Roasted garlic and parsley flatbreads

Roasted garlic and parsley flatbreads

Apologies for the unscheduled hiatus - life, in general, has continued to be full of good food but sadly lacking in time to write about it.

Anyway.  The other day, my parents visited, bearing the usual offerings.  No, not wine or flowers, those would be strange.  A couple of boxes of mangoes (they are in season so it is compulsory to eat at least a box of 12 a week) and five bulbs of garlic.  Now, usually anyone is welcome to bring multiple bulbs of garlic to my house (please take note) but, in this case, I had bought myself our usual weekly supply (4-5 bulbs) the day before.

What to do?  Well, the situation is ongoing so the full answer remains to be seen but - obviously - part of the answer had to be roasting a couple of bulbs.  While one can dispose of roasted garlic fairly straightforwardly with a spoon (if one is feeling civilised), on this occasion, I decided to make flatbreads and stuff them with roasted garlic and parsley.

To make the filling, I roasted some garlic, mixed it with some chopped parsley, drizzled some olive oil on top and added some salt and pepper.

Mmmm, roasted garlic

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the flatbreads, which worked fairly well overall.  I love making breads on the hob, it's how most Indian breads are made, and it's just plain more fun than the oven approach.  I am tempted, at some point, to try finishing them on the barbeque to get that slightly burnt, smokey thing going on.

The only tweaks I made were that, because his recipe calls for 10g of yeast and yeast comes in 7g packets, I went with 14g of yeast.  I suspect that's why mine weren't the flattest flatbread of all time but it still worked fine...  I also didn't care for his method of stuffing the flatbread - he suggests getting a ball of dough, putting the filling inside and then rolling them out.  Totally didn't work for me so I switched to shaping them with my hands into a disc, putting in the filling, folding it over again and squishing a bit with my hands.

Dough before it grew immensely

Stuffed flatbreads ready to be cooked

Roasted garlic and parsley flatbreads are go!

I really enjoyed these and am already plotting what to fill them with next..  currently, burnt aubergine and feta is the lead contender..

Pancakes! Baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancakes are pure genius.  Want something sweet?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and stodgy and comfort foody?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and posh and delicate?  Have a pancake.  Want something spicy?  Have an Indian pancake.  Is there anywhere in the world that hasn't developed its own type of pancake?

Anyway.  My lovely husband loves pancakes like all sane human beings but has plans for the evening so we decided to have pancakes the night before.  Which is perfect because it means that I can write and schedule a post to go up on Pancake Day itself which is pretty cunning.

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the pancakes themselves and stuffed them with a somewhat random mixture of things that I had in the kitchen:  fried four chopped onions, added some mushrooms and garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and added in some grated cheddar and chopped parsley at the end, after taking it off the heat.

onion, garlic, mushroom, parsley and cheddar pancake filling

Then, made the pancakes.  I love doing things like this on the hob - watching the butter foam, having to speedily swirl the mixture, having to flip them over.  It's all great fun!

Pancake

Pancake

As each pancake was done, I put in the batter for the next and while that was cooking, I'd fill the cooked pancake with the mixture and put in a baking dish.  I went for folding the pancakes into quarters.  Mostly because that fit well into the baking dish I had - you could do it in any number of ways.

the first of many

starting to fill up!

Nigel Slater suggested adding a knob of butter to each pancake before it went in the oven but that seemed a touch unhealthy after all the butter that went into the pan to grease the pancakes so I just went for topping with grated parmesan.  Because obviously that is totally healthy.  Baked at 200 degrees C for about 10 minutes to heat through again and melt the parmesan on top.  Nigel Slater suggests baking filled savoury pancakes for 30 minutes but that would have been waaaay too long for these, they were perfectly done after 10.

Mmmmm.  These were lovely.  I love pancakes.  Not just for Pancake Day but nevertheless Pancake Day is an excellent excuse for a few!

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Olive stuffed tomatoes and parsley and red onion salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Due to insane busyness at work, I have a number of things mentally queued up to post about.  This was actually what we had a a starter for our Christmas Day meal which tells you something about how long my mental queue is!

Cherry tomatoes being hollowed out

Because we were having a relatively heavy main - spanokopita - I wanted something light for the starter but, at the same time, something special.  For some reason, things always feel more special when they're stuffed.  I suppose it's because you know that someone spent ages with their thumb in a series of tomatoes to produce it. Even if that someone is you.  The main lesson that I took from this is that, if you do not want your thumb to be completely numb at the end of this, you should make sure the tomatoes are room temperature before you begin. 

Anyway, that life lesson aside, this was pretty good.  I got some cherry tomatoes - well, baby plum tomatoes, I think but it amounts to the same thing - hollowed them out with my thumb, stuffed them with olives (I had to chop the olives to get them inside but obviously this depends on the relative sizes of your olives and your tomatoes), and served on a bed of chopped red onion and herbs. 

Red onion and parsley salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto

Pasta with walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto and roasted yellow peppers, asparagus and courgettes

An article in the Guardian reminded me about making pesto.  I tried making pesto a while back and it was nice but not significantly nicer than shop bought pesto.  But this article reminded me that one of the advantages of making your own pesto is that you don't have to stick to the pine nuts/basil/parmesan thing, you can make up your own recipe.  So, on a whim, I bought some walnuts, parsley and hard goats cheese and made my own.  I just chucked some of all three of these in the food processor and added olive oil until it looked right.  Not the most precise recipe of all time but it tasted pretty damn good.  I think I prefer parsley to basil in pesto, largely because of the more robust flavour.

Walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto

Walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto

To go with it, I roasted some vegetables - courgettes, yellow peppers, asparagus and some chopped garlic along with lots of salt and black pepper and olive oil.  I love roasted vegetables so much.  While they were roasting, I cooked the pasta and then combined.  Hmmm.  Definitely experimenting with pesto again..

Roasted yellow peppers, asparagus and courgettes

Pasta with walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto and roasted yellow peppers, asparagus and courgettes

Mushroom stroganoff

Stroganoff and rice

I make absolutely no claims for the authenticity of this dish, I only have the haziest of ideas of what the defining characteristics of stroganoff actually are but it is quick and tasty and involves mushrooms and mustard. That's generally good enough for me.

Chopped onion and mushrooms

Mmm, mushrooms

Mushrooms cooking

Fry 500g of mushrooms and an onion in olive oil (or butter) for around 10-15 minutes, add a dash of sherry, 300ml of crème fraiche, mustard to taste (I go for about three teaspoons of seedy mustard but I love my mustard!), salt, pepper and paprika. Fresh chopped parsley on top is good if you have it. Serve with rice.

Almost ready stroganoff