Roast Tomato Sauce

This week saw the first day of autumn, or the autumn equinox, and the traditional season for a 'harvest festival'. I therefore shouldn't be surprised that in recent weeks my focus has been on cooking up what nature (with a little help from me in some cases) has produced.

This week is no exception. I have heard that this year in the UK has been a poor year for tomatoes but a great year for figs. I beg to differ. My fig tree has produced only around 6 ripened fruit so far but my tomatoes have been brilliant. Hardly a split fruit and I'm confident that a record percentage will ripen, meaning I probably won't be making any green tomato chutney this year - a definite first.

However, this did mean that I found myself picking 2kg of ripe tomatoes in one go - probably another record. I decided to roast them to make a sauce.

I set the oven to heat up to 190C, gas mark 5, and dug out two large baking trays, which I lined with a sliced onion and 5 cloves of garlic, also sliced. I then set out to halve my 2kg tomatoes and place these on the onion and garlic, cut side up. The whole lot was sprinkled with thyme leaves, salt, pepper, a teaspoon of soft brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, and 4 tablespoons of groundnut oil.

I placed them in the oven for 70 minutes, switching the trays around half-way through the cooking time.

After allowing the trays to cool slightly I tipped everything into a food processor and gave it a blitz before pressing the puree through a sieve to remove the seeds and tomato skins.

If you prefer a chunky sauce you will need to skin the tomatoes before roasting them and then just give them a brief turn in the food processor after roasting. However, my tomatoes are a small, cherry variety and the thought of skinning them all at the start was too much to contemplate. You do lose some volume of sauce when sieving it though. I ended up with 750ml of sauce, enough to serve 6 as a pasta sauce. I imagine that a skinned and un-sieved version would give you almost a litre.

All in all, a pretty easy way to deal with a glut of tomatoes, as well as store some of the taste of summer for a cold winter day, since the sauce freezes well. I placed two 250ml batches in the freezer and kept another 250ml portion in the fridge for a speedy work-day pasta supper.

Delicious!

Spiced Cranberry Vodka

All that talk of sloe gin last weekend got me thinking about making something 'warming' for the shorter and colder days that aren't too far around the corner.

Last winter I made a couple of dishes that called for 200g of cranberries and I could only buy them in 300g bags. Each time I put the left-over 100g into the freezer, thinking they'd come in handy. All these months later and I still have the two partially filled bags of cranberries waiting to be turned into something.

When making sloe gin the big chore is to prick each and every sloe with a pin in order to allow the gin to get into the fruit and enhance the flavour of the finished product. A simple alternative is to freeze the fruit before steeping it in the gin. The science behind this is that water expands on freezing so the water in each and every cell of the fruit expands as it freezes and bursts the cell wall. This is why defrosted fruit and vegetables are always a bit limp compared to their fresh versions as they have lost all their structure. Anyway, with all the cell walls split you have essentially done the equivalent of sticking a pin in each and every one quite a few times over.

With my cranberries already frozen they seemed ripe for dropping into a jar of alcohol and I felt vodka would be a good option. Sloe gin seems to call for up to the same volume of sugar as fruit but I find this a bit sweet. So, on this occasion I erred on the side of caution and added just 100g caster sugar to my still frozen 200g cranberries and threw these into a clip-top jar with 1 litre of vodka.

To make up for the slightly lower level of sugar I added a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste before unearthing an already open packet of mulled wine spice sachets, which I thought would add a nicely warming element. Not sure how many to put in, I threw caution to the wind and added three. This could be a huge mistake but we will have to wait and see.

I should say that I sterilised the jar first by placing it, without the rubber seal that sits around the lid, into a warm oven for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I popped the rubber seal in a heatproof bowl and poured over some boiling water. I let the jar cool a bit before adding the vodka and other ingredients so as not to crack the glass with the shock of the cold vodka or risk scorching the fruit and spices.

With all the ingredients in and the lid reassembled and sealed, I gave the whole lot a gentle shake.

