Sweet Potato, Roast Garlic and Coconut Soup

I was tempted to call the title of this post Sweet Potato, Roast Garlic, Lime, Cumin and Coconut Soup, but I thought I would stick to the Rule of Three. Despite a rather long and overcomplicated name, the ingredients blend together to a much more mellow soup than you would expect. That is not to say it is dull, I like to think the combination makes a beautiful balance, like in a good Thai curry.


Ingredients
2 heads of garlic
Olive oil
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp butter
4 spring onions
1 long red chilli
800g (ish) sweet potato
1 can coconut milk
1litre chicken or vegetable stock, or water
Fish sauce (to taste)
1 lime

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Tear 2 squares of foil. Place a head of garlic on one of the foil squares, drizzle over a little oil. Crimp the edges of the foil together tightly, so the garlic is encased in a baggy foil packet. Repeat with the other head of garlic. Roast for 20-25 minutes, until the garlic is very soft- leave it for longer if it is still hard.

While the garlic is roasting, toast the cumin seeds in a dry frying pan until they start to smell fragrant, then tip into a pestle and mortar and grind as finely as you can.

Chop the spring onions and the chilli. You can do this quite roughly, as they will all get blended up in the end. I keep the chilli seeds in this for the extra bite, but you can remove them if you prefer a milder soup.

Melt the butter in a pan big enough to accommodate everything. Add the chilli and spring onion, and let them cook over a gentle heat. Whilst they are cooking, peel and chop the sweet potato into even sized pieces. Add to the chilli and spring onion, and cook for a few minutes more. Stir in the cumin, then add the stock or water and coconut milk. Simmer until the sweet potato is tender. How long it will take depends on the size you cut your potatoes.
Remove the garlic from the oven, unwrap and allow to cool enough so you can handle it. Squeeze the garlic pulp out of its skins into the pan. Blend the soup with a stick blender until completely smooth. Add a dash of fish sauce and half the juice of the lime, stir and taste. Add more lime or fish sauce to your taste, and serve.

The soup is surprisingly filling, I found a bowl with some bread made a very tasty and warming supper.

Plum Gingerbread Swirled with Cheesecake

A quick food shop last week turned into a splurge on autumnal produce-I came back with rough-skinned russet apples, root vegetables to turn into a comforting, cream enriched soup and two big punnets of plums. Most of the apples are gone, the majority just eaten on their own, or with some sharp cheddar. A few were used as a topping for a pecan cake, sprinkled with lots of cinnamon and nutmeg. The vegetables have been peeled, cooked, pureed and eaten; I had forgotten how nice a simple vegetable soup could be, especially when you've caught the dreaded cold, like I had. I still have a lot of plums though, even though I like them a lot I was lacking inspiration. Thank goodness for the internet, especially at the moment when I am living without most of my cookery book collection. The first thing that caught my attention was plum gingerbread, then this plum traybake with cheesecake and finally these gingerbread cheesecake bars.

The cake I made came closest to the gingerbread cheesecake bars. The recipe was essentially the same, but with a few additions. Plums, obviously, but also some stem ginger to the gingerbread mix, and some lemon zest and juice to the cheesecake. I omitted the ground ginger from the cheesecake batter, as I wanted complete contrast of the two mixes. Also, instead of pouring the gingerbread batter in the cake tin, covering it with the cheesecake mix, then marbling the two, I put alternating spoonfuls of the batters in the tin and then swirled them up with a knife. I think my method would be easier, as the gingerbread batter is much heavier and denser than the cheesecake, so to try and swirl the gingerbread above and into the cheesecake seems rather difficult.

I have just a cold piece with a cup of tea , and I was very pleased- I really like the contrast between dark, heavy gingerbread and light, tangy cheesecake. I wouldn't go as far to say that the plums 'make' the dish, but they are a really nice addition and suit the flavours of the cake.

If you want to make this recipe, I used this one as a base, from the Oven Adventures blog, which looks great- I'll be pouring over it later. Add the zest of one lemon and one teaspoon of the juice to the cheesecake batter, and one ball of stem ginger, grated, plus a little of the syrup from the jar to the gingerbread. Omit the ground ginger from the cheesecake mix. See my notes above for mixing the two batters in the cake tin. Finally top with some sliced plums. I used 4 plums, each cut into four thick slices.

Toblerone Fridge Cake

I'm a big fan of Felicity Cloake's 'How to cook the perfect...' series. Felicity has my dream job, refining recipes to perfection and writing about it. Her final recipes are great- at least the ones I have made are, but I trust the other recipes are equally good. 

