Broad bean salad

I have a lot of broad beans at the moment; I planted them late and I’m just picking the last of them now. We used some to make this salad, which was perfect with barbequed food: we had shish kebabs, nan bread, yoghurt and cucumber salad, humus, lots of things. I got the idea from a Jamie Oliver Recipe, but he had added some other ingredients at the end. I stopped short of the full thing, as the salad was delicious enough without the extras. I made it at the last minute, as it is good slightly warm.

INGREDIENTS:

  • Allow around 30g beans per serving
  • Lemon juice to taste (1 lemon for 4 servings)
  • olive oil (ratio of lemon juice:olive oil is 1:3)
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 sprig of fresh mint per serving
  • 1 spring onion per serving

METHOD:

  • Pod the beans, and blanch them, unsalted, in boiling water for a minute or two. Drain and set aside to cool.
  • Put the warm beans in the serving dish, and dress with lemon juice and olive oil. For every 1 tbsp of lemon juice, add 3 tbsp olive oil.
  • Season with salt and pepper, and add finely shopped mint. Slice the onions very finely, and fry in a little olive oil, until the onions are soft and starting to colour. Stir them into the salad.

This works really well served with sour cream or greek-style yoghurt.

Truffle Risotto

Mm. A recipe to start early, it doesn’t take 20 minutes, more like 3 to 4 hours. It involves making a mega rich stock, and then adding the rice. This is from one of my favourite recipe books, ‘Risotto Risotto’ by Valentia Harris.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 40g pork fat or lard
  • 40g prosciutto crudo
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 carrot, finely sliced
  • 1 celery stick chopped well
  • 400g beef offcuts or skirt
  • 1.5 litres boiling water
  • salt and peppper
  • 400g risotto rice
  • 75g butter (
  • 75g grated parmesan
  • white truffles, preferably fresh, but can be bought as a paste or in oil

METHOD:

  • Put the pork fat, onion and prosciutto in a blender and whiz to make a thick paste.
  • Put the paste in a large and heavy pan, and fry until soft and golden, at least five minutes, then add the carrot and celery and fry for another five minutes.
  • Add the beef and brown on all sides. Cover with the boiling water, season with salt and pepper and put a lid over the pot. Simmer for three hours.
  • Remove the meat and set aside. If you have used a very rough cut like the skirt, then discard this. We used left-overs, which we shredded and added back later.
  • Put the remaining stock through the food processer so that it is really smooth, and add boiling water to make up to 1.2 litres.
  • Bring the smooth stock to the boil, add all the rice and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until there is no free fluid
  • Add the butter and cheese and any reserved beef that is tender enough to eat. Stir and leave to relax for five minutes.
  • Cover the risotto with shaved truffles, or stir in the white truffle paste, and serve.

Polpette, meatballs, or ….

Once again, I reached into the gastronomic lucky dip that is our freezer, that great storage zone for all things local and perishable. The day before yesterday I fished out a bag of locally produced beef mince. I used it to make polpette. This is probably not worth making with cheap mince, but they were great with what we had. I used the mixture to make polpette (small meat balls) the first night, and then formed the rest of the mixture into patties and had them as burgers in buns. The following recipe will serve six. I got it from ‘Italian Food’ by Elizabeth David.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 450g good quality organic local mince
  • 2 slices white bread
  • milk
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • A small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
  • salt and pepper
  • nutmeg
  • a little lemon rind
  • plain flour
  • olive oil

METHOD:

  • Cut the crusts off the bread, and soak for fifteen minutes in milk
  • Squeeze the excess milk from the bread, which should be really mushy.
  • Add the garlic, parsley, tiny strips of a little bit of lemon peel, seasoning and spices and blend in a food processer. It is possible to do this by hand as well.
  • Add the bread mixture to the mince, and beat in the egg, until everything is well mixed
  • Next, flour a board and your hands. Form little slightly flat meat balls from the mixture, each just over an inch across, and coat with flour. Make a little dent in the top of each meat ball.Fry in hot oil. I think you can deep-fry these, but I just fried them in a pan. When they are done drain them on paper before serving.

I served these with pasta and tomato sauce. The book suggests serving them with a green salad. The next night, as I said, I made small burgers out of the mixture, possibly a culinary crime, but it was very tasty.

Sweet and easy tomato sauce

‘The Moro Cookbook’ by Sam and Sam Clark is one of my favourinte cookbooks. They have also written Moro Easy, and Morito (tapas).

