Category: Love food

Categories
Breads, muffins etc Love food

Make bread in under an hour

Soda bread is the easiest way to turn out a tasty loaf of bread from start to finish. By ‘finish’ I mean being able to eat, so the one hour includes at least 40 mins cooking time. A great option to accompany soup or your Sunday brunch eggs.

(No complaints though if it takes you a little longer than the hour)

Pictured here is Waitrose’s Guinness and Treacle Soda bread. I have also made many times BBC Good Food’s easy soda bread recipe. In this one, rosemary is listed as optional. I have always added it and personally would not list it as optional.  If you want to make it vegan you can easily switch out the milk for soya milk. Oh and one more thing on this recipe, I use semi-skimmed milk not whole milk. I would be wary though of trying it with skimmed milk.

It is fabulous still warm with butter. I would, however, leave it a little while before slicing as it may fall apart. If you do have any left over for the next day you may find it better to toast it. If it seems a bit crumbly then toast under the grill rather than risk it falling apart in the toaster.

Categories
Love food Main event

Ricotta, Spinach & Onion Tart

Serves 6

This is easy to make but it does have a number of components so may be too involved for many of you. Most of the bits can be prepared in advance though and assembled just before you are ready to cook.

PASTRY

I always make the whole quantity of pastry but will often freeze half and then halve all other ingredients each time I make.

  • 250g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
  • 250g plain flour
  • 75 ml cold water

Pulse the butter and flour in a food processor until there are no lumps of butter. Add the water and process until a ball of pastry is formed. Leave in the fridge for half an hour before rolling out. Even if you don’t want to bake the pastry straight away I recommend trying to roll out the pastry before it gets too hard. You can always leave the rolled pastry in the fridge before baking. If covered, it is fine to leave the pastry in the fridge overnight ready rolled out. I don’t worry about the shape of the pie but it should be approx. 5mm thick.

Before baking prick all over with a fork.

TOPPING

  • virgin olive oil
  • red onions x 4, thinly sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • thyme leaves
  • 600g fresh spinach
  • 200g ricotta
  • 200ml crème fraiche
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 50 freshly grated parmesan or vegetarian alternative
  • Prepare the onions: saute the onions in the olive oil with the chopped garlic and thyme leaves (can be prepared a day ahead)
  • Prepare the spinach: wash well and blanch in a large pan of boiling water until wilted. Drain well. leave in a colander until ready to use. You can turn every now and again to remove the excess water. (can be prepared a day ahead)
  • Mix the crème fraiche, egg yolk and parmesan in a bowl.
  • Ricotta: Drain off any excess water from the ricotta and give a mix to break up.

ASSEMBLY & COOKING

  1. Cook pastry for approx. 10 mins on 180C. It should be crisp and lightly browned.
  2. Just before you are ready to put in the oven before eating (it takes 15/20 mins to cook), put the topping on – first the onion mix, then the spinach (make sure it is not dripping water), next dot teaspoons of ricotta randomly over the spinach and finally do the same with the crème fraiche.
  3. It’s now ready to bake for 15/20 mins on 180C until golden patches appear on the topping. Eat straight away.

I served it with the Grated Salad in the previous post.

Categories
Love food Salads Vegan

Grated salad

A simple name for a simple salad but don’t let its simplicity fool you. It really is very tasty. Simply take three ingredients – beetroot (raw), carrot and apple – peel and grate into one bowl. I recommend wearing rubber gloves for the beetroot, unless you’re happy to have deep purple hands.

You can choose your own proportions depending on how earthy or sweet you want your salad, or what you have in the fridge to use up. I used two small bulbs of beetroot, one medium carrot and one medium apple.

To your grated mix add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a splash of olive oil and salt and pepper. You don’t want this salad swimming in liquid so add a little at a time, mix and taste until you are happy with it. I added some toasted mixed seeds which gives the salad a nice crunch. Some chopped mint and a few raisins would also be good additions. Both of those sadly are not favoured among my family.

Categories
Love food Main event

Feta, Pistachio & Pomegranate Bake

Thank you Waitrose for this recipe which we tried out today. I didn’t bother with the pomegranate seeds so mine didn’t present quite as well as the slice in the Waitrose image. As it wasn’t being made for any guests, I thought it was an unnecessary touch and good for you to see it how it really was.

To allow for family dislikes I missed out the citrus zest, the dried cherries, the dill and the mint! It worked because I was given a thumbs up and the real test is that it was agreed that it could be made again. We did discuss though whether it is different enough to the nut roast favourite we regularly make. We didn’t conclude strongly one way or the other.