Toast

After St. Patrick's Day: an Opportunity to Bubble and Squeak

While I was in England, I browsed my cousin's copy of Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, which is terrific. I'd been childishly avoiding checking out his work, ever since I found out that he wrote an autobiography called Toast, which I ought to have known about, but didn't, when I started and named my blog. More fool me. As you may have noticed, I have a collection of cookbooks which, seen in the best possible light, can only be called "excessive".Nonetheless, I was enjoying reading this one so much that I bought my own copy.

This is not the Bubble and Squeak of my childhood, but it is sufficiently like to invoke the nostalgia factor. My mother made her Bubble and Squeak with left-over boiled potatoes and cabbage, chopped coarsely, and sauteed in butter. (It is called B and S, as if you couldn't guess, because it bubbles and squeaks as it fries.) His is made with left over mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage or sprouts. Both are handy if you made or are making a traditional St. Patrick's Day corned beef and cabbage meal.* Just save some for the next day.

I like Nigel's even better than my mother's version, because of his heretical addition of cheese. Wonderful. You can, of course, radically change the whole nature of the thing, based on which cheese you choose.Oh, and his are formed into patties- so they are a little dressier. I caution you, as does he, that the cabbage or sprouts you use should not be too tired or overcooked. Maybe make extra of each thing next time you cook cabbage and potatoes, and take them out and drain (and save) them a little early?

Very finely chop lightly cooked cabbage or sprouts in an quantity equal to the amount of leftover mashed potatoes available. Mix together, and add a handful of coarsely grated cheese, and a little very finely chopped parsley. Taste for salt and pepper, and add a bit of milk or cream if the mixture appears too dry to form patties. Form palm-sized flat patties, and chill in the fridge for an hour or so. Dredge in flour, and fry in melted butter. Consume. These go very nicely with all manner of meats and other dishes. I am a bit weird, and like them on a plate with a fried egg. I dunk bits in the yolk, but suspect this is the kind of food pleasure that is somehow a bit rude to mention in public.

*My friend E. makes an annual feast of corned beef with cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, and serves it all with home-made soda bread and mustard. It happened last night, and it was , as usual, delicious.

A Gratuitous Advertisement and Some Vegetarian Party Food

I have probably mentioned this before, but Trader Joe's all-butter frozen puff pastry is the answer to a prayer. Sure, anyone can make their own delicious puff pastry, as a certain anapestic frequently reminds us. But a person is not always motivated sufficiently to cover herself and her kitchen in flour. If I only had puff pastry as often as I made it myself, I would be a thinner, but perhaps not so happy woman. And the thing is- I really can't stand the standard Pepperidge Farm frozen stuff from the freezer case at the Iggle.

I actually used to think it was fine. It was the first approximation of puff pastry I'd ever had. And puff pastry is an amazing, brilliant invention, which naturally knocks one's socks off, even in its least lovely form. After a several experiences of the good stuff, from pastry shops and restaurants, that particular ready-made kind of frozen stuff began to taste of oil and chemicals to me. Wishful thinking kept me going with it for a while. But either it's gotten worse, or I'm just pickier. And until the Trader Joe's thing, the only all butter stuff on offer in my part of the USA was incredibly expensive- out of my league- at Williams-Sonoma.

So if you live near a good bakery willing to sell you some of theirs, more power to you. I don't, and I'm therefore especially grateful to the Trader Joe group for bringing this buttery goodness my way. End of uncompensated commercial message.

With this stuff in the freezer, you can make all kinds of yummy special stuff at a moments notice, including one of my very favorite snacks- Shammi's egg puffs. What you see above is a rough approximation of a recipe I saw in an English cooking magazine called "Delicious". With a salad, it would make a nice vegetarian dinner party menu, I think. I actually just made one for me, and have been taking leftovers for lunch, cold. Very french picnic-y, I feel.

