Chakchouka

I'm still buzzing with ideas for meals to cook from my trip to the Lebanon last week but with a weekend of work ahead I know I'm not going to be able to spend much time in the kitchen.

This spicy egg dish which I cooked for the Guardian Student Cookbook I wrote back in the summer will have to do in the meantime.

Cooking eggs with tomatoes, chillies and sometimes peppers is popular all over North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Basque country but this particular version originated in Tunisia. I love the way the egg whites leach into the sauce marbling it red and white.

Serves 2-4
3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium to large onion, peeled and sliced
3 small or 2 medium peppers, quartered, seeded and sliced
2-3 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4-1/2 tsp hot pimenton, paprika or chilli powder
1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes - or 400g fresh tomatoes, skinned and 1 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp chopped coriander (optional)
4 eggs
Salt and pepper
Feta and pitta bread to serve (optional but good)

You’ll also need a large frying pan preferably with a lid or some foil

Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the sliced onion and peppers and cook for about 10-15 minutes until they begin to soften. Stir in the crushed garlic and cook for another minute or two then add the cumin and pimenton, paprika or chilli powder and coriander, if using and cook a minute more. Tip in the tomatoes, stir and leave over a low heat for another 10-15 minutes until the sauce is thick and jammy. Check the seasoning adding salt and pepper to taste. Make four hollows in the surface with a large tablespoon then crack an egg into each hollow (or crack it in a saucer then slide it into the sauce). Cover the pan with a lid or a large piece of foil and carry on cooking until the whites are lightly set but the yolks are still runny. Serve with warm pitta bread with some extra coriander sprinkled over the top. Some crumbled feta is also really nice with it.

Do you make baked egg dishes like this? If so what's your favourite?

Parsnip, potato and truffle gratin

OK, before you point out that truffles are hardly frugal, I know. If you had to buy them that is. But we were given a huge one by a (Somerset) farmer who had so many on his estate he didn't know what to do with them.

Unfortunately it started to stink out the fridge so swift action was called for. We had pasta last night with an outrageous amount of truffles and tonight a parsnip, potato and truffle gratin I invented on the spur of the moment and which was actually rather good. (So good that we'd scoffed most of it before I got round to taking a photo.)

Serves 4 as a veggie (it would go well with lamb), 2-3 as a vegetarian main course (we had it with cumin-braised carrots and red kale with garlic and chilli.

2-3 large parsnips
1 medium to large potato
1 small onion
Generous shavings of black or white truffle or a drizzle of truffle oil (but don't overdo it. It's probably safer to mix a few drops into some sunflower or vegetable oil until you get the intensity of flavour you want.)
600ml light vegetable stock
Butter for greasing the dish and dotting over the gratin
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6

Scrub, peel and halve the parsnips, cutting away the woody central core. Slice on a mandolin or finely with a very sharp knife. Peel and slice the potato, onion and truffle to a similar thickness. Lightly butter a largeish baking dish, tip in the vegetables and truffles (or truffle-infused oil) season and mix, then pour over the stock and dot with butter. Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes until the vegetables are tender and the top crisp and brown. Serve as a side dish with lamb, for example, or as a main with a couple of other veg.

Personally I'd have been tempted to add some cream to this somewhere along the line but my husband is dairy-intolerant :(

Peppered mackerel and potato salad with mustard dressing

My husband seems to have taken over in the kitchen recently which isn't too good for this blog so I'm having to raid the back catalogue for recipes. This is another that went into the giveaway Guardian student book I wrote for them a couple of months ago. I'm not mad about smoked mackerel but it's fantastically good value and works brilliantly in this chunky potato salad

Serves 3-4
45 mins including cooling time

450-500g new potatoes
1/2 a small onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 level tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp wine or cider vinegar
6 tbsp light olive oil or sunflower oil
200g peppered smoked mackerel
A handful of chopped parsley or some snipped chives (optional but adds a bit of colour)
Salt and pepper

Wash and scrub the potatoes clean leaving on the skins. Cook in boiling salted water until just tender (about 12-15 minutes) then drain and leave until cool enough to handle (another 10 minutes or so). Meanwhile whisk together the mustard and vinegar in a bowl and season with salt and pepper then gradually whisk in the oil plus a tablespoon of water if it seems a bit thick. Slice the potatoes roughly into the dressing and leave for another 15 minutes if you’ve time for the flavours to absorb. Pull the mackerel off the skin and break up with a fork into largeish pieces, removing any bones and lightly mix with the potatoes and parsley. Serve straight away (potato salads are never as good if they’re chilled)

IMO you can never have too many potato salad recipes. What's your favourite?

