Recipes for Cook

I dont know what it is with me and flats lately! Maybe my subconscious is aware of some kind of impending bunion or hammertoe development and is willing itself over my fashion choices. Whatever it is, its irrelevant, because Ive recently discovered Stubbs & Wootton. Have I been living under a rock?? Apparently, Stubbs & Wootton pump out hand-made shoes in a variety of styles from Palm Beach, NYC, and South Hampton.

While many of their wares look like an old mans night slippers, best paired with a smoking jacket, they have a bespoke section which allows you to build your own custom pair, choosing everything from the color to the embroidery on the toe. The masterpiece you see above is the pair I dreamed up. Theyre pink, and velvet, and adorned with seahorses--they should basically be hanging in the Louvre next to the Mona Lisa.

Preppy is probably hopefully the last thing that comes to mind for those of you who understand my style, but these slippers inspire me to embrace my inner yuppie, Heather-y bitch. But, of course, I could never abandon my affinity for the excessive, which is why I thought itd be fun to take the preppy thing up a notch and do it in monochrome!! Yes, head to toe pink, starting with these pants:

This is a ridiculously simple and tasty little thing to do with zucchini. I first heard about it 3 years ago when my mother made it, and I declared I would do it myself too, soon. Well, soon is a relative term, I guess. Weve been struggling to getting our zucchini plants to produce, which is a laughable problem given their reputation. However, I managed to round up enough this week to give it a go. It does taste a little lighter than regular hummous, but is otherwise surprisingly similar. Just the thing for a light summer meal.

about 2 cups - 4 servings
20 minutes prep time


1 medium zucchini (2 cups diced)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup tahini
1 small clove garlic
2 to 3 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed, ground
a sprinkle of paprika, a grind of black pepper

Wash and trim the zucchini, and cut it into dice. Put it in a blender or food processor with the remaining ingredients and purée until smooth, stopping to scrape down the sides if necessary. Give it a taste and adjust the flavours if you think it needs more of anything. (Less? Sorry; too bad.)

Remove to a serving dish and let rest for 30 minutes or so to allow the flavours to blend. Serve with crackers or crudités. I dont know how well this keeps; the issue has never arisen.

Bang Bang Shrimp is certainly a favorite of diners at Bonefish Grill and it is something I regularly crave as well.  Being concerned, as most are, that fresh USA Gulf shrimp may soon be difficult to come by, I decided to take advantage of the beautiful 10-15 counts which were available at the supermarket.  The Bang Bang Shrimp dish served in the restaurant is generally small popcorn shrimp lightly coated in corn starch and fried.  I choose to make mine with a heavier batter and panko for my gigantic version. 

I combined 1/2 beer with some corn starch, flour and salt and pepper.  After cleaning and deveining the shrimp I gave them a batter bath and then coated them with panko bread crumbs.  I pan fried the little beauties for about 3 minutes per side or until they were golden brown and crunchy.

Meanwhile, I made the defining sauce for my Bang Bang shrimp by combining mayonnaise, Srirachi hot sauce, sweet hot pepper sauce, and rice wine vinegar in a very large mixing bowl.

As the shrimp came out of the fryer, the were immediately dunked and tossed in the perfectly pink spicy sauce.  Serve them over a bed of cold, crispy shredded iceberg lettuce with a sprinkle of sliced green onions and chopped cilantro and it really is one of the tastiest treasts to tickle (and heat up) your taste buds!   

Soaking
Rice should be washed nicely and soaked at least for 2 hours. No harm will be done if rice is soaked long
Trick of making soft idlies depend much on urudh dhal soaking too.
Dhal should be soaked only for 45 minutes. Over soaking will reduce the quantity of batter
Wash the dhal nicely and pour 3 cups of water and soak. Add the fenugreek seed to the dhal Use the water in the soaked dhal for grinding. If you are not able to grind after soaking keep it in the refrigerator and take out 15 minutes before grinding.

Ingredients
Broken green gram (pasiparuppu)-1 handful (1/4 cup)
Green chili-4
Chopped small onion-10
Curry leaf-little
Small jeera-1 teaspoon
Coconut milk-2 tablespoon
Procedure
Cook the dhal in a big kadai. Once the dhal is well cooked, add the cut vazhai thandu pieces, chili and onion. Add a cup of water. Close the kadai and cook for 10 minutes in slow fire. Open the lid and add little salt (remember that this thandu can’t hold too much salt).Bring to a boil and switch off the stove. Add the coconut milk. Season the koottu with little small jeera and curry leaf in a teaspoon of ghee in a separate kadai and add to the koottu.If you want to store the koottu for the next day, coconut milk can be avoided.