This particular recipe is from their first book, and was a revelation. Until now, if I wanted to make a tomato sauce, for example to pour on meatballs, I would have added all kinds of things, and certainly started with an onion. This recipe is easier and better.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 tin organic tomatoes (or 500g fresh tomatoes with the skins removed).
  • 2 tbsp organic olive oil
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • salt and pepper

METHOD:

  • If you are using fresh tomatoes, chop them finely. If you are using tinned tomatoes, put them in a bowl and squish them up with your hands
  • In a medium saucepan, heat up the olive oil. When hot but not smoking, add the finely sliced garlic and fry until the garlic is beginning to turn brown
  • Add the tomatoes and a pinch of salt. Cover and cook over a low heat until a lot of the liquid has evaporated, a least 30 minutes. You can also leave this in a slow oven for 30 minutes or more, until the sauce is at the right consistency.

If you wish, add cinnamon or chilli with the garlic at the start.

Spicy venison meatballs in a tomato sauce

I made this with some left-over roast venison, but you can also make it with venison mince. I have found that having a mechanical mincer is a game-changer. I think this would also work really well with minced beef. The recipe is from Norman Tebbit’s book, The Game Cook. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 450g minced venison
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 50g breadcrumbs (I used panko)
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 red chilli, finely chopped
  • 1 egg
  • ground black pepper
  • chopped parsley
  • salt 
  • olive oil
  • Another onion, finely chopped
  • 1 can of chopped tomatoes
  • 4 tbsp tomato puree
  • 300ml red wine
  • 2 tsp sriracha sauce, or 1/2 tsp paprika and 1/4 tsp chilli powder
  • salt and pepper

METHOD:

  • preheat the oven to 180C
  • Start making the tomato sauce. Fry one of the chopped onions in olive oil over a medium heat. 
  • When the onion is soft and beginning to brown, add the tomatoes, tomato puree, red wine and sriracha sauce. Season with salt and pepper if required. Simmer over a low heat while you make the meat balls. If it looks too thick, add a little stock or water. I like to blend the sauce with a soup blender. 
  • Mix the minced meat with the onion, beaten egg, cumin, coriander, chilli, chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Mix well by hand and then mix in and combine the bread crumbs. 
  • Form the mixture into golf-balls (or slightly smaller). Fry in olive oil until browned. They should be handled carefully as they have a tendency to fall apart.
  • Put the meatballs in a casserole dish with the tomato sauce, put the lid on and cook in the oven for around 40 minutes. 
  • Serve over spaghetti, with a green vegetable on the side, and a grating of parmesan on top. 

Roast Venison with red wine and rosemary

I’ve made this twice now, using a large piece of loin from a red deer. This is a very easy and quick recipe, good with mustard mashed potatoes, and green vegetables. The timings given are for a rare to medium rare roast. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 700 to 800g venison loin or haunch
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 to 4 carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
  • 1/2 celeriac, peeled and cut into large dice
  • 1 red onion, peeled and cut into 8+ wedges
  • 2 tsp red current jelly
  • 1 to 2 large sprigs of rosemary
  • 100ml red wine
  • 250ml stock
  • 1 tsp cornflour (optional)

METHOD:

  • Preheat the oven to 220C
  • Heat the oil in a large oven-safe pan, and brown the meat on all sides, and season with salt and pepper.
  • Pack the chopped vegetables around the meat, and roast in the oven for 15 minutes
  • After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 180C and roast for another 20 minutes (less for a smaller cut of meat)
  • Remove the pan from the oven, and take the meat out. Put it on a dish and cover with a lid or tin foil.
  • In the pan, add the wine, redcurrant jelly and rosemary to the vegetables, and bring to the boil, stirring to mix in any bits of meat from the bottom of the pain.
  • Simmer for a couple of minutes, and then add the stock and cornflour. Simmer for another ten minutes and adjust the seasoning.
  • Serve the venison sliced with the gravy and vegetables, mustard mash and a green vegetable such as cabbage or broccoli.

