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Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category
Friday, February 6th, 2009 by urban foodie
 Despite being and avid cook I had never made a risotto. I have eaten many but never made one, that’s Mr UF’s domain, he is risotto king. However, the other night circumstances left me with a craving for roast squash and feta risotto and no Mr UF until much too late to start cooking. So, I rolled up my sleeves and, armed with various wise risotto words (good and hot stock, lots of stiring), threw myself into the task…
The result was rather fantastic, sweet roasted squash matched by the creamy rice and foiled by the sharpness of the feta, with a little kick of chili and freshness from the parsley and lemon. It’s a really easy dish to make, you just need patience and a bit of care - there was, however, far too much time at the stove stirring for my liking so I may not make one again in a hurry, but then I have Mr UF to do that for me.
If you haven’t a willing partner to stir your arborio then I’d recommend you try it yourself, the result is really tasty - oh and cheap and veggie too.
Ingredients
200g arborio rice (about a mean mugful)
100g Feta (2/3 of one of the packaged blocks)
100ml white wine
Handful of parsley
1 onion
1 small squash
500ml chicken/veg stock
1/2 lemon
chili flakes
Olive oil, S&P
1 Heat the oven to 160 C and prepare the squash - take out seeds and skin too if necessary, I prefer all except butternut without. Cut them into bigish chunks, 2 inches across, sprinkle with a little oil, a pinch of chili flakes, S&P and arrange on a baking tray. Bake for 40 mins until browning nicely at the edges
2 Pick and chop the parsley, crumble/chop up the feta into small chunks
3 After the squash has been cooking for 20 mins, put the stock on to warm and chop the onion as finely as you can and fry gently in a little olive oil in a large pan.
4 When the onions are translucent (5-7 mins) add the rice and stir for 30 seconds
5 Add the wine and reduce right down
6 Add in the hot stock a ladle at a time, stirring constantly until the liquid is absorbed. The rice is cooked when it tastes right, about 20 mins in but start checking at 12mins
7 Take off the heat and add in the roasted squash, chopped feta, parsley and squeeze over the lemon juice - mix gently but firmly and serve in a deep bowl with a glass of fresh white
Tags: Chili, feta, pumpkin, risotto, squash
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 by urban foodie
 Well, I tried to make a pavlova for dinner with friends on Saturday night but my meringue didn’t quite turn out right (I think I didn’t beat it for long enough before adding the sugar).
Although delicious, toasted crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle, it didn’t look good - they really can blow up alarmingly in the oven - so I had to form a quick plan b.
And, inspired by the pudding Eaton Mess, I decided to deconstruct my pavlova, crumbling the unsightly meringue and mixing with the cream and raspberries before my guests saw it. Of course, what actually happened was we had a bit of wine and a bit of a laugh about the meringue growths, it’s best not to get too precious about food presentation, and then thoroughly enjoyed the pudding. Mmmm pavlova.
Ingredients
For the Meringue
(from Nigel Slater’s Appetite - quantities slightly modified and cooked as individual nests)
4 medium / 3 large organic egg whites
180g sugar
1 teaspoon cornflower
For the topping
200ml (big carton) whipping cream
2 small punnets raspberries (or 8 passion fruits if they are in season)
Serves 4-5
1 Heat the oven to 160 C, line a baking tray with parchment (non stick) baking paper, measure out the sugar
2 Separate the eggs - careful not to add even a smidgen of yolk or the whites won’t thicken
3 Whisk the whites until they are stiff and shiny - I did this in the magimix
4 Add the sugar in two batches, whisk until really thick and glossy
5 fold in cornflower by hand and then dollop 4/5 mounds onto baking paper (space them well apart) building them up into nests by adding to the edges - or you can make one big one
6 Put in oven for 1 hour, then turn off oven and leave meringues in to cool for 1 further hour
7 Meanwhile you can be whipping the cream into thick clouds and sieving about a quarter of the raspberries with a teaspoon of sugar to make a coulis (just push through the sieve, instant sauce!)
8 When you are ready to eat, present either pre-assembled (meringue, cream, raspberries, sauce), or in separate bowls for guests to make as the please, or make a(n Eaton) mess and serve with a smile!
Tags: eaton mess, passion fruit, pavlova, pudding, raspberry
Posted in Recipes | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 26th, 2009 by urban foodie
 Mr UF made a very tasty roast chicken on Sunday, sage and lemon, simple and delicious.
