Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

Lebanese Moussaka

Lebanese moussaka

Even though we'd only just had another dish with fried aubergines, while I had Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking out of the library, I decided to make another:  Lebanese moussaka.  This is similar to Greek moussaka but, crucially, vegetarian. 

It involves the now familiar-to-me frying of the aubergine slices, setting them aside.  Then frying an onion and garlic in olive oil, adding chickpeas and tinned tomatoes, salt, black pepper and allspice.  Then layering the mixture in between aubergine slices and baking for around 15 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Ready to go into the oven

Ready to go into the oven

I really liked it but, then, it involved aubergines AND chickpeas so that is not wholly surprising.  I do think, next time, I might spice it more - I was trying to be good and follow the recipe but I think it could use a bit of chilli or something else to pep it up a bit.

Welsh cakes

Mmmm, Welsh cakes

So, we went to Wales on holiday.  It was good.  There were leeks and cheese and other stereotypically Welsh things.  Including some really nice local ale - I particularly liked Neath Ale's Witch Hunter, a lovely bitter with a slight sweetness to it.

 Anyway.  We intended to buy some Welsh cakes to bring into the office but shamefully forgot.  So, we made some instead.  They were tasty.  I used this recipe from the BBC with a few modifications:

• added slightly more sugar than the recipe suggests as they were coming out a little too savoury for our taste
• added a LOT more spice than the recipe suggests - went for about half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of ground cloves and a full teaspoon of cinnamon, and I think still more spice would be good

Welsh cakes dough

Welsh cakes dough

• didn't bother rolling out and cutting into rounds, just shaped with my hands which worked fine
• did one batch with currants but another with mixed currants and dried cranberries which turns out to be a nice twist
• used more butter rather than lard

Ready for frying

Overall, these were awesome - really quick and easy. Given that we usually have all the ingredients at home, it's definitely something I'll be holding in reserve for when we have guests and want to have something sweet to offer them.

Mmmm, Welsh cakes

Mmmm, Welsh cakes

More ice-cream adventures in London - ChinChin Labs, Camden

So, as I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of nice ice-cream, particularly Italian-style ice-cream.  I went, recently (while feeling a little bad for going anywhere other than Gelupo) to the Chin Chin Labs for liquid nitrogen ice-cream.  To be completely honest, I  expected it to be a bit of a gimmick. And, it was - there were silly outfits and a sales patter about the chemical process, etc.  But it was also extremely good ice-cream, some of the best I've ever tasted.  I had ginger wine sorbet with bits of ginger biscuit in it which was amazing - somehow, it didn't just taste of ginger, it tasted of ginger wine.  Mmmmm.  My lovely husband had cinnamon french toast ice cream which they make by infusing milk with cinnamon french toast.  So good.  So so good.

Restaurant review - The Wapping Project, Wapping, London

Trend-setter that I am, I visited The Wapping Project with friends just before this Guardian review of it was published.  The Wapping Project is achingly cool.  So cool that its website doesn't even work in my edition of Firefox.  Anyway.

The space is amazing.  I'm usually - to be honest - all about the food but, sometimes, a space is so lovely that you have to notice it.  It's pretty awesome to be able to wander into an old warehouse, look at some modern art, and then have a meal with some of the art surrounding you. 

However.  The restaurant is expensive, even for London - we ended up spending around £50 a head for cocktails/two courses/post-dinner drinks.  And, to be honest, I didn't think it was quite worth that.  The food was nice enough - I had a starter involving some wild mushrooms and a main dish that made a lovely creamy sauce out of sweetcorn to go with gnocchi - but there are places I'd rather spend that sort of amount on dinner.  The service was pretty ropey too - our waitress didn't really seem to know what she was doing and was difficult to track down.  The cocktails were, I thought, the best bit - some interesting ones on the menu and they were carefully and freshly prepared and well worth it.  I had a blood orange margarita that was one of the best cocktails I think I've ever had.  Given that, I sort of regretted not just going for cocktails and somewhere else for dinner.

Restaurant review - Simplicity, Rotherhithe, London

Rather embarrassingly, since we live just down the road from it, I had never head of  Simplicity in Rotherhithe before a friend suggested it recently.  The area is not over endowed with nice restaurants so I was pleased to find that it was really good.  In particular, I thought it had a nice atmosphere, quiet and with friendly, knowledgeable staff.  There's only one vegetarian option on the menu but it involved hollandaise sauce which makes it pretty awesome in my book.  They do also say that they will be happy to cook you another vegetarian dish if the one on the menu is not to your taste which is a nice offer.  In particular, the wine list was well chosen and we enjoyed the wine that we had. 

The only slight criticism I'd make is that the portion sizes were a little odd - the crostini and olives that we ordered as a collective starter was very generous but the vegetarian mains were on the small side compared with the other mains. 

Since it is only round the corner from us, I'm pretty sure we'll be back.

Baked Aubergine with Tomatoes and Feta (Melitzanes Fournou me Tyri)

I've mentioned Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking before.  I've been trying a few more things from it out.  One of the things I really like about the book is that it has some more unusual things in it.  One of them was this recipe which is the Greek version of the classic aubergine/eggplant parmigiana or parmigana di melanzane.