I will give the jar a daily gentle shake until all the sugar has dissolved - you'll be able to see it settle on the bottom if it's still in granular form. I'll then switch to giving it a gentle shake on a weekly basis.

Sloe gin is generally left for up to three months but other flavoured tipples I've made have been left for just two weeks. I have no idea how long I'll leave this little concoction for but I'll let you know what I end up doing and what the results are like.

Fingers crossed it will work out well and keep the family happy and quiet over the festive season!

Deconstructed Rhubarb Crumble

I'm not sure what has got into the rhubarb plants this week but, having picked over half a kilo from my two plants last Sunday, I ended up picking another 625g this Sunday. This is definitely a personal best. However, with the days getting shorter and cooler, I imagine this could be the final crop, or at least the final crop from which anything meaningful can be created.

Yet again I was casting around for an interesting recipe and came across a label I'd saved from a bottle of sloe gin given to me a couple of Christmases ago. This 'serving suggestion' was to bake rhubarb in the gin, which sounded like a match made in heaven. So, I chopped the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and put them in a roasting dish. I then mixed 80g caster sugar with 7 tablespoons of sloe gin and a couple of tablespoons of water before pouring this over the rhubarb. I popped this in the oven (heated to 180C, gas mark 4) for 40 minutes until the fruit was tender, basting it every 10-15 minutes.

Wondering aloud what may be nice served with this baked rhubarb my friend suggested some nutty biscuits that my Mum had made a while back. Fortunately I have this recipe in my collection so I knocked up a batch whilst the rhubarb was baking. Helpfully, both recipes are baked at same temperature.

These are officially Almond and Pecan Biscuits but I didn't have any pecans so substituted these for pistachios. I'm sure the recipe would work well with any sort of nut.  To make these cream 150g softened unsalted butter with 100g caster sugar, then mix in 100g ground almonds, 100g gram flour, 60g chopped pecans (or other nuts of your choice), 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (or vanilla bean paste), and 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger. Form the mixture into 12 equal sized balls and place on two baking trays lined with non-stick parchment. Flatten the dough balls slightly before baking in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Allow to rest on the trays for a few minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. If you find the oven a bit full with the rhubarb too, you can always cook the biscuits in two batches. This also saves on baking parchment as well as washing up.

The rhubarb recipe says that it's best served slightly warm, and with a very healthy lunch of salad consumed, my friend and I couldn't help but try the rhubarb with a still-slightly-warm biscuit on the side. The result was divine and resembled a somewhat deconstructed fruit crumble, particularly if you let your biscuit soak up a bit of the rhubarb 'juice'.

There will now be no stopping me deploying both recipes when I next make a rhubarb crumble. I think briefly blitzing all the biscuit recipe dry ingredients with cold butter to make a crumb texture and using this to top the baked rhubarb and sloe gin mixture would be the best rhubarb crumble ever.

Thank goodness I have been freezing raw rhubarb as well as cooking with it straight from the garden. All I need now is some more sloe gin, since I used up my very last drop on this recipe. Fortunately I helped my parents pick sloes last weekend so perhaps if I offer to supply the rhubarb they will offer a few tablespoons of their yet-to-be-made gin?

Autumn Harvest

I have been making the most of the limited good weather this summer to explore some amazing gardens. Some have inspired me to change my own planting and colour schemes, such as this flower bed at Great Chalfield Manor in Wiltshire (I shall definitely be introducing some new foliage in dark red and silver-green as well as some orange blooms to my garden in the spring).

Others have made me hanker after a garden about ten-times the size of the one I have, along with a few thousand pounds spare so that I could own one of Jenny Pickford's wonderful iron and glass sculptures, seen here at The Courts Garden.

However, all these visits meant that my own garden was in need of a little attention this weekend and I became somewhat glad that it is the size it is. A few hours of gentle labour in the lovely sunshine later and I had a sack of clippings ready for the recycling lorry and a wonderful harvest of rhubarb, tomatoes and semi-dried lavender.