As usual we didn’t finish all of it (even a small chicken is to much for two, even when the two are such hearty eaters as us!). This means that a chicken on Sunday is really a wonderfully giving dish, the carcass is whistling away in the stock pot as I write with a couple of bay leaves, an onion and some whole peppercorns for stock, that just leaves the leftover chicken meat…
If you are more numerous in your house I’d always get a slightly bigger chicken than you need to ensure leftovers, highly economical and full of flavour.
Usually the leftover chicken meat would go in a risotto but this time I have knocked up a very easy pasta sauce using one of it’s favourite friends, the mushroom.
Ingredients
250g mushrooms (about 6 large white mushrooms or equivalent fancy ones)
100g leftover chicken (a decent couple of handfuls)
100ml creme fraiche (or cream if that’s your preference, but I love the sourside)
100ml white wine
250g penne
1 teaspoon thyme (dried is fine)
olive oil
S&P
Serves 2
1 Put on the pasta to boil
2 Chop the mushrooms and saute in a little olive oil
3 Once they are cooked, after about 3 minutes, sprinkle in the thyme, add the white wine and reduce by about half
4 Stir in the shredded chicken and heat through (you could also use diced fresh, in which case start with the chicken and then add the mushrooms etc once it is done)
5 Drain the pasta and add the mushroom and chicken mixture to it, stir in the creme fraiche/cream and serve immediately with either a green salad or a bit of baguette if you are after a real carb rush
Tags: Chicken, easy supper, leftover chicken, mushroom, pasta, penne, Quick Supper
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 by urban foodie
 This is a throw it together dish that turned out even better than expected - the sweet leeks and bacon are complimented by the slight sharpness of the creme fraiche. Keep the tagliatelle al dente to maintain interesting textures, oh and the peas keep everything tasting fresh.
Quick and easy, dinner in about 30 minutes.
Ingredients
1 leek
1/2 packet bacon (4 rashers)
2/3 tablespoons creme fraiche
big handful of peas (frozen are fine)
5/6 tagliatelle nests
Serves 2
1 Chop and wash the leeks and sautee gently in a pan with olive oil and a little butter. Turn the heat right down and cook, covered, very gently for 25 minutes, stirring every few minutes. You should only be able to hear the whisper of a sizzle
2 After 10-15 minutes slice the bacon widthways into thin strips and add to leek pan, don’t put the lid back on, do turn the heat up a bit
3 After 20 minutes, cook the pasta in fiercy boiling water for 5 or so minutes
4 Put peas in pasta pan for last 2 minutes
5 Drain pasta & peas and mix all ingredients in pan, dolloping in creme fraiche. Serve with a crisp side salad
Tags: bacon, easy supper, Quick Supper, tagliatelle
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | 3 Comments »
Monday, January 12th, 2009 by urban foodie
 This is a gorgeously easy, frugal and tasty supper that is perfect for January when energy levels and bank accounts are at their lowest ebb. It’s from that master of unpretentious real food, Nigel Slater, from his fabulous book Appetite.
Just potato, bacon and stock with a generous hand of sage to bring a delightful herby savour. It takes just a few minutes to put together and uses only half a packet of bacon/pancetta, so you can keep the rest for another supper later in the week - like Baked Eggs with Kale or Bacon Cabbage and Potato.
Ingredients
From Appetite, by Nigel Slater (as ever I have tweaked to my taste, but that’s the beauty of the Slater recipes they are made for adapting to the meal you cook them for).
Waxy potatoes - 14 smallish ones
Olive Oil
Butter
Bacon or pancetta
Good chicken stock (fresh or a quality bouillon - I used the stock from my Christmas cider and mustard baked ham)
4 sage leaves
1 leek - optional
Feeds 2/3
1 Heat the oven to 180 C, slice the potatoes into £1 coin thick slices, slice the bacon and leeks too
2 Fry the potatoes until just golden
3 Butter a shallow baking dish or roasting tin and layer the potatoes, bacon, sage and leek (if using) into the dish, add just enough stock to reach to top layer, dot with butter and pop in the hot oven
4 Forget about it and go and have a nice sit down, after about an hour it is ready, serve with bread for mopping up the abundant sauces
Tags: bacon, easy supper, potato, sage
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | No Comments »
Sunday, January 11th, 2009 by urban foodie
 Baked Eggs with Kale
Sometimes, when the temperature is icy and night so early, you need a bit of comfort food.
I had a strong, strong craving for baked eggs, that still creamy white with an unctuous yolk. Normally I’d just defrost a bit of spinach, add a pinch of nutmeg and S&P, make a hole and put in an egg, sprinkling some cheese and maybe a dash of tabasco before putting it in the oven for 15 minutes. Somehow this seems ok for a solo lunch but not nearly enough for a supper with Mr UrbanFoodie. Funny how you’ll cook yourself something you’d never offer to another…
I found this recipe in the Guardian, good old Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall comes up trumps again, the man is a natural foodie, so in love with food its infectious. It’s basically a cheesy white sauce with kale to surround the eggs, I added some left over chorizo and a leek that was on its last legs, so it is easily customisable to taste/what’s going a little curly in the fridge.
Serve with bread to mop up with and prepare for some serious sofa time, you’ll be so warmly blanketed.
Ingredients
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, I have only tweaked it a little…
1 small onion
2 bay leaves
nutmeg
350ml milk
30g butter
30g flour
Big bunch kale (at least half a collander full)
125g cheddar / mix of cheese
4 very fresh eggs
1 Peel and cut onion in half, add with bay leaves and nutmeg to milk in a pan, bring to boil, cover and take off heat to infuse for 20 mins
2 Grate cheese, put oven on to 180 C
3 Melt butter and add flour, cook the roux for a few mins until it looks like wet sand, add in the (strained) milk bit by bit - don’t worry if it lumps just stir them in, they will go
4 When white sauce is undulating (making thick waves with your wooden spoon) add 3/4 of the cheese remove from heat and cover with clingfilm to stop a skin forming, set aside
5 Wash and chop kale, you can either steam for 3-4 minutes or sautee, covered for 2-3 minutes. I did the latter as I already had the leek and chorizo sauteeing in a pan
6 Mix the kale into the cheese sauce and pour into an ovenproof dish, make 4 holes for the eggs. This can be a bit like working with wet sand so do them one by one if you need to
7 Add eggs, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and pop in oven for 15-20 mins. Start checking eggs at 10 mins, the dish is done when they are
Tags: comfort food, Eggs, kale
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 by urban foodie
 No one does festive cookies like the Americans.
Inspired to bake biscuits as small but meaningful gifts, I looked at a lot of recipes on the internet and I found cookie recipe after cookie recipe that the authors had baked with their moms. Recipes ingrained in family tradition. I can’t think of a better tradition to cultivate than spending time in the kitchen making treats, chatting whilst mixing and infusing the house with gorgeous smells. Sweetness without saccharine or sap, what Christmas should really be all about.
This recipe for snowflake biscuits (or snowflake cookies) from Gina DePalma at Serious Eats sounded delicious and had a rather moving side story so I decided to give it a go.
In fact I made these 3 weeks ago but sickness and festivities have stalled me writing about it, so save them for next Christmas or for when you feel the need for deep rich chocolate bites - birthday, dinner party gift… (they are really very good with coffee and a liqueur).
I have adapted her recipe very slightly to my taste - mainly more rum - and seen a few variations on the snowflake theme about so I think these are fairly flexible little biscuits, just use the basic ingredients and I reckon you can tinker a bit with the rest.
Ingredients
110g whole, shelled, unsalted pistachios
120g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
75g unsalted butter
50g cocoa powder
200g granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 tablespoons golden rum (leave out if these are going to the kids)
Grated zest of 1/2 a large orange
200-300g icing sugar for rolling
1 Coarsely chop the pistachios and set aside. In a medium bowl mix flour, baking powder and salt together.
2 Put cocoa powder in the bowl of your mixer, melt butter and mix on medium speed, then add sugar, egg, scarpe down sides and add vanilla extract, rum and orange zest. Next add the flour, pistachios and beat for 30 seconds to stengthen dough. (if you don’t have a mixer you can do this by hand, just takes a bit of elbow grease)
4 Wrap dough in clingfilm and chill for 4-18 hours.
5 Take dough out of fridge and whilst the oven is pre-heating to 165 C, cover two baking sheets with baking paper and put the icing sugar in a bowl.
6 Break off little pieces of dough, roll into small balls (10p piece/ large marble size) and double dip into sugar. line up on sheets with at least a biscuit space between them.
7 Bake for 8-10 mins
8 Allow to to cool for a minute on the sheets and then transfer to racks to cool, don’t forget to taste a couple just to be sure they are gorgeous - they’ll keep in an airtight box for about a week. Give in a small ballotin boxes tied up with a ribbon, or serve after dinner with liqueur coffees.
