Caramelised red onion and mushroom quiche

So it's goodbye to 2010, and hello 2011- that seems to have gone incredibly quickly. Anyway I eschewed the traditional fizz, to start the new year with a quiche! Well not quite, but this is a pretty rich and indulgent dish which is great for a special occasion, but is also very simple to put together.

I used this basic recipe, but adapted it somewhat. I used trusty Jus-Rol to supply my shortcrust pastry. And for the filling, I slowly cooked two finely sliced red onions in a little olive oil and couple of stems of thyme for about 45minutes until they were soft and unctuous. Four sliced chestnut mushrooms then went in, and everything stirred around until cooked. Once cooled, this was mixed with the eggs and cream with a little salt and a generous grind of pepper. I also added big handful of grated emmental cheese.

I followed the rest of the instructions in the recipe by blind baking the pastry before cooking the entire quiche. I had a few issues with some over-flowing filling, but if this happens just use a few scraps of pastry to patch up any cracks or areas where the pastry has shrunk back. After about 45 minutes at gas mark 6 you should have a quiche that is golden on top but still moist inside. You can leave it to cool to eat at room temperature if you want, but I personally like this quiche still warm with some nice salads or other vegetables.
So in conclusion, quiche- a retro classic I'm planning to bring back in 2011!

Chewy chocolate chip cookies

So nothing says Christmas like a chocolate chip cookie. Well perhaps not, but the holidays do mean that I have bit more time on my hands for things like baking. Unfortunately though I am generally fine baking cakes, something always seems to go a bit wrong with preparing other baked goods. In the process of making these American-style chewy cookies I somehow managed to set fire to the greaseproof paper covering my baking tray.
Anyway, this is a very simple recipe courtesy of Smitten Kitchen, and as these are soft cookies the dough doesn't require rolling and cutting out but merely melding into small lumps. This is the recipe in grams rather than American cups.

Recipe (enough for around twenty decent sized cookies):
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (I omitted this but used salter butter)
170g unsalted butter, melted
220g demerara sugar
100g caster sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
170g plain chocolate chips

Mix together the melted butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs and vanilla, and make sure they are all well combined. Pour this into the sifted flour and baking powder and gently mix. Put in the chocolate and continue mixing for a bit. I didn't use chocolate chips but instead chopped up the same weight of chocolate. I should probably have cut things smaller though as I had some issues with bigger chunks of chocolate melting and sticking, which made moving them off the baking sheet a bit of a pain.
But anyway you should end up with a buttery dough that you can squish together either with a tablespoon or your hands into golf ball-sized rounds. Place these on a lined baking sheet about 10cm apart, and bake for around 30min at gas mark 4. I was guilty of cookie over-crowding and ended up with some merging into each other. But as the finished product is quite soft they were easy enough to cut up again, though this did result in some odd shapes.
You may also need to adjust the cooking time depending on the size of your cookies, as some of my batches took longer than others.
What you should end up with is a cookie that slightly crisp at the edges, chewy in the middle and with chunks of oozing chocolate. Ideal scoffed with a hot chocolate in the winter months.

Calcutta-style egg rolls

As my family is from the West Bengal region of India (state capital Calcutta/Kolkata) this is an area I've visited a few times over the course of many years. Calcutta is pretty famous for its street food- not that I'd know much about that though as my parents concerns for the often less than sanitary conditions in which street stalls operate limited our consumption of these delights. However there were a few times when the hygiene police relaxed their (probably sensible) policy and a few treats sneaked through. The one I remember most vividly are egg rolls- a sort of thin, flat bread, with an omlette layer attached to it, with lots of chilli and red onions. This was all rolled up, wrapped in greaseproof paper and eaten hot off the griddle. They must have been good as the last time I had one was about twenty years ago and I still remember them.
The bread element is very light and stretchy, and I've no idea how it's made. But the closest thing I've found to it are the Shana parathas I've blogged about recently. So for a super-speedy egg roll supper all you'll need are:

Recipe (enough for one hungry person)
2 ready make parathas such as the Shana brand
2 eggs
1 small red onion, finely sliced
1 medium green chilli, finely sliced with seeds removed if you prefer things mild
Salt and pepper to season
Couple of teaspoons of sunflower oil or similar

First cook the parathas fully and set aside. Beat the eggs well, season, and stir in the onion and chilli. Put a teaspoon or so of oil into a frying pan and heat it as much as you would if making an omlette. Once hot enough, pour in half the egg mix and wait about 10 seconds until it starts to set. While it's still liquid on top, push the paratha into the egg until the heat 'fuses' them. Turn the heat down, and then once the egg layer is cooked, flip the paratha so that the bread layer warms up and any overspill egg is cooked through as well. Repeat with the second paratha and the rest of the beaten egg. Roll up with the egg layer inside, and and scoff while hot. Eat with some salad if you are so inclined.

NB I'm sure that the egg rolls I ate had the onion and chilli cooked with the egg, but you can also not bother cooking them and just put them in at the rolling up stage (apparently).

Shana parathas and jeera aloo (cumin potatoes)

I love Indian breads in all their forms- makhani roti, batura, luchi, poori, naan, parathas, yum, yum, yum. I also love the potato in all its forms- baked, chipped, mash, roasted and boiled, being some of my favourites. And so despite the risk of carb-overdose, the combination of parathas and potatoes is one of my favourites.

It is however a bit of a pain to come home and start making parathas after a hard day at the office. In fact kudos to the Indian housewife because it is quite difficult to do well even if you haven't been sweating over a powerpoint presentation all day. Luckily I discovered Shana frozen parathas a few years ago. And therefore instead of lots of dough forming, oiling, and clever folding and rolling, I usually open a packet of these and cook them for a few minutes on a tava or non-stick frying pan. And to go with my flaky flatbread I like a generous helping of some jeera aloo (potatoes cooked with cumin) and a little red onion and cucumber salad.

Recipe (enough for 2)

About ten or twelve small potatoes such as Charlottes, choppped into smallish pieces
1 tbsp flavourless oil such as sunflower
1.5 tsp ground cumin
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground chilli, or one whole chopped green chilli
Salt and pepper for seasoning

Heat the oil in a karahi, wok or deep frying pan. When it's quite hot but not smoking, add in the potato, and cook on a medium heat. After a few minutes put in the cumin and chilli, mix well and reduce the heat a bit. The potatoes will take around 10 to 15 minutes to cook through, and become golden brown with a sort of cumin crust. When they're almost done add the crushed garlic, season well, and leave on a low heat until the potatoes are fully cooked.
While the potatoes are cooking, chop some red onion and cucumber for the salad, and heat the frozen parathas. Scoff while everything is still piping hot, and add extra chillis or pickle if required. NB Serving on a stainless steel thali for authenticity is not essential.

Shana paratha (original)
I rate them 8/10
Cost: Around £1.80 for a packet of 5

Pumpkin pie

I have vague memories of eating pumpkin pie once as a kid. I know I liked it although I can't really remember anything else about the taste or texture. But I can't think where I would have sampled this American speciality. It's certainly not something my parents would have made, and they didn't have any American friends that I can recall. I did however watch an awful lot of Happy Days, Mork and Mindy, and The Wonder Years, so there's a chance that I am suffering from false food memory syndrome.
But anyway, the idea of pumpkin pie appeals to me. It's got pumpkin in, which I am a fan of, and it's a bit different from our regular Brit deserts. I'd been thinking of trying to make it for a while, but was further prompted by this Guardian article and the rumour that Waitrose stocked a popular American brand of canned pumpkin.
On finding that this rumour was correct, I basically followed the instructions on the side of the Libby's tin. But I did taste along the way to make sure it wasn't getting too sweet, and the spice levels were appropriate.

Recipe (enough for 6-8 people)

Filling:
2 large beaten eggs
1 tin of Libby's pumpkin puree (425g)
175g sugar (I used golden caster)
0.5 tsp salt (I forgot to add this so it doesn't appear to be essential)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tsp ground ginger
0.5 tsp ground cloves
0.5 pint evaporated milk

For the pastry pie lining I used one block of Jus-Rol sweet shortcrust pastry that was rolled out thinly to cover a 25cm diameter shallow baking dish (I lightly oiled the sides and put a piece of baking parchment in the base). This was baked blind for 20minutes at gas mark 6 (though I actually thought it could have done with an extra 10min as the base of the finished pie was a little underdone in my view). As the pie case was cooling a bit, I combined all of the filling ingredients until they had the consistency of thick pouring cream. Once the filling was in, the pie went in the oven at gas mark 4 for around an hour, or until a knife poked in the centre came out clean. It was then left to cool until we were ready to eat it with a big dollop of thick double cream.

