Monday, December 19, 2011
.jpg "Granola1") Well so much for the slew of Thanksgiving recipes I was planning to post, is it me, or is time just zooming by these days? Anyway, as Thanksgiving is now just a happy memory, that means Christmas is just around the corner, and that means a visit from Lorna! Yes she’s here in New York with us and whilst we’re planning/ cooking some posts we’d like to do together I thought I’d quickly publish a simple granola recipe that we’ve been enjoying for breakfast.
.jpg "granola3") Nutty Granola
makes approximately 18 1/2 cup servings
1 cup slivered almonds
1 cup flaked almonds
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup chopped pecans
3 cups rolled oats
2 tbsp ground flax seed (optional)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
Heat oven to 350F/180C, combine the nuts, sunflower seeds, oats and ground flax seed on a large sheet pan and bake/toast for about 20 minutes stirring a few times during baking. While that’s in the oven melt the butter with the rest of the ingredients together in a small pan. Remove the seeds, oats & flax from the oven and transfer into a large bowl, turn down the oven to 250F/120C, pour the melted ingredients over and give it a good stir to evenly coat everything. Spread it back out on the baking tray, return to the oven and bake for 1hr 30min stirring occasionally so it browns evenly. Once time’s up remove it from the oven and let it cool completely, then gently break it up and store it in an airtight jar; it keeps for ages this way - Melani
Monday, November 14, 2011
 So next on my Thanksgiving recipe recommendation list is Brussels sprouts, yum! Okay, so I know that’s unlikely to be everyone’s first reaction, and I also know that Brussels sprouts are often given a bad name by over enthusiastic cooking and early memories of squishy greeny-grey things we were forced to eat on the side of holiday dinners, but it doesn’t have to be that way!
This recipe gets around the over cooking by having you take the Brussels sprouts apart so you can quickly sauté them, and includes bacon and shallots (let’s face it what doesn’t taste better with bacon – apologies to all you vegetarians) to give you a dish that is beautifully bright green – a hit on any holiday plate and one you might even be tempted to cook during the week without guests.
Sautéed Brussels sprouts
Serves 4
4 cups of Brussels sprouts
4 rashers of streaky bacon (roughly cut up)
1 large shallot (or a small onion)
2 tablespoons of water
Salt & pepper to taste
Trim the bottom of each sprout and cut in half before removing & discarding the core, separate out the leaves into a large bowl. This can be done a day ahead if you wish, just store the leaves in a zip-lock bag in the fridge.
Heat a dry sauté pan, throw in the bacon and cook until it’s crispy then remove from the pan and place to one side. Pour off the majority of the bacon grease, place the pan back on the heat and add in the shallots sautéing until soft (2 minutes or so), next add in the Brussels sprout leaves and 2 tablespoons of water, stir, and cook until the leaves are bright green – about 5 minutes. Season well with salt and pepper. Finally, gently mix the crisped bacon back in and you are ready to serve :) – Melani
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Now Halloween is done with, we (in America) are racing toward our next big holiday, Thanksgiving. Last year my brother-in law and his wife did the honors, and the year before that my mother-in-law, so this year I’m up! This means the next few recipes from me will all be things that might make it onto my holiday menu. To begin with, here’s a soup that makes a wonderful first course. It’s an easy recipe that you can make ahead of time. It’s low in calories, but still full of fabulous flavor. This recipe originated from The Daily Soup Cookbook, which has some of my favorite soup recipes, more of which I’m sure, will show up here on GF&H at some point. Butternut Squash Soup
Makes 10 cups
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large onion (or 2 small ones!) chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
6 cups vegetable stock (I cheat and use Knorr Bouillon Cubes)
1 piece of Parmesan rind – about 3″ by 1″
2 bay leaves
2 butternut squash (about 1.5 lbs each) peeled, seeded and cut into 1″chunks
2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan
3 fresh sage leaves chopped
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
Heavy cream for drizzling at the end
Melt the butter over a medium heat, add the onion and celery and sweat for about 5 minutes. Add in the stock, parmesan rind and bay leaves, then bring to the boil, before lowering the heat and letting it simmer (partially covered) for 15 minutes. Now add the squash, bring it back to a simmer and cook it for a further 20 minutes. Now it’s time to remove the Parmesan rind and the bay leaves and puree the soup until smooth with a stick/ hand blender. Lastly add the grated parmesan, nutmeg, pepper, chopped sage and cayenne, heat it through for a couple more minutes and then you’re ready to serve with just a small drizzle of cream – Melani [print-me]
