No, not a description of me after Sunday Lunch - A Full Tart

 

 

Just because I haven't been blogging as frequently as I might like, it doesn't mean I haven't been cooking and this particular recipe was a success, though it does differ somewhat from the original recipe as I kinda made do with what I had, but I was happy and confident to experiment with what I knew was a reliable basic recipe because it is of Ottolenghi origin.

 

For some reason, though I wasn't wrong to do this, I bought a bag of roasted Mediterranean vegetables in the supermarket and after rediscovering them in the freezer, I decided to roast about three quarters of the pack with a little olive oil, seasoning and thyme to use as the filling for this full tart. Plus, personally, I think sweet potato is a weird vegetable. I am not sure I even like it in soup, let alone as something identifiable in a quiche. Each to their own.

 

The weather here of late has been really amazing! Normally I cook something Mediterranean inspired as a form of escapism and as a stark contrast to the rain teaming down the windows during the Summer months. However, sat outside on a balmy evening, with a glass of something, bit of salad, a sense of luscious well being - you could be sat somewhere with the Mediterranean lapping up against the shore rather than somewhere in northern England. How wonderful this country could be with some decent weather!

 

Full Tart, adapted from 'Plenty' by Yotam Ottolenghi

 

Serves 4 - 6

 

My adaptations in red

 

Ingredients:

 

                                                  1 red bell pepper                                                  

1 yellow pepper

                                                100 ml olive oil                                                

1 aubergine, cut into 4cm dice

salt and black pepper

1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into 3cm dice

1 small courgette, cut into 3cm dice

(or, replace the above vegetables with approximately 3/4 bag of frozen Mediterranean vegetables)

2 medium onions, thinly sliced

                                              2 bay leaves                                                  

300 g shortcrust pastry (I used shop bought and had some left over which I froze)

8 fresh thyme sprigs, picked

                                              120 g ricotta cheese                                               

120 g feta

7 cherry tomatoes, halved

2 medium free-range eggs

200 ml double cream

 

Method:

 

 

 

If you are using fresh vegetables then follow the directions below, Otherwise, open the bag of vegetables, scatter them on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, season and sprinkle over some herbs. Roast for about 20 - 25 minutes at 220C or until the edges of the vegetables have started to caramelise, and then head to the instructions for the pastry, or...

 

Heat the oven to 230C/gas mark 8. Cut around the pepper stalks, then lift out and discard, along with all the seeds. Put the peppers in a small ovenproof dish, drizzle with oil and put on the top shelf of the oven.

 

Mix the aubergine with four tablespoons of oil and season. Tip into a big baking tin and place on the shelf below the peppers. After 12 minutes, add the sweet potato, stir and roast for 12 minutes more. Now add the courgette, stir and roast for a further 10–12 minutes. By now, the peppers should be brown and the vegetables cooked. Remove everything from the oven and turn the heat to 160C/gas mark 2½. Cover the peppers with foil and leave to cool; once cool, peel and tear into strips.

 

 

Meanwhile, heat two tablespoons of oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Sauté the onions with the bay leaves and some salt for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until brown, soft and sweet. Discard the bay and set aside.

 

 

 

Grease a 22cm loose-bottomed tart tin. Roll the pastry to a 3mm-thick circle large enough to line the tin with some overhang. Press it into the edges. Line with baking parchment and fill with baking beans. Bake blind for 30 minutes, lift out the paper and beans, and bake for 10–15 minutes more, until golden brown.

 

 

 

Remove and allow to cool a little. Spread the onions over the bottom, then top with roasted veg.

 

 

 

Scatter over half the thyme, dot first with small chunks of both cheeses and then the tomato halves, cut-side up.

 

 

 

Whisk the eggs and cream with some salt and pepper, and pour into the tart; the tomatoes and cheese should remain exposed. Scatter the remaining thyme on top.

 

Bake for 35–45 minutes, until the filling sets and turns golden.

 

 

 

Rest for at least 10 minutes, then trim off the excess pastry, remove the tart from its tin and serve.

Sooooooo good for you and your soul! Pork Meatballs in Chunky Tomato and Mediterranean Vegetable Sauce.