Chocolate Muffins

Margaret says this is her favourite chocolate muffin recipe. Not exactly wholefood, but they can be made with organic and fairly traded ingredients. The recipe comes from ‘Chocolate’ by Patricia Lousada which a friend gave me a while ago.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 125g unsalted butter
  • 90g granulated sugar
  • 30g dark brown sugar
  • 2 free range eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla essence
  • 200g self raising flour
  • 15g cocoa powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 150ml milk,
  • 60g good quality plain chocolate in 1cm squares

METHOD:

  • Set the oven to gas 5, 190c and line a bun tin with paper muffin cases
  • Cream the butter and the sugars and beat until light and fluffy
  • Beat the eggs and add gradually to the butter and sugar, beat the two together as you add the eggs
  • Sift the flour, cocoa and salt together a couple of times and fold into the egg mixture, adding the milk as you go to make a soft ‘dropping’ mixture
  • Half fill the paper cases with mixture, and divide the squares of chocolate between the muffins. Cover each chocolate topping with a little bit of mixture
  • Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes until the muffins are cooked and springy to touch. Put on a cooling rack.

Muffins are best fresh. Say no more.

Beef and beer stew, prehistoric style

I so very nearly called this post ‘Prehistoric beef and beer stew’ but then thought at least one person might find that too funny to pass up for a joke.

This is one of the recipes from a book called ‘Prehistoric Cooking’ by Jacqui Wood. I picked this one because I was still experimenting with honey from last month’s article. My sister sent me the book, hopefully because she thought I would find it very interesting.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 500g stewing steak
  • 25g wholemeal flour
  • 25g butter
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 bunch of sorrel (grows wild, I have some cultivated in the garden)
  • 50g honey
  • 1 pint of ale

METHOD:

  • Cut the meat into 2cm cubes, and dust with the flour
  • Fry the meat in the butter until browned. Use a casserole dish with a well-fitting lid.
  • Add salt, chopped sorrel, honey and beer.
  • Put on the lid of the casserole and cook over a low heat for one and a half hours, until the beef is tender.

For authenticity, serve with wholemeal bread rather than potatoes. Carrots are a good side dish. 

Polenta Cake

This is a delicious recipe that can be made using duck eggs. Polenta is gluten free so this is a useful cake to whip up for the GF tea table.

INGREDIENTS:

CAKE

  • 110g butter
  • 225 g caster sugar
  • 4 eggs, beaten
  • 110g ground almonds
  • 2 tsp almond extract
  • 225g fine polenta

SYRUP

  • 3 tbsp runny honey
  • 2 tsp lemon juice

METHOD:

  • Preheat the oven to 180 C. 
  • Cream the butter and sugar together until soft and creamy
  • Beat the eggs into the mixture with the ground almonds, then add almond extract and polenta
  • Line an 18 x 28 cm swill roll tin with greaseproof paper, allowing the paper to stand about 2cm higher than the tin. Spread the mixture into the tin and bake for 1 hour.
  • Meanwhile, prepare the syrup. Warm the honey in a pan and add the lemon juice, and bring to a boil. Simmer for five minutes until the syrup has reduced a little. Set aside to cool. 
  • When the cake comes out of the oven, cut into squares and pour over the syrup. 

You could garnish these with slivered almonds while still hot and sticky, the syrup should hold the slivers in place. Serve when cooled. These are good at the end of a meal, with a cup of coffee. 

Honey

Honey is one of the foods that I can remember eating when I was very young. I can remember eating comb honey when we lived in New Zealand; I must have been aged about four. Later, when we lived in the middle east, we used to buy honey from the people living in the Alburz mountains; we called in bees-foot honey, as it sometimes contained small fragments of the poor bees that made it. In Nigeria, honey was rare and costly, and sold wrapped in leaves by tribesmen sitting at the edge of the market place.

In all these parts of the world and more, and going back through the millennia, honey has been eaten. There are Mesolithic cave paintings in Spain, showing women collecting honey. It has value as a food, and as a medicine. The ancient Egyptians new of its healing powers and used it to dress wounds, and to embalm the dead. In the bronze-age, in Britain, honeyed breads were made for festivals.

Honey has value as a food, and also has medical uses. These are still being researched, and include measuring the medicinal value of honey to help with oral infections, reducing cough in children, and in the management of chronic wounds and acute burns. The use of some types of honey for wound management is already part of mainstream practice in the UK. There seems to be variation between types of honey when it comes to how well they work; Manuka honey is the most widely know therapeutic honey, made from nectar collected by bees from the Manuka tree in Australia and New Zealand. There seems to be several different ways in which the honey works to treat and prevent infections in wounds.

WHAT IS HONEY?

