"Woodsy Quiche" - a creation for hubby's birthday

It was dear hubby's birthday this last weekend and he'd agonised for weeks - literally - over what to have for his birthday dinner.  Finally, the night before we went shopping for it and in what amounted to something of a desperate moment of being backed into a corner over the whole thing, he decided upon a quiche.

Not just any old quiche though.  He wanted a quiche that contained tiny sausage meat meatballs, along with chestnuts and a British white cheese.  Something of an artisan quiche, it seemed like!

Now I'm not exactly a dab hand with quiches, but I have made some creditable attempts at them in the past.  So I had a good idea of what to put with these ingredients to make a proper quiche-like texture and the additions of some curd cheese (bought from our local Polish shop), creme fraiche, a shallot and chives seemed to me to have the potential of doing the job.

We debated over adding mushroom, but didn't want the filling to become squishy.  Mushrooms are such a high percentage of water, this seemed highly likely unless they were fried off first and with the sausage meat, we were a bit leery of everything becoming too fatty.  Mind you, the sausage meat was 90% pork - so not much room for fat there.  As it turned out, I had a last minute good idea and added a couple of mushrooms as decoration - which because they were on top of the filling mix, were able to dry out under the fan of the cooker and so not cause any soggy problems.

Cooking and combining the ingredients for the filling was a simple matter of a bit of cutting and a-chopping, a little bit of rolling and frying and a lot of mixing - so no great difficulty there.  For some reason, the pastry had turned to concrete in our fridge (I think it may be turned up a little too cold) and it took a good few minutes of heaving and grunting over the rolling pin before it succumbed (warmed up, more like) and rolled out.  I was using a large quiche dish and had literally just enough pastry to line it, rolled really thin.  However, the thin pastry was a good thing, as it gave the filling lots of room to shine without having a mouthful of thick shortcrust pastry to contend with.

The flavours matched up really well.  The sausage meat loved the chestnuts, the chestnuts loved the cheese and the cheese loved the well seasoned egg mixture.

I don't recommend eating the quiche when it has just come out of the oven, as it is too bubbly then.  Allow it to calm down and cool to warm before you serve and it will be a lot more agreeable.  In fact, I ate the remainder for lunch today - cold - and it was excellent, so I can see the recipe would be well suited to a picnic or as a pot luck contribution, too.

I served ours with hubby's choice of vegetables; minted new potatoes, buttered asparagus and mange tout and it ate very well.  Cold, it would be just as nice with a potato salad and any number of green leafy or garden salads.

Summer is just around the corner, so why not tuck this recipe behind your ear for then!

I'm happy to announce that this recipe was "Recipe of the Day" for 1st April 2015 with eRecipe.com - and as such we have a badge to prove it!  Yay!



WOODSY QUICHE    (serves 5-6)

Ingredients :

Pastry

165g plain flour
pinch of salt
75g butter (if you're using salted butter, leave the pinch of salt out), at room temperature
100ml or so of cold water.

Filling

3 eggs
100g curd or cottage cheese
100g creme fraiche
pinch of sea salt
half a tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp olive oil
1 small shallot, chopped finely
100g chestnuts, halved
250g (4 sausages) of 90% pork sausage meat
100g good Wensleydale cheese, crumbled into pieces
10g chives, chopped
2 mushrooms, sliced, to decorate.

Method :

1.  Begin by mixing up the pastry.  I use a food processor for this, but you can do the entire process by hand if you wish, in which case rub the butter into the flour until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.  If using a food processor, add the flour, salt (if using) and butter and process for as short a time as possible, or until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.

2.  Add the water little by little, mixing it through or by pulsing the processor and adding water in between pulses, until the dough has come together in a fairly dry, sandy, ball.

3.  Wrap the pastry in cling film and place into the fridge to rest for 20 mins minimum.

4.  In the meantime, mix up the filling.  Begin by rolling the sausage meat into tiny meatballs the size of your thumbnail.

5.  Then, pour the olive oil into a small pan and add the shallot.  Cook on a gentle heat until the shallot is beginning to soften, then remove it with a slotted spoon and reserve.

