It rained hard in these parts all day today. The distant hills were smudged with mist and the low steel grey sky felt oppressive. The short time I spent in the sun-kissed South of France, in May last year, now seems centuries ago. Occasionally as an antidote to dull days I recall the clear blue skies, the shimmering azure sea and the colourful food markets of Provence. One memory of the holiday has hooked itself crochet like into my mind; it is the taste of the orange wine, which is a speciality of the region. Now that Seville (marmalade) oranges are in season I decided to make a batch of Vin d’ Orange.
Tag Archives: Recipe
Making Orange Wine
♥ Baking: Biscuits
I don’t buy biscuits. I simply don’t because I might simply scoff the lot. Plus there is the vexatious question of dubious ingredients in some shop bought biscuits (think additives and trans fats). However I do have a sweet a tooth so I occasionally bake a batch of biscuits. These vanilla biscuits are one of the first things I learnt to bake many years ago; they are beyond easy to make and if you exclude the cooking time the making of them takes just five minutes. You should get about twenty from this recipe.
Filed under Recipes
♥ Mango and Walnut Scones
Am I alone in sticking to a very limited choice of foods to eat for breakfast? I usually select either the healthy option of a bowl of porridge with yogurt or the not so healthy alternative of a scone. In an effort to make some tiny changes to my breakfast routine, when I was baking a batch of scones for the freezer I added walnuts and dried mango instead of the usual couple of handfuls of sultans. I try to avoid dairy as much as possible but I have never been able to find an acceptable substitute to use for baking, if anyone knows one please let me know.
♥ Chocolate Tart
I am of the make-your-own-pastry-tribe but if you’re not and would like to make the tart you could always seek out a good ready-made pastry. When a recipe calls for a pastry shell to be baked blind, I adopt a twenty-four hour approach to tackling it; I make the pastry and bake the shell the evening before it’s needed and then all I have to do the following day is make the filling and cook off the tart. This is a Simon Hopkinson recipe, I suspect everybody is probably into Simon Hopkinson’s latest book, The Good Cook, post his recent BBC series, but the chocolate tart recipe is from his older and excellent book Roast Chicken and Other Stories published by Ebury Press in 1994.
INGREDIENTS
For the pastry
175g butter
65g icing sugar
2 egg yolks
225g plain flour
For the filling
3 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
40g caster sugar
150g butter
200g dark chocolate broken into pieces (I used one with a 70% cocoa content)
METHOD
To make the pastry, put the butter, sugar and egg yolks in a bowl (or food processor) and work together quickly. Blend in the flour, and work to a homogenous paste. Chill for at least one hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°C . Roll out the pasty as thinly as you can and use it to line a 20.5cm tart tin. Bake blind in the oven for about 25 minutes or until pale biscuit in colour, but thoroughly cooked through. Remove. Increase the heat of the oven to 190°C.
To make the filling, put the egg yolks, whole eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat vigorously together, preferably with an electric mixer until really thick and fluffy. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Pour on to the egg mixture while just warm. Briefly beat together until well amalgamated, them pour into the pastry case. Return to the hot oven for 5 minutes, then remove and leave to cool. Serve with thick cream.
Enjoy!
Note: To bake the pastry case blind I lined it with tin foil and weighed it down with uncooked rice.
♥ Vegetarian Supper
My five-day detox in June (see here) left me feeling so energized that I decided to devote this week to another dose of healthy eating. The ideal was no wheat, dairy, sugar, alcohol, caffeine or meat. I have to confess that I racked up: one coffee, a few cups of tea with *whispers* milk, a delicious square of apricot sponge cooked by a friend and oh two glasses of wine this evening. Oops. I don’t feel too bad about my breakouts as in the main this week eats were über healthy. Tonight I made a dish that I have christened, roasted vegetable, goat’s cheese and chickpea bake. Here’s the recipe, which makes two/three portions.
INGREDIENTS
One small onion finely chopped
400g can of chopped tomatoes
Two cloves of garlic very finely chopped
Handful of basil
Two medium courgettes cut into bite sized chunks
Two red peppers cut into bite sized chunks
70g goat’s cheese diced
Handful of chopped walnuts
Half the contents of a 410g can of chick peas drained and washed
2 handfuls of breadcrumbs (I used spelt bread)
Grated zest of one lemon
Handful of parsley
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
METHOD
First pre heat the oven to 180°C. Saute the onion in a frying pan in some olive oil until translucent, then add the garlic and cook for a further two minutes (don’t be tempted to throw the garlic in at the start, as garlic burns easily). Add the tin of tomatoes with salt and pepper to taste and leave to simmer over a low heat for thirty minutes, towards the end of the thirty minutes throw in the handful of basil leaves. When the thirty minutes are up, take the pan off the hob and allow to cool for a few minutes before whizzing to a smooth sauce in a food processor. Taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary, if the sauce is too acidic you might like to add a teaspoon or so of sugar. While the sauce is simmering on the hob toss the chopped vegetables in olive oil and put them in a roasting tin and pop in the oven until the vegetables are soft (approx 30- 40 minutes). When the vegetables are cooked, mix in the diced goat’s cheese, chickpeas and chopped walnuts and gently fold in the tomatoe sauce. Make the topping by mixing the chopped parsley and lemon zest into the breadcrumbs. Transfer the vegetable, chickpea and goat’s cheese mix into a baking dish, top with the breadcrumb mix and place in the oven until heated through (approx 20 – 25 minutes).
This dish was an experiment and it tasted good but next time I think I will try adding a couple of tablespoons of pesto to the tomatoe sauce.
Filed under Food/Wine, Healthy Living, Recipes
♥ Bastille Day Madeleines
Tomorrow, Bastille Day is the French national holiday; it commemorates the storming of the infamous Bastille prison on 14th July 1789 by disgruntled revolutionaries. The rebels took the Bastille and that event became a symbol of The French Revolution. Tomorrow all of France will be en fête; I decided to celebrate from afar by baking some madeleines.
Filed under Cake, Celebrations, France, Recipes
♥ Orange Breakfast Bars
This Sunday’s weather made it very difficult to believe that we are just ten days away from Midsummer. The sky was dull and dark in these parts and misty, gauzy, grey rain floated incessantly to the ground. A soft day! To cheer myself up this evening I did a spot of comfort baking and whizzed up a batch of orange and cinnamon breakfast bars, for the freezer. The recipe comes from Jane Clarke’s book Body Foods for Life.
♥ Sunday
I was working over the weekend, all day Saturday and for a few hours today. Yesterday on the way home I was feeling slightly lazy, so I stopped for a pizza and a glass of wine. The pizza was rather large and today the contemplation of all the carbs and the calories in the aforementioned pizza send me scuttling home to cook for myself. I love simple recipes; this is a Jill Dupliex one, for chorizo with sweet potatoes, I came across a couple of years ago. The quantities given will feed four people.
Just Add Attitude 