The Joys of Picking Your Own

Now the sunny weather is here all sorts of fruit and veg has sprouted, blossomed and grown and is now ripe for the picking. Last weekend was a particularly sunny day and I spent a most enjoyable afternoon at a Pick Your Own farm, doing just that – picking my own fruit and veg.

I went with my mother and grandmother to Grove Farm, which is about an hours drive away but well worth the trip. They sell different fruits and vegetables over a 4-5 month summer period depending on what’s in season and growing at that moment. When we visited they had strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, fresh peas, spinach, new potatoes, beetroot, broad beans and carrots.

The fun thing is that when they say Pick Your Own they really mean it, as you are provided with a wheelbarrow, bags, boxes and a spade and sent to trundle through the surrounding fields and bushes, digging up and collecting the produce to your hearts content.

It can’t get any fresher than actually pulling your own carrots and beetroot directly out the ground! The intensity of carrot flavour is a just picked carrot is unbelievable!

The sun was shining as all three generations of our family chatted while lifting the leaves of the strawberry plants, hunting out the plump red fruits hidden underneath, sampling the odd one just to check their ripeness.

We came away laden with fresh produce – I see plenty of salads and fruity treats ahead! There are quite a number of PYO farms dotted around and I highly recommend hunting them out. The produce is often far cheaper than the supermarkets and aside from growing your own, you won’t find fresher or more local produce.

A Fantastico Evening with Gennaro Contaldo & Bertolli Sauces

Tuesday evening found me gathered in the downstairs cookery workshop of London’s L’atelier des Chefs along with a group of 10-12 food bloggers for an evening of Italian food and sauces. The event was being run by Bertolli to showcase their new range of Italian sauces in association with none other than famous Italian chef Gennaro Contaldo! For those of you who don’t know Gennaro the man responsible for inspiring Jamie Oliver’s love of Italian cuisine and has also appeared in a number of his tv programmes.

Walking down the stairs to the cookery workshop I felt like I was entering some secret underground bunker. The walls were lined with cookware while a large professional kitchen was visible through a huge glass wall. The room was dimly lit and a large table filled one end of the room, covered with a red chequered tablecloth and bowls of olives, bread and olive oil and balsamic for dipping.

Over drinks and introductions we waited for Gennaro to arrive. The other bloggers were a lovely bunch and a lot of them seemed to know each other. I had a great chat with Helen of Fuss Free Flavours but I was also pleased when Anne of Anne’s Kitchen turned up, as I’ve met her once before and it was good to catch up. Then all of a sudden Gennaro arrived and everyone became very excited as he took time to chat to us all individually.

We then made our way to the kitchens where we were given aprons and big white floppy chefs hats to wear before being split into tables to work with. Here’s Anne modelling the outfit. I don’t know if the hats were sized, but I think mine must have been a large as at one point in the evening it fell completely over my eyes and nose, making me feel very foolish. Thankfully I think everyone was too absorbed with what they were doing to notice.

Gennaro started by telling us that most Italian sauces start with a Soffritto base. This is a mix of finely diced carrot, onion, celery and garlic with is sweated off before adding tomatoes and any other ingredients. This gives the sauce extra depth of flavour and is the method and base used for all the Bertolli sauces, which are also made using Italian ingredients. Gennaro told us that he wasn’t promoting the sauces to replace normal cooking but more as good staples to have on standby for when you are short of time or come home late and open the fridge to find only some milk and a few bendy carrots for dinner.

The sauces come in a range of flavours and Gennaro demonstrated three different dishes to us using the sauces. He cooked a chunky beef ragu using the bolognaise sauce, some poached mackerel, capers and oregano in the tomato and basil variety and a vegetarian mushroom and courgette bolognaise. The smells coming off the dishes were fantastic and very fresh and authentic. Gennaro is so passionate and enthusiastic about Italian food and cooking that he was constantly jumping around, shouting Italian phrases and making us laugh with stories, all accompanied by big hand gestures and facial expressions. It made a great atmosphere but meant he never stood still long enough for me to get an un-blurred photo of him!

While these dishes were bubbling away we got to make our own Soffritto base to which we added tins of whole Italian tomatoes – which we had to squash using our hands – nice and squishy!

He then demonstrated that by adding a few chopped chillies we could turn our simple sauce into a spicy Arrabbiatta sauce. He said to use 1 or 2 chillies as the small ones he was given were quite hot, but he then got a bit carried away with his story about how not to touch your face or go to the toilet after chopping chillies (see pic below) and ended up chopping about 12 which he divided between our four joint pots – good thing I like my sauce spicy!

We didn’t have time to finish cooking our sauces so we were all provided with our own customised jar and label so we could bring our sauce home and continue cooking with it later. I thought that was a really nice touch.

Then it was time to eat. We all sat around the big table sipping Prosecco and nibbling on the bread and olives while the dishes were plated up.

Gennaro asked if there were any Vegetarians and of course, up went my hand rather sheepishly. It was the only hand… but Gennaro proclaimed loudly that he loved Vegetarians and that some of his favourite recipes were Vegetarian and gave me a huge portion of the Veggie ragu on tagliatelle while the others sampled the mackerel followed by the ragu (modelled here by Josh of Cooking The Books).

The veggie ragu was delicious and had a wonderfully deep tomato flavour. Being Italian the pasta was of course served al dente, just as I like it. By the appreciative sounds coming from the other diners I think the other dishes were very good too.

At the end of the evening we were all presented with a selection of the Bertolli sauces, recipe cards and recipe book for us to take away and experiment with ourselves. I was also delighted to be given a signed copy of Gennaro’s cookery book, complete with lots of delicious sounding dishes. I came away full, happy and inspired to get cooking Italian food. Thanks to everyone at Wildcard and Bertolli for organising it and to Gennaro for being so enthusiastic and friendly. It was a fantastico way to spend an evening!

Deep Chocolate Chip Brownies

Last weekend I was in the mood for brownies. I wanted them to be simple, no nonsense, pure, thick, moist and very chocolaty. I went on a brownie blog hunt and came across David Lebovitz’s blog which featured the most incredible looking Dulce de Leche brownies. They weren’t quite what I was after but I saved the recipe and carried on hunting. However, I couldn’t get those Dulce de Leche brownies out of my mind, they just looked so indulgent and the perfect sort of texture I was craving, so I decided to adapt the recipe slightly and just make the brownie part sans the Dulce de Leche. I know some people who will think I am crazy for doing this but I didn’t want to taste anything other than chocolate in my brownies.

The recipe was very quick and easy to put together. I liked how it made use of a good quantity of dark chocolate as well as some cocoa powder to ensure they were truly chocolaty. I also added some white chocolate chips to my batter as I like to see them dotted throughout the brownie once sliced.

The resulting brownies were fabulous! About an inch deep (wow!) and with a gorgeous moist texture and certainly packed with rich chocolate flavour. They had a paper thin crisp sugary top which I feel is always the mark of a good brownie.

They were divine when eaten still ever so slightly warm, the white chocolate chips still a little soft and melty. Pure chocolate indulgence. I wouldn’t say they were my ultimate brownie as I like mine to have a bit of chew to them also, but they were very close! I found the following day they had gone a little more cakey but they were still very fudgy and delicious. I’m definitely going to be trying out the Dulce de Leche version sometime soon.

Deep Chocolate Chip Brownies
(Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz's blog)

Ingredients
115g butter
150g dark chocolate 60-70%
25g cocoa powder
3 eggs
200g caster sugar
120g plain flour
75g white chocolate chips (optional)

Method
Preheat the oven to 175C.
Line an 8 inch/20cm square pan with a long sheet of foil that covers the bottom and reaches up all four sides. Lightly grease the bottom and sides of the foil with a bit of melted butter or oil.
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Break up the chocolate and add to the pan, stirring constantly over a low heat until the chocolate is melted. Remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the sugar, followed by the flour. Finely stir in the chocolate chips if using but do not mix for long or else they will melt into the batter.
Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes until the brownies form a light crisp surface and they feel slightly firm to the touch. A skewer inserted should come out with a few sticky crumbs attached, but no molten mixture.
Remove from the oven and cool to room temperature in the tin before using the foil to help you lift the brownies out of the tin. Cut into 12 squares.
Delicious eaten within a few hours when they are very soft, moist and the chocolate chips are still slightly gooey. They turn more fudgy and cake-like the next day.

Insanely Delicious Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

The joys of peanut butter cookies have been discussed by many bloggers in recent months, and as nice as they sounded I wasn’t in any particular hurry to try them out myself. They seem on first glance quite a simple plain cookie, I was sure they would be nice, but nothing that special. Oh how wrong I was!

A few weeks ago I was hunting for a simple cookie recipe to bake and send to my brother who was sitting his first year exams at university. Everyone knows what horrible things exams are and how much of a treat a break from revision is with a tasty snack. While browsing some blogs for inspiration I stumbled across the flourless peanut butter cookie recipe again and decided now would be the ideal time to try them out. Packed with nutrient rich peanut butter, sweet, simple and very post-able they fit the brief perfectly.

They were so quick and easy to put together that in a matter on minutes the creamy nutty aroma of hot peanut butter was filling the kitchen. When I opened the oven door I got a faceful of the steam and it was so intensely peanut-buttery that I began to think these cookies might be a lot more special than they first appeared.

I could hardly wait for them to cool down to try one. They had a craggily surface appearance and were lightly golden and crisp around the edges but stayed gorgeously soft and chewy in the centre. So chewy in fact that you could bend one almost in half before it broke in two!

The flavour was delicious – insanely delicious. The peanut flavour seemed to blossom and grow with each bite. They are in fact one of the best cookies I have ever made/tasted!! They don’t lack anything by being flourless, they are still quite a substantial cookie.

I sent a stack of 10 of them off to my brother and I got a text from him two days later saying they were all gone and could he have some more! Even my sister who hates peanut butter came back for a second one. They have to be tasted to be believed.

Insanely Delicious Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
(Recipe adapted from Joy The Baker blog)
Ingredients

170g smooth peanut butter
80g caster sugar
80g light soft brown sugar
1 egg
1tsp baking powder

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a baking tray with a silicone mat or parchment paper and set to one side.
In a large bowl, beat together the peanut butter and both the sugars using an electric mixer until well combined (it will be quite stiff).
Add the egg and beat again to incorporate before beating in the baking powder.
Take slightly heaped teaspoonfuls of the mixture and roll into small balls. (Don’t worry if the mixture appears a little greasy, it’s just the nut oils in the peanut butter).
Place the dough balls 5cm/2inches apart on the prepared baking tray. Use the back of a fork to slightly flatten the cookies and give the indent of the fork tines.
Bake in the oven for 10 minutes until lightly golden brown around the edges, but still soft in the middle. (If you like a crisper cookie, bake for 12 minutes rather than 10)
Allow to cool for 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. They should crisp up around the edges but stay deliciously soft and chewy in the middle.
Makes 18-24 cookies
Store in an airtight container and eat within 4-5 days (this won’t be a problem!)

Rum & Raisin Cheesecake

Rum and raisin ice cream is my dad’s favourite ice cream flavour. You can’t buy it very easily in the supermarkets here, but whenever we come across a special ice cream shop on holiday rum & raisins is usually his flavour of choice. This year for Fathers Day I decided I wanted to incorporate rum & raisin into a dessert especially for him. My first thought was cake, but we’ve been eating a lot of cake recently and I wanted to do something a bit different. I soon came around to the idea of incorporating the flavours into a cheesecake, which seemed particularly fitting as the creaminess of the cheesecake would represent the creaminess of his favourite ice cream.

I searched the internet for recipes but found a lack of rum & raisin cheesecake recipes and so instead I decided to adapt a divine looking cheesecake recipe I spied a few weeks ago on Smitten Kitchen with my own flavours. First off was soaking the raisins in lots of rum. I used amber rum, mainly because it was all we had in the cupboard, but I think it was a good choice. Not too sweet nor too sharp or bitter. I left the raisins seeping in the rum for two days, by which time they became wonderfully plump and glossy.

The biscuit base consisted of crushed chocolate bourbon biscuits, crème filling and all. I thought their dark colour would add a nice contrast to the pale creamy cheesecake filling. To create a two toned effect decided to add some melted dark chocolate to the sour cream topping, sandwiching the rum raisin filling inside the dark top and base layers. I love the finished look this created and I think it helped keep the sweetness and strength of the raisins and rum in check.

How did it taste? A-maze-ing!! You have to try it to believe it. The cheesecake was silky smooth and incredibly creamy and the fruity stickiness of the raisins seemed to have permeated the whole cheesecake, being quite subtle in the cheesecake on its own but when eaten with a plump boozy raisin the flavour just exploded in your mouth. I added a little date syrup to the mix to enhance the treacle-iness of the raisins which I think helped. The rum was very strong and apparent on first bite, flooding your mouth with flavour; then the creaminess from the cheesecake swooped in and left you with a smooth luxurious aftertaste with the cocoa bitterness of the biscuits and topping helping to tone it down. The flavours really came in layers, it was addictive and more importantly my dad loved it.

