What Rachel Ate

Cauliflower Cheese

March 4th, 2009

Most things are improved by the addition of cheese sauce. I remember eating a sunday dinner at a friend’s house once; the usual roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and greens. The meat of choice was a large ham, with a sticky sweet glaze. All in all a good spread I thought, then out came the piece de resistance, a jug of cheese sauce! Can you think of anything better than being allowed to douse all of your food in a cheesy blanket?

Alas, I like to think to think that my tastes have moved on a little and these days, I sometimes even eat meals that don’t don’t contain any cheese. But cauliflower and any other slightly bitter counterparts such as green cabbage and kale really do benefit from a bit of cheese sauce. I’ll often eat it as a meal in itself with some salad or a few roasted vegetables. Roast potatoes, super crispy with a fluffy centre are particularly divine dipped into the sauce.

Ingredients

Serves 4

1 medium cauliflower
40g butter
40g flour
500ml milk
125g strong cheddar, grated
1/2tsp english mustard
2tbsp breadcrumbs

Remove the outer leaves from the cauliflower and break into small florets. Place in a large saucepan, cover with water, add 1/2 tsp salt and bring to the boil.
Once the water comes to the boil, drain and tip into a large baking dish.
Meanwhile, heat the butter in a large saucepan, once melted add the flour and whisk thorughly, continue cooking until the mixture (a ‘roux’) turns a nutty brown colour.
Now add the milk slowly, whisk it completely into the mixture as you go to avoid lumps.
One all the milk is added, cook over a low heat, stirring all the time until the sauce thickens, it should coat the back of a spoon.
Now take off the heat, season well and add the cheese and mustard, allow it melt for a minute or so and stir well.
Pour over the cauliflower and top with the breadcrumbs.
Cook at 200C for 20-30mins until bubbling and golden.

Tags: cauliflower, cheese
Posted in Dinner recipes | No Comments »

Lovely Roast Chicken

March 2nd, 2009

The simplest things in life are often the best. A classic roast chicken, one of the easiest things to make, yet so tasty and comforting. Of course, I always buy the best quality I can and eek out the whole chicken to get as many meals as possible. See these tips from Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and River Cottage.

I roasted it up on Sunday in plenty of herby, garlicky butter and we feasted on it with some roast butternut squash and cauliflower cheese (see below). Then came the messy part, I pulled off every last shred of meat for use in a vietnamese(ish) chicken salad, and the scraps will go into a soup with various odds and ends from the veg box. The carcass and giblets can then go into a pot for several hours with a carrot, onion and some bay to become a thick and wobbly stock. Of course, more often than not, I don’t exactly feel like making stock late on a Sunday night, so I chuck the bones in the freezer, ready to make a big batch at a later date.

Ingredients

Serves 4

1 free-range or organic chicken at room temperature
50g soft butter
2 fat cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 handful herbs such as sage, thyme, rosemary, marjoram
1 lemon

Remove any trussing and giblets from the bird, give it a quick rinse inside and out, pat dry and place in a large roasting tin.
Make two slices in the thighs all the way to the bone, this will allow the bird to cook more evenly so you end up with succulent breast meat and tender thighs.
Put the butter in a bowl with the garlic, herbs, salt and pepper and the zest of the lemon. squish th emixture together with your fingers.
Gently prize the skin away from the breast so you’re left with a gap, squeeze half you butter in between and rub it all over the breast. Smear the remainder over the thighs. Cut the lemon in half, squeeze a little over the bird and put the rest in the cavity.
Place in the middle of a hot oven for 30 mins until the skin begins to crispen, now turn it down to 180C and cook for a further 40mins.
You can tell the chicken is done by poking a knife into the chicken where the thigh joins the breast; the juices released should run clear.
Take the bird out and allow to rest for 20-30mins before carving.

Tags: chicken
Posted in Meat recipes | 1 Comment »

Brown Rice Salad

February 25th, 2009

This was more Saturday morning cooking, but this time I was definitely trying to be healthy. Not in any worthy sense of the word, I just wanted to eat something that was of course tasty but felt like it was doing me good and didn’t send me back to bed for a nap.