Iscas

The bargain of the week has to be lambs liver in Tesco which is currently selling at £1 a pack. I'd been vaguely thinking in terms of cooking it with mash and onion gravy but my husband offered to make one of his specialities, a Portuguese dish called Iscas.

I can never pin him down to quantities but basically it involves coating the liver with flour flavoured with dried rosemary and sage, frying it lightly then deglazing the pan with port (no, not particularly frugal unless you have some, which we do), vinegar and squeezing in a good dollop of tomato paste. Oh, and 2 or 3 sliced up cloves of garlic are cooked in the oil first. We usually have it with spinach or broccoli then feel very virtuous and smug about the amount of iron we've taken on. Conveniently forgetting the port which will probably give us gout.

There are other rather more precise versions online of which this one from Cookipedia looks about the best.

Do you eat liver and if so, what's your favourite way of cooking it?

Cornish Pasty Pie

I still seem to be insanely busy since I came back from France so thought I'd post an old favourite I haven't made for a while which comes from my book Meat and Two Veg. Since you can now buy it for 4p on Amazon (how humiliating is that?) I might as well give it away.

You might not be convinced of the virtues of making your own Cornish pasties given the number of pasty shops nowadays but I promise you that the taste of this freshly baked pie and the smell coming from the oven as it cooks will make you change your mind. I’ve made it as a pie as it’s much easier than trying to cram the filling into individual pasties (and also less fattening, I kid myself)

Do use good quality beef for it - the traditional skirt is perfect. And don’t be tempted to put the veg and meat through a food processor. They really are better chopped by hand.

Serves 4-6

400-425g beef skirt or lean braising beef, trimmed of fat
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Half a small swede, peeled (about 225g)
450g waxy potatoes, peeled (e.g. Desirée)
2 medium sized onions, peeled (about 225g)
1 rounded tsp sea salt
1 rounded tsp white or black peppercorns, freshly ground
For the pastry
250g plain flour
110g block margarine (e.g. Stork) or butter
75g Cookeen or other vegetable shortening
A good pinch of salt
4-5 tbsp iced water
1 medium egg lightly beaten

You will need a large shallow pie dish

Measure out the margarine or butter and lard, wrap each piece in foil and place in the freezer to harden for at least half an hour. Cut the beef into very small cubes, put in a large bowl and mix with the Worcestershire sauce. Cut the swede into similar sized cubes, quarter and finely slice the potatoes and finely chop the onion. Add the vegetables to the meat, season well with salt and pepper and mix well.

Measure the flour into a bowl and grate in the semi-frozen fats, dipping each block into the fat as you go. Cut the fat into the flour until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs then sprinkle over 4 tbsp of the iced water. Work in the liquid with a flat-bladed knife, adding enough extra liquid to enable you to pull the mixture together into a ball. Put the pastry onto a floured board, shape it into a flat disc then place in a plastic bag and chill it in the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6. Grease the inside of the pie dish lightly with margarine or butter, tip the filling into it and pack it down well. Moisten the rim of the pie dish with water. Roll out the pastry to a circle slightly wider than the diameter of the dish and carefully lay it over the meat mixture. Press it down lightly inside the rim and trim off any overhanging pieces with a sharp knife. Cut a slit in the centre of the pie and brush the surface with the beaten egg. Decorate the pie with the trimmings if you feel inspired.

Bake the pie for 30 minutes then turn the heat down to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4 and bake another 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for at least 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature with a simple green or mixed salad.

There's been a bit of a ding dong on Twitter over whether I should have called this Cornish Pasty Pie. Two Cornishmen (well, one man, one woman) were outraged but my argument would be that it's a pie with a Cornish pasty-type filling - hence the name. What do you reckon - and what would you call it?

