Onion Bread

We often used to buy onion boule from Morrisons for lunch, but then they stopped doing it! So we found a way to make something even better. Who needs Morrisons?

1 large onion, finely chopped
600g bread flour (your choice of wholemeal, granary or white; we like granary)
2.5 tsp instant dried yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
400 - 450ml warm water

Preheat oven to 170 C. Spread onion out on a baking sheet and bake for around 30 mins to let it dry out. Remove from oven and leave to cool.
Put flour, yeast, sugar, salt into stand mixer mixing bowl. Stir in the cool dried onion bits.
Add 400 ml water and oil and mix in using kneading hook.
The mixture should not be too dry and flaky. Add more water if needed. Wetter is better, but you still need to be able to shape it into a loaf or rolls.
Knead for a few minutes, in the machine or by hand until the dough is stretchy and pliable.
Either shape into rolls, or put into a loaf tin.
Leave to prove for around an hour and a half, or until it is about double in size.
Preheat oven to 200 C (fan) - needs to be good and hot.
Bake for around 10 - 15 mins for rolls or around 25 - 30 mins for bread.
Tap the bottom of the bread - it should sound hollow if cooked through.

Dauphinoise Potatoes with leeks

enough potatoes for however many you're serving - about 2 or 3 medium per person
300ml tub of single cream (enough for about 4 portions)
milk if needed
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 leek, washed
salt and pepper
grated nutmeg to taste

Preheat oven to around 150C fan.
Peel and slice the potatoes and leeks into thin slices (with a food processor it's very quick)
Mix with enough of the cream to coat the spuds and garlic, and salt and pepper in a shallow baking dish, adding a bit of milk if it needs to stretch further. The cream should be almost level with the potatoes, but you want them sticking up a bit so they brown. Grate some nutmeg and black pepper over the top.
Bake for about an hour, until the spuds are cooked and you have a golden crust on top.

Hot Chilli Sauce

Beware! A little goes a very long way! Based on this recipe https://honest-food.net/homemade-chiltepin-hot-sauce/ I used the little hot chillies I'd grown from seed from last year's chillies. Not sure what variety they are, but they're hot. I strained the sauce through a sieve, although the original recipe did not call for that. I thought it wise to remove the seeds as it tasted really really hot already.

1/4 cup about 25g chillies, green ends cut off

2 big cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup water

1 tsp smoked paprika

2 tsp paprika

Blitz all the ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Strain through a fine sieve and bottle.

Keep in fridge.

Salmorejo

We had this in Andalucia. It's a kind of cold soup, thicker than a gazpacho, almost dip-like in consistency. I guess they need a way to use up all the ripe tomatoes. We also have a surfeit of tomatoes at the moment, and this is a delicious way of using some.

About 6 large very ripe tomatoes

1 small clove garlic, roughly chopped

1 cupful of stale white bread or baguette, no crusts (about 2 slices of a cob loaf)

1 tsp vinegar - the authentic recipes say sherry vinegar, I substitute balsamic as I didn't have sherry

salt to taste (about half a teaspoon)

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 hardboiled egg, chopped

slice serrano ham, chopped

1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes, leave for a couple of minutes, then peel and put them in the blender with the garlic.
2. Blend until fairly smooth.
3. Add the vinegar and some salt, along with the torn up bread and leave to soak for a couple of minutes, then blend until smooth.
4. With the blender running, gradually trickle in the olive oil to emulsify.
5. Transfer to a bowl and chill.
6. Traditionally it's served with some chopped hardboiled egg and serrano ham scattered on the top, with slices of bread on the side.

Vegetable Samosas

Pastry:
500g plain flour
3tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
large pinch curry powder or turmeric
80g chilled diced butter/cooking marg

Filling:
glug vegetable or olive oil
1 small onion finely chopped
2 garlic cloves crushed
2 cm piece of ginger, crushed
1 - 2 chili, optionally de-seeded and finely chopped (depends on your spice tolerance!)
About 400g leftover cooked potatoes roughly chopped(small cube and microwave if making from raw)
can substitute with other cooked root veg - sweet potato and carrot are good but sweeter than using regular potato
75g frozen peas
1tsp garam masala or mixture of cumin and coriander
1 - 2 tsp Pataks curry paste or to taste
2 tbsp fresh coriander choped
oil for deep frying

1.  For filling, heat oil and cook onion garlic ginger and chili and curry paste for 3 - 4 mins until softened and golden, not burnt. Add spuds, mashing down roughly.
2. Add the peas, garam masala and salt to taste.
3, Remove from heat and stir in the coriander (filling freezes well if you have too much for the pastry).
Leave the mixture to cool (if it's too hot it will make the pastry melt).
For pastry, whisk together the flour salt and curry powder, then rub butter into flour mixture. Stir in about 300ml water and knead to form a soft dough.
4. Take 60g lumps of dough and roll into balls.
5. Roll out each piece of dough into a circle (mine are not very circular as you can see), cut in half, then fold as in the photos to make a cone shape.

