Rain and spring green pasta

It's been raining here for weeks and weeks. It's not that I mind the rain, in fact, the garden is looking unusually lush for this time of year. It's just that it is relentless – I can't leave the house without full waterproof protection and I get fed up with my umbrella blowing inside out so I give up with that and just get wet. And grumpy.

All this bad weather has given me more time to cook and I've been busy! I made this lovely pasta dish the other day, inspired my my friend Lindsey's dislike of spring greens (how can someone not like their lovely sweet fresh flavour?). Because she doesn't like them, she passes them on to me to use ("for the guinea pigs", but I can't resist eating them all myself, sorry George and Freddie!). In this dish, I thought I'd try crisping up the greens, like you can with kale. It didn't work as well as I was hoping, but because I added quite a bit of salt to the crispy greens, they were an unusual seasoning for the pasta.

Spring green pasta with chicken


Serves 2

Half a red onion
A knob of butter
1 tsp caraway seeds
One small bunch of spring greens

100g linguine pasta

2 chicken breasts
zest of one lemon
1 tsp oregano

Pop the knob of butter in a small saucepan and allow to melt over a low heat. Add the caraway seeds and stir so they are coated and start to release their flavour. Finely chop the red onion and add to the pan. Sweat the onions in the butter mixture.

Finely slice the spring greens and add half (keep the rest for later) to a bowl with a teaspoon of olive oil and half a teaspoon of salt. Mix well, then spread out on a baking tray and place under a hot grill. Keep an eye on greens to make sure they don't burn! They'll probably cook within a 3 minutes; keep moving them around. I found the brown crispy bits (almost burnt, but not black!) most tasty. Take them out once they're done and set aside.

Now start cooking the pasta – add to a pan of salted boiling water.

Hammer out the chicken breasts with a rolling pin to flatten them (they cook more evenly if they're the same thickness all the way through). Press the lemon zest and oregano on to one side of the chicken breast, and season well with salt and pepper. Fry the chicken breasts in a hot frying pan until they're browned on both sides and cooked through.

Add the rest of the spring greens to the onion and caraway seed pan and turn up the heat for a couple of minutes. Drain the pasta, leaving a couple of tablespoons of water in the pan. Add the onion, caraway and greens plus all the butter left in the pan to the pasta and stir through.

Transfer to hot pasta plates, place the chicken breasts on top and artistically balance the crispy salty greens on top.

Consume!

Rosemary, lemon and white chocolate cookies

I received the Flavour Thesaurus by Nicki Segnit for Christmas and I was thinking about making cookies with a savoury twist so I looked up flavour combinations with rosemary. We have lots of rosemary growing in the garden (I moved it to a new location yesterday – I hope it survives the move!) so I went and picked a bit and added it to these delicious cookies. No cookie would be complete without chocolate, and according to the flavour thesaurus, lemon goes with rosemary and chocolate – so that is how these cookies were born (with a little help from a Hummingbird bakery recipe, to form the basis of the cookie batter)!

Rosemary, lemon and white chocolate cookies

Makes 10–12 cookies


135 g unsalted butter
80 g caster sugar
80 g soft light brown sugar
1 egg
190 g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
zest of half a lemon
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100 g dried cranberries
70 g white chocolate chips
3 sprigs of rosemary (about the size pictured), finely chopped.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Farenheit) and line to baking trays with parchment or greaseproof paper. Cream together the butter and both sugars, then break in the egg, add the lemon zest and rosemary and mix well.

Sift together the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda, then add to the creamed mixture in two batches, mixing thoroughly until a dough forms. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Break off pieces of the dough (about 2 tablespoons in size) and toll them into balls before placing them on the baking tray. Allow about six cookies per tray and space them as far apart as possible. Place in the oven and bake for 15–20 minutes until the cookies are a light golden on top. Leave on the sheet for about 10 minutes to cool and set (if you can resist it!) before transferring to a wire rack.

Pad Thai

I love Pad Thai – the delicious sweet and savoury noodle combination is always a winner. I love that there's filling egg mixed in with the noodles! You could use silken tofu in place of the egg to get that eggy texture. I haven't tried that yet... I have made my version with firm tofu (in addition to the egg) and, although it may not be the most authentic, it is made using ingredients that are available from most supermarkets.

Like most stir-fry-type recipes, this is pretty fast-paced so have all your ingredients to hand and be prepared to give it your full attention! It does mean that a delicious dinner can be on the table within 20 minutes – faster than an oven-baked ready-meal! I can't beat that pesky microwave though...

Pad Thai
Serves 2


120 g rice noodles
1/2 a bell pepper
1/2 a pack of firm tofu cut into cubes
4 spring onions (or "scallions" to my American readers)
2 eggs

1 lime
1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Peanuts (unsalted or roasted and salted - your choice; chopped)
Coriander (or "cilantro"! to serve)


Start by chopping the bell pepper, spring onions and tofu, taking care to dry the tofu cubes on some kitchen roll. Boil some water in a pan and soak the rice noodles (they should be cooked by the time you need to use them – you could soak them in a saucepan and if they're not quite done, boil them for a minute or two).

Warm up a wok with a couple of teaspoons of oil. When hot add the spring onions and peppers and fry for a minute. Add the tofu and fry for a further 2 minutes. Add the fish sauce, sugar and rice-wine vinegar. Add the noodles and stir to coat. Move the contents of the wok to one side and quickly add both eggs. Leave the noodles where they are while the eggs cook – stir them to scramble them. When they're separated into egg-bits (after a minute or two), stir them through the noodles. Taste and add more sugar or fish sauce.

Serve in bowls and squeeze a quarter of a lime over each bowl. Put the other quarter of a lime at the edge of the noodles. Sprinkle the peanuts and coriander over the top in an artistic flourish!

NB: I just realised this isn't vegetarian - darn that fish sauce! For Veggies, use soy sauce instead.

Apple and carrot chutney

I've just noticed that the past few months, all my posts have been written on a Monday! What a strange and completely unconscious decision of mine! Anyway, today is TUESDAY and I'm going to write a post about my chutney. I haven't actually tried it yet – family, please can I have some feedback on the chutney? I'll only post the positive responses of course – my scientific mind is wincing at the very thought of this bias – but it's only a blog!

I found this recipe because I thought a carrot chutney would be interesting and good value (since I was not making my chutney in the traditional way when there is a glut of fruit or vegetables, but for Christmas, I needed something that wasn't really expensive because it was out of season). As it happened, this is more of an apple chutney with a bit of carrot thrown in. No matter – it was still fun to make and (I hope!) tasty.

Apple and carrot chutney

Thank you good people of ScotClans from where this recipe was borrowed. Not having much experience of making chutney, I didn't want to chance it with an experimental batch!

225 g onions, chopped
900 apples, cored and chopped
110 g carrots, topped, tailed and diced
2 garlic cloves very finely diced
110 sultanas, or raisins
50 g fresh ginger, peeled and grated
15 g ground coriander
15 g paprika
15 g mixed spice (allspice)
15 g salt
pinch of cayenne pepper
340 g brown sugar
750 ml malt vinegar

Put the onions, apples, carrots and garlic into a preserving pan with the vinegar. Cook gently until all softened, then stir in all the other ingredients. Slowly bring to the boil, then simmer for ½ hour, stirring from time to time to stop the chutney sticking to the pan.

When it is thick enough that you can draw a wooden spoon across the base of the pan and leave a channel behind it that does not immediately fill with liquid, the chutney is ready.

Turn into sterilised jars, seal and cool. (There should be enough to fill 12 jam-jars)

Store in a cool, dark cupboard for at least 2–3 weeks before eating.

This did make our house smell of vinegar for the whole weekend, so I wouldn't advise any fancy parties or estate agent viewings on a chutney-making weekend. It probably works in the opposite way to freshly brewed coffee and baking bread...

Cardamom and cocoa cookies

The Christmas hampers were well received! I had great fun making them - it was a great week of cooking. We still have to wait and see how the chutney turns out but everything else was scoffed in record time (even considering all the other Christmas goodies tempting everyone).

The cookies I included in the hamper are a favourite of mine. The recipe is from Anna Hansen's book, The Modern Pantry. We visited the restaurant for brunch recently too (in fact, we couldn't go without trying a bit of everything, so we had a three-course brunch consisting of pastries followed by a hot main dish and finished off with some of their lovely truffles). It goes without saying that it was all delicious!

Cocoa and cardamom cookies

Makes 16 cookies

80g unsalted butter
175g soft brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
200g dark chocolate, melted
110g plain flour
40g good quality cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
150g macadamia nuts, lightly toasted and chopped

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then gradually beat in the egg, followed by the melted chocolate. Sift the dry ingredients together and fold them in, followed by the macadamia nuts. If the dough is too soft to handle, chill it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so, until it is manageable, then roll it into 16 balls.

Arrange them 5 cm apart on baking trays lined with baking parchment and place in an oven preheated to 150 degrees Celcius. Bake for 15 minutes, until just firm, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool.