CHEESY HAM AND EGG BASKETS - more confinement cooking.

One of the things I miss most whilst being confined to quarters is having a nice lunch out.

 

We usually go out to lunch every week or two, mostly on a spur of the moment basis, but of course, "that particular avenue of pleasure is currently closed off".  So, in our efforts to make the best of things, we have been trying to have more interesting food.  Often out of necessity (shortage of ingredients) but also as entertainment.  Eating out is entertainment after all and we do miss that.  Dredging my memory for lunch inspiration I was reminded of these tasty little frittatas which we first had last year and you can see the original idea here.  

 

You line a muffin tin with ordinary ham and fill with an eggy mixture and other bits and pieces.  I used cheddar cheese and tomatoes but you could use sliced peppers, bits of spring onion, chunks of goats cheese, anything along those lines.

 

You could of course just make one big frittata in a pan with bits of ham in it instead, but cooking them like this you end up with little ham baskets with crispy edges and a tasty filling.  This way takes a little longer to prepare but time is something we are not short of at the moment.  Each one is a portion for a snack, or two or three each make a nice lunch.  Serve with salad, crusty bread or, if you're feeling that side out, chips!

 

Ingredients

 

6 slices of ordinary supermarket ham (not too thick but not the wafer thin kind)

6 eggs

2 tblsp whole milk (you could use cream!)

2 medium tomatoes

a handful of grated cheddar cheese

 

Method

 

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180 fan / gas mk6.  Butter a six hole muffin tin (or double up the quantities for a 12 hole tin, adjust down to make just four).

 

If your ham is in nice small rounds, make four slashes in each slice so that you can tuck them into the tin to line each hole, overlapping the edges.  (See picture.)  If using the larger oblong or square slices of ham such as you find in France, use a saucer, jam jar or similar as a template to cut rounds of roughly the right size before slashing them.  You might have to experiment a bit and if you end up with scraps of ham just add them to the mix or save them for something else (omelette, pasta, quiche, dog, etc.).

 

Whisk the eggs and milk together in a jug, season with salt and pepper (you could add herbs if you like) and divide equally between the holes.  Add a slice of tomato and a good sprinkling of grated cheese on top.

 

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and puffed up.  Remove from the oven and allow the filling to settle down before removing gently with a palette knife.

 

Serves 2-3 people, depending on how hungry they are and what you serve with them.

SPINACH, PEA AND SAUSAGE EGGS FLORENTINE - yet more pandemic cooking.

 

This is one of those recipes that I couldn't wait to cook the moment I read it in a blog.

 

The lovely Dom's blog, Bellau Kitchen, is a joy to read and has over the years inspired me to cook lots of new dishes.  Cakes, soups, chicken thigh dishes, quiches, and many, many more.  The recipes always work and some have become my absolute favourites.

 

This was a huge hit with us when I made it just yesterday.  Although I was keen to try it, it actually took me a month to get around to it.  Knowing that there were some sausages, spinach and peas in the freezer but huge queues of people with trolleys patiently waiting to get into our nearest supermarkets (Tesco and Aldi) polarised me into activity and I finally did it. 

The only other ingredient that might not necessarily be a store cupboard/freezer item is the cream but as I said recently, we have a few boxes of Tesco "UHT double cream substitute" which were destined for France and is now very handy to have in here.

 

You can see the recipe here.  For the herbs I used a sprig of thyme from the garden and the only real deviation I made from the recipe was to use Cumberland pork sausages not veggie ones and about half the quantity of everything except the sausages.  That was plenty for the two of us, and in fact just two eggs not four would have been fine. It was absolutely delicious.

GINGER SPELT BISCUITS - more pandemic cooking.

 

I don't make biscuits very often but these are my favourites to make when I do.  The interesting thing about them is that they're made using spelt flour.

 

With ordinary flour being rarer than hen's teeth at the moment it occurred to me that one of the flours that might have been left behind on the supermarket shelf by the stockpilers is spelt flour.  So you may just be able to get your hands on some.  In which case I would highly recommend these biscuits.

 

 

 

They're quick to put together and bake in just 7 minutes or so.  The added bonus is that the kitchen smells wonderful the minute you start to melt the butter and golden syrup in the pan!

