Pancakes

Yes I know its over a week late, but this post is more about a kind of revelation. 

While I searched for inspiration for a savoury pancake last week I remembered something foodie that must have dug itself deep into my head. Some time ago, I knew of an Italian chef who ran a small village restaurant. His food was excellent and his passion for his restaurant and customers was second to none. He ran a traditional type of Italian where the pasta could be the starter, then a salad or veg, followed by the meat or fish. There was not a pizza in sight (This is street food, not restaurant food!). He was a character. I remember him once insisting that Cannelloni was not pasta, but pancake.

After googling this, I couldn't seem to find a definitive answer to whether Cannelloni is supposed to be pasta or pancake. I found out that it can be. I also found out that manicotti is also the name for a dish of pancake tubes, filled in the same manner as cannelloni. But then when searching further, it seems that mancotti can be pancake or pasta. All very confusing. But also very simple.....

Being gluten-free now, this means my pasta choices are limited. Generally there is fusilli or penne available, and incresingly so spaghetti and sometimes lasagne. But that's it. So here is the revelation. If cannelloni/manicotti can be pancake, it certainly will be in this house! Gluten-free pancakes are no trouble, but finding and cooking lasagne sheets and constructing rolls would involve so much more faff (and cost).  A workable way of making interesting baked pasta dishes has now come into my life! Hurrah!

What I made came straight from my head and I didn't follow any recipe, but I will attempt to document it here as best I can. Apologies for the picture, not very appetising. I promise it tasted much better than it looks!

I used a standard pancake recipe of 100g (gluten-free) flour, 1/2 pint milk and egg. There are so many recipes and recommendations out there so I won't re-write the method. I made a batch of 6 pancakes and let them cool between sheets of greaseproof paper.

Filling:
A few mushrooms, chopped
Bacon lardons
Red onion, chopped
Dried sage
White wine (optional)
Cream

Topping:
Milk
Flour
Butter
Cheese, grated

1. Gently fry the bacon, onion and mushrooms together. They want to be softened rather than browned.
2. Add a dash of white wine if you have any in (and open - its not that important) and reduce.
3. Sprinkle in some dried sage. I like sage flavour so added about a heaped tsp.
4. Pour in some cream and stir. The amount I used was enough to make a sauce, but not make it runny. This is actually the stuffing rather than the sauce, so it needs to be chunky.
5. Make a bechamel sauce with the butter, flour and milk (Delia's recipe (within her cannelloni recipe) uses cream and nutmeg which I left out - there are so many calories already!). Stir through some grated cheese, saving enough for the top.
6. Construct the cannelloni by spooning some bacon mixture onto each pancake and rolling it up. Place the rolls side by side in an oven proof dish. Pour over the bechamel sauce and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
7. Bake until heated through and the cheese and sauce are bubbling. We serves it with a dressed green salad.

P.S. The picture at the top is of dessert. A standard pancake with the obligatory nutella and a generous drizzle of cream. Lovely!

Mixed Tapas

January is generally a month of frugality (is that a word?), both money-wise and food-wise. I'm not going to say diet, as we never diet, but occasionally we take stock of what we're eating.
This post is not really about sensible eating, more like watching what we spend.

One of our favourite restaurants is The Orange Tree Tapas and Grill, and we have come to love several dishes on the menu. Since we are trying to watch what we spend at the moment (home improvements and credit card bills pressing) I decided to try and re-create some of our favourite tapas dishes rather than going out.

The dishes I tried were the Chicken in Paprika and Cream and the Beef in Peppercorn sauce from the restaurant. I also did a dish based on their Chicken with Mushrooms in Cream but with the addition of some cured ham. And also a dish of chorizo and prawns in a tomato and garlic sauce which I had seen some time ago on Market Kitchen.
The paprika cream sauce was simple to make, just a couple of lightly fried shallots with the chicken, then a splash of white wine and then the cream. And then enough paprkia to get the right flavour.
The mushroom sauce was similar, but I slowly cooked a couple of sliced mushrooms with the shallots. I wanted the flavour of the mushrooms throughout the sauce which seemed to work well. In both cases the chicken was finely sliced so it cooked quickly.

The chorizo and prawn dish was very simple, and the most tasty of the lot. I cooked two finely sliced cloves of garlic very gently in quite a bit of olive oil, so that the garlic softened but didn't brown and the oil was infused with the garlic flavour. I then added chucks of chorizo to the pan so that the lovely oils would mix together. Then came a good helping of passata and then the cooked king prawns just to warm through.

The dish I really wanted to get close to what we eat at The Orange Tree was the Beef in Peppercorn sauce. The sauce at the restaurant is lovely and rich, with a dark colour and is almost chocolately in flavour and texture. I've been searching for a recipe for something similar for a while now and came across a discussion on the BBC food messageboard about how to acheive this chocolatey-ness in peppercorn sauces. Several people thought it was to do with the use of brandy or madeira to de-glaze the pan, and the length of time cooking. One contributor posted a link to this recipe as a recommended version of steak in peppercorn sauce which could lead to the chocolately texture and flavour. So it was on this that I based my attempt to re-create our favourite dish.

Here is my adapted recipe:

1 steak (sirloin or rump, or any quick frying steak) cut into strips
1 shallot, finely chopped
a splash of brandy
crushed black peppercorns
double cream
beef stock

1. First fry the shallot gently in a little olive oil (or butter).
2. Cover the steak strips in loads of crushed black peper then add to the pan and cook very quickly.
3. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside.
4. De-glaze with a splash of brandy making sure all the bits left from the meat are scraped up. Heating so the brandy reduces. I didn't heat it til it ignites as the original recipe suggests, as I am a wuss!
5. Add about 50ml of beef stock to the pan, and enough cream to give the consistency you want and heat through.
6. Return the meat to the pan, stir through and then serve.

Sorry that the amounts are vague, but I generally cook by eye and taste, if anyone would like more precise measurements, please let me know, as I will be trying this again!

This dish didn't turn out chocolatey, but was very tasty. I think next time I will cook down the sauce longer to reduce it, intensify the flavours and to darken the colour. I also think I added too much pepper to make it comparable to the sauce we have had at the restaurant. It was more like a standard peppercorn sauce that you have with steak rather than something that bit more special. Does anyone have any idea if cooking the sauce for longer will work?

Morale of the story: maybe it is best to eat your favourite foods at the place where they became your favourite! We will return to the Orange Tree, but maybe not this month!

A simple cheese and mushroom sauce

We had a very simple dish a few days ago that we didn't think really warranted a post but then sometimes an idea is all you need.  When we visited the Marple Food and Drink Festival we bought some Venison Burgers from a local farm shop.  I cannot remember the name of the farm I am afraid but pretty sure they were from Todmorden!  Sorry that doesn't help.  Anyway the point of the post is the sauce we made to go with the Venison.

Venison Burger with a Cheese and Mushroom Sauce

What you will need:

Shallots (finely chopped)
Mushrooms (roughly Chopped)
White Stilton (small cubes)
Double Cream
White Wine
Salt and Pepper to season

First fry the shallots and mushrooms gently for about 10 minutes until the shallots soften and the mushrooms deepen in colour. Then add about a glass of white wine and reduce it by half. Stir in enough double cream to get the consistency you want and enough cubes of the cheese to add the required flavour. This does involve tasting to get the balance right. I think I added too much cheese really as it seemed to over-power the mushroom flavour a little, but we do like cheesy sauces!

The sauce went well with the meat, and something similar could be used for steak and other cuts.  Perhaps think about the cut of meat when deciding how rich you want it.  You could use a different cheese or less of it to make it milder if the meat is very delicate.  The wedges you see were homemade by par boiling and baking with salt, pepper and Greek oregano.

Italian Delights

Well, Friday night is normally Champagne night for Fran as I am usually at work.  I had an unusual free Friday this week so some slight changes were needed.  Fran's friend had acquired a bottle of Prosecco so we decided on having an Italian themed night.

Personally I opted for some Peroni.

So after the alcohol was arranged we began developing the menu.

We weren't too adventurous but for starters we found a nice recipe in Jamie's Italy, further developed a little side dish of mine and for mains we made some gluten-free pizzas.

So in the end it looked like this:

Starters:
Funghi al Forno Ripieni Di Ricotta - Baked Mushrooms stuffed with Ricotta
Fried Courgette and Patty Pan Squash with Oregano

Mains:
Pizza with Parma Ham and Basil
Garlic Bread

Desert:
Tiramisu


Funghi al Forno Ripieni Di Ricotta: (for 3)

125g Ricotta Cheese
Zest of 1 Lemon
Salt & Pepper
Fresh Oregano
Parmesan Cheese
3 Large Flat Mushrooms
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

(I just realised while reviewing the ingredients that there should have also been chilli in it but I forgot.  It worked without but maybe would be better as Jamie intended)

Mix Riccotta with lemon zest and salt & pepper (plus chilli if you remember!).  Fold in the Parmesan and oregano.
Remove the mushroom stalks and toss in a little oil and season.  Then fill the caps with the Ricotta mix.  Sprinkle with Parmesan and bake in the oven at 220 deg for 15 mins.




