STUFFED MARROW (or the courgette that nearly got away!)

We have had some rum old weather here in France and autumn gardening has not been easy.  When Nick finally was able to clear the overgrown vegetable patch he discovered a surprise.  A courgette that had grown to the size of a marrow!  It was about 70cm (28") long!

We are fans of stuffed marrow in this house but haven't made one for years.

You can see my previous post about it here.

 

The dish is essentially a marrow cooked then stuffed with a bolognaise-style meat sauce and baked in the oven.  My mum always made hers by peeling the marrow and cooking it in boiling water before stuffing it and baking it.  According to the internet an overgrown courgette is not the same as a marrow, the latter being more watery when cooked.  So, this time instead of peeling and cutting it into rings we cut it lengthwise, unpeeled, and roasted it in the oven to make sure it was cooked before stuffing.

It was however rather huge so we only used half of it and we still have the other half to work out what to do with it next!  In actual fact we didn't manage to eat all of the one half either so I turned the leftover portion into stuffed marrow soup!  You can see that here.

Ingredients

1 large marrow or courgette, or two or three smaller ones

350g lean minced beef

1 tblsp sunflower oil

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 beef stock pot or cube

a good splash of red wine or sherry

1 large can of chopped tomatoes

a little hot water

a sprinkling of mixed herbs (optional)

a good sprinkling of grated cheese (cheddar or emmental)

Method

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.

Wash or wipe the marrow and cut it in half lengthways.  Scoop out and discard the seeds using a tablespoon.  Lay it cut side upwards in a large baking tray and put into the oven to cook while you make the filling.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the onion and fry gently until soft.  Add the meat and garlic and fry until the meat is browned.

Add the tomatoes, herbs and stock pot/cube and stir well.  Add the wine or sherry and stir in.  Continue to cook until the meat is cooked, adding a little hot water to get a thick sauce.

Remove the cooked marrow halves from the oven and check that they are cooked using the point of a knife or skewer.  Return to the oven for a few more minutes if they’re not tender.  Then place them in a suitable baking dish that they fit into neatly.  Spoon the meat filling into the cavities and sprinkle the grated cheese over.

(At this point you could leave the dish as it is and finish cooking later if convenient.)

Return to the oven and bake for around 30 minutes until the cheese has melted and forms a slight crust.  

The whole dish is a meal in itself for two or three people with some crusty bread on the side.  Would serve 4-5 with a few extra veg.

SCARY SAUSAGE ROLLS FOR HALLOWEEN

A variation on my usual sausage roll recipe for Halloween.

Add onion, green pepper and a teaspoon of spice such as garam masala to the sausage mixture.

See the full recipe here.

BROCCOLI, CAULIFLOWER AND SPRING ONION SOUP (soup maker recipe)

Autumn is most definitely well established here in France and it's soup weather again.

Vegetables are not cheap here.  When we go back to the UK I am always amazed to find that you can still get a bag of parsnips or carrots for less than £1 or a cauliflower for less than £2.  In France we now use a lot of frozen veg; onions, mushrooms, leeks, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans.  It can be a cheaper way to buy them and helps to avoid waste.

Cauliflowers here can vary enormously in price from one week to the next.  They can be 1.90€ one week and 5.50€ the next in the same shop.  And often they are huge and already look past their best.  When they look nice and fresh and are a sensible price we buy them and they can be a challenge to use up before they go off.  With about one third of a cauliflower and a whole head of broccoli looking almost past it in the veg drawer I decided to make soup.

I have never found spring onions as we know them in the UK here; those slender, sweet and not at all sharp ones that are delicious in dips and salads.  Here I have found bunches of larger round white onions and much chunkier ones that look like British spring onions' big brothers and they are both stronger in flavour.  With half a bunch of those also needing to be used up I included them in this soup.

It was delicious!  Smoother than a home made soup often turns out which I wonder might be due to the variety of potato.  Who knows, but it's definitely a combination I will use again.

I made it ahead of using it and kept it in the fridge so when reheating it I added a good slurp of Pineau des Charentes (the nearest thing to dry sherry that you can readily buy here) and a swirl of cream when it was in the bowl.

Ingredients

4 small potatoes

2 medium carrots

a large chunk of cauliflower

a large chunk of broccoli, including (discarding the woody bits) the stalk

3 large "spring" onions, or a small bunch of small spring onions (or an ordinary white onion)

2 vegetable stock pots (I used the last of my Tesco garlic and thyme stockpots)

Salt and pepper to taste (or add this at the end of cooking or when reheating) 

A splash of dry sherry and a swirl of cream (optional) to add after cooking

Method

Peel, wash and roughly chop as appropriate enough veg to fill the soup maker to the bottom line.