Rice, whether its white, brown, long, short,
forbidden (black), or red, is one of my favorite dishes. Red rice with its nutty flavor has secured a good place in my heart, and as a result in my kitchen, in the last year. I usually cook it alaturka; however, this time I wanted to try a Bhutanese recipe since red rice is from Bhutan. I found the recipe online here. I only made small changes, and the Bhutanese rice turned out to be great. I served it with Turkish meatballs and they got along pretty well. From now on Ill absolutely cook red rice with this recipe.

1 cup red rice
2 tbsp butter
1/2 bunch green onions, chopped finely
1/2 cup petite diced carrots
1/2 cup finely chopped shitakee mushroom
1/2 tsp thyme
3 bay leaves
1 1/2 - 2 cups vegetable stock (the stock I used was salty, so I didnt use extra salt)

-Wash the rice with cold water and let it sit in warm water for an hour before you cook.
-Heat the butter in a pot, stir in onions, and cook for 4-5 minutes. Add carrots, mushroom, and rice. Stir for another 5 minutes.
-Add vegetable stock (you can also use chicken stock or water), thyme, and bay leaves. First bring to a boil, then put it in an oven dish, cover, and cook in a preheated oven at 450F for 20-30 minutes, until rice soaks the water.
-Let it sit for at least ten minutes before serving.

This recipe is for a Turkish food blogging event called "Pirinç Ye" (Eat Rice) which is hosted by Sonia of Our Beautiful House and Garden.

A meal I had last year at one of Icelands fancier (and most expensive) restaurants, where perfectly done beef was served with braised veal that was well on its way to becoming pâté and had an incredible richness of flavour, reminded me of all the times when, as a child and well into my teens, I would stalk the pot when my mother was making lamb pâté and try to nab a little morsel of braised meat that had been cooked for so long that it was beginning to separate into string-like pieces, each bursting with the flavour of meat, onions and salt and saturated with the special flavour braising gives to meat. Unfortunately for the restaurant, the comparison was not in their favour, because while the braised veal – I think they called it veal mousse although I am relatively sure that neither cream, eggs nor gelatin were involved – had a wonderful, rich flavour, it had a mushy, nasty texture that made it impossible to eat it by itself - you needed a piece of beef, vegetable or potato to hide the texture.

A little later I bought a shoulder of lamb and used a couple of pieces to cook vegetable-lamb soup. After the hour it takes to make the soup, the meat was tough and flavourless and I decided I was probably going to end up making pâté from what remained. But yesterday when I was reading Ruth Reichls book Garlic and Sapphires, the chapter on beef gave me a hankering after meat, and I remembered the braised veal and lamb. I now decided to try to recapture that fascinating, rich flavour, along with the right texture. I had braised meat many times but never taken it to the stage where it begins to fall apart, so this was a first for me.

I started rooting around in the freezer, rejected some cutlets I found, knowing I could get them cooked and tasting good in about 30 minutes, whereas the lamb shoulder, which I dug up next, would be perfect for braising. I took two pieces and put them in the fridge to thaw, then when I came home today I got them out, cut them down to a size that would fit into the smaller of my soup pots, browned them at high heat in a frying pan and flavoured them with salt and pepper, then dumped them into the soup pot with a quartered onion and little bit of water. Once it was boiling merrily I lowered the heat so that it would barely keep simmering, put the lid on and started the timer.

After 20 minutes I opened the pot, saw there was too much liquid and poured off some of it into a jar. Every 20 minutes I checked on the pot and pulled the bottom piece of meat out and put it on top to allow all the meat to wallow in the increasingly flavourful broth, which I replenished from the jar whenever it was in danger of boiling off. After an hour I decided there was some flavour note missing from the broth, so I added a sliced carrot and a bit more salt.

At the 70 minute mark I took the meat and cut it into smaller pieces and returned it to the pot with the bones. I started cooking the potatoes around the 80 minute mark and decided that I needed a second side dish to serve with the meat, so I got out some white cabbage which I sliced into ribbons. When the potatoes were cooked, I got them out and mashed them, adding milk, butter, sugar and a pinch of salt, and then put them aside.

It was now time to start browning the meat. I poured off the broth which by now could well be called stock, so rich and concentrated had it become, turned up the heat to medium and put some butter into the pot, as the meat was rather lean and there was hardly any fat on it to use for the browning. I also put some into a frying pan for the cabbage.

While the butter in the pan melted and got up to the right temperature, I coated the meat in butter and listened to hear the sizzling begin. I dumped the cabbage into the frying pan and stirred it to get it coated with butter, then turned back to the meat. This I stirred to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot and tore it apart with the edge of the wooden spoon and a fork while it browned. To make sure it wouldnt burn or dry out, I occasionally added a spoonful of the stock. At this stage I was taking turns stirring the meat and the cabbage.

When the smell of cooking cabbage began to rise from the pan, I added couple of dashes of maple syrup to it (you need to be very careful with the maple syrup as too much ruins the dish) and a pinch of salt to counteract the syrups sweetness. I stirred the cabbage to coat with the syrup and then removed it from the heat. Then I finished browning the meat, which was now beginning to take on a caramel colour and looked like my mothers pâté meat does right before she puts it into the grinder. The onions had been completely mashed up and absorbed by the meat, but carrot pieces were still visible as tiny morsels of bright orange among the browned meat. I added the final spoonful of broth, gave it a stir, picked out the bones (carefully licking each before discarding it) and then dumped the meat onto a plate, added the mashed potatoes and the cabbage.

And how did it taste? The mashed potatoes were creamy and mild with a hint of butter, the meat was rich and soft with just the right amount of saltiness and a hint of pepper, but the cabbage was a bit bold – which was surprising as raw it had little flavour – but it was perfectly al dente and after the first explosion of flavour it had just the right amount of sweetness and a mild taste of maple to counteract the first big taste shock. I think the most exquisite moment of the meal came when the liquid from the cabbage – equal amounts cabbage juice, butter and maple syrup – seeped into the meat and was absorbed into it, adding a hint of sweetness to it to complement its rich and slightly salty braised flavour. In other words: it was a very, very good meal, in the way only food cooked at home with love and care can be.

I am just hoping the mashed potatoes will prevent me from getting heartburn, but even if I do, it will have been worth it.

I fancied making some bread yesterday, something nice to go with soup at lunchtime.  So a quick flick through my favourite bread book Bread by Eric Treuille & Ursula Ferringno from Dorling Kindersley (great photos!) and I found a recipe for Foccaccia con Olive, my version is a variation on this. 
I didnt have any olives left, but what I did have a tub of Olive Pate which my SIL had brought with her at Christmas.  It was ideal to smear all over the top of the foccaccia.  I also made my dough in the bread maker but cooked it in the oven, best of both worlds in my opinion.

I never feel much like doing a lot of cooking on a Friday night, so this was a quick and tasty meal that took very little preparation. 

I was asked to review this glorious veggie box by Farmison  the company is the brainchild of John Pallagi and Lee Simmonds, two old friends and colleagues who share a great love for fantastic food.

They promote their 7 core values:

1. Farmison provides home cooks with fabulous foods that would normally only be found in the kitchens of discerning, ingredient-aware chefs.
2. Farmison provides a lip-smacking alternative to the year-round monotony of supermarkets.
3. Farmison constantly changes what it sells to reflect whats in season. When foods are not at their best, we dont stock them.
4. Farmison supports biodiversity in our food chain by promoting rare breed meats and searching out less common fruit and vegetable varieties.
5. Farmison gives small-scale food producers a UK-wide platform to showcase and sell their products, complementing their own local initiatives.
6. Farmison sources food from the UK first and foremost and only chooses imported food if there is no British equivalent.
7. Farmison sells foods produced in a way that respects farm animals, producers and the environment.

I was certainly impressed by the freshness of the vegetables and the variety, they were very well packed too.

 I only needed two courgettes and about 8 mushrooms for this dish so there will be more recipes coming up.

Vegetable Papardelle with Stilton

2 large courgettes, diced
8 mushrooms, sliced
30g butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
100g Melton Mowbury Stilton,  crumbled
250g Soli Pappardelle pasta (courtesy of my lovely hamper from Capricorn Goats Cheese)

Heat the butter and oil in a large pan, add the courgettes and mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes until the vegetables are soft and golden brown.