 

They're a lovely, chewy, gingery biscuit, crisp on the outside and softish in the middle.  They don't actually keep all that well and tend to soften quite quickly - but then keeping them is not usually an issue - they tend not to hang around for too long in our house!

 

Ingredients

 

50g butter

50g golden syrup

50g preserved stem ginger from a jar, chopped fairly small

50g golden caster sugar

50g light soft brown sugar

1 egg yolk

150g spelt flour

1 tsp ground ginger

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180 fan / gas mk 6.  Line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Put the butter, syrup and stem ginger in a small pan and warm gently until the butter has melted.  Enjoy the glorious aroma!

Remove from the heat, beat in the sugars and egg yolk, followed by the remaining dry ingredients.  Mix together until well combined. 

Take smallish, walnut-sized pieces of the dough (mine weighed about 15g each) and roll into balls.  Divide the balls between the baking sheets allowing plenty of room between them for them to spread.

Bake for 7-8 minutes until golden brown and puffed up.  Remove from the oven and leave on the baking sheets until they have collapsed back down.  Then lift them carefully onto a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 30 biscuits.

RHUBARB BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING - more pandemic cooking.

 

I'm enjoying the challenge of using up what we have in rather than going out to shop.  Equally, going out to shop now results in a kind of ready, steady, cook selection of random ingredients at the moment, which also calls for a bit of culinary lateral thinking.

 

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my friend Gaynor recommended the rhubarb and custard hot cross buns from Aldi.  They were a good recommendation but I somehow managed to forget that I had bought two packs (they had loads of them at the time) and discovered the second pack last weekend, in a cupboard and several days past their sell-by date.  They were definitely stale but not mouldy so I instantly thought "bread and butter pudding".

 

 

I adapted a recipe for brioche pudding which I have adapted before as you can see here.  Essentially, it's a pack of hot cross buns (any type will work) soaked in the usual egg custard mixture with a few small bits of rhubarb tucked in between the buns. 

 

Luckily I also had a few eggs.  Only days ago there were none to be had anywhere.  I usually get half a dozen from the milkman (yes, we have milk delivered to the door - in real glass milk bottles, no less) but his supplier had sold out.  There were empty spaces on the shelves where the eggs used to be in all our local shops, big and small, even in the little kiosk at our local farm.  Anyway, the milkman had changed his supplier and come up trumps so I had a couple of eggs to spare.   

 

 

We also have rhubarb in our brand new rhubarb patch.  We planted a new plant last summer and it's taken really well to its new home.  There were several stalks ready for picking and I just used two skinny ones for this pudding.

 

 

The pudding was delicious.  Gorgeous warm with a slick of cream* or cold with extra custard. 

 

*I also happened to have some UHT cream in stock.  I always take a few boxes of Tesco "UHT double cream substitute" with us to France every time, but of course we're still in the UK.  So all the bits and pieces I had set aside to take have been unpacked and can be used up here.  A lucky stash as it turns out. 

 

Ingredients

 

1 pack of four hot cross buns, rhubarb and custard flavour or any other kind

butter for buttering the buns

2 thin sticks of rhubarb**

2 eggs, beaten

140ml double cream

250ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tblsp caster sugar (I used golden caster sugar as that's all I had)

 

Method

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 140° fan / gas mk3.  Butter a suitable baking dish.

 

Slice the buns in half and butter each half.  Cut each piece into two and arrange in the dish, flat edge down. 

 

Trim and wipe the rhubarb and cut into small pieces about 2 cm long.  Tuck them in between the pieces of bun.

 

Put the eggs, cream, milk, vanilla and sugar into a jug and whisk together.  Pour the mixture carefully over the pudding and press it all down slightly with the back of a spoon or fish slice. 

 

Bake for 30-40 minutes until the custard is set and the buns lightly browned at the tips.  Dust with icing sugar and serve warm with cream, ice cream or custard.

 

Serves 6.

 

**My rhubarb was young and skinny so didn't need any pre-cooking.  If using larger sticks later in the season it would be a good idea to poach the pieces in a little water until just softened before adding to the dish.

RHUBARB AND RASPBERRY UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

 

The last time we had guests - remember those days? - this is what I made for dessert.