Honey is made from the nectar of flowers, which collected by honey bees. Bees manufacture honey as a stable, high-energy food for their young. They collect nectar from plants that are in bloom. Flying back to the hive, the bees then transfer the nectar into six-sided wax cells. They then flap their wings to help water to evaporate from the nectar, and condensing it into honey. Once the honey is ready, the bees seal each cell with wax, storing it for when it is to be consumed.

When it comes to harvesting the honey, the beekeeper removes the combs of honey from the hive, cuts off the wax caps and spins the come to get the honey out. The honey is then strained and bottled. Only honeybees make large enough colonies in hives for this to work; bumblebees do not live in large colonies, and honeybees are not native to the islands.

TYPES OF HONEY

The colour and flavour of honeys differ depending on which flowers have been visited by the honey bees. The colour ranges from nearly colourless to dark brown, and the flavour varies from mild to distinctive and bold, depending on where the honey bees buzzed. Honey from different flowers has a distinctive flavour and colour due to differences in the nectar

As a general rule, the flavour of lighter coloured honeys is milder, and the flavour of darker coloured honeys is stronger. Darker honeys have more nutrients than light ones. Vitamin and mineral content also depend on the floral source of the honey. Below is a list of some of the more commonly available types of honey in the UK and in the wholefood catalogue.

Acacia honey: A light mild clear honey produced from Acacia and a blend of other flower nectars.

Chilean ulmo honey: Growing along the coastal areas of southern Chile, ulmo trees produce a white blossom in February and March. This honey has a delightful flavour reminiscent of aniseed and parma violets.

Greek honey: A strong rich dark clear honey produced from pine, wild rose and other flower nectars.

Clover Honey: Usually a pale set honey, it has a smooth texture and a deliciously mild buttery flavour.

Orange blossom honey: This clear honey is collected from hives sited in orange groves. It has a deliciously distinctive orange flavour and a light amber colour.

Turkish pine honey: From the pine forests of western Turkey, south east of Izmir, this dark, clear honey comes from hives managed to organic standards. It has a rich, full-bodied flavour reminiscent of sweet molasses.

Scottish heather honey: This is a dark, set honey, usually gathered from the moorlands around the Grampian mountains during August and September. Heather honey has a distinctive thick consistency with a rich flavour – slightly bitter with a pleasing aftertaste of burnt caramel. Some find it too strong.

COOKING WITH HONEY

There is an art to cooking with honey; as well as being very sweet, some honeys have quite a strong flavour, while others lose their floral taste in the process of cooking. In addition, honey includes water, so adjustments need to be made to recipes when substituting honey for sugar.

There are some combinations that blend well with the texture and flavour of honey; my favourite is Greek yoghurt with honey and nuts. A similar classic combination is icecream and heather honey; the neutral ice cream showcases the strong flavour of heather honey . Another classic combination is pecorino cheese with walnuts and comb honey.

When it comes to baking, most recipes work best with a blended wildflower honey, whose flavour is not too cloying or assertive. If you substitute all the sugar for honey, the texture of the finished cake or biscuit can be a bit chewy. Instead, use a mixture. The suggested substitution method is to use about 1/3 honey, 2/3 sugar. Use an equivalent weight, for example for a recipe asking for 100g sugar, you would substitute 30g of the sugar for 30g of honey.

If you are using a lot of honey, you should also subtract about 100ml of liquid from a recipe for every 250ml honey used and some sources suggest adding 1/4 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to a recipe to counteract honey’s acidic nature, which can affect other ingredients.

RECIPES:

Lemon soother:

  • Juice of 2 lemons, plus 2 thin slices
  • 1cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 2 tsp Honey
  • 4 tbsp whisky (optional)

Pour the lemon juice into a measuring jug and add the sliced ginger and honey. Add enough boiling water to the jug to measure 300ml and stir. Pour into 2 heatproof glasses, add the whisky if desired and serve immediately, garnished with a thin slice of lemon.

Banana Honey and Cinnamon Smoothie

  • 1 banana
  • 150ml semi-skimmed milk
  • 150g Natural Yogurt
  • 1 tbsp clear honey
  • 1 large pinch ground cinnamon

Chop a banana into large chunks and place in a blender. Pour in 150ml semi-skimmed milk and add a 150g pot Natural Yogurt with 1 tsp clear honey and a large pinch of ground cinnamon. Blend until smooth, pour into a glass and serve, sprinkled with a little more ground cinnamon.