Add the stock pots and water to fill to the top line.

Cook on smooth.

Makes 4 generous lunch servings, or 6 for first course servings.

COFFEE AND WALNUT CAKE (version two)

A few months ago I made a coffee and walnut cake for an event in the village, to a recipe I had not used before.  Usually I go for the Hairy Bikers recipe from their book "Mums know best" which I wrote about here.  I have also made a lovely coffee cake without walnuts to a recipe from the W.I. book "Cakes" which I wrote about here.

This time I fancied using one from the latest (41st) edition of the BeRo book, which in the end I adapted quite a bit.  Anyway, the cake I made on that day was surplus to requirements and never made it out of the event kitchen, a fellow volunteer buying the whole cake instead.  Which is fine except that I didn't get to find out whether it was any good or not!

As was bound to happen, another event came along recently and I made the cake again.  It's more or less a combination of my two regular recipes; includes walnuts in the cake, has a buttercream filling and a glacé icing top.  It was not the only coffee and walnut cake there and both sold out early in the day, confirming my theory that the old fashioned, traditional cakes, especially if they are well covered in icing, are always the most popular at cake sales.  There was just one small sliver of mine left, looking lonely by itself, so I was able to taste it.

It was light and moist with a strong coffee flavour and just the right amount of walnuts.  This will be my favourite recipe to use..........for now anyway!  I've actually given it two stars in the fiddle factor as chopping walnuts is not my favourite pastime and making two different icings (one for the filling and one for the top) is a bit more time consuming, but it was worth it! 

Ingredients

For the cake

175g self raising flour

1½ level tsp baking powder

100g white caster sugar

75g golden caster sugar (or use all white)

175g baking spread or spreadable butter

3 eggs, beaten

65g walnuts, finely chopped

1 tblsp Camp coffee essence

For the buttercream filling

40g softened butter

80g icing sugar

1 tsp Camp coffee essence

For the glacé icing

110g icing sugar

1½ tsp Camp coffee essence

To decorate

5-6 walnut halves roughly chopped plus 4 whole halves

Method

Preheat the oven to 180° C / 160° fan / gas mk4.  Grease a pair of 7½" or 8" (20cm) sandwich tins and line the bottoms with baking paper circles.

In a large bowl mix together using an electric whisk (or use a stand mixer) the flour, baking powder, sugars, butter, eggs and coffee essence until creamy and well blended.  Mix in the nuts.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and level the tops.  Bake for 25-30 minutes until done (see side bar for tips).

Remove from the oven, leave in the tins for 5 minutes then turn out carefully, removing the baking paper, and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter in a medium bowl until soft.  Sift in the icing sugar, add the coffee essence and beat until smooth and well combined.

To make the glacé icing, sift the icing sugar into a small bowl and beat in just enough of the coffee essence to get a spreadable icing.  If you want to get the drip effect as in the second picture, add a little more essence or water a drop at a time until it is slightly more runny.

When the cakes are completely cold, sandwich the two together with the buttercream then spread the glacé icing evenly over the top.  

Decorate with whole and chopped walnuts to your taste.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

GOOSEBERRY AND ORANGE DRIZZLE CAKE*

Our gooseberry bush in France is doing well but was a bit slow to get going this year owing to the peculiar weather.  When I braved the thorns to pick the first gooseberries there were not quite enough to make into a crumble.  

With little more than a handful of gooseberries to use my thoughts turned to cake and I remembered seeing a recipe for gooseberry and orange cake somewhere.  Having looked it up I decided that it was really a lemon drizzle cake, made with orange not lemon, and with a few gooseberries added.  So that's what I did.

I used a BBC Good Food recipe which you can see here. It was simple to make using the "all in one" method for cakes, just stirring in the gooseberries at the end of the beating.  It was lovely and we ate it for dessert outdoors on a disappointingly dull summer's day.  The weather in France this year has been rather English (although I hear that the actual English weather has been even worse than usual).  It seemed fitting that with the English weather we should have a traditional cheese and bacon quiche (my mum would have called it a flan) served with what I call English salad - lettuce, tomato and cucumber (with a small tin of sweetcorn sprinkled over for added crunch and interest) followed by a gooseberry cake.

There seemed to be a lot of mixture so rather than overfill the tin I made a few little buns.

They were done in about 20 minutes.

Ingredients

For the cake

225g each of :

    self raising flour 

    caster sugar 

    softened butter or baking spread (I used something called Le Fleurier which is a spread   containing  butter and various oils but no palm oil)

4 eggs

3/4 tsp baking powder (this is not in the GF recipe but when using French self raising flour I usually add a little baking powder as without it the rise is sometimes disappointing.)

zest of 1 large orange

a handful or two of gooseberries, rinsed, topped and tailed

For the topping/drizzle

most of the juice of the orange

2 tblsp granulated sugar

Method

Put a long strip of baking paper along the inside of a 2lb, 900g loaf tin then put a paper liner on top.  (The strip helps to lift the cake out of the tin before it has completely cooled and is still quite fragile.)  Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.  

Put all the cake ingredients except for the fruit into a large mixing bowl and beat until smooth with a hand held electric whisk.  (Or use a wooden spoon and keep beating until smooth.)

Stir in the gooseberries and spoon into the tin.  Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden brown and done.

(This recipe produced a lot of mixture so rather than overfill the tin I used it for a few buns.  They went into the oven when the cake came out and were done in 20 minutes.)

Poke a few holes in the top with a skewer, toothpick or cake tester.

To make the drizzle, mix the sugar with the orange juice and pour over the cake while it is still warm.

After 10 minutes lift the cake out of the tin using the paper strips (still in its liner) and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

*Eagle eyed readers may realise that this is different from the first time I posted this recipe.  The essential difference is that the new version uses a larger quantity of all the ingredients but the end results would be the same.  

SALMON, PEA AND POTATO QUICHE

"Here she goes again" I can hear myself saying! Yes, another blog post about leftovers!

I've been "off the lead" for a couple of weeks while Nick is back in the UK for one of our scheduled visits, which usually revolve around seeing friends and family, and mending things.  The MOT for the car we leave in the UK falls due at this time of year and when I was last there it had a dashboard warning which declared "ENGINE FAULT. REPAIR NEEDED".  Naturally I ignored it and it ran perfectly well except for the annoying audible warning!  However it needed to go to the garage anyway for its test so we allowed a bit longer for the visit in case parts needed to be ordered.  It was a simple fix so all is well.

So, with Nick out of the picture I decided to host a "ladies that lunch" for some other singletons at home.  For starters I served the little vegetable tarts which you can see here.  For main course I made roast salmon on a bed of courgette and tomatoes which you can see here.  For dessert I made five pana cottas with a strawberry topping.  I made these the day before so that I just had to add the topping last minute.  Only three other ladies had replied to my invitation so I had "quality tested" the spare one for my dinner.  When a fourth guest accepted last minute and having eaten one of the puddings I rustled up a second dessert of apple and gooseberry crumble using fruit and topping from the freezer, to Mary Berry's recipe which you can see here.

Naturally there were leftovers!  A few unused cooked peas, beans and broccoli from the starter, plus nearly half a pint of the egg mix.  I have found it best not to over fill the tarts, as the leftover mix can be used later.  (Usually I just pour it over a few savoury bits and pieces to bake a kind of "crustless quiche".)

There was also one salmon fillet with a few bits of courgette and tomato left and a few potatoes. I had a pack of shortcrust pastry in the freezer which I thawed out and then just piled everything into it including ripped up flakes of salmon.  I used my general method for making a quiche which  you can see here, adding a few slices of a rather past it noggle end of goat's cheese and some tomato to decorate the top.  Three quarters of the way through the cooking I pressed the filling down a bit using the back of a fish slice as it looked like some bits were going to be browned too much.  This made sure everything was submerged in the custard and resulted in a well filled quiche.

It was absolutely yummy!  Another "free lunch"!  It took me three days to eat my way through it on my own but was so delicious I would most definitely make it again from scratch!  In fact it would have made the ideal lunch dish for the ladies.

Ingredients 

a pack of ready made, ready rolled shortcrust pastry

2 tblsp caramelised onion chutney (or any other suitable chutney made with onions)

a handful of cooked peas, green beans and broccoli florets

1 cooked salmon fillet

a few chunks of cooked courgettes and tomatoes from the roasted salmon recipe (or fry some)

2 small cooked potatoes, sliced

2 eggs

2 tblsp of crème fraiche

approx 100ml milk

a few slices of goat's cheese, or any other cheese, grated or sliced

a few slices of tomato

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan.  Line a loose bottomed 20cm tart tin with the pastry.  Use the baking paper that comes in the pack to line the pastry case, add a layer of baking beans and blind bake for 15 minutes.  (I find it a good idea to put the tin on a baking sheet, which removes the risk of accidentally pushing the loose bottom up when lifting the pastry case in and out of the oven.)