One of her recipes is for the perfect fridge cake. It doesn't use Toblerone, but I had a large bar at home, and after making Nigel Slater's Toblerone sauce for ice cream, I was keen to use it in other recipes. Felicity's recipe calls for half milk, half dark chocolate, which easily could be aped with a mix of dark and milk Toblerone bars. I just used milk because it is what I had at home, but perhaps the recipe could be bettered with the substitution of dark Toblerone for some of the milk. I did enjoy it as it was though, but I do have quite a sweet tooth. 

The overall flavour wasn't especially Toblerone-like, but it did have the added bonus of nougat pieces peppered throughout. The next time I make it I may use honey in the place of the golden syrup, and add a tiny drop of almond essence to boost the flavour

I omitted the 50g of candied peel, as I don't like it much, and made up the weight with some extra dried fruit. My choice of dried fruit was 70g dried apricots, 70g dried cherries, 70g dried cranberries and 40g sultanas. I only used the sultanas to make up the weight of the dried fruit, but actually I am glad I used them- the cherries and cranberries are so tangy, it was nice to have a more mellow fruit. I decided not to do the grown up option of soaking the fruit in alcohol, and stuck to orange juice. To be honest, a boozy hit isn't what I fancy in a piece of fridge cake, I prefer to save that for puddings rather than have it in my mid morning treat.

For the nuts, I used a half and half mix of pecans and almonds. I think for a Toblerone fridge cake you need to include some almonds to match the nougat in the chocolate. Macadamia strike me as a nice, but pricey addition. 

I was interested to see how little golden syrup she used- only one tablespoon compared to 4 tbsp in my other favourite fridge cake recipe. Also, using an egg in fridge cake seemed odd to me, but the resulting texture was perfect.  

I have copied the recipe with my notes added:

200g of your favourite dried fruit, chopped into raisin-sized bits- I used 70g dried apricots, 70g dried cherries, 70g dried cranberries and 40g sultanas
150ml orange juice (or rum, whisky or Cointreau for grown-ups)- just orange juice for me- I didn't measure, just used the juice of 1 large orange
200g digestive biscuits
150g dark chocolate- dark and milk chocolate replaced with 300g milk chocolate Toblerone
150g milk chocolate- see above
120g butter, at room temperature
1tbsp golden syrup
1 egg yolk
50g mixed peel- omitted, weight made up with additional dried fruit
100g flaked almonds or other nuts, chopped- I used 50g pecans and 50g blanched almonds

Put the chopped fruit into a small pan along with the juice or alcohol and heat very gently until the fruit becomes plump and squishy, and has absorbed most of the liquid. Set aside to cool. Break the biscuits into small pieces.

Line a roughly 20cm square brownie tin with baking paper (you can use a little butter to stick it down at the corners).

Break the chocolate into pieces by whacking the sealed packets against the kitchen counter. Put a heatproof bowl above, but not touching, a pan of water and bring to the boil. Tip the chocolate into the bowl, turn down the heat, and stir until the chocolate has melted. Take off the heat and allow to cool slightly.

At this point I toasted the pecans and almonds in a dry frying pan, and let cool before chopping. The toasted flavour of the nuts was lost in the finished cake, so I probably wouldn't do this next time. 

Meanwhile, put the butter in a large mixing bowl with the syrup and use a wooden spoon, or electric beater, to beat them together until they're soft and a bit fluffy. Add the egg and mix in well.

At this point I drained the dried fruit, so the so the orange juice that wasn't absorbed didn't change the texture of the cake. 

Beat the chocolate into the butter mixture, then tip in the rest of the ingredients and stir until they're all coated with chocolate.

Spoon the mixture into your baking tin and press down firmly with a wooden spoon to make it as flat as possible.

Put in the fridge for a few hours until it has set solid, then lift the paper out, and cut into squares with a sharp knife.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Ginger and Five Spice Roast Duck

This is a Chinese-flavours-inspired way of roasting duck that tastes really good and is very simple. I was cooking a special meal for two, and originally had in mind making a stuffing with apples and chestnuts. After a long day a work I was in the mood for something simpler, both in terms of cooking and stuffing. I certainly wasn't looking forward to peeling the potatoes that I would need to roast to go alongside this stuffed duck. So I went for this altogether easier dish.

Place a rack in the sink and sit the duck on top. Fill the kettle to the maximum limit of water and put it on to boil. Pierce the duck with a skewer or fork all over the breast and legs, and when the water has boiled pour the water slowly over the duck. Leave the duck to dry off for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Make sure the duck is properly dry inside and out, dab it with some kitchen roll if necessary. Slice a piece of ginger root, and rub the cut side over the duck's skin. Put 2-3 slim slices of duck inside the cavity. Take 1tsp of 5 spice, and rub it all over the duck.
Put the duck in a roasting tin, on a rack. Roast for an hour and a half. Let it rest, and serve.