6.  Add the sausage meatballs and increase the heat a little.  Cook until the outer surface has turned golden on at least two sides.  There is no need to ensure the balls are cooked through.  Remove them and reserve to cool.

7.  Roll the pastry out and line your quiche dish.  Cover the pastry with some baking parchment cut to fit and pour in some baking beans or rice.  Place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas4 for 20 minutes or until the pastry has turned a light golden sandy brown.

8.  Remove the baking parchment and set the baking beans or rice aside to cool before going back into storage.

9.  Break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk to combine.

10.  Whisk in the curd cheese, creme fraiche, shallot, chopped chives and seasoning.

11.  Add the chestnuts, sausage meatballs and crumbled cheese to the mixture and stir to combine.

12.  Pour the filling mixture into the casing and gently spread everything around evenly.

13.  Add the sliced mushroom in a decorative pattern atop the mixture and press lightly into the mix.

14.  Place into the oven (still at 180degC/350degF/Gas4) for some 30-40 minutes or until golden in colour on top and, when pressed, the surface feels firm.

15.  Set aside to cool slightly and serve warm, not directly from the oven.

Printable version

Sausage meatballs in Thai style sauce

Hold onto your hats, here comes another recipe from hubby - Chillibob!

I have to admit that I didn't like this recipe at all the first time he made it, but this latest time, he swapped from using the tin of coconut milk to using creamed coconut that he let down with sufficient water.  The difference was quite remarkable - and turned this recipe from one which I didn't ever want to see again, to one which I'd be quite happy to have again.  Amazing what a little change like that can do!

Son & heir loved the recipe the first time around and loved it just as much the second.  He cleared his plate.  Mind you, I think that has a lot to do with the fact that there wasn't any discernible vegetable matter on the plate!

If, perhaps, you don't fancy the sausage meatballs, then there's absolutely nothing to stop you making your own meatballs from any kind of mince.  I'm quite sure that whatever you made them from, they'd go just as well as the sausage versions.

SAUSAGE MEATBALLS IN THAI STYLE SAUCE (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :

1 large or 2 medium onions, finely diced
25g butter
1 tsp Olive Oil
1 Tin Tomatoes
1 Tin Coconut Milk or 1 pack Coconut Cream, let down with some water
1 small Jar Red Thai Curry Paste
500g best quality Sausagemeat, rolled into walnut sized balls

Method :

1.  In a large wok or deep frying pan, melt the butter and oil together and then gently fry the onion until tender and slightly coloured.   Add the thai curry paste and allow to cook out for a minute or so, stirring frequently.

2.  Add the tinned tomatoes and coconut milk (or cream) and stir until well combined. Drop the meatballs into the sauce, one at a time stirring very gently to coat each one.

3.  Bring the pan to a simmer and cook until the sauce has reduced to your taste, stirring occasionally to prevent the meatballs from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Serve with rice.

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It all started so well, with Cornish Pasties, of all things ...

As I recall (and a lot has happened since then, so I could be wrong), the last thing I spoke to you all about, was the Chicken Caesar Salad.  Seems like a lifetime ago!

First of all, I have to publicly thank Dominic for the box of Picota Cherries that reached us safely on Saturday morning.  Such a cute box!  I set out with great intentions of making a cherry clafouti, or individual cherry tartlets - but fate just has a hand in these things sometimes and unfortunately, I didn't get around to making anything other than the odd lovely bowl of "fresh from the fridge" cherries with greek yoghurt on top.  I am ashamed to say that I didn't even (goodness knows how) manage to get a photograph of them.  I hang my head in penitence.

What Pad Thai SHOULD look like!

On the Sunday, we were due to have the Pasticcio - but due to unforeseen circumstances, I lost all will to cook the darned thing at around 3pm that afternoon.  So, we opted out and had a Chinese Takeaway instead.  From No.1 Wok, it was predictably yummy - all except the Pad Thai, which was so over cooked, it had degenerated into a sloppy, slimy mess.  The Nasi Goreng was lacking in chilli and had obviously been seriously westernised, but the King Prawn curry, Honey Chilli Chicken, King Prawn sweet & sour plus all the rices were delicious.