The rest of the family don’t like rum so they weren’t so keen, but as I made it for my dad I didn’t mind – plus it means all the more for us!! (I can’t work out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing!?!) If you don’ like rum I’m sure it would taste equally wonderful with an orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier.

(Apologies for the photos, they don’t do it justice. The sun was going down and making everything come out orange with funny shadows – grrr)

Rum & Raisin Cheesecake

For the rum soaked raisins
70g raisins
4 tbsp (60ml) Amber rum

For the cheesecake filling
200g Chocolate bourbon biscuits
50g butter
600g cream cheese
180g caster sugar
1½ tbsp plain flour
3 eggs
1 tbsp date syrup (or ½ tbsp molasses)
The rum soaked raisins

For the chocolate sour cream topping
300ml sour cream
50g dark chocolate

To serve
100ml double cream

Method

Place the raisins in a small bowl and cover with the rum. Cover the top of the bowl with clingfilm and leave for 24-48 hours to allow the raisins to plump up and absorb most of the rum.
On the day you want to bake the cheesecake, line the base of an 8inch deep springform tin with parchment paper or wrap the base of a ring mould with clingfilm.
Now prepare the biscuit base. Place the bourbon biscuits, crème filling and all, into a food processer. Blitz until the biscuits are broken down and resemble fine crumbs. Warm the butter in the microwave until soft but not melted. Add to the biscuit crumbs and blitz again to incorporate.
Tip the crumbs into the base of the tin and press down firmly to form an even layer. Place in the fridge to chill while you prepare the filling.
Preheat the oven to 175C. Beat the cream cheese and sugar together until no lumps remain and the cream cheese is soft and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Scatter over the flour and date syrup and beat again to incorporate.
Finely fold in the rum soaked raisins and any remaining rum juices, keeping 1 tablespoon of raisins back for later.
Place your tin on a sturdy baking tray. Pour the cream cheese mixture over the biscuit base and smooth out if necessary. Scatter the few reserved raisins over the top and bake for 45-50 minutes. The cheesecake should be puffed up and slightly cracked around the edges, but still wobbly in the centre.
At this point remove the cheesecake form the oven but leave the oven at temperature. Set aside to cool for 15 minutes while you prepare the sour cream topping.
Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Add the sour crème and fold together quickly into a chocolate cream before the chocolate starts to set.
By now the top of your cheesecake should have relaxed and flattened out. Pour the chocolate sour cream mixture over the top of the cheesecake and return it to the oven for a further 12-15 minutes. The topping will still look quite soft, but it will firm up on cooling.
Remove the cheesecake from the oven and leave to cool for 1½-2 hours before refrigerating for at least 4 hours.
When ready to serves, run a hot knife in-between the edge of the cheesecake and the tin and release it from the tin. Use a large flat fish slice spatula to remove the base and transfer the cheesecake to a serving plate.
Whip the double cream until soft peaks form and then pipe around the edge of the cheesecake using a star nozzle, or any other nozzle you fancy.
Serve in generous slices.

Note: This cheesecake is not really suitable for children as the rum flavour seeps into the whole cheesecake and remains quite boozy and evident.

The Cake Slice June 2010: Shenandoah Valley Blueberry Cake

After my doubt of salads it is high time I return to the main source of recipe inspiration on this blog – cakes, bakes and other sweet treats! To welcome me back to my love affair with baking I have for you this months Cake Slice cake.

The winning cake this month is Shenandoah Valley Blueberry Cake. A simple yet delicious tray bake cake studded with blueberries – originally made with blueberries from the Shenandoah Valley in America, but blueberries from anywhere – fresh or frozen will work equally well. I used some lovely fresh blueberries I picked up in a local Bedford market so really I should call it Bedford Blueberry Cake – it’s got a good ring to it anyway.

This cake is quite plain and simple to look at, is syrup and frosting-less and contains no vanilla, lemon or other flavouring in the cake itself, relying on blueberries for its stand alone flavour. While I applaud this simplistic approach I was slightly disappointed in the finished cake. If you got a mouthful compete with a big juicy blueberry then the flavour was wonderful, but on its own it seemed to lack that extra something special. I felt it was crying out for a bit of lemon zest or vanilla in the cake and could have done with being served with a blob of yoghurt and a drizzle of lemon curd to bring it alive. However, the author suggests eating this cake for breakfast or even as a midnight snack(!!) so maybe a plain cake is appropriate in this case.