How (not) to cook a pig's cheek

I've been meaning to post this for about a month but events have overtaken me. First landing the Guardian wine column which meant a frenzied few days tasting before going away on a long overdue holiday to France. I was going to blog there but managed to get sidetracked by visiting winemakers. I suspect this will be the story of my life for the next few months.

Anyway, pig's cheeks. Or rather pig's cheek. I found one on sale (below) at Source in Bristol for around a fiver I seem to remember and having never cooked one thought I'd give it a go. I was a bit disconcerted to find that one of the recipes I looked up called for more like a dozen cheeks which would have made it about as expensive as fillet steak so decided to give my solitary one the pork and beans treatment following a recipe I'd been given by a friend for hand of pork.


The boys at Source suggested I brined it first which I did but am not convinced it made a huge amount of difference*. The end result was pretty tasty but there was so little lean meat on the cheek that it was more like a pork-flavoured dish of beans. To satisfy the average healthy male appetite I think you'd need at least a cheek per person which really negates the idea of pig cheeks as a cheap cut.

Anyway here, for what it's worth, is what I did but I suggest you make it, like my friend Sue, with hand of pork

Brined pig’s cheek and beans
1 pig's cheek

For the brine
100g granulated sugar
300g seasalt
4 juniper berries
3 cloves
1 bayleaf
1 litre water

For the beans
500g dried butter beans
2 onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 carrot peeled and cut into chunks
175ml white wine
vegetable oil
rosemary and /or thyme

Put the beans in a large bowl of water and soak overnight.

Put the ingredients for the brine in a saucepan and heat gently until the salt and sugar have dissolved. Bring to the boil and cool. Immerse the cheek in the brine for at least a couple of hours.

Pre-cook the beans in a large pan covered generously with clean cold water and boil fast for 20 minutes. Don't add salt. Drain but reserve the liquid.

Preheat oven to Gas 3/160°C (I used the lower oven of the Aga)

Very finely chop the onion, garlic and carrot or blitz in a food processor. Heat a large casserole big enough to take the pig’s cheek, add a couple of tablespoons of oil and cook the finely chopped vegetables until soft.

Add the part-cooked beans and the wine, and pour in 1 litre of the reserved stock from the beans (If you need more stock then make up some chicken stock from a cube and use that)

Add rosemary and/or thyme to taste - if you have sprigs then use these, if not, dried herbs will be fine - and plenty of black pepper.

Place the pork joint on top - with a bit of oil rubbed onto the skin and season with sea or rock salt.


Put the roasting pan in the oven and roast for about 3 to 3 1/2 hours. (Mine took more like 6-7 hours) Check every now and then that there is enough liquid in the beans - add more stock/white wine if needed.

At the end of cooking the pork should be deep golden brown with crackling worth fighting over! (Mine didn't get this consistency but the cooking temperature was lower)

Serve straight from the roasting dish in the middle of the table - the pork will be best cut into chunks rather than trying to slice it.

* Not that I'm against brining. I've brined pork chops to very good effect.

Have you ever cooked a pig's cheek/s and if so how did it go?

Swapcrop - trading fruit for jam

Swapcrop is the latest in a series of initiatives encouraging us all to be more community minded and gain something in the process. (Other examples being Landshare and Freecycle). The basic idea is that people who grow more veg or fruit than they know what to do with should make it available to keen jam and chutney-makers who don’t have a garden or allotment in return for a few jars.

The idea comes from the newly formed Guild of Jam and Preserve Makers whose mission is to ‘promote and encourage jam and preserve making' and to provide a forum for jam makers to swop tips. It’s been set up by Rosemary Jameson, founder of the incredibly useful Jam Jar Shop which provides all kinds of jam-making supplies. Pam Corbin who wrote the excellent River Cottage handbook on Preserves is the president.

Seems like there’s a bit of a jam revival going on at the moment. The WI is holding its first Real Jam Festival at Denman College in Oxfordshire from the 20th-21st of November which sounds like a good old-fashioned village fête with competitions, demonstrations, fresh produce stalls and ‘refreshments’ (when did you last hear that word?). I like some of the tongue-in-cheek categories which include 'Jam in the Public Eye' for celebs and 'people of high office e.g. MPs and archbishops', 'Man Made Jam' (for men) and Children’s Jam.