Tags: Add new tag, biscuits, chocolate, edible presents
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 5th, 2009 by urban foodie
 Well it’s the end of the festive season, nothing left in the bank account, a little added to the waistband, and - if you’re anything like me - a slightly random selection of odds and ends in the fridge.
Yesterday I unearthed a slightly overripe avocado, a couple of slices of curling parma ham and hunger for something vitamin and veg rich but not too heavy to ease into the (relative) austerity of January.
So I squashed the avocado in a bowl, added a chopped tomato, a dollop of creme fraiche, a turn of salt and lots of pepper and spread the lot over the parma ham on a nice bit of brown toast.
Not so much a recipe as a bit of inspiration to use up those bits and pieces in the fridge, you’ll have a tasty lunch and an easy conscience.
Hope you all had fabulous new year’s eve - here’s to a cracking 2009!
PS Well done to all those who donated to Menu for Hope, they raised over $60,000.
Tags: avocado, easy lunch
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | No Comments »
Sunday, December 28th, 2008 by urban foodie
Apologies for the lack of recent posts but save tips for saline mouth washes and hot ginger and lemon drinks (it’s been a great week) I haven’t had much to post about. But now it’s the major food fest of the year and I’m getting myself back on track to enjoy it. This year the little sis is cooking the main meal so I made a ham. Unfortunately I have no pictures, technical difficulties beyond my control! Trust me though, it was a fabulous deep purple-pink with a caramel crust - gorgeous.
First things first, the ham. I ordered a half smoked gammon from Frank Godfrey the butcher at Highbury Barn, N5. This family butchers has been there for 100 years, and, at £20 for 2.4kgs, very reasonably priced for local reared, humanely tended and slaughtered, expertly hung meat.
As this is my first ever ham I went for simple classic flavours, namely apple and mustard. I cooked the ham in cider and apple juice and then baked it with a spiced mustard crust.
Ingredients
2.4 Kg gammon (I chose a half smoked one which I soaked for a few hours in water just to make sure it wasn’t too salty)
2L Cider
1L Apple juice
1 onion
3 bay leaves
12 peppercorns
1 heaped teaspoon 5 spice
2 heaped tablespoons honey
4 heaped tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 Put ham in cider, apple juice with the peppercorns, bay leaves and onion (peeled and chopped in half) - top up with water if you need to so that ham is just covered - bring to boil, skim off any scum and simmer for 20 mins per 450g - 1h50 for this ham.
2 Remove ham from liquid (I then reduced this down a bit to make 2L of stock which is now in 500ml portions in the freezer ready for a hamy risotto and/or pea soup) and allow to cool a bit whilst you heat the oven to 160 degrees.
3 Mix 5 spice, mustard and honey to make glaze. Remove the skin from ham, discard it it is of no use anymore, and diamond score fat then rub in glaze.
4 Pop it in the oven for 20-30 mins until the fat has started crisping up and going dark caramel colour. Eat hot or, my preference, cold with a bit of mustard or interesting relish, will be good for up to 4 days (if it lasts that long…).
Tags: Cider, Ham, Mustard
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | No Comments »
Saturday, December 13th, 2008 by urban foodie
 What a true gem of a breakfast a really good egg is when soft boiled to perfection and accompanied by buttered toast.
It really is the perfect breakfast, just the right volume of flavour for breakfast, not too voluminous in your awakening stomach and full off protein - plus there is the inescapable delight of first cracking the egg top and then piercing the yolk, with soldier or spoon, so that it oozes deliciously. whether you are 7 or 70 it is always a simple joy.
Making the perfect soft boiled egg can be a bit hit and miss so here is a failsafe method from Delia Smith (who else).
Recipe
1 Take a room temperature egg (organic only please), place it on a tablespoon and lower into gently simmering water - use a small pan with just enough water to cover the egg or eggs.
2 Repeat as necessary
3 Simmer gently for 1 minute
4 Take off heat and cover, leave for 5 mins (medium eggs) or 6 (large eggs)
5 Serve in an egg cup with a side of hot buttered toast (I like a thin veil of Marmite on mine) - oh and yes cutting into soldiers isn’t just acceptable but is actively encouraged.
Tags: breakfast, egg, weekend breakfast
Posted in Kid Friendly, Recipes | 6 Comments »
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