So what was the final taste conclusion? Was I transported back to the halcyon days of childhood? Well, sort of. The pie smelt lovely, as anything with cinnamon in it usually does. And it tasted quite nice too. But to be honest it wasn't that exciting. The predominant flavour was cinnamon, and I couldn't really taste much of the pumpkin. I've since heard pumpkin pie described as a variation on a custard tart, and I think that's quite accurate. It had the same sort of texture, and the same bland background with a big hit of spice. Unfortunately I'm not a big fan of the custard tart. The male companion person is though, and he was delighted to scoff several slices of this with great enthusiasm. And to be fair I did have a number of slices myself, just with a bit less enthusiasm.

Apple and blackberry crumble

So it's now very much autumn. I quite like autumn- I get to wear boots, wrap myself in shawls, and eat things like baked potatoes and crumble (though possibly not all at the same time). I was relatively efficient this year in picking some blackberries at the end of summer and stashing them away in the freezer. And so the other week, I thought I'd use some of them in a crumble.
Crumbles are probably one of the simplest puddings to make, and these days I just assemble it by eye rather than weighing out ingredients. But below is a rough guide to what you'll need (or have a look at the Guardian food blog on the subject). I've started to add crushed amaretti biscuits to the crumble topping, as I like the extra crunch and the subtle almond flavour works well with both the apple and blackberries.

Recipe (enough for around 6 people)

2 Bramley apples, peeled and sliced
Around 750g blackberries (fresh or frozen)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tblsp sugar (I use demerara)
2 tblsp water

175g plain flour
80g butter
80g sugar
2 handfuls of amaretti biscuits (roughly crushed)

Put the apples, sugar, water, cinnamon in saucepan and cook gently until the slices are softened but still holding their shape. Add in the blackberries and stir until everything turns a deep claret colour. Taste the fruit to make sure you're happy with the flavour, I like it to retain a little sharpness, but add more sugar if you want.
Rub the butter into the sugar and flour to make crumbs, and then mix in the crushed biscuits. Let the fruit cool a bit, and then put it in a deep-ish dish that's big enough to hold it and a layer of the crumble topping. Bake at gas 5 for around 30-40mins, or until the fruit is bubbling up at the edges and the top is golden. Serve in a big bowl with some thick double cream or ice cream (or custard if you're old school).

Jamie Oliver's spinach and ricotta tortelloni

As I've probably said before fresh pasta parcels are often a default dinner for me. They're quick and easy but do sometimes suffer from a flavour fail. I quite liked these Sainsbury Taste the Difference ones, but they weren't exactly setting the world on fire. Enter Jamie Oliver. He's now put his name (and indeed face) to a range of fresh, handmade pastas which I spotted recently in Tesco. I thought I'd try the traditional sounding spinach and ricotta tortelloni, as it's a classic combination that it's hard to go wrong with but can be quite dull.
The first thing I noticed was that these tortelloni were huge- almost the size of my fist. And there weren't very many of them- this concerned me. However on closer inspection the pack was the same weight as other similar products. I think I prefer having a greater number of smaller things rather than a couple of giant items on my plate. But that's just me.

So anyway, how did my dozen or so tortelloni taste? Well actually pretty good. I just dressed them with some olive oil and black pepper, and the flavour of spinach and nutmeg came through pretty well. The cheese filling tasted much stronger than just ricotta though, and on examination of the ingredients, Edam cheese made an unexpected appearance. I suspect there are some Italian nonnas spinning in their graves, but it was tasty and added a bit of density to the filling that I quite liked. The pasta itself was relatively light and not too claggy, so all in all quite enjoyable and certainly good enough to be a quick post-work dinner.

Jamie Oliver Spinach and Ricotta Tortelloni
I rate it 7.5/10

Cost: Around £3.50 (possibly just about enough for two if not starving)