Fill a large pan with boiling water, bring to a rolling boil and add the Pappardelle

Add 100ml cream to the pan of vegetables and then add the crumbled stilton cheese.

Turn down the heat and cook gently until the cheese melts into the sauce.

Drain the pasta and mix with the cheese and vegetable mixture.  This made a generous serving for two but would have served four with some bread.  We love Stilton but if its not for you, then you could use any cheese that melts well.

Look out for more recipes made with my Farmison Veg Box, if you would like to find out more about how you can buy your fruit and vegetables from Farmison there are a variety of boxes available, as well as a range of meats and cheeses.

 Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. I was not required to write a positive review and any opinion expressed is my own.

Jacqueline has set us a slightly different challenge for  this months No Croutons Required,  she says "I would like to focus on what is often served alongside soup or a salad. I am thinking of the humble sandwich.  Toasted or plain, I would like you to come up with an interesting sandwich. The only stipulation is that it must be suitable for vegetarians."

My Mum probably makes the best sandwiches, she always ensures that there was plenty of filling and that the filling goest right to the edge of the sandwich, the best way to achieve this is by cutting off the crusts. But Im not going to make that kind of sandwich because ever since the early stages of the Great British Bake Off, Ive been hankering to make some flatbreads.
 I used the recipe for Magic Bread Dough from Hugh Fearnly Whittingstalls River Cottage Veg Everyday.Its an interesting mix of strong and plain flour and something I havent tried before.
  
There is plenty of dough to make several different flatbreads. For the dough for my sandwich I added some chopped rosemary.  You can cook the flatbreads on a griddle but I put them in a hot (240C) oven for about 5-10 minutes.

This one is more like a pizza.  I spread the dough with, one of my favourite sauces, Maggi Chilli and Tomato Sauce straight from the bottle.  Then sprinkled over some grated Lockerbie Cheddar Cheese.


For the sandwich filling, I adapted  Hugh F-Ws  Leek and Cheese Toastie from River Cottage Veg to lower the calorie count.

Leek and Cottage Cheese Flatbread Sandwich

15g butter
2 medium leeks, trimmed and finely chopped (white and pale green part only)
A couple of sprigs of thyme, leaves only
3 tablespoons of cottage cheese
1 tsp cornflour
50g cheddar
1 large rosemary flatbread
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in a frying plan and add the leeks.  Cook gently until softened. Stir in the thyme.  Mix the cornflour with some of the liquid from the cottage cheese and add to the pan, add the cottage cheese and warm through.  Take off the heat and add two-thirds of the cheese .

Pile the leek and cheese filling onto one half of the flatbread and fold over, sprinkle over the rest of the cheese and place under a hot grill for a couple of minutes until the cheese melts.




Serve with salad

I served my sandwich with a Carrot, Cucumber and Apple Salad with chopped Pistachio nuts


To finish off, Id like to show you the sweet flatbread that I made, using the basic dough a few dried apricots, chopped white chocolate and ground almonds.


After it was baked, I glazed it with honey and put it back in the oven for a couple of minutes. 
Im entering this for No Croutons Required run by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa from Lisas Kitchen.

Pinch of red pepper flakes
Pinch of kosher salt
Pinch of freshly ground pepper
½ teaspoon Italian herb seasoning blend
1 teaspoon honey

***Toppings:
¼ package of pepperoni slices
½ can of sliced olives
2 cups mozzarella cheese

--Garnish with fresh chopped basil

METHOD

Preheat oven to 475 degrees, and set rack to a low position in your oven. Prepare pizza pan by brushing it with olive oil, then sprinkling it with cornmeal, and set aside.

Roll out pizza dough into a round, slightly larger than pizza pan. Place rolled-out pizza dough onto pizza pan, and fold under edges to form a lip; brush all over with olive oil, and par-bake for 5 minutes, remove and set aside.


Meanwhile, heat a large skillet to medium-high head, and add the olive oil, onion and bell pepper, and saute until onions are translucent. Add the garlic and continue sautéing for 30 more seconds. Add the remaining ingredients, and bring to boiling point, and then reduce heat and let simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until sauce reduces and thickens. Place the sauce on the par-baked pizza crust, and continue baking for 15 minutes, until crust and cheese are lightly golden.


***Breadsticks

Meanwhile, begin forming breadsticks:
(Click here for recipe: Twisty Breadsticks - Homemade)