 

Meatballs. A staple in this house, not least because is usually involves spaghetti (thumbs up from the Lola and Finn jury) are therapeutic to make (thumbs up from me) and because they happen to be ready soon after Phill comes through the door after being at the business end of a pretty underwhelming day (...just about has the energy to raise thumb to anything). Not that this is the place for it, but isn't it funny that in some industries, the higher one climbs, the more inept one becomes (or maybe they were always inept, but were good at shifting their ineptitude onto others...)

 

Anyway, before I end up weirdly politicising meatballs (?) let me return to meatballs as a conduit for joy, for good ingredients cooked well, for dinners around the table, digging in, chatting about anything and everything, a glass of red wine maybe, a scrape of Parmesan. Sun's out, life IS good! A slow walk past the 'chuck outs' in my local supermarket (a weekly 'thing' of mine) further reinforced the fact that the people in my area do not know what to do with pork, unless it is a chop, because I have lost count of the pork fillets/pork mince/pork belly I have acquired at a knock down price. At varying times my freezer is chocka with bits of pig. This week, organic pork mince and lots of it! In the trolley it went!

 

This recipe is a hotchpotch of stuff from my freezer, fridge and cupboard. I won't say store cupboard necessarily, but most of the ingredients are possibly somewhere in your kitchen. It's a pretty flexible recipe, in terms of the sauce at least. You might need to be a bit more exact when it comes to making the meatballs, so they don't fall apart. But the result was pretty pleasing. I was watching Masterchef in the week where the finalists were cooking with Mamma Agata at her cooking school in Italy with a myriad of simple ingredients, herbs, vegetables and the results looked so amazing! I can only hope that one day I could cook in such a way but for now, this is where I am at.

 

Pork Meatballs in Chunky Tomato and Mediterranean Vegetable Sauce

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad, and one other

 

Ingredients:

 

500g pork mince

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil

1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary

1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp dried oregano

4 slices of stale bread, blitzed to breadcrumbs

1 large egg

salt and freshly ground pepper

 

For the sauce:

 

1 large onion, diced

a selection of vegetables, such as peppers, courgettes, aubergines cut into chunks (actually, I used some of a bag of frozen Mediterranean vegetables and some frozen peppers which I had in the freezer. I used a large handful of each bag, so I would eyeball it at about 300g of chopped vegetables)

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato puree

About 300ml of chicken stock

1 tbsp sugar

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

 

Serve with pasta of your choice.

 

Method:

 

Firstly make the meatballs. Combine the meatball ingredients in a large bowl and mix with your hand, or else pulse the ingredients in a food processor, taking care not to overwork.

 

Before shaping the whole mixture into balls, take a little and fry it (or taste it if the idea doesn't bother you) to check that you have seasoned the mixture enough. If you need more, add more.

 

 

 

Once you are happy with the seasoning, using damp hands form the mixture into balls.  Put on a baking tray.

 

Preheat the oven to 180c.

 

Meanwhile, make the tomato sauce. In a suitable pan, fry off the onion until it becomes translucent then add the vegetables and saute briefly. If you use frozen like I did, you will need to cook longer to allow the water to evaporate.

 

Add the tomatoes (puree and tinned) and stir to combine, then add the chicken stock and the sugar. add some seasoning now but be prepared to add more once the sauce has reduced.

 

Put the meatballs into the preheated oven and cook for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown and cooked through.

 

While the meatballs are cooking, allow the sauce to simmer for about 15/20 minutes until it has perceptibly reduced and thickened. At the end of this time, check and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

 

 

 

Once the meatballs are browned and cooked through, take them out of the oven, add them to the thickened sauce and stir them through carefully so as not to break them.

 

 

 

Serve the meatballs and sauce over cooked pasta with some Parmesan and a little basil garnish.

 

 

 

 

 

Half term and I am pretending I am in Mallorca - Tumbet

 

 

... I am imagining that in Mallorca it is shimmering hot with a periwinkle blue sky and a breeze that merely breathes through the branches of the soon to be abundant fruit trees whilst I sit on the veranda of an old Mallorcan house, sipping Palo and reading a good book, watching Lola and Finn splash about in the pool and Phill visibly begin to unwind and build up some laughter lines. I think it's safe to say that he needs this imaginary holiday more than me. Anyway, in my mind I am feeling pretty damn content after eating the joyously wonderful Tumbet in such imaginary surroundings - it is better than the harsh realism of being sat here in my conservatory staring out westwards watching the cloud...and the rain...and wondering if my washing will ever dry. 