We ate this with plain rice and pak choi stir fried with some chilli bean sauce, and chinese barbecue sauce, which you can find the recipe for here (near the bottom of the page)

Granola and Berry Muffins with Greek Yogurt Frosting

These sound very much like something you would get from a chain coffee shop, but they have the benefit of being homemade, so they aren't dense and claggy like most shop bought muffins. The recipe I based this on was Nigella's for granola muffins. I initially thought berries would be a good addition, and then adding something yogurty seemed like a natural progression- one of my favourite breakfasts in muffin form.

The yogurt frosting is simply yogurt and sieved icing sugar, mixed together. But I was really pleased with it, as it has a slight tang from the yogurt and it sits softly on top of the muffins. It does though up a dilemma, however- if you want to eat the muffins warm (the best way) you don't want to ice them and let them sit, as the frosting will just run off the muffins. So you can have them cool with frosting, or warm without. There is the possibility of spooning the frosting on a muffin as you eat it, then you get the combination of warm muffin and cooling yogurt.

From the amount of batter I made, I ended up with 6 large muffins, and 11 mini-muffins. As I was simply bulking out the original recipe with berries, the large yield wasn't surprising.
The recipe for the granola muffins can be found here. I added about 150g berries stirred in with the granola, a mix of blueberries and redcurrants, but I most berries could be used. For the icing, I mixed about 100g Greek yogurt with 4 heaped tsp icing sugar. This didn't make enough for all the muffins, I only wanted to make a small amount as it was an experiment. So if you want to make enough for all of them, I would triple the quantity

Harissa Roast Chicken

This is a very simple roast chicken recipe, which I made when I had a chicken in the fridge, but little inclination to go to the shops to buy flavourings. Luckily, I had a jar of Belazu Rose Harissa, which is a lovely product, something I buy when I take myself out to Waitrose as a treat. I served it with flatbread, roasted tomatoes and olives with feta and some garlicky yoghurt. If I had been to the shops, perhaps I would have got some mint for the yoghurt, or may even bought the ingredients for tabbouleh (which I think this would have gone especially nicely with the chicken). Even so, it was a great meal.

Ingredients
1 roasting chicken
2-3 tbsp rose harissa
enough olive oil to loosen the harissa- about 1 tablespoon

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Mix the harissa with the olive oil in a bowl. Gently loosen the skin of the chicken with your hands, and spread the harissa mix onto the breast of the chicken. Spread any leftover harissa over the legs, inside the chicken cavity, all over. Sprinkle the chicken with salt- something nice and flaky, for preference.
Roast the chicken for 20 minutes for every 500g, plus an extra half an hour. Let it rest for about 20 minutes before carving and serving.

I made a little sauce to go with this- just the chicken juices scrapes up from the bottom of the pan, loosened with a little chicken stock, then boiled to concentrate the flavours. A little honey stirred in to sweeten, and served alongside the chicken.

Peach and Blackberry Galette

The blackberries growing near me seem especially good. A few years ago I went blackberry picking and the fruit I got were mean, sour little things with not much taste to them at all. But this year they have been delightful, big and plump, and nice to just pick off as a little snack when you happen to walk past a bush.

In How to be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson has a recipe for blackberry galette. This is the same recipe, but with one peach, sliced. I made the blackberry only version, and a week later made the peach and blackberry. I think I prefer the addition with peaches, but then I really enjoy baked peach. The contrast of late summer and early autumn fruit is lovely too- it captures that wonderful time of the year when it is still sunny and bright, but there is a chill in the air, and the promise of a warm pudding makes the dark evenings bearable.

I was a big fan of the pastry- the cornmeal gives it a slightly sandy texture, which is nicer than it sounds. It is also nice to work with, easy to roll out and handle.

The link to the recipe can be found here. But to make my version, just cut a peach into thin slices, and top the pastry with it along with the blackberries. Aesthetically, I think peaches under the blackberries is best. I didn't reduce the amount of blackberries, despite the addition of peach.
One thing I did notice was in Nigella's recipe is that after you have rolled out the pastry, she instructs you to:
'Sprinkle with 1-2 tablespoons sugar, to taste, then dollop with creme fraiche'
It is better to spread the crème fraîche over the surface of the pastry than to dollop. I think she must have done this too, judging by the photos. Lumps of baked crème fraîche are OK, but its nicer to spread it all out under the fruit, so it mixes with the blackberry juices evenly.

This is a very easy recipe, and good if you have friends over. The pastry can be left for a few hours in the fridge, and rolling it out and topping with fruit takes very little time. In 25 minutes or so, you have a great hot pudding that you can serve with the rest of the crème fraîche from the recipe. And like many things, its really good cold for breakfast.