Even though we just got back from Devon last night, I am going home to visit friends and family in Sweden today.
It will be lovely to have dinner with friends, enjoy my mother’s lovely cooking, spend a whole day with my best friend, go for walks in the woods and just chill out in the quiet countryside.
I promise to post updates about Devon and the supperclub when I have a little more time to spend in front of a computer.
It is lovely being in Devon breathing fresh air. It is quite cold but it was blue skies and sunshine yesterday so we had fish and chips by the beach in the cute village of Beer. 🙂
I really love pasta bakes, they are the ultimate clearing-out-the-fridge-companion, as you can thow anything in it and it still tastes good, and I love the crispy cheese on top, very comforting. So Christopher and I have been debating the pasta bake for a few weeks. Me pro, he against. But then suddenly, he gave in and said we could try it. That means I won, right? 😉
When I put the dish down in front of him, he said it looked really good and smelt lovely, and to his surprise he really enjoyed it, he didn’t just have a second helping but a third. Smugly I said ‘Well I wasn’t going to make a crappy pasta bake’, and he explained that he ate a lot of pasta bakes at Uni but they weren’t as good, so that was he expected. I think I have converted him now.
I find it much easier to make this creme fraiche based sauce instead of a proper bechamel, it is much quicker and perfect for a weekday dinner. And you can use the half fat creme fraiche, I sometimes do.
Pasta bake with spicy sausage, mushrooms and chilli, serves 3-4
250 g dried pasta (any shape but spaghetti/tagliatelle)
150 g spicy sausage/chorizo
1 can sliced mushrooms
For the sauce:
300 ml creme fraiche
3-4 tbsp chilli sauce (I used Heinz and Reggae Reggae)
2 tsp Gourmet Garden Parsley blend or 1 tbsp chopped parsley
100 ml grated cheese and more to put on top
a splash of concentrated vegetable stock
salt & white pepper
Cook the pasta and drain it. Fry the mushrooms in a knob of butter and olive oil until they have a nice colour, remove from frying pan. Cut the sausage into slices and fry these in the same pan until the have a nice colour (this intensifies the flavour). Mix all the ingredients for the sauce in a saucepan and bring to a boil, season to taste. Grease an oven-proof dish with butter and pour in half of the pasta. Distribute half of the mushrooms and sausage on top, and add some of the red cooking juice from the sausage too, it will add some more flavour. Then pour nearly half of the sauce on top as well. Repeat with another layer and sprinkle plenty of grated cheese on top. Bake for 15-20 minutes in 200C.
Christopher and I will take the train down to Devon today. I’m really excited as I haven’t been there before but I have heard (and seen on TV) that it is beautiful there. We are going to stay with Christopher’s grandmother Joan. She is absolutely lovely, and it will be great to spend a bit more time with her.
I look forward to nice walks in the woods and along the coast, to breathe fresh air and to relax and drink lots of tea. Hopefully we will have time for a visit to The River Cottage for lunch. I really like the series, so it would be great to experience it properly. I imagine the life in the countryside here to be a bit like in the series with lots of village fairs happening all the time. In Sweden people keep to themselves a little bit more, or meet up in smaller groups, but here the culture is more sociable. Having said that, Swedes are very sociable too, just in a different way.
So I am very much ready for some countryside life, I love London but I am a country girl at heart! 🙂
Tonight, Gaby and I are once again going to a supperclub, this time the Cucina Cinzia. It will be great to try some authentic Tuscan food, and I have heard rumours that the food there is delicious. Can’t wait and promise to tell you all about it later.
Have a nice weekend everybody!
It felt like winter yesterday evening. Cold wind and after a short short walk I was freezing. So when I finally got in I put on sheepskin slippers and made a warming soup. As much as I hate being cold I love when you finally get into your warm home and get the body temperature up again by making and eating something warming. That’s what autumnal food is all about, and this soup is a pretty good example of this.
Christopher was very pleased with the result as I didn’t use any cream in this soup (which I often do in soups) but this one doesn’t need it, and I’m not sure if butternut squash and cream is a great combo. The soup was slightly hotter from the chilli than I expected, so a dollop of creme fraiche was nice with it. I also made some parmesan sticks from leftover puff pastry and some quesadillas with spicy Hungarian salami.
Buttnernut squash soup with chilli, serves 2
1/2 butternut squash (I know I should have weighed it, but was way to hungry, mine was a medium-sized one)
1 medium potato
olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 clove of garlic, grated
1 pinch of salt
water
a splash of concentrated vegetable stock
1-2 tsp chilli flakes
1 tbsp chilli sauce (a mild sweet one)
1 tsp ground cumin
adjust with more salt and stock
Take the pits out of the squash with a spoon and cut the skin off. Cut the squash into 1 inch cubes. Peel the potato and cut it into equally sized cubes. Heat up some olive oil in a large pan and add the cumin and garlic and then the squash and potatoes. Let it soak up the flavours for a few minutes without browning, then add boiling water (or cold, but boiling water is quicker) to cover, add a splash of stock or a piece of a stock cube and bring to a boil. The squash cooks soft in a few minutes, but wait until the potato is soft too. Then remove the vegetables from the saucepan and mix them, adding a bit of the cooking water until you have the thickness you like. Pour the rest of the cooking water out of the pan and pour in the mixed soup. Bring to a boil and add the chilli, more cumin, some salt and maybe some more stock, all after your own taste. Serve with maybe a dollop pf creme fraiche to take the edge off the chilli, some nice bread or quesadillas.
Parmesan sticks
Cut puff pastry into 10 cm long and 1 cm wide strips and place on a baking tray. Grate over plenty of parmesan and bake for 8-10 minutes in 200 C.