To make it you need:

one package (about 450 grams if you are making your own, and shaming me) of all butter puff pastry
a package of prepared hummous (or, you could shame me thoroughly, and make your own)
various cut up veggies for roasting- your choice (I used some very dense cremini mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, red peppers, shallots, fennel, parboiled, peeled fingerling potatoes, and whole garlic cloves. Sliced onions are a bad idea- they made it hard to cut the pie-too bad, as the red ones taste great roasted)
an egg yolk, beaten with a little milk
chopped fresh cilantro
cumin seed or rosemary
olive oil spray or olive oil

Preheat oven to 425F. Cut the veggies into bit sized pieces- neither too tiny nor too large. You want them fairly chunky, but you also want to be able to cut the pie. Set them on a foil lined baking sheet. Coat thinly with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and the cumin or rosemary. Meanwhile, if using frozen pastry, take it out to defrost. It should be in two equal sized parts.

Bake the veg until browned and a little crusty, and remove from the oven. (This will take varying amounts of time, depending on the vegs you chose, and your oven. You have to check. I did my whole thing in the convection toaster oven, which is very fast. It is a good idea, when using vegs of varying cooking times, to make the longer cooking kind into smaller pieces- the quicker cooking, chunkier.)

Remove foil and veg, and line the baking sheet with parchment. Set one piece of the pastry down on the parchment, and brush about 1" of the outside edge with the egg mixture. Spread the remainder of the surface with a layer of hummous. If you have some left, mix it in with the roasted vegs. Pile the roasted veg over the hummous, leaving the eggy border bare. Sprinkle chopped cilantro over the veg.

With a rolling pin, roll out the second sheet of pastry so that it is just a little bigger and thinner than the covered piece. Carefully set it on top of the veg, and press to seal the pastry edges together. Use your fingers to mold it over the veg, so there are no air pockets. If the top pastry edge overlaps the bottom one , trim the borders to make the top and bottom even. Press all around with a fork, to further seal, and cut 3 diagonal slits on top, using a very sharp knife. Brush top with remainder of egg mixture. This takes about 35 minutes to bake, but watch it. Mine (above) got a little too brown.

You can actually freeze this before baking, defrost and bake when needed. Not bad, but it's better all fresh.

The Other Linda's Bread Pudding

I was lucky and very glad to be invited to stay at my cousin's friends' house in London. We spent a couple of days and nights, and all we rambled around together, went to a play and an exhibition, ate an endless and delicious meal at a Chinese restaurant, and had a clear, beautiful spring day in Greenwich. To top it all off, we were cooked for, which is just the nicest, friendliest thing ever-even better than gorgeous Chinese restaurant meals, IMHO.

We drove the few hours from Brighton. Linda's* big wonderful townhouse was complete with bay window, nifty tiled victorian fireplace, and had (as did its neighbors) a very cool carved plaster mask/head over the huge front door. It smelled fantastic, due to the bread pudding which was doing its thing in the oven. When we had it after dinner, it had cooled down, and there was warm custard to pour on top. Not too shabby, eh? So I got her recipe, and here it is for you, so you can be lucky, too.

This is a bread pudding of the sturdy variety, such as I remember my mother having sometimes made, and it was perfect cool, with the warm custard. It is also nice warm, with a little cool cream on top. The contrast seems to work well, either way. It smells very homey cooking- in the manner of gingerbread, or baking apples. Also good are the more etheral sorts of bread pudding-especially the kind made with leftover croissants, but that is a story for another day.

To make bread pudding you need:

8 oz. bread, white or brown, crusts off unless they are totally mushy
10 fl. oz milk
2 oz. butter
3 oz soft brown sugar
1 egg
2 level tsps "mixed spice" (This is comparable to a "pumpkin pie spice" here in the States. You can mix cinnamon, ginger,tiny bit of cloves, if you like)
1 egg, beaten
6 oz "mixed fruit"- (this refers to a mix of raisins and candied peels- chopped fine. I didn't have any candied peels- so I chopped up some mixed dried fruits very small, and added golden raisins and a bit of lemon peel, to make up the difference. It worked well. I quite like candied peels-just didn't have any.)
grated rind 1/2 orange
freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350F. Break bread up as finely as possible. Put in a bowl, and pour milk over. Let it sit about half an hour. Butter a baking dish that holds 2-2 1/2 pints. Melt butter and add to crumbs with sugar, spices and beaten egg. Beat well with a fork, so there are no lumps. Add fruits and peel. Spread in baking dish, and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake one to one and one half hours.