 

I love these kind of dishes in which the whole is better than the sum of its parts. I mean, I do like all these things separately I suppose but there is something that happens, let's call it 'alchemy' for I like the word, that takes place when these ingredients come together. I don't know whether this particular alchemy will confer some kind of everlasting life and youth but what I do know is that it tastes wonderfully garlicky and glorious. And if you're of a mind to, dipping a bit of good bread into the flavourful olive oil once the Tumbet is no more is a total and utter must.

 

Once again, as I am attempting to escape to somewhere further south with this recipe so it seems apt that this recipe is from Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes, a book that has seen plenty of action in my kitchen, as its battered cover and corners will testify.  Stein makes reference to Sam and Eddie hart's Modern Spanish Cooking, which I also have, and my reason for mentioning it is not to give you some sort of glimpse into my cookbook addition, it's more to emphasise the extraordinarily good provenance of this dish.

 

It is a little bit of a faffy recipe with a few stages involving frying the various vegetables off, but don't let that put you off because it is worth it. Not unsurprisingly, Lola and Finn were not necessarily taken with aubergines. That's okay. Phill recommends this dish highly, and so do I, 'cos we loved all of it.

 

Tumbet: Oven Baked Potatoes, Peppers, Tomatoes and Onions, adapted from Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad twice as a side dish

 

My adaptions are in red

 

Ingredients:

 

For the tumbet:

 

Two large aubergines, stalk ends removed

1 kg floury potatoes (I used Vivaldi, that I get from Sainsbury's)

About 10 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Two large red peppers (Though I confess to using one red and one yellow - I fancied colour)

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

 

For the tomato sauce:

 

14 plum tomatoes (Ever tried getting decent tomatoes around here? Impossible. So, I subbed two tins of plum tomatoes instead)

1 - 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 onion chopped (I used a full onion because it wasn't so big)

1 banana shallot or 3 ordinary shallots (I used ordinary)

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 large thyme sprig (I subbed 1/2 tsp dried thyme)

1 oregano sprig (I subbed 1/2 tsp dried oregano)

2 bay leaves

salt and pepper to taste

 

Method:

 

 

 

To make the tumbet - slice the aubergines into 1.5cm thick rounds ans lay them out on kitchen paper or a clean tea towel. Sprinkle with salt and allow the aubergine slices to degorge for about 20 minutes.

 

 

 

Peel the potatoes and slice into 5mm thick rounds. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan and fry the potato slices until they are golden and tender. You will have to do this in batches. Season.

 

 

 

Halve and core the peppers, then slice length ways into 1 cm strips. Heat some more oil in the frying pan and fry the peppers over a medium heat for about 20 - 25 minutes stirring occasionally. (I cooked mine for about 15 minutes and they were fine). Remove, season lightly and set aside.

 

On their way to golden!!!!

 

Meanwhile, pat the aubergines dry to remove the salt and juices. Place the slices in a frying pan with some more of the olive oil and fry until the slices are golden brown. You'll need to do this in batches and you will probably need to add more oil. Set aside.

 

For the tomato sauce. If you are using tomatoes you'll need to skin them, quarter them and remove the seeds. If you're using tinned, maybe pour yourself a glass of wine at this point.

 

Bit chunky - we like it this way. You might like to cut them smaller...)

 

Sweat the onion and shallot in the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat for about 10 minutes or so then add the garlic and bay leaves and cook for another five minutes approximately.

 

 

 

Add the tomatoes and thyme and oregano and some salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a simmer and reduce slowly for 25 - 30 minutes until you have a thickish sauce. Remove any herbs you can (I'm thinking bay leaves if you used dried herbs like me) and then taste and season again if necessary to taste. You do need a sauce with flavour because it is going to 'season' the vegetables too.

 

Preheat the oven to 190c/Gas 5 and oil the base of an ovenproof dish.

 

 

Lay potato slices over the bottom and then cover with pepper strips, then aubergines (though for reasons I still don't understand I did aubergines first, then peppers). I had potato slices over so I topped the peppers with them.

 

 

 

Pour the tomato sauce over the top and bake for 25 - 30 minutes.

 

 

 

Serve with chicken or fish maybe. I had Merguez sausages and some sourdough bread and we ate like a king, a queen, a princess and a prince.