 2 garlic cloves in a good glug of olive oil, add 4 handfuls of risotto rice and stir, add 1 glass dry white white and stir until absorbed then add vegetable stock a ladle at a time, waiting until each has absorbed before adding the next) and then when the rice was al dente I added the juice of 1 lemon, 2 good handfuls of petit pois (I used frozen, you could use fresh) and 1 tbsp of mascapone. Stir through, ensuring peas are cooked and your risotto is ready. The mascapone makes this really creamy and unctuous, but the zesty lemon and sweetness of the peas stop it from being too cloying.

The fish was really easy. I placed 4 cod loins in tin foil parcels in the oven for about 15 mins (timing will depend on size of fish/whether you're cooking from frozen), and then served them topped with gremolata.

Gremolata is an Italian flavouring which you can use on lots of different things to add flavour. I generally stick to putting it on fish or vegetables, but Italians use it on lots of different meats as well.  It's very quick to make too, just mix 2 tsps of lemon zest with 1 finely chopped clove of garlic and 4 tbsps of chopped flat leaf parsley (I also add the juice of 1 lemon and some salt, as I think it's nicer..but it's not the traditional recipe). That's it! Quite a fancy name for lemon, herbs and garlic!!!

So, onto the best bit! Dessert! I made a trio of lemon puddings (sponge, posset and ice cream), which went down really well....

All the recipes below are really easy and make enough for 4-6 servings. Best of all, the ice cream doesn't require any fancy equipment!

Lemon Posset

300ml double cream
90g caster sugar
1 lemon (zest and juice)

1. Heat cream and sugar until dissolved and then boil (keep stirring!)
2. Take off the heat and stir through the lemon juice and zest (it should thicken a little at this point)
3. Pour into dish of choice (I used espresso cups) and chill until set (6-8 hours for best results)

Lemon Sponge (best ever!)

115g soft butter/margarine (I use Flora Light..)
170g self-raising flour
170g caster sugar
2 eggs
6 tbsp milk
1tsp baking powder

Lemon Syrup: juice of 1 lemon and 2 tbsps of caster sugar mixed until dissolved

1. Preheat oven to 180c/GM 4
2. Put all of the cake ingredients (excluding syrup) into a large mixing bowl and beat for 2-3 mins until smooth, glossy and easily falling from your spoon
3. Pour mixture into a lined cake tin (I've done this in loaf tins/round tins/cake tins and it works regardless!)
4. Bake for 30-40 mins until top is browned and a skewer comes out clean
5. Use the skewer to stab holes in the cake and pour the syrup over the top while the cake is still warm

Lemon and Rosemary Ice Cream (recipe from Times Online)

500ml double cream
100ml lemon juice
200g caster sugar
1tbsp lemon zest
2 sprigs rosemary (remove and keep the leaves)
pinch salt

1. Mix together lemon juice, zest, sugar and leaves from rosemary sprigs. Leave to macerate for at least 30, stirring occasionally.
2. Stir in the cream and salt.
3. Pour into a shallow plastic container and freeze
4. Wait 1 hour, remove and stir with a fork (to break up any ice crystals)
5. Put back into freezer and repeat after another hour
6. Freeze for 6+ hours (ideally overnight) and then you're ready to go!

Whilst no Ice Cream maker was required, this menu was made infinitely easier by a food mixer (mine is a Kitchen Aid, price justified by 10 year life expectancy and weekly usage = £0.73 per use!!!) and a microplane (a million times better than a normal grater for zest/chocolate shavings/nutmeg). Without them, it might just take you a little longer to prepare, but end result should be the same!

Hope you like! If you have any comments or suggestions for future recipes, please post them on the feedahappylife Facebook page.

Helen x

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