The batter for this cake is very thick and dense and I was worried I was going to end up with a heavy, thin cake so I was very happy when it rose well and baked into a lightly textured cake. It was also one of the quickest cake to put together I have ever made. I should think it was in the oven and baking in under 20 minutes and as its recommended to eat it while still warm it’s the ideal cake to have up your sleeve for any unexpected guests who might suddenly phone to ask if “it would be alright if they just popped by to say hello” You could have this baked and ready for them when they arrived and leave them feeling you are the ultimate domestic goddess. Served with a little lemon curd, a few extra berries and a dusting of icing sugar this cake could easily be a winner.

It’s also Fathers Day today and as I knew this post was coming up today, after baking and sampling a small slice I gave this cake to my Dad as a sort of early treat. He said it was great with a cuppa and a blog of cream. Happy Fathers Day Dad!

Shenandoah Valley Blueberry Cake
(Recipe from Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott)

Ingredients
200g plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
65g butter, softened
150g caster sugar
1 egg
75ml milk
100g fresh or frozen blueberries (do not thaw)

Method
Heat the oven to 170C and generously grease a 9 inch square or round pan.
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and stir with a fork to mix well. In a medium bowl, combine the butter and sugar and beat with a mixer at high speed until well combined. Add the egg and beat well for 1 to 2 minutes, stopping to scrape down the bowl until the mixture is smooth and light.
Stir in half the flour mixture then half the milk, mixing just enough to keep the batter fairly smooth and well combined. Add the remaining flour, then the rest of the milk, mixing gently. Stir in the blueberries.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes or until the cake is golden, springs back when touched gently in the centre and is pulling away from the sides of the pan.

Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes and then turn it out to cool, top side up. Serve a slice of cake right from the pan, warm or at room temperature.

Makes 1 x 9inch single layer cake

Greek Salad

This is the final salad of the 5 salad theme. I have made Greek salad once before on this blog, but it is such a delicious yet simple dish that I couldn’t resist sharing it with you again. When made with real creamy Greek feta cheese, sun ripened tomatoes, olives, lemon and fresh oregano it captures the taste of Mediterranean summers. It makes use of all the Mediterranean colours too, red, white and green, which look beautiful together.

It’s zesty, juicy, salty, creamy, fresh, crisp, fragrant…in a word delicious. What more could you want on a summers day?

One of the things I like best about this salad is how it matures and develops in flavour when made a few hours or even a day in advance. All the juices slowly seep out of the fruits and vegetables, mingling with the herbs, lemon, olive oil and the saltiness from the feta creating its own dressing. It’s also highly versatile and tastes great eaten on its own or served in pita bread, with baguettes, a topping for a jacket potato or even used as a filling for a tart. Next time you have need of a salad I urge you to give this one a go.

Greek Salad

Ingredients
200g Greek feta cheese
½ cucumber
200g cherry or small tomatoes
1 small red onion
100g black olives
1 lemon, zest only
1 tbsp fresh or 2tsp dried oregano
2½ tbsp olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Method
Start by preparing all your ingredients ready for layering.
Cut the cucumber in half lengthways and scrape out the seeds using a teaspoon to create little boat shapes. Slice them into 5mm thick crescent slices.
Drain the whey from the feta cheese and pat dry using some kitchen roll before cutting into small cubes. Slice the tomatoes into halves or quarters, size dependant, along with the black olives.
Peel, cut in half and very thinly slice the red onion, as thin as you can. Finely grate the zest of the lemon onto a chopping board for ease of sprinkling later. Do the same with the oregano.
Arrange a third of the tomatoes, feta, olives, red onion and cucumber over the base of your serving dish. Scatter over a third of the lemon zest, oregano and a light dusting of freshly milled pepper.
Drizzle one tablespoon of olive oil over the top and repeat the process with another third of the ingredients, followed by another spoonful of oil and the rest of the ingredients. Drizzle with a little extra oil and cover with clingfilm and place in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving.
I find Greek salad tastes best if made a few hours or even a day before you need it to allow time for the flavours to develop and meld. All the vegetables release their juices and create their own delicious lemony, herby, fresh tasting dressing if left for half a day or more.
Serves 6 – 8 as an accompaniment. Perfect served with a picnic or BBQ.

Here’s a photo of all the five salads together – so colourful and summery! Now we just need the warmer weather back again to enjoy them.