 

In the freezer I had some of the beautiful pink rhubarb from our trip to the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival last month.  I decided to make an easy upside down cake with it, using the recipe for the fresh pineapple cake which you can see here.

 

 

The cake was actually meant to be just a rhubarb upside down cake but when I arranged the fruit over the base of the tin it was obvious that there were too many gaps.  Consequently I filled in the gaps with some raspberries, about half a punnet that I already had in the fridge.  (We put raspberries or blueberries on our porridge most mornings so usually have some in.)  Rhubarb and strawberries are a match made in heaven so I imagined that rhubarb and raspberries might be equally good too.

 

 

It was in fact delicious and a combination I will definitely use again.  Apart from anything else, it was a fabulous colour!

SAUSAGE AND LENTIL STEW

 

Now that many of us seem to have more time on our hands, living in this slightly surreal existence, we, like most people, are having to make do or be a bit more inventive with our food.  Nipping out for a lettuce, because we have run out and fancy a salad for lunch, is not a sensible option so we're spending more time checking our cupboards to see what's lurking in there and - this part is by no means a hardship - checking my cookbooks for ideas.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario.  Should I find a recipe then look to see if I have the ingredients?  Or should I see what ingredients I have and look for a suitable recipe?  In this case it was the former.  A happy hour spent leafing through some cookbooks I don't often get out to play with turned up this recipe.  It comes from a book called "One Pot Wonders" by Lindsey Bareham.

 

It's always satisfying when what you cook looks exactly like the picture in the book.

 

I had seen several bags of four Cumberland sausages lurking in my dad's freezer when I had a clear out.  He used to treat himself to four each time he went to his preferred supermarket and if they didn't get eaten they were put in the freezer.  He's 91 now and since he gave up driving he's also given up shopping and cooking and only eats microwavable ready meals from the local Nisa shop, or ones that we supply him with. 

 

The unused sausages were all getting on a bit so we had taken them off his hands to make room for a stock of ready meals in preparation for the impending lockdown.  Nick also remembered a pack of Puy lentils hiding at the back of a cupboard.  So we had all the necessary ingredients for what promised to be a very tasty dinner.

 

 

We adjusted the quantities to serve just the two of us and cooked the sausages in the oven rather than frying them as per the recipe.  We omitted the chillies as I can no longer eat chillies and added some mushrooms because they were there.  You can see the original recipe here.

 

It was delicious and left us wondering why we don't cook with lentils more often.

 

Ingredients

 

1 tblsp olive oil

4 nice fat sausages (Cumberland, Lincolnshire or any you have available)

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

2 small or 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped into small dice

a few mushrooms, thickly sliced

100g Puy lentils

500ml stock made with a stock cube of your choice (beef, veg, chicken but probably not fish)

salt and pepper

some chopped parsley if you have any

a lemon wedge if you have one and Dijon mustard to serve

 

Method

 

Preheat the oven to 180° Fan.  Prick the sausages and lay on a baking tray lined with scrunched up baking paper.  Bake for about 20-30 minutes until nicely browned and cooked through, turning occasionally so they brown evenly.

 

While the sausages are cooking, heat the olive oil in a large, deep frying pan or sauté pan.  Add the onion and garlic and cook for 5 minutes.  Add the carrot and mushrooms and cook for a further 5 minutes.

 

Add the lentils and stock, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes until the lentils are tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed.  (By now the sausages will also be cooked.)

 

Cut the cooked sausages artistically in half on the slant and add to the pan with the chopped parsley.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and reheat as necessary.

 

Serve with a lemon wedge and Dijon mustard.

 

Serves 2.

LOCKDOWN

 

Rhubarb and raspberry upside down cake.

 

So, here we are, in lockdown.  It was bound to happen sooner or later and too many people seemed to me to be not taking the social distancing part seriously.  Maybe it should have happened sooner.  Only time will tell.

 

I'm trying to stay positive.  As long as we can stay well we can find a way to make the most of the confinement.  There's always stuff to clean, other stuff to paint and, of course, recipes to try.  I now seem to have plenty of time for all of it.

 

Stay safe, keep well and hopefully we'll all be able to meet up on the other side of this.