Quesadillas
Spread salsa on two soft tortillas, sprinkle grated cheese over one of them, add some salami, a little more cheese and put the other tortilla on top. Fry the tortillas in a dry skillet until they’re brown on both sides and the cheese has melted. Cut into wedges and eat straight away. These are great with soups or with guacemole as a snack.
Via Pioneer Woman (a blog I really like with insight to American cooking) I found this recipe posted on Tasty Kitchen. I really enjoyed this creamy mushroom soup, whereas Christopher’s comment was that it tasted really nice, but he didn’t think tomato, cream and mushrooms was a good combo, not what one expects. I must say I only expected one thing – for it to taste good, and it really did! 🙂 I had the leftovers for lunch the next day and it was really tasty then too.
I served Pioneer Woman’s cheesy garlic bread with it, (with a few changes of course) and we both really liked it!
When it comes to cooking I rarely follow recipes properly, I guess I see them more as inspiration. Even if I have the intention to actually follow it, I always end up adding or substituting something. With this soup I had been a bit silly and printed the measurements in US style and not metric, and couldn’t really be bothered to convert it, so I used all the ingredients (apart from the wine, didn’t have any at hand) and only added some chilli sauce for a punch and sweetness. If you want the original recipe, click on the link above, and below is my modified version. Tasty that one, too!
Creamy mushroom soup, serves 3-4
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1-2 small carrots, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
250 g closed cup mushrooms, sliced
1 clove of garlic, pressed
200 ml passata
500 ml chicken stock (1,5 stock cube + boiling water)
300 ml cream
some finely grated parmesan (approx 2-3 tbsp)
thickening agent (I used Swedish Maizena, made of corn starch)
2 tbsp chilli sauce
salt and white pepper
Heat up the olive oil in a large sauce pan, when hot throw in the celery and carrots and let them soften a bit. Then add the garlic and next the mushrooms. Let the mushrooms reduce in size for a few minutes, and then add the passata and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and let it boil for five minutes or so, then add the cream. Bring to a boil again, adjust the seasoning and add the chilli sauce, and let it simmer for a few minutes. Then add the thickening agent and let it boil on low heat until the soup has the thickness you desire. Maybe add some chopped parsley and serve.
Cheesy garlic bread
Cut crusty baguette lengthways. Melt a knob of butter and add some pressed garlic ot a frying pan and fry the bread (soft side own) until it is golden. Make sure the garlic doesn’t burn. Then mix mayonnaise and grated cheese (cheddar and parmesan) in a bowl. Add some salt. Spoon the mixture onto the crusty bread and put them high up in the oven on 225C until the cheese mixture is nice and golden too. Dig in!
We had clams again on Saturday! This because I bought a few more than we could eat on Friday. I put them in a bowl of water and kept them in the fridge overnight. Three had opened itself a little so we threw them away, but 12 of them were fine, and Christopher made them into this lovely starter. It was a bit fiddly openening the shells with a knife, but worth it.
This was also the christening of the lovely escargot dishes I got for my birthday. It is definitely time for the escargots next!
Clams au gratin, serves 2
12 clams
butter
garlic
chopped parsley
breadcrumbs
Open the clams carfully with a small knife. Keep one half of each shell with the clam on it. Place these on a dish. Melt butter, add garlic and parsley and spoon ot over the clams. Place some breadcrumbs on top and pop the dish under the grill or in a hot oven (225C or so) until the breadcrumbs are golden and crisp and the clams are cooked. This only takes a few minutes. Serve with some nice bread.
On my lunch break on Friday, I made a quick visit to the wonderful Borough Marke. I found some girolles, cepes and Jerusalem artichokes that got to come home with me. I didn’t really have a plan of what to use the mushrooms for when I bought them, I just can’t resist the golden girolles. If I had known I was to use them in a nice creamy sauce with a splash of cognac, with pasta, I would have bought lots more, so the pasta – girolle ratio isn’t what it should be, but it still tasted lvoely.
Pasta with girolles, serves 2
pasta of your choice (about 250 g dried pasta)
girolles
olive oil
a knob of butter
400 ml cream
1-2 cloves of garlic, pressed
1 splash of cognac
1 tsp chilli sauce
2 tsp persillade
grated parmesan (Parmiggiano reggiano is to prefer)
chopped parsley
Cook the pasta. Heat up oil and butter in a sauté pan until it is really hot. Fry the mushrooms for a while, sprinkle on some salt and pepper. Turn the heat down and add the cream, add the other ingredients apart from the parsley, and adjust the seasoning to taste. Drain the pasta and add it into the sauce. Serve with some more grated parmesan, some nice bread and a glass of wine.
Nigella’s new series, Kitchen, is on at BBC at the moment, and this recipe is from the first episode. First you roast some potatoes in the oven, then you scatter seafood on top, add some wine and put the dish back in the oven for another 15 minutes. This was utterly delicious with homemade aioli and nice crusty bread.
Nigella’s seafood bake with potatoes, serves 2
4-5 large potatoes
1 lemon
1/2 red onion
olive oil
4 squid tubes
some large raw prawns, unpeeled
clams
50 ml white or rosé wine
persley, chopped
Don’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into 1,5 cm thick slices and cut each into four pieces. Put the potatoes in an ovenproof dish. Cut the lemon into pieces the same way as the potatoes and scatter over them. Cut the onions into pieces and scatter around the same dish. Pour over some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put in a 200 C oven for an hour. Meanwhile, soak the clams to remove grit. Throw away the opened ones. Take out the dish from the oven, cut the squid into rings and put them into the dish, next add the clams and prawns. Pour in the wine and add some more olive oil. Bake in the oven for another 15 minutes. Crank up the temperature to 220C if you like. When it is all done, scatter some parsley on top, maybe squirt some lemon juice and serve with aioli and nice bread.
Scandelights