Remove from the oven, remove the baking beans and paper and, if the pastry still looks a bit damp, return to the oven for another 5 minutes.

Spread the onion chutney over the pastry case.  Add the cooked greens in an even layer and distribute the sliced potatoes evenly over the top.  Tear the salmon fillet into strips and arrange them evenly over the veg.

Beat the cream and eggs together in a jug and add enough milk to make up to 250ml.  Mix well, add salt and pepper and pour evenly over the filling.  Add the cheese slices (or some grated cheese) and tomato slices.

Return to the oven, reducing the temperature to 160C / 140 fan.  Bake for 20 minutes then press any bits of filling that are above the surface of the custard back down so that they are submerged.  

Bake for another 10-20 minutes until the filling is set and slightly browned.

Allow to settle and cool for 10 minutes before serving.  Serve warm or cold with salad or anything else you fancy.  Chips and baked beans would be nice!  Equally a simply "English" salad or something more exotic.

Cuts into 6 regular or 4 generous servings.

GIFFLAR ROLL PUDDING (AND/OR TART)

 

Considering the nature of my last two posts, and now this one, you would be forgiven for thinking that I now spend my whole life dreaming up how to use leftovers in a way that avoids waste but is still edible.  I have to say that lately it does often feel like that but I can assure you, there has been proper cooking going on and when I get time to sort through photos and concentrate on things normal service will be resumed.

Just in case you were also wondering what on earth a Gifflar is, well, it's these things.  They are kind of bready rolls flavoured either with cinnamon or vanilla like small cinnamon buns but a bit firmer.  The only place I have ever seen them is in Ikea.  They are very tasty, not too sweet, and very filling with either a cup of tea or a glass of wine.

In one of our mad panic visits to Ikea earlier in the year (in an attempt to finish DIY projects and make the house ready for visitors) I picked up a bag of each and they did indeed come in very handy for keeping said visitors' hunger at bay on the occasions when the catering had gone awry.  

As mentioned in my previous post, there were inevitably leftovers when all the visitors had gone home and I spotted in the cupboard an opened packet of vanilla Gifflar which was only missing one or two rolls.  So, thinking that you can make a bread and butter pudding out of many things other than bread, I came up with a way of using them for a dessert.  I also used a few apricots that were lurking in the fridge drawer but you could use plums, apples, or virtually any other fruit.  My mum used to put raisins or sultanas in her bread and butter pudding and they would also work well here.

I sliced each one in half and arranged them in a pie dish, tucking the sliced apricots in between. 

I then poured over my usual custard mixture for a bread and butter pudding which you can see here.

It worked really well.  It puffed up in the oven and sank back down when it had cooled and was, truthfully, a lot firmer than say the brioche pudding that I usually make, but was still delicious.

The next day it had firmed up rather more and, as dipped my spoon into the dish, I realised that in actual fact it was now very much like a tart and could be sliced.

So that's how we had the rest of it, sliced just like a tart and served with a drizzle of cream!  Which made me wonder if I had once again invented a new kind of dessert, after the fashion of the tarte tatin or the Bakewell pudding?!

If so I think I would have to think of a different name for it.  Gifflar tart somehow doesn't sound quite as appealing!!

Ingredients

8-10 Gifflar rolls (either cinnamon or vanilla flavour)

a handful of apricots, stoned and quartered

1 tblsp demerara sugar 

2 eggs

2 tblsp double cream (or any kind of cream or crème fraiche)

about 150ml milk

2 tblsp caster sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C / 140 fan.

Cut the rolls into half and arrange in a suitable, buttered baking dish.  Slip the slices of apricot in between and sprinkle over the demerara sugar.

Put the eggs into a measuring jug and beat.  Add the cream and enough milk to make up to 400ml.  Beat in the caster sugar.

Pour the egg mixture evenly over the contents of the dish and press down lightly with the back of a tablespoon or fish slice.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until the custard is set.

Whilst still warm serve in spoonfuls with cream, custard or ice cream.  Serve in slices like a tart when cold.