6. Spoon some of the filling into the centre, filling almost to the top, then pinch the top edge shut, pressing edges gently to seal.

7 Deep fry the samosas in about 5cm oil in a deep frying pan for a bout 3 minutes, turning until crisp and golden. Serve with the raita.
Raita
plain yoghurt
sliced onion
squeeze of lemon juice
chopped fresh coriander and mint
1/2 tsp sugar
chopped cucumber
optional small clove garlic, crushed
Mix together.

Carrot and coriander soup

See Veggie Daughter blog!

Tuna Lasagna

2 tins tuna
4 eggs, hardboiled
1 large onion
50g butter/marg
50g cornflour or plain flour
1 pint/500g milk + extra for topping
sprinkle dried mixed herbs
sprinkle dried tarragon (optional)
1 courgette (optional)
frozen spinach, about 100g
pack of lasagne sheets
mozzarella

Melt the butter/marg in a large frying pan, (if you're using tuna in sunflower oil, drain the oil into the pan and reduce the amount of butter slightly). Add the onion, courgette if using and mixed herbs and gently saute until onion is soft and transparent and courgette is soft and slightly browned.

Stir in the flour and cook gently for a minute or two, then gradually stir in the milk, heating gently and stirring until it boils and forms a smooth sauce. Add the frozen spinach and stir until it melts and is dispersed through the sauce. Then stir in the tuna and chopped eggs and remove from the heat.

In a baking dish put a layer of the sauce, followed by a layer of lasagne. Repeat until you are left with about half a cup of sauce, ending with a layer of lasagne. Mix in about half a cup of extra milk and heat to thicken it slightly, then pour over the top of the lasagne and top with torn mozzarella pieces.

Bake in 190 degree oven for around half an hour, until top is golden and lasagne is cooked - if it's burning, cover the top with foil and reduce the heat.

Fried chicken

This was based on the Tom Kerridge recipe on BBC Food Tom's fried chicken in a basket.

boneless chicken thighs - enough for a couple each
carton buttermilk
100 g flour
50g cornflour
spice mixture: choose from garlic powder/salt, smoked paprika, normal paprika, chili powder, oregano, mixed herb, onion salt, dried sage; depending how salty your garlic and onion powders are, you may need to add some salt. You can vary the spices to your taste - eg garam masala, 5 spice, ras el hanout...
olive oil

Soak the chicken in buttermilk for several hours.
Mix together the flour and spices in a bowl.
When you're ready to cook, take the chicken out of the buttermilk - you can re-use it once if you freeze it now. Shake off the excess buttermilk, then coat the chicken pieces in the spiced flour.
Shallow fry the chicken pieces in hot oil for a few minutes each side until almost done, then transfer to a baking tray.
Finish the chicken off in the oven to crisp up the coating and make sure it is cooked through.

Ethiopian style chicken stew

Totally inauthentic, but delicious. We were craving Ethiopian food and there isn't an Ethiopian restaurant anywhere near here. Note to self: don't try making injera bread again.

The chicken is the one at the back.

500g boneless chicken thighs, cut into biggish chunks
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp ghee (or sunflower oil with some butter)
2 big onions, minced finely (use the food processor for speed)
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp berbere spice mix (or to taste)
100ml white wine
1 tsp honey
250ml chicken stock
salt (may not need if using salted stock)

1. Marinate the chicken in the lemon juice and some salt for at least 30 minutes.
2. Melt the ghee or oil/butter mixture then very gently saute the onions for 15 minutes or so until very soft but not burnt.
3.Add the garlic and ginger and berbere seasoning and saute for 10 minutes very gently.
4. Add the chicken, stock, wine and honey and bring to the boil.
5. Cover and simmer  gently for 30 - 40 minutes until the chicken is tender

Ethiopian style Red Lentils - Misir Wot

good glug of ghee/oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 or 3 tomatoes, chopped
3 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp berbere spice, or more to taste
300g red lentils
700ml veg stock
salt (may not need depending on how salty the stock is)

1. Saute the onion in ghee or oil until soft and golden, not burnt.
2. Add the garlic and simmer for a moment or two.
3. Add the tomatoes and tom puree, and the stock and stir it all together.
4. Stir in the lentils and cook for 20 - 30 mins or so until the lentils are cooked and becoming mushy.