The other starter was the fried courgettes and Patty Pan Squash with oregano:

Courgettes
Patty Pan Squash
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Dried Oregano
Grated Mozzarella

Slice the courgettes and squash and stir fry in olive oil.  Add pepper (but not salt yet) and oregano - cook for a few minutes more and place on kitchen roll. 

Lay the veg on a baking tray, add salt and grated mozzarella and cook on a high heat for 15 mins.







Pizzas and garlic bread were quite simple as we bought the gluten-free bases and built from there:

I made the tomato sauce by frying finely chopped onion with garlic in olive oil, adding tomato puree and fresh tomatoes and cooked it down for 30 mins till it thickened.

I spread this on the bases.

Finally I added grated mozzarella then topped with parma ham and fresh basil leaves.







Jenny's Tiramisu - adapted from a Gordon Ramsay recipe:

The tiramisu was supplied by our friend Jenny and was delish but can't really explain how she made it.  It definitely had chocolate chips in it and was gluten-free.  Thanks Jenny, you can come again :)






Was a great night of pleasant eatings but I must admit at this stage that I made a few errors in the mushroom dish.  I mentioned earlier that I forgot the chilli, well I also forgot to season the mushrooms before baking - so I didn't do a very good job of a very easy dish really.  It was, despite my ineptness, rather tasty.  I will certainly be trying it again but paying better attention to the instructions (hangs his head in shame).

Red Soup and Grey Soup

Grey Soup and Red Soup

After the recent extravagance of the eating out, even though at last meal was a bargain, much of what we'll be doing in the next week or so will be of the Eating In variety. Kinder to the wallet, liver, and waistline.

Something tasty, healthy and relatively cheap which I've been doing recently is soup for lunches. Although if you ask my work colleagues, this is not recently, this has been for ever! I've generally been making roasted tomato soup, sometimes with added peppers, sometimes pepper soup with tomatoes, and sometimes half and half. Even though you can taste slight difference, this is generally known as Red Soup.
The choices are made basically on supermarket/greengrocer offers and availabilities of peppers and tomatoes, more often than not, the pepper offer wins over, and Red Soup is more peppery.
This week it has been more tomatoey.

Almost Red Soup

This week I started off by roasting 1kg of normal salad tomatoes (or big bag from Lidl), with 1 onion, a couple of bashed garlic cloves, the 2 left over red and yellow pepper halves (from a fish dish) and one whole green pepper. Sometimes I put some thyme in there too, but couldn't be bothered - maybe it was raining and I didn't fancy going out to cut it. Oh, and some balsamic vinegar. All in a big roasting tray with quite a bit of olive oil. I leave it at 200C until the tomatoes have burst and things are turning a little black, and the house has started to smell of lovely roasting things. Then with enough veg stock to make it soup-like I blitz with a hand blender. This time I needed a bit of sugar, but no tomato puree - sometimes the tomatoes aren't very tomatoey - not a necessity for the "other" type of red soup, as peppers don't need to be tomatoey.

I am not one of those people who can't eat the same thing every day, but even with the subtle differences of the different varieties of Red Soup, it was getting a little monotonous, so I fancied re-trying another soup I used to make.

The inspiration for Grey Soup came from the Farmers' Market in Manchester - when it was called Farmers' Market. Since it became the "Real Food Market" the soup man seems to have disappeared. Maybe he'll return at Christmas? He did lots of homemade, fresh tasting soups. All made with proper ingredients, including a Mushroom, Garlic and Parsley soup. Each time a selection of soups were available buy in cups to eat there and then, or in tubs to take home for your fridge. I did notice that the ingredients on the tub for this Mushroom soup were little more than the title ingredients, but with the addition of flour to thicken. Alas, that means even if he does return, I won't be able to eat it. So I tried once more to recreate it.

I chopped up 350g (box from Lidl) of closed cup mushrooms, very small, plus 1 onion (which I don't think was on the soup man's ingredient list) and about 3 cloves of garlic. In previous attempts I think I put too much garlic in, as it mainly tasted of garlic, for the entire day. I then cooked the whole lot, with a bit of oil, very slowly for ages. I don't really time my cooking, I just do it til its done. Not very helpful I know. I then added a handful of chopped fresh parsley.

Nearly Grey Soup

This was then blitzed down with a hand blender. It made just a big mush, so I added about 3/4 pint of veg stock to make it soupy and it seemed to work. One concern I have with mushrooms, is that they can be too mushroomy. Not sure exactly when, or if this occurs during the cooking process, but I know what I mean. But thankfully Grey Soup, on this attempt was neither too mushroomy or garlicky. A success I feel. The only annoying thing is, this amount of mushrooms and cooking time only made 2 portions, whereas Red Soup can stretch to a full week's worth of lunches.

Maybe next week; Green Soup. And perhaps Brown Soup.