This left me the afternoon to decide what to make of my produce. The lavender was pretty simple. Once it was trimmed and tied in bundles I used clothes pegs to clip it to the top of the blinds at the lounge windows, which are rarely closed, to allow it to finish drying. It's also giving a great scent to the room.

Knowing that more tomatoes would be ripening in the next few days I decided to attempt to semi-dry the tomatoes I'd picked, since there's only so much salad I can eat in a week. I followed a Nigella Lawson recipe that she calls 'Moonblush Tomatoes' since she leaves them overnight to 'dry'. Cut each tomato in half and place in a roasting tin, cut side up. Sprinkle with a smattering of sugar, salt and dried herbs (I used oregano). Heat the oven to about 220C or gas mark 7. Once hot, place the trays of tomatoes into the oven and immediately switch it off. Leave the tomatoes in the oven overnight (hence the 'moonblush' name) or all day if you are doing it in the morning. I like to repeat this process once more for good measure.

The result is a soft tomato that is very lightly cooked and has a very intense flavour. I've popped some in the freezer to add a taste of summer to dishes later in the year. The others are in the fridge and are good with pretty much anything but perhaps a risotto, quinoa or Puy lentil salad.

Finally I turned my attention to the rhubarb. Considering the fact that I only have two plants, it was quite a good crop, weighing in at around 630g. With plenty of fruit in the fruit bowl to keep me going for breakfasts and lunches I was put off just cooking it to have with yoghurt and muesli. I also thought making a cake or crumble without enough mouths to feed would be a bit of a killer for my waistline so I scoured all my recipe book indexes to see what else could be done. Riverford's Everyday and Sunday book came up trumps with a Rhubarb and Praline Semifreddo - something that would use all the rhubarb but with the result living in the freezer until I had enough mouths to feed or that could be easily rationed out in (hopefully) non-waist-expanding portions.

First make the praline by toasting 75g flaked almonds in a non-stick frying pan and then adding 50g caster sugar and heating gently until it has melted and coated the nuts. The sugar should turn a dark caramel colour. Tip out the caramel-coated nuts onto some baking paper and allow to cool.

Next, cut up the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and cook with 100g caster sugar and the zest and juice of an orange. The recipe asks for 500g of rhubarb but I threw in the lot. The fruit should be tender but still hold its shape. Strain the fruit, reserving the liquid, and chill.

For the next bit you need three fairly large mixing bowls and an electric whisk. In your largest bowl whisk together 4 egg yolks, 50g caster sugar and a few drops of vanilla essence (or vanilla bean paste). Everything will end up in this bowl so it needs to be fairly large. Clean the whisk beaters and in a second bowl whisk 500ml double cream until it forms soft peaks. Clean the whisk beaters again and in the final bowl whisk 4 egg whites until they form soft peaks. Now gently fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. Next, fold in the cream. Finally smash up the praline and fold it into the egg and cream mixture along with the chilled rhubarb. 

Take a large mould or a couple of 1kg loaf tins lined with cling film and carefully fill with the mixture. Wrap in more cling film, carefully pressing it onto the surface of the mixture. Chill for at least 5 hours or until you are ready to eat it. Serve in slices with the reserved rhubarb and orange juice.

I have no idea what it tastes like but I can't wait to find out!

Time and Effort Bear Fruit

I am delighted to say that I have completed another appliqué blanket and this time it's for me to keep, rather than to give away. I am finally enjoying what my friends have been enjoying (or so they tell me) for a while now.

Amidst catching up on the news, drinking tea and eating cake at Craft Club the other weekend, I managed to make 15 bird templates. Each one is first drawn onto the paper backing of a roll of bondaweb before being roughly cut out. These are then ironed onto the wrong side of your chosen appliqué fabric before being cut out, carefully following the drawn lines this time.