My main inspiration was this recipe for Tuktuk salad from Waitrose Food Illustrated (my new food magazine of choice). But as these things so often go, I was limited by ingredients and ended up going down my own path, albeit still a tasty one.

The base is brown rice which I always find works best in salads when its been allowed to cool first. Some lentils for texture and added health benefits although chickpeas would be good too. Plenty of red onion and garlic or try spring onions. Some toasted seeds for crunch, but toasted cashews would be equally delicious and a simple zingy salad dressing. I like to put parsley on everything if I can and the freshness works well here, but you could try coriander or mint.

The great thing about a salad like this is that it will hold up well for a few days, have it with a dollop of hummus in a pitta or with grilled fish or on its own for lunch and like me, feel very virtuous.

Ingredients

Serves 4

125g puy lentils, cooked
250g brown rice, cooked
2 red onions, finely diced
5 tomatoes, diced
200g frozen peas, defrosted
100g sunflower seeds, toasted
1 small bunch parsley, chopped

Dressing
1 ½ tsp dijon mustard
1 ½ tbsp cider vinegar
4 tbsp olive oil

This is really just an assembly job, all the work goes into preparing the ingredients.

Mix all the salad ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk the dressing and pour over. Mix well and check for seasoning.

Make sure your cooked brown rice is completely cool before assembling the salad.

Tags: lentils, peas, rice, seeds, tomato
Posted in Salad recipes | 1 Comment »

Triple Decker Club Sandwich

February 23rd, 2009

These are inspired the by The delightful Rose in Oxford, in fact just looking for a link to the website is making me drool. Many mornings, lunches and afternoons have been happily spent here drinking vanilla tea, eating scones and everything else. It’s all organic, made from scratch and outrageously good.

The club sandwich is legendary, layers of chicken oozing with mayonnaise and avocado, crispy bacon, lettuce and tomato. A heart attack on a plate, maybe. The best way to start the weekend, definitely. This is my version – I like to secure the little triangles with cocktail sticks not just for looks, this helps hold the entire creation together. For next time I’m planning on having this with a handful of crisps to wedge into the sandwich, a guilty pleasure if you will.

Ingredients

Makes 2 rather large sandwiches

6 slices bread
150g cooked chicken, shredded
2 tomatoes, sliced
6 rashers streaky bacon
1 avocado
2 tbsp mayonnaise
handful lettuce, shredded

Toast your bread. Meanwhile cook the bacon in a frying pan until golden and crispy.
Cut the avocado in half, remove the stone and scoop out the flesh. Mash in bowl with a little salt and pepper, and 1tbsp mayonnaise.
To assemble the sandwiches spread half the avocado onto one slice of bread and top with half the chicken and another slice of bread. Top this with half the bacon, tomatoes and lettuce. Spread half the mayonnaise onto the third slice of bread and complete. Repeat for the other sandwich.

Tags: avocado, bacon, chicken, sandwich
Posted in Snack Recipes | 2 Comments »

Pappardelle with Sausage and Savoy Cabbage

February 20th, 2009

Possibly the best way to eat savoy cabbage (along with colcannon). There aren’t many vegetables that don’t benefit from being paired with pasta and cream or cheese. Faced with another cabbage in the veg box, I rustled this up and it’s definitely one to make again.

The cabbage is definitely the star, you’re not trying to mask it with all the other ingredients, simply enhance. So don’t be alarmed at the amount of raw cabbage you have to fit into the frying pan, it will cook down. This is all about using what you have, any other pasta will do, try mozzarella in place of the parmesan or strong cheddar. Any other greens would also work well, kale, chard, or spinach.

Ingredients

serves 4

400g pappardelle
1 pack sausages, approx 250g
2 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped
50g butter
1 Savoy cabbage
200g grated parmesan
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted

Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and reserve a mugful of the cooking water.
Meanwhile, quarter the cabbage, remove the core and slice as finely as possible.
Heat a large frying pan and add a little oil, split the sausages, and add the insides to the pan, use a wooden spoon to break the meat up into chunks whilst you’re frying. Once golden, add the cabbage, garlic and butter.
This will look like a huge amount of cabbage, but it will cook down. Stir as best you can and try to coat it all in the buttery juices. Continue frying and stirring for about 5mins until the cabbage is completely cooked, season well.
Tip the pasta into the pan along with the cheese and 2 tbsp cooking water. Stir the pasta into the cabbage, be patient after a minute or so, the cheese will melt and form a lovely shiny sauce that clings to the pasta, add some more pasta water if you need to.
Sprinkle over the pine nuts and serve.

Tags: cabbage, kale, spinach
Posted in Pasta recipes | 7 Comments »

Sticky Toffee Pudding

February 18th, 2009

Yes, yes, yes. Possibly one of the best puddings ever and it’s so much better homemade. Not only that but it’s worringly easy to make, do it once and prepare to become obsessed.

Perfect, tooth-achingly sweet comfort food. Dates and dark brown sugar give this it’s butterscotch stickiness with a divine caramel sauce to pour over. I cook them in muffin tins for individual puddings.

You could actually bake a big batch and freeze leftovers (as if!) for a later date.

Ingredients

Makes 6 puddings

125g pitted dates, chopped
½ tsp bicarbonate soda
30g butter
90g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
125g brown sugar
1 egg

Sauce
100ml double cream
75g brown sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup

vanilla ice cream to serve

Put the dates and 125ml water into a small saucepan, heat until bubbling, take off the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda and butter until melted.
Meanwhile, whisk the egg in a large bowl, add the date mixture, flour and baking powder and stir until combined.
Grease six holes in a muffin tray and divide the mixture into them. Bake at 180C for 20mins until a cake tester comes out clean.
To make the sauce, add all the ingredients to a small pan, bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes.
To serve, place the pudding on a plate, pierce a few times and drizzle the sauce over. Top with a big scoop of ice cream.

Tags: Rachel's favourites
Posted in Sweet things | 1 Comment »

Root Vegetable Rostis

February 16th, 2009

And yet, the root vegetables keep appearing, every week a pile of muddy parsnips and carrots peeking from the vegetable box. Only this week there was a massive swede coming along for the ride, enough to send you over the edge, I tell you.

So, on Saturday morning, reading cookery books as per usual, I came across a Bill Granger recipe for potato and feta pancakes. I adapted this (a lot), left out the feta and used parsnip, carrot and swede and what a success! The egg binded them perfectly to form sweet little cakes, perfect with baked beans and a fried egg for breakfast. Although I’d eat them wherever you’d normally have potato.

I’m thinking these would be good with a handful of grated cheese thrown into the mix or courgettes and feta in summer.

Ingredients

Serves 4

500g root vegetables, grated. Try potato, parsnip, carrot, swede, turnip, squash or pumpkin
1 onion, grated
2 eggs
45g flour
4 tbsp vegetable oil

Put the grated vegetables in a colander with a liberal sprinkling of salt and leave for 30mins.
Meanwhile whisk the eggs in a large bowl and add the flour. Add the vegetables to the bowl squeezing out as much water as possible as you go. Stir well and season.
Heat the vegetable oil in the pan and add about 2 tbsp of mixture to the pan for each rosti, you should get about 8.
Make sure the heat is on medium and leave the rostis to fry for 4-5mins on each side until golden brown.

Tags: carrots, parsnip, swede
Posted in Breakfast recipes, Dinner recipes | 1 Comment »

Valentine’s Day

February 15th, 2009

The combination of the credit crunch and February 14th presented the perfect excuse to buy lots of decadent ingredients, cook up a delicious meal, pop open some bubbly and hunker down for the evening.

The starter was a beef carpaccio salad, inspired by this Jamie Oliver recipe, although we used rocket instead of green beans, the mustardy onion dressing went perfectly and it’s actually a fairly cost effective starter as 1 steak was plenty for 2 people.

The main event, another Jamie Oliver recipe, roast monkfish with black olive sauce, we left out the mash and had new potatoes sliced into coins and roasted with plenty of salt, oil and garlic. What a delight, meaty monkfish is fast becoming a favourite especially as a certain someone is allergic to white fish.

And for dessert… lemon cheescake ice cream from the delightful Nigella, cheesecake in frozen form.

