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

Caponata in gram flour pancakes

For some reason, I have never attempted to make caponata before.  I don't know why.  It combines many of my favourite things:  aubergines; olives; capers; tomatoes. 

I think it may be because I first had it, when cooked by my Italian best friend at university, who has been one of the big influences on me cooking-wise.  I wish I could say the same were true vice versa but I fear she still thinks I'm a barbarian with no tastebuds because of my general love for strong flavours.  It's not that she did a bad job when cooking it, it's more that I realised through cooking with her a lot that I just plain understood very little about non-Gujarati food at 18 and I found it all rather intimidating.

Funny-looking aubergine

Anyway.  I bought a funny-looking aubergine (see right) at the supermarket the other day - yes, I did buy it basically because it was funny-looking, yes, I do have a mental age of about 7 - and I thought I'd give it a go.

Anyway.  Caponata.  I went for a combination of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe, a vague recollection of what my Italian friend did, and whim.

I chopped an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and three cloves of garlic.  Fried for a few minutes  Then added a tin of reasonably nice Italian tomatoes, some chopped green olives and some capers. 

onion, celery and garlic

chopped aubergines

Did a bit of seasoning at this stage (and tweaked and tasted at the end)-  some balsamic vinegar (about 3 table spoons) and about 4 table spoons of sugar.  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall suggested only a table spoon of sugar but, to me, that just didn't taste quite right so I kept adding more until it did, and obviously salt and black pepper.  Left to reduce for around 15 minutes. 

Caponata

Frying aubergines

While that was reducing, I chopped up a couple of aubergines into relatively small pieces (about 1.5 cm square) and fried until golden in some olive oil. 

I then combined the aubergine with the onions/celery/tomato mixture, Topped it with fresh parsley.  Though, I did think belatedly that rosemary would have been nice as well and might be worth a try next time.

gram flour pancakes batter

For no particular reason, I decided that it would be good to have the caponata in pancakes and I haven't made gram flour pancakes for ages, so that's what I went for.  Went for a gram flour/plain flour mix - 2:1 ratio - added a dash of milk, and then enough water to make it a pouring consistency (just slightly thicker than single cream), spiced it a bit with salt, chilli flakes and black pepper.

gram flour pancake about to be filled with caponata

Heated up about a table spoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, cooked the pancakes (it takes around a couple of mins each side, depending obviously on how thick you want your pancakes), filled them with the caponata and put them in the oven for about 5 mins to warm through before serving.

It was pretty good.  Nice fun dish to cook on a Sunday afternoon.  In retrospect, I'm not sure that it's really worth bothering with the pancakes - I think bread would have been just as nice with the caponata and a bit less of a faff but I like my gram flour pancakes so I don't really repine!

Gram flour pancakes with caponata

Party food - puff pastry tarts, mushroom & stilton, tomato, garlic & olive, tomato & mozzarella

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tart

One of the things that I find difficult about hosting parties is providing enough food to cater for different preferences - e.g. people who don't like cheese or tomatoes or whatever - while not cooking so many different things that results in kitchen chaos.

At the party we hosted recently, I went for making mini puff pasty tarts with different toppings.  Very easy, can be made small enough that they are finger food, and allow you to have a variety of toppings to appeal to all.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tart

Mushroom and stilton puffy pastry tarts

What you do is:  buy some puff pastry, cut into squares of about 2 1/2 inches square, put on topping, bake for 10-15 mins at 200 degrees C.  It's worth leaving some space around the edges to avoid spillage but you don't need to leave more than about a 1/4 of an inch.  To avoid having to faff in the kitchen too much with guests around, we baked these the morning of the party and served at room temperature but they would be good hot/warm too.

The toppings I went for were:

Mushroom and stilton:  which I made by frying mushrooms in butter and sherry, then melting in some stilton.  These were probably the ones that got eaten fastest at the party.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella:  thin slice of tomato on each with a slice of mozzarella on top.  These looked like mini pizzas.

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tarts

 Tomato, olive and garlic:  slice of tomato, olives and chopped garlic.  Mmmm, garlic!

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tart

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tarts