And then there’s a return of the National Trust’s Chutfest, a two day event at Barrington Court in Somerset on October 2nd and 3rd where jam and chutney makers can swop their produce - and others can buy it. Their categories are rather more conventional though the idea of one devoted specifically to rhubarb and ginger chutney has an endearingly eccentric ring to it.

What I like about both these enterprises is the element of self-help - the barter and the swapping. Something that's always gone on in the country on an informal basis but which can benefit us townies too.


Do you make your own jams and chutneys or do you let your produce go to rot? I have to confess we lived for years in a house with several apple trees and never managed to eat our way through them all. Much to the disapproval of my mum who patiently used to wrap them in newspaper and store them in the garage whenever she came to stay - often to find them rotting away several months later. I still feel guilty when I think of it.

Squash and saffron risotto

I don’t know why risotto is thought of as special occasion food. I suppose because it seems complicated to make if you’re unfamiliar with it but it is frugal food par excellence - and comforting at that.

Sure, the rice is more expensive than most but you don’t need a lot of it. It also pays to use good parmesan (below) which I get from my local deli for no more than you’d pay in a supermarket (£16.95 a kilo). Don't buy ready grated - it's more expensive and the flavour isn't nearly as good.


Saffron is expensive, I grant you, but you only need a pinch and if you buy it by the box from a deli or online from a supplier like this you’ll have enough for a couple of years.

Risotto is also a great way to use butternut squash - or pumpkin come to that - a vegetable with which I have a bit of a love-hate relationship. It always needs something bitter or spicy to counteract its excessive sweetness. Sometimes I sprinkle it with crushed chillies and coriander before I roast it or sprinkle it with crisp-fried sage leaves but this time I used saffron because that’s what I happened to have.

A lot of recipes call for mascarpone but that seems to me too rich - and just another expense. I used a dollop of the crème fraîche I had in the fridge and it tasted fine as would a little double cream though you’d probably need to correct its extra creaminess with a squeeze of lemon.

Serves 2

1 small butternut squash or half a larger one
3 tbsp light oiive oil or sunflower oil
15g butter
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 clove of garlic (optional)
Pinch of saffron threads
1 small glass white wine
1/2 tsp sweet pimenton or paprika
600ml chicken stock made with 1 dsp vegetable bouillon powder
150g risotto rice
25g freshly grated parmesan
1 generous tbsp crème fraiche or 2 tbsp double cream and a squeeze of lemon
Salt and pepper
Chopped parsley to serve if you have some.

Wipe the squash clean and cut it lengthways into quarters - or, if using half a squash, in half. Scoop out the seeds then cut each piece across into 4 or 5 big chunks. Cut the skin off each chunk.


Preheat your oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Pour 2 tbsp of the oil into a roasting dish. Turn the chunks of squash in the oil, season with salt and pepper and roast for about 15-20 minutes until almost cooked. Take out about a quarter of the squash, turn over the remaining chunks and give them another 10 minutes or so until completely soft. Set aside.

Meanwhile start the risotto. Peel and finely chop the onion. Heat a heavy pan on the hob, add the remaining tbsp of oil then add the butter. Cook on a low heat till the onion is soft, stirring occasionally (about 3-4 minutes)

Heat the stock and pour over the saffron then leave in a warm place to infuse.

Once the onion is soft add the garlic and pimenton, stir then turn the heat up slightly and tip in the rice. Cook it for about three minutes stirring continually so it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan. Pour in the wine and when the sizzling has died down and it has evaporated add the fully roasted squash and give a good stir.

Bring the stock up to boiling point and add a cupful. Stir until the stock has been absorbed then add more stock and repeat until the rice is creamy but still has some ‘bite’ and most of the stock has been absorbed (about 20 minutes).

Turn off the heat and stir in 2 tbsp of the parmesan and the crème fraîche. Cut the part-cooked squash you set aside into small cubes and add to the risotto then cover and set aside for 5 minutes. (The heat of the risotto will finish cooking the squash.)

Check the seasoning adding more salt and pepper to taste and a little more stock or boiling water if the risotto has got too thick and spoon into warm bowls. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and a scattering of chopped parsley if you have some.

Do you make risotto regularly and if so what flavours do you like best?