Essentially, it is the same dish but with feta instead of mozzarella and kafalotyri instead of parmesan (if you can find it, I didn't bother since I had parmesan in the house).  I loved it - surprisingly different tasting to aubergine parmigiana despite being prepared in virtually the same way - much more intense than the Italian dish, perhaps not surprising as Greek food in general is more gutsy than Italian food which for my tastebuds can sometimes get a bit too delicate.

Essentially, you slice and fry a couple of medium sized aubergines.    Put them aside.  They look like fish.  It is silly.

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Then make some tomato sauce - I went for a tin of nice Italian tomatoes simmered and seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper and a dash of red wine.  Then crumble 200g of feta in a bowl.  Then put some of the aubergine slices on the bottom of a baking dish, put over a third of the tomato sauce, a third of the feta.

Aubergine slices with tomato sauce and feta

Aubergine slices with tomato sauce and feta

Do that again until you've run out of stuff and put the kafalotryi or parmesan on top at the end.  Then bake at 180 degrees for around 20 minutes until the top is golden.

Baked aubergines with tomatoes and feta ready to go into the oven

Baked aubergines with tomatoes and feta ready to eat

Tsaizika - coiled aubergine and feta filo pastry

Tsaizika - cooked

So, as mentioned before, I like to take cookbooks out of the library to test them out before adding them to my (rather too large) cookbook collection.  The other week, I took out Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking by Paola Gavin.  I took it out because it had so many unusual recipes - mostly variations on better known themes - but still.  I like cookbooks with unusual recipes.




I recently tried out my first recipe from her book - for tsaizika which I've never had before but she tells me is a Sephardic Jewish speciality from Greece.  Essentially, what this is is coiled filo pastry with a filling made from burnt aubergine pulp, feta and eggs.   Mmmmm.  In the MightyAubergine household, it generated a certain amount of hilarity:

My lovely husband:  Wow, that looks...  yoni-esque

Me:  How rude!  I'm going to put that in my blog!

MLH:  Oh, come on, you were thinking it too!

Me:  No, I wasn't!

MLH:  I bet you are now!

Me:  Ye-es.  Can't wait to.. tuck in.

Anyway.

Burnt aubergines, feta, eggs, and parmesan filling

Essentially, the filling consists of:  pulp from two burnt aubergines, 150g of feta, 2 eggs, 100g Kefalotyri (or parmesan if you have none) mashed together and seasoned with salt, black pepper and nutmeg. 

Cheat - burnt aubergines in a jar

I am pretty good at doing the burnt aubergine thing but it is time consuming and so I tend to cheat and use jars of burnt aubergine which are available from my local Turkish supermarket.  (Photo to the left.) They have the advantage of also working out quite a lot cheaper.  If you have no local Turkish supermarket or just prefer to do these things yourself, Ottolenghi's description of how to do that bit is pretty good and can be found here. 

You then roll the filling up in tubes of filo pastry (around 3 cm thick) and coil them up like a Danish pastry on an oiled baking sheet.  When you're done coiling up one roll, you do another roll and add that to the existing one to enlarge the coil.  And so on and so forth until you've run out of..  something.  I ran out of filling first.  You then bake for 180 degrees for about 30 mins or until the top is golden brown.

Tsaizika - all coiled up with the oven to go

Tsaizika - all coiled up with the oven to go

The process of coiling was..  a little messy and it decidedly did not look very artistic.  There was a certain amount of spillage as not all of the tubes held together very well.  I overlapped the next tube when that happened and kept it all quite tightly coiled and, actually, the end result was no spillage at all.  I left it to stand for a couple of minutes before cutting into it but, although I fully expected it to explode a bit, the filling was the perfect consistency - moist but non-explosive.  

Tsaizika - cooked

Tsaizika - cooked

Tsaizika - cooked - non explosive filling!

The dish was lovely - one of the most interesting things I've cooked recently.  Though, I did think it could usea different texture in the filling - the feta and the aubergine are both quite similar in that sense - perhaps olives?  or sun-dried tomatoes?  or pine nuts? I also wondered just how important all this coiling business was..  I mean, it was kind of fun but I might be inclined next time just to make it as a pie.  Or as savoury baklava.  Hmmm.  

I have been slightly spoiled by beautiful food photography in most of the cookbooks that I own and I really missed photographs/illustrations when doing this recipe - my lovely husband and I had to debate exactly how to coil the pastry using a rolled up piece of kitchen towel - but, actually, the directions that Paola Gavin gives (at least in this recipe, I have yet to try anything else in the book) were clear enough that I coped just fine.

Goats chese, red onion and rosemary muffins - Delia Smith

As well as the spinach, carrot and cumin muffins, both in order to further justify having purchased muffin tins and in order to try a different recipe, I also made goats cheese, red onion and rosemary muffins for the party.  I used this recipe from Delia which was similar to the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe but without natural yoghurt.





These came out nicely but I didn't like them quite as much as the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ones - to be honest, I think mostly they just weren't quite strong tasting enough for me.  I'd be inclined to try them again with a stronger flavoured cheese - perhaps stilton or very mature cheddar.

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