Since I was applying my 'birds on a wire' design to the blanket, the next step was to mark and sew the three wires that sit at a very slight diagonal across the whole of the blanket. I measure and mark the lines with tailors chalk before setting the sewing machine to the shortest stitch possible without the stitches ending up on top of each other and then setting it to a medium width of zig-zag. Many metres of thread later you can not only admire your three straight lines but also set about arranging your birds along their wires.

As I say, lots of news needed to be caught up on, interspersed with tea drinking and cake eating so that's about as far as I got at Craft Club. So, it was with some relish that I clocked off work early last Friday and set about carefully sewing each bird to the blanket. First you arrange the birds, then you peel off the paper backing from the bondaweb before carefully ironing each bird in place.

Sewing appliqué involves using the same zig zag stitch as used to sew the 'wires' but to enable the fabric to slide neatly under the sewing machine foot and give you an element of rigidity and control of the fabric, you pin a piece of paper to the back of the blanket beneath where your appliqué shape, in my case a bird, sits. I find it easier to start at a point, usually a beak, and then steadily work my way around the shape. I try to continuously move the fabric to get a smooth line but some curves are just too acute, as are all corners, so you end up lifting the sewing foot and making a slightly larger adjustment. Just remember to keep the needle in the fabric before lifting the foot or you will completely lose your place.

You also need stop the needle on the correct side of the fabric so that your zig zag stitches don't get too spaced out.  So, if you are sewing clockwise around the outer edge of a ring, keep the needle down when it's at the outer edge of the fabric.  This is the right hand edge of the zig zag stitch. If you are sewing clockwise around the inner edge of a ring, also keep the needle down when on its right hand edge of the zig zag stitch but this will be in the appliqué fabric as opposed to just in the blanket fabric. This is probably something you need to read as you are sewing for it to make sense but I promise it gives a better result.

Anyway, what with the pinning of the paper and then tearing away the paper once I'd completed each bird, I think I managed a bird every four to five minutes. This must be a record for me - I must be improving with practice! With a few slurps of tea as I went as well as stopping to load on more thread, I had completed all 15 birds in about an hour and a half.

The final step was to pin and then blanket stitch a hem all the way around the edge of the blanket, which was a task I enjoyed over the next few days, either nattering with a friend or catching up on some TV.

I am really pleased with the result and it has already been put to very practical use, warming me up after getting a bit of a soaking on my cycle home from work on Tuesday!

I'm also equally pleased to be able to share with you more fruits of my labour. This time the labour has been less intense but certainly fruitful - literally. This is a project that began back in March with the sewing of some tomato and chilli seeds and I'm pleased to say that the first crops are appearing.

The first ripe, outdoor-grown tomatoes of 2015 

With more ripening every day

And the first chillies

With some even turning red

Happy days indeed!

A Bit of Nostalgia

I was on a fabric shopping mission this week and so took any opportunity I had to detour into shops and poke around markets. I was looking for some denim to make some place mats and coasters and some black fabric for some trousers that would be suitable for the office. I failed on both counts but my searching did pay off in an unexpected way.

For almost six months I have been looking for a dark-ish grey fleece to make my next couple of appliqué blankets and had pretty much given up, at least until the autumn when I hoped shops would start stocking more wintry fabrics. However, my fabric foraging this week unearthed a small roll in a stall in St Nicks Market in Bristol.

I had taken the long-way home from a meeting and braved this stall which my friend describes as 'scary'. The best way I can describe it is being a run of narrow, wooden lock-up cupboards within the market's Glass Arcade. The wooden doors can't possibly be the original ones from the 1740s but it certainly feels very old and dusty. When the stall is open you can walk into the cupboard and have just enough room to walk between the rolls of fabric which stand upright, about 3 to 4 rolls deep and a shelf at about head height holds yet more fabric, reaching up another couple of metres. Each roll is prevented from unrolling with a large elastic band which also holds a hand-written label with a very brief fabric description and the price per metre. The stall holder stands outside the cupboards at a table, surrounded by more rolls and baskets of fabric. He is armed with a wooden metre ruler and a pair of scissors. This stall is not for the faint-hearted or the claustrophobic!

