Iced coffee

I am not a huge coffee drinker, but my consumption usually rises in the summer when iced coffee starts appearing on the menu of the cafe mega-chains that are so handily placed around our train stations and places of work. Milky coffee poured over ice doesn't sound too complex an item to replicate at home, but there seems to be lots of debate over how to make the coffee element with advocates for instant coffee, cold brewing, and just chucking an espresso over ice.

Anyway, as summer in the UK has finally kicked in over the past few weeks, I thought it must be a sign when I saw this recipe for iced coffee on the Beautiful Mess blog. This basically involves steeping ground coffee overnight in the fridge, filtering, and that's pretty much it. I halved the quantities used, so for 2.8 litres of water I added around 2.5oz of ground coffee (apologies for the mixed measurements resulting from trying to scale down a US recipe), which still makes a lot of iced coffee. I did also try adding a teaspoon of cinnamon, but that wasn't really enough to have any impact on flavour. So I'd either leave this out altogether, or bite the bullet and add the proportions recommended in the original recipe. I like my coffee milky in all circumstances, so for my final drink I filled a glass with ice cubes and poured in about two thirds coffee, a third milk, and a little cream for extra richness. This resulted in an icy cold drink that was also rich and smooth. But obviously making iced coffee at home means you can have it however you want, and add whatever flavourings or syrups you fancy too.

Apparently, the cold brewed coffee should be fine in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks. And so far I've found that the inconvenience of having a large glass jar occupying a big chunk of the fridge, has been well worth the delight of having iced coffee available at all times.

Borek and a meze selection

I like things made with filo pastry, but I've never I actually made anything with it myself. So now I'm in my thirtieth decade I thought I'd better correct this. I wanted something for a light summer lunch, so a meze selection including borek seemed like a good option. Borek are essentially little parcels of pastry with various fillings, which are found all around the Mediterranean and Middle East. The borek I've come across are always filled with a feta-style cheese, but Wikipedia tells me that they can have a range of different fillings. I decided to stick with feta, and used a recipe based on this one. I adapted it a bit, so my version's below. And I (obviously) did not consider making this super-thin pastry myself, but bought some ready-made filo.

Recipe (enough for around 12 pieces):
Ready-made filo pastry (I used 4 sheets in total, but this will depend on the dimensions of your pastry)
1 large egg, beaten
200g feta cheese
1 tblsp chopped dill
A good grinding of black pepper
Around 70g butter, melted
Around 2 tblsp sesame seeds

Firstly make up the filling by mashing the cheese with the egg, adding the dill and seasoning with pepper when they are well combined. It doesn't need to be smooth mix, so don't worry about any large crumbs of cheese.
Next get your filo pastry, and lay one sheet out. Brush this with melted butter, lay a second pastry sheet on top, and then brush this with butter too. I had a large rectangle of pastry so cut this in half across the widest part, and then each half into three, to create six smaller rectangles. I then placed a couple of teaspoons of the cheese mix along the longest edge, tucked in the sides, and rolled them up into cigar shapes (nb I had some rather fat cigars). These were then brushed with more melted butter and sprinkled with some sesame seeds. Depending on the dimensions of your filo you may need to alter how you cut it, but aim to make rectangles. Repeat this process with another batch of filo pastry, to make twelve borek in total. You need to work quickly with filo pastry as it becomes very delicate the drier it is. I found that putting my pastry in the fridge between batches seemed to help, and laying a damp tea towel over it is also supposed to be effective too.
Once the borek are made bake at gas mark 4 for around 25minutes until they are lightly browned.

The borek can be served hot, or at room temperature. I prefer them hot, so as I was making mine in advance I just popped them under the grill for a bit before I wanted to eat them (this also coloured them a little more). Though these are very simple in terms of ingredients, the combination of light, crisp pastry with soft, salty, slighty herby cheese is fantastic.

To go with my borek I made some cacik (a bit like raita but with garlic and mint), and Nigella Lawson's peanut butter hummus. This was a really good recipe which I more or less followed, apart from roasting my cumin and leaving out the yoghurt. To complete the meze selection I included some taramasalata from Waitrose. This is the nicest taramasalata I've had, but I think in this context it wasn't really needed, and the fishy flavour jarred a bit with the other dishes (I think some pitta bread was needed for it to work). But overall this meze lunch was perfect for a warm summer's day- filling but not too heavy, and with lots of flavour. Actually the borek were so nice I'd happily make them in the depths of winter too.

Memories of summer- tomato tarts

So with the nights drawing in, the last of the summer's crop of tomatoes are becoming a bit of a distant memory. I only actually made these simple individual tomato tarts about six weeks ago, but it somehow seems a lot longer than that. These rosada tomatoes were homegrown and quite small but incredibly sweet, and will definitely be grown again. They were halved, mixed with a generous amount of feta cheese (for some reason I'd drawn a blank on what to put with them so thanks to MangoCheeks at Allotment2Kitchen for inspiration) and some torn basil leaves, and piled into some puff pastry 'cases'.
I used ready-rolled Jus Rol puff pastry which has never let me down over several episodes of tart making. Due to a lack of pastry cutter a medium sized bowl served as a template for each round tart, and then a smaller plate to lightly score an inner circle leaving an edge of around half an inch. I pricked this inner area several times with a fork (to stop it rising too much) and then baked the pastry circles for around 10minutes in a medium oven until they were slightly coloured. I'm not sure if this is strictly necessary, but there's nothing worse than raw pastry and as the filling for these tarts didn't really require much cooking, I thought I'd give the cases a head start. Once the pastry had cooled enough to handle I spooned in as much of the filling as I could fit in and returned the tarts to a hot oven for around 15minutes, until the pastry turned golden and the contents were starting to brown on top.
Warming the tomatoes through in the oven seemed to increase their sweetness, and thus the contrast with the salty feta cheese, and with a bit of salad this was a perfect summer dish. I think this could easily work in more autumnal conditions too (as long as you're not a stickler for seasonality) with some steamed vegetables and boiled potatoes. Serving on a retro 1960's plate not essential.

Jus Rol chilled puff pastry sheet
I rate it 9/10
Cost: Around £1.55 for 375g

Spaghetti with crab and rocket

I only started cooking this relatively recently when fresh picked crab meat started appearing in my local supermarket but it has undoubtedly become one of my favourite speedy recipes. It's light enough to eat in the summer, especially with the rocket leaves which act like an integrated salad, but is also lovely in the winter when you're in need of some hearty fare. The brown crab meat forms an instant sauce so additional ingredients like cream aren't required, and it's so quick the thing that takes longest to cook is the pasta.

There seem to be lots of variants of this recipe but this is my version (probably initially inspired by Nigella or someone else off the telly though). For enough for two you'll need:

100g picked crab meat (white and brown)
2 or 3 spring onions (finely sliced)
1 fat clove of garlic (finely chopped)
1 medium red chilli (finely chopped; remove seeds if you don't want too much heat)
Large handful of rocket
Plenty of olive oil
Enough spaghetti for two (about 200g)
Plenty of seasoning

Bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the spaghetti. At the same time gently sweat the spring onions in a generous amount of olive oil until they've softened without colouring. Add the garlic and chilli, stir for a couple of minutes and then add the crab meat and cook until it's heated through. Remove from the heat and then stir through the cooked pasta. Season to taste and add an extra splash of olive oil if you want. Either add the rocket directly to the crab and pasta and mix or serve on top (and eat immediately).

It has also been known for all of the above to be combined with enough pasta for one and eaten solo. But definitely not by me, no definitely not.......

Smoked mackerel pate and an unexpected salad

I'm fully expecting a resurgence in the popularity of mackerel. Admittedly it's not really suitable for fish and chips, but it is local, sustainable and (at least currently) there seems to be plenty of it. This is a fish that needs to be eaten when it is as fresh as possible though, and therefore my consumption of it is generally dependent on good timing with the stocking of the supermarket fish counter (if only there was a proper fishmonger in this city....).
But a great alternative to fresh mackerel is the smoked version. I tend to buy peppered, smoked mackerel and both this and the plain are widely available in all supermarkets. The smoked fish can be simpled flaked into a salad with some boiled potatoes and thinly sliced red onions for a great summer meal, but one of my favourite things to make is a smoked mackerel pate. This involves combining the following:

150g plain or peppered smoked mackerel (skin removed and flaked)
100g cream cheese
2-3 tablespoons greek or natural yoghurt
2-3 medium spring onions (thinly sliced)
A couple of grinds of black pepper (if needed)
Generous squeeze of lemon juice

All the above measurements are very much approximations, so if want a looser texture then add more yoghurt, or more fish to increase the mackerel-iness. Unless you are a total salt fiend, you won't need to add any more of this. This pate, served at room temperature, is perfect with some nice bread, either as it is or toasted.

I made this the other week, intending to eat it meze style with some bread, salad, and prawn and vegetable skewers. However, on getting to the shops there were no skewers to be had. So after realising that the important part was grilling the ingredients rather their being stuck on little wooden sticks, I decided to convert this into a grilled vegetable and prawn salad. This involved thinly slicing a courgette and a pepper, tossing them in some crushed garlic and enough olive oil to lightly cover and then putting them on a tray under a hot grill. After about 10-15mins, by which point the vegetables had blistered and charred slightly, I added the raw prawns, which had just been lightly seasoned. These only took a couple more minutes to cook through, before the whole lot was scattered onto some salad leaves.

Cost: Smoked mackerel around £2.00 for 200g
I rate it 9/10.

Grilled haloumi cheese salad

I know someone who is always rather (overly) concerned about having a protein component to their meal. This is something I don't tend to worry too much about, but if you are of the same persuasion as my acquaintance then this could be the salad for you. Haloumi cheese is a common feature of most dairy aisles in the supermarket, and is a firm and salty Cypriot cheese made with sheep's milk. You can eat it as it is, but it is hugely improved by cooking. I grill slices of haloumi in a hot, dry pan. When it's golden on one side carefully flip it over and cook the other. The cheese should be lightly crisped on the outside, and soft and melting inside. I really like this served hot as part of a salad with avocado, tomato, whatever green leaves you have to hand and some thinly sliced red onion to cut through the richness.
I'm not really the type of girl who usually considers salad a suitable dinner, but in the summer this haloumi salad with a little bread and olive oil makes a lovely quick meal.

Cost: Pitas brand haloumi cheese around £2.30 (more than enough for two)
I rate it 8/10