*It has been my experience that 98% of everyone who was ever named "Linda" is within 5 years of my age, in either direction. What was in the air then?

The fireplace is a phone picture, I'm afraid it didn't blow up too well. Some of them do, with the iphone, but my hand was unsteady on this one.

Loafing

I couldn't ask more from a holiday. Two weeks visiting family/friends in Sussex in an early spring, with a two day London excursion in the middle. It was a perfect balance of visiting, relaxing, and entertaining escapades. The weather was ridiculously good-there were daffodils, and blossoming trees, and I am nonetheless even sort of glad to be home. Eventually, I will tell you all about it.

At the moment, however, I am beat. It was only a 20 hour trip, door-to-door , with no glitches or holdups beyond a not too awful delay on the A23 enroute to Gatwick, caused by a dramatically overturned crane. But it has more or less done me in. And in a way it would not have done when I was a Young Thing, I'm forced to admit. A day later, and I'm still falling asleep at the drop of a hat.

So here is what I have for you today, along with a couple of pictures of visiting friends on a houseboat, in a very attractive little community of houseboats on the river in Shoreham. This is a recipe for an surprising (to me) delicious and versatile lentil-walnut loaf, which my cousin and I made as part of a dinner party for vegetarian guests. I was surprised, because I'd never made a lentil loaf before, and thought it sounded pretty dull, and more improving, or therapeutic, than delicious. I was not encouraged by the source- a rationing era cookbook with the non-enticing title of "Beans". Shows what I know.

We had our loaf with an onion gravy (variant recipe below) and "roasties" (an assortment of roasted potatoes and root vegetables), baby yorkshire puddings (more onion gravy), and a salad. It was all pretty much devoured, but the few loaf leftovers were delicious cold, in sandwiches. I think they would also make a nice starter- served like a pate, with some crusty bread and a couple of gherkins, or some other sort of pickled things.

This is what you need to make the loaf:

6 oz. of puy lentils, soaked overnight, and cooked until soft
4 oz. walnuts, powdered in a processor
4 ox fine breadcrumbs, preferably whole wheat
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 egg
1 onion, chopped very finely
pinch thyme
pinch aleppo pepper (that's me, can't leave well enough alone)
1 clove garlic, snashed
1 tbsp olive oil
S and P to taste

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a loaf pan and line it with foil, lengthwise, with the foil extending past the two short ends. Butter the foil. Heat the oil and cook the onion and garlic until just beginning to change color. Combine with all the other ingredients in a big bowl. Pack into the prepared loaf pan, and fold the ends in. Butter an additional bit of foil to cover the top. cook for 1 and 1/4 hours. Remove top foil, and carefylly unfold the side foil extensions. Let it rest for a few minutes, then lift out by the foil ears, and set on serving plate. Cut into slices with a sharp, preferably serrated knife. Serve hot with onion or mushroom gravy. when the leftovers are cold, it can be sliced more easily, and more thinly.

This is not the gravy we had, as I had only one onion on hand at home, and no wish to go shopping. It is miserably cold here, and there was snow, which is definitely not what I would have ordered, if asked. Apparently I'm still jet-lagged, and this recipe is persistently jumbled and disorderly. But it is also nice, and quantities are adjustable and ad hoc. I will attempt a revision when I get my head screwed on the right way again:

Mushroom Shallot Gravy

Soak mixed dried wild mushrooms in madeira for an hour or two. Chop some shallots and a bit of red onion, and sweat them in a small, heavy pan in a little olive oil. Slice some cremini or ordinary fresh mushrooms, and chop the soaked mushrooms after wringing them out. Add the mushrooms, and saute until almost done. A little bit of thyme and a small sprig of fresh rosemary if available. Sprinkle the lot with a handfull of flour, and cook until the flour disappears and gets a little crusty. Add reserved soaking liquid, and some good quality vegetable stock (or any stock you like), and cook, stirring in the beginning, over a medium low heat until thickened to desired consistency and the flavors have blended.

And I did miss you, despite having a wonderful time.