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Oh the dilemma of what to do with an abundance of apples. Liv, my lovely Kiwi lodger, has been spending some time in Suffolk lately and keeps returning with more and more apples, and so the pile keeps on growing, as does the challenge of what to create with them. So far we’ve had apple tarts, apple & parsnip soup and muesli with shredded apple & yoghurt has become a morning staple. I’ve only had a one mini disaster, the jam, though pictured here looking pretty good is overly sweet (I blame the russets), but nevertheless quite a therapeutic couple of hours spent singing along to the radio slowly stirring – perhaps jam is just not my thing. Anyway, the pièce de résistance so far has to be these muffins – apple & almond is such a delightful combination. I was really happy with how these turned out, and that they are still incredibly moist and tasty 4, 5, 6 days on…
Whole Wheat Apple & Almond Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
150g whole wheat flour
100g ground almonds / almond flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
150g butter (at room temperature)
150g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 medium eggs
2 small – medium apples (have a peeler & grater to hand)
80ml milk
100g Plain yoghurt (optional)
Handful of flaked almonds (for topping)
Preheat your oven to 170C/340F, grease or line your muffin tin as you prefer, in this case I used some of the lovely looking tulip muffin cases. Sift together the whole wheat flour and baking powder, I tend to do this a couple of times as I truly think the sifting makes a difference to the lightness of texture in the final muffin, add in the ground almonds and put to one side. In a bowl beat together the butter, caster sugar and vanilla essence until creamy. Whisk together the eggs and milk and then add a bit at a time into the bowl with your butter mix, beating well after each addition. Now fold in the flour & almond mix bit by bit until smooth. Finally peel and grate in the apples (I did this in the moment to avoid the apples browning), add in the yoghurt and stir until evenly mixed through – I say the yoghurt is optional only as I made one batch with and one batch without and they were both equally delicious, I just felt the yoghurt gave them a slightly creamier moistness. Divide the mix evenly into your cases, or into your pre-greased muffin tin, sprinkle each with a few flaked almonds and bake for around 35 – 40 minutes. Best served warm, whilst enjoying the wonderful sweet nutty aroma lingering in your kitchen, but they will also keep really well for up to a week in a sealed container - Lorna
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Four days to Halloween! I know because my youngest daughter Hanna is quite literally counting down. The girls really wanted to throw a Halloween party this year, so to get ready we’ve been doing some serious decorating which included taking a trip to the pumpkin farm to hunt out the best candidates for our Jack-O-Lanterns. I have to admit it was just as much fun for me as it was for them, and as an added bonus I also ended up with a ton of pumpkin seeds. We always roast some seeds with a little olive oil and sea salt, but this year as we had so many I decided to try making some brittle for the party too. It turned out wonderfully! The combination of sweet and salty is something I always really enjoy, I hope you’ll like it too - Melani
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Fresh pumpkin seeds, picked clean and washed in cold water, then dried throughly on paper towel
Olive oil
Sea salt
Okay so you’ve carved your pumpkin, try and separate the seeds out from the goo (and yes, that is the technical term for it) dump them into a bowl of water and then rinse them off in a colander. Lay them out on paper towel and pat them really dry (I’ve heard that it’s better if you air dry them over night but I’m way too impatient for that). Heat the oven to 350F/180C, toss the seeds with just enough oil to coat them, spread them on a tray and sprinkle liberally with the sea salt. Roast them for 30-40 minutes giving them a shake every now and again until they turn a gentle brown all over, oh and be warned don’t leave them too long as they will start to explode – it scared me half to death last year when we forgot to take then out of the oven in time!
Roasted Pumpkin Seed Brittle
1 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (see above)
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
Line a sheet tray with a silicone mat. In a small saucepan melt the butter, stir in the honey and the brown sugar. Over a medium-hight heat bring this to a rolling boil and then lower the heat to medium-low and cook for a further 4 to 5 minutes without stirring until the mixture changes color to a mid-amber and a candy thermometer registers 280F/140C. Stir in the pumpkin seeds, cook for a further 2 minutes or till 300 F/150C. You can always skip the thermometer and take your chances, which is how I do it, but watch it carefully as there is a fine line between taking it out too early and having it not set hard (you end up with more of a fudge), and leaving it too long and having it burn. Pour the mixture on to the silicone mat, sprinkle with a touch more sea salt let it cool completely and then break it into pieces.
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bellamara - I love this!! Just made it and can’t stop nibbling ;-) Thank you so much for this recipe!
Sneh | Cook Republic - This is a beautiful recipe. I made it earlier this week and absolutely love it :-) Thanks for sharing!