Ideally this would be served with injera bread, some other Ethiopian dishes, such as collard greens, beef curry, chicken curry and fresh cheese. I managed the chicken curry and I even made some fresh cheese, but the bread was a disaster. We ate it with rice, which was still delicious, but I love injera bread.

successful cheese

unsuccessful injera

Scones

I've tried lots of different recipes for scones. This one was from Rodda's, the clotted cream people. They should know what they're talking about. They were pretty good. I didn't have buttermilk, so I used a dollop, probably 2 tsp or so, of natural yoghurt made up to 150ml with the milk. Vanilla is down as one of the ingredients, but I didn't put it in. This is half quantity - there weren't many of us eating them.

225g SR flour
50g butter (I actually used Stork)
pinch salt
35g sugar
150ml buttermilk (or mixture of milk and a couple of spoons of natural yoghurt or sour cream)

Stir the salt into the flour, then rub the fat into the flour.

Stir in the sugar.

Mix in the milk until just combined - don't overwork it or your scones will be leathery. I found this made quite a wet mixture and added a touch more flour. The scones were hard to roll, but did come out deliciously light.

Shape into a ball, roll out to about 2cm thick, then use a pastry cutter to cut out rounds to the size you want.

Put the scones on a greased baking tray,  brush with beaten egg,  or with milk, or melted butter. I like to sprinkle a little sugar on the top at that point if I'm using milk or butter. Bake at 200C in a fan oven for about 10 to 15 mins until golden.

Serve with jam and clotted cream. I will leave the order you spread them on up to you.

Baked Spiralized Onion and Carrot Bhajis

Fuzzy picture

These were surprisingly good, considering bhajis are normally deep fried and very oily.

1 large chunky carrot, (around 200g) scrubbed and spiralized, no need to peel

0.5 large onion, sliced

1 egg, beaten

50g flour, preferably gram flour

spices to taste - I used a good shake of ground cumin, some Madras curry powder, some tikka curry powder, some turmeric, some hot paprika, garlic powder and salt

sunflower oil

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees c

Stir together the flour and spices. I didn't have gram flour, so I used half Teff flour, left over from a disastrous attempt to make Ethiopian injera bread, and half plain wholemeal flour.

Stir in the beaten egg and a splash of water and mix into a thick batter.

Toss in the onion and carrot and give it a good mix.

Dollop 8 lumps of it onto a greased, preferably lined, baking tray and drizzle the oil over the top. We found that the smaller shallower ones were nicer as they crisped up better than the fat ones!

Bake for about 15 mins until crispy, turning over about 10 mins into the cooking time to get the bottoms crispy.

Serve with a raita made from yoghurt, mint and cucumber with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Carrot Bran Muffins

I have been known to call these 'Worthy but Dull Muffins'. I hadn't made them for several years, but then remembered them when there was a thing on the news this week about eating more fibre. These have plenty of fibre and they are surprisingly yummy when eaten fresh from the oven. Later the same day they're still ok, but the next day a bit meh.

5 oz wholemeal flour (or a mixture of plain and wholemeal)
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp bicarb
pinch salt
2oz All Bran cereal
2 oz raisins
1.5 oz brown sugar
1 oz margarine or butter
2 eggs
150ml milk
4 oz grated raw carrot
0.5 tsp cinnamon
0.5 tsp mixed spice (more if you like it)

Preheat oven to 190 C. Mix together flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt, as well as the bran, raisins and spices.

In another bowl cream together the marg and sugar, beat in the eggs and milk, then fold in the flour mixture.

Finally stir in the carrot. If the mixture looks very wet, add a bit more flour until you get a sponge batter type consistency.

Spoon into muffin tins, preferably lined with silicone cases (they seem to stick to the paper ones), and bake for around 15 - 20 mins until a skewer comes out clean.

Eat on the day of baking, or they really do become Worthy but Dull muffins.