Anyway, it was here that I found a roll of grey fleece, which the very nice stall-holder manhandled out from amidst all the other rolls of fabric for me. I would have been too scared to get it myself in case moving one roll caused a landslide of all the other rolls. In that event I'm sure the emergency services would still be trying to dig me out!

I really wanted 4 metres but thought I could just about get away with 3.4 metres, which was what was left on the roll. I left feeling very pleased with myself and not without a small sense of serendipity. This particular stall is only a few metres away from the place that my great grandfather had his fruit and vegetable stall, which also employed my grandfather and great uncles from about the 1930s.

Alas, at home, I discovered that the accuracy of the measurements at the stall didn't quite match my own measurements. Once spread out on the lounge floor, I discovered I had only 3.1 metres of fabric, certainly not enough for two large blankets. I therefore cut one generous blanket and will have to think what to make with the rest. It will make two cot blankets but am not sure that grey is a good baby colour, even though I'm assured that grey is the new black! That will have to be something I ponder on. In the meantime, I had craft club to prepare for, so gathered my blanket-making paraphernalia. This time it was going to be a blanket for me so the fabric and colour choice may look familiar.

If you are a regular reader, then you may know that the members of our monthly craft club take it in turns to host and others then contribute cake and dishes for dinner (we meet at 2pm, stop for tea and cake mid-afternoon, and then all gather round for dinner at around 6.30 or 7pm). I had volunteered to make the cake again - I am getting the impression that not many of my fellow crafters are keen bakers - and so started to look for something suitable. Perhaps inspired by my trip to St Nick's Market and being reminded of my grandfather, I stumbled on a recipe that reminded me of something my grandmother used to make - a Raspberry and Coconut Slice.

First make the raspberry layer by placing 150g raspberries and 50g granulated sugar in a small pan. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves then simmer for about 5 minutes until thick and syrupy. Next make the base by beating together 100g caster sugar and 100g softened butter until pale and creamy. Separate three eggs and add the yolks, one at a time, to the creamed butter and sugar. Stir in 100g ground rice and 100g desiccated coconut and mix to form a firm dough. Press this into a lightly greased or lined 30 x 20cm shallow, oblong cake tin, before spreading over the raspberry jam mixture.

For the topping, whisk the egg whites until stiff, then whisk in 75g caster sugar until the mixture is stiff and glossy. Finally, fold in 50g desiccated coconut and spread over the raspberries to cover. I then scattered the top with coconut flakes but you need to watch these don't burn. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 180C or gas mark 4.

As it turned out, it didn't have the texture of the version my grandmother used to make - mine was distinctly moist and gooey, whereas hers definitely had a crispy top - but the flavours were certainly there.

Hits and Misses

My recent creative outpourings have been of the culinary kind but I've been very remiss in taking any photographs, perhaps because I was too busy focusing on serving up the results to my various guests. I'm pleased to say the dishes were very much hits - shame about the missed photographs!

However, I can start with a photograph of the Chocolate Biscuit Raspberry Cake, which I managed to photograph just before the last few pieces disappeared. Raspberries are still in season and this is very simple to make (a bit of a cheat if I'm honest) so I urge you to give it a try if you like the look of it (despite the poor food styling!)

Place 250g digestive biscuits (gluten-free or normal) into a large plastic food bag and roll with a rolling pin to crush finely. Mix with 25g icing sugar and about 50g of honeycomb pieces (these tend to be available in the baking section of your supermarket but can be omitted if you can't find them). Melt 150g dark chocolate with 100g butter and then mix thoroughly with the biscuit mixture.  Press firmly into a 20cm x 25cm swiss roll tin, lined with baking parchment.  Chill for 15 minutes until set.

Melt 150g milk chocolate and spread this over the biscuit base. Arrange 200g fresh raspberries over the top, plus a few more pieces of honeycomb (optional). Chill until set but bring to room temperature before attempting to cut it into about 20 squares.  I didn't do the latter, hence it looks a bit crumbly and the chocolate topping has cracked, but it made no difference to the enjoyment of eating it!

My next culinary creation was a Greek-inspired, three course meal for my parents. It was a post-holiday catch up combined with a very belated Father's Day lunch. I settled on the Greek theme partly as a way of showing that's there's more to Greece than a debt crisis and partly as an attempt to conjure up a sense of summer. Here I completely missed with the photographs but I'm told my parents were still talking about the meal the following day so it was a total hit.

We began with a Watermelon and Feta Salad with Toasted Pumpkin Seeds. Allow about 200g watermelon, 50g feta and 12g pumpkin seeds per person. Firstly place the pumpkin seeds in a non-stick frying pan and place over a medium-high heat for a few minutes shaking every now and again. The seeds will brown slightly and may puff up or split (see photos below). The flavour this dry-frying gives to the seeds is fantastic. Dice the watermelon, crumble over the feta, sprinkle on the seeds, season with freshly ground black pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Serve with toasted pitta bread to help mop up the oil. Simple but delicious - I promise!

'Normal' Pumpkin Seeds

Dry-fried Pumpkin Seeds

For the main course I marinated four lamb leg steaks in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, a teaspoon of Greek honey, a crushed clove of garlic and 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh mint. Marinate for at least 20 minutes, but longer if you have time, before cooking on a very hot, ridged griddle pan for 2-3 minutes per side.  Remove from the pan and allow to rest on a warm serving plate whilst you pour the remaining marinade into the griddle with a splash of water and let it bubble up before pouring over the lamb.

I served these with scrubbed baby new potatoes which I cooked with a drizzle of olive oil in a large non-stick frying plan with a tight-fitting lid. Place over a moderate heat and cook for 25-40 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes, until they are soft. Keep shaking the pan to make sure they are browned evenly. If you don't have a non-stick pan you need to be more careful and may need to add the occasional splash of water to stop them sticking. These were sprinkled with sea salt before serving.

To accompany the lamb and potatoes I made a Rocket, Orange and Dill Salad. Remove as much of the orange pith and membrane as you can and toss the juicy orange segments with the rocket, and chopped dill. For four I used 2 oranges, one cut into segments, the other juiced for the dressing; 50g of rocket; 50g of small black olives, drained and tossed in dried mixed herbs; and for the dressing mixed 4 tablespoons of olive oil to the orange juice along with some salt and pepper. Toss in the dressing just before serving.

For dessert, I served Roast Figs with Walnuts and Yoghurt. Simply take 1 large or 2 medium figs per person. Preheat the oven to 220C or gas mark 7. Cut each fig into quarters but only 2/3rds of the way through each fruit. Squeeze each fruit gently to open them out and then place snugly into an oven-proof dish. For each person take about 20g chopped walnuts and mix with a dessertspoon full of Greek honey. Spoon the mix into the top of each cut fig and bake for about 10 minutes. Serve warm, with a large dollop of authentic Greek yoghurt and an extra drizzle of honey.

Sorry there aren't any photos except for the pumpkin seeds.

This evening I have just enjoyed a salad with some freshly made Roasted Carrot and Harissa Houmous with salad and some toasted pumpkin seeds, which is what reminded me of the Greek meal and inspired me to finally write a new blog post.

From Waitrose Kitchen July '15

The houmous and salad before I threw on the toasted pumpkin seeds

I hope I've inspired you to try a bit of summer cooking. Meanwhile, I'm on a fabric-shopping mission. I'm looking for some denim to make some placemats for the not-so-new garden furniture and some black fabric to make a pair of work trousers using the pattern I used for the navy blue linen. So far I have drawn a blank but will try a different part of town next weekend. Wish me luck!