Tags: beef, monkfish
Posted in Dinner recipes | No Comments »

Parsnip and Leek Risotto

February 6th, 2009

Running with the idea of cooking parsnips in long thin strips with or without bacon like this recipe, I came up with this risotto, utilising some leeks lurking in the fridge. I’m not normally a fan of risotto, but this was perfect, rich and comforting. I tried to use as much parsnip and leek as possible to give this some redeeming features to go along with the butter and cheese, in reality it means it’s not as heavy and stodgy and you’d expect.

Ingredients

Serves 4

6 rashers streaky bacon, finely sliced
a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary, finely chopped
300g leeks, finely sliced
500g parsnips
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
300g arborio risotto rice
125ml white wine
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
50g butter
100g grated parmesan

Heat a large saucepan and drop in the bacon along with a glug of oil and the thyme. Fry on a high heat for a few mins, add the parsnip and cook for a few mins more until tinged golden.
Turn the heat down and add the leeks and garlic cook for about 5mins until soft. Pour in the rice, stir well and cook until the grains become translucent.
Next add the wine and turn up the heat, allow the wine to bubble away until nearly all of it has gone.
Now add a ladleful of stock, stir gently until nearly all the stock has been absorbed (but not all!), continue to do this until most of the stock has been absorbed and the rice is cooked with a little bite, add a little more stock if necessary to make sure the risott is ‘wet’ and not stiff.
At this point check the seasoning, add the butter and cheese, stir briefly, pop on a lid and leave for 5mins before serving.

Tags: leek, parsnip, rice
Posted in Dinner recipes | No Comments »

Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie

January 29th, 2009

I guess you could call this more of a ‘gardeners’ pie’ as naturally there is no lamb in it, either way given this was a random idea thrown together after work, its definitely as rich, filling and hearty as any meaty version and as delicious too.

Red lentils braised in red wine and tomatoes, topped with buttery mashed potatoes and grated cheese, and baked until bubbling and golden. I used plenty of carrots and even a little cabbage in the mash (I always seem to have leftover cabbage in my veg box) so as well as the lentils, this makes for virtuous eating in fitting with January Healthy Eating (surely we can stop that soon?)

This is a really basic recipe, perfect for varying with what you feel like, just googling this I found recipes using sweet potato mash, goats cheese topping and beans instead of lentils, so feel free to experiment. The only word of warning is to make sure you pack plenty of flavour into the lentil sauce as anyone who’s cooked lentils and/or beans before knows, they do taste good, they just need a little extra care and attention to get there.

This is perfect cook ahead food to serve to large groups of people. You could even make double and freeze half, great for chucking in the oven after a busy day. Leftovers make perfect packed lunches too.

Ingredients

Serves 4 (with leftovers!)

2 onions, peeled and finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
200g red lentils
250ml red wine
1 can chopped tomatoes
1tsp stock powder (or ½ stock cube)
900g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into 5cm chunks
50g butter
200ml milk
100g strong cheddar, grated

Heat a large casserole and add 2tbsp oil, fry onions and carrots gently for 5mins, add the garlic and bay leaves and fry for a few mins more.
Tip in the lentils and stir well to coat in the oily, oniony juices.
Pour in the red wine and allow it to bubble aways for about 3mins.
Add the chopped tomatoes, fill the can with water to rinse it out and add this too.
Add enough extra water so that lentils are covered in about 2cm water.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 20-30mins until the lentils are cooked, top up with water if necessary, you want a fairly liquid sauce.
Once the lentils are cooked , check the seasoning and add salt and pepper.
Meanwhile boil the potatoes in plenty of boiling salted water until very soft, drain well and either push through a potato ricer or mash with a masher.
Heat the milk and butter in a small saucepan and pour over the potatoes, add plenty of seasoning and beat until smooth with a wooden spoon.
Spoon the lentil mixture into a large baking dish, top with the mashed potato.
Sprinkle over the grated cheese and bake at 200C for 20mins until bubbling and golden.

Tags: lentils, potato
Posted in Bean and pulse recipes, Dinner recipes | 3 Comments »

Recently...

Cauliflower Cheese

Lovely Roast Chicken

Brown Rice Salad

Triple Decker Club Sandwich

Pappardelle with Sausage and Savoy Cabbage

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Root Vegetable Rostis

Valentine’s Day

Parsnip and Leek Risotto

Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie

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