Monday saw hubby doing battle with the smoke alarm, as he cooked his way through grilled sausage, grilled bacon, fried egg, mushrooms, baked beans, tinned tomatoes and a fried slice of his own home-made bread, for everyone.  It's just as well we've got a kitchen door which shuts effectively, or I'd have been camped out under the smoke alarm with a fan!

As ever, Tuesday is shopping day.  We go directly after dropping Son & heir at school, which gets us to the supermarket at around 8.30am.  This ensures that a) there will be a disabled buggy available and b) that it will be charged up and ready to go.  It also has the added bonus of there not being too many people around, at that time in the morning.  In fact, by the time we leave, the car park will have just about filled up.

Needless to say, we haven't had breakfast by then and so we tend to pick up something to have with a cup of coffee when we get home.  On this occasion, it was a pack of two innocent-looking Belgian Buns from the Bakery.  Which were very nice - a naughty treat - right up until I began to feel a bit peculiar later in the evening.  In fact, it was just as I was about to serve up our home-made Cornish Pasties (of which, a blog will appear later)!  This "feeling peculiar" continued across the next two days, hubby joined in around 2-3 hours after I began to go down with it and we both were completely out of action (barring taking Son & heir to school and collecting him again, then making him something to eat) for the next two days.

Just as well I don't have claws, really!

We were both fighting nausea, had debilitating stomach pains and I broke out in an alarming-looking itchy rash.  It occurred on my arms on Tuesday evening, but progressed to my back by Wednesday evening - but the odd thing was that it went away during the day.  It was very like the rash I get when I've had too much garlic, so I take it to be my body's way of dealing with something it really doesn't like.  Poor old Son & heir was quite concerned about the pair of us, although he did get the added bonus of a particularly nice pizza which we'd bought for him on Wednesday evening, as a defence against having to cook.

So there we are.  The sorry and somewhat un-nerving tale of our lost two to three days.  I think I'm just about over it now, and hubby is following along - although he's had a rather harder time of it, as he was required to pitch in and do a whole heap of housework on the Wednesday, before the Occupational Therapist arrived to check out our new patio.  Poor soul, he did a brilliant job that obviously didn't do him any good at all, health-wise.

Of course, all this has thrown my meal plan into disarray.  Although, I am ultimately happy to report that we've been able to keep to the plan for every day other than Wednesday, when we opted for the ready-made dinners in Sainsbury's chiller cabinet, rather than cook.  What did I have?  Well you won't be surprised to hear that I chose a Shepherd's Pie.  What else would do the trick?  Hubby chose sausages, but ultimately had one of the leftover Cornish Pasties from the day before and Son & heir chose what looked to be a completely gorgeous pizza with a stuffed crust.  It was only the circumstances that prevented me from mugging him for a taste.

That's an 8-inch plate it's sitting on!

So!  These Cornish Pasties - completed against the odds (and I have sampled one since) are truly the best Cornish Pasties I've managed to produce, to date.  I kept the recipe simple - just potato, swede and onion, plus the best steak mince I could find - and a whole heap of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt.  I also used the mandolin to cut the vegetables, as I figured they would benefit from all being a similar thickness.  Seemed to do the trick!.

They baked up to be the most enormous pasties I've ever seen - one each was more than enough for a dinner, with the addition of a few baked beans to help them go down.  As said before, hubby managed one before being struck down by the lurgy and Son & heir happily waded his way through his, with a big smile on his face.

I've dealt with Wednesday above, but Thursday should have been Calzones & salad.  Hubby was in no fit state to be making bread dough, so the Spicy Lamb Mince & Ottolenghi's Green Couscous that we should have had on Wednesday, filled the gap.

It's the first time I've cooked this Spicy Lamb Mince and I have to say that I'll very definitely be doing it again, as it was really delicious.  Together with the Green Couscous - which came up trumps and was as gorgeous as the first time I made it - they went really well and made a healthy plus flavoursome meal for jaded tastebuds.

I won't deny that both hubby and myself had a bit of a tummy-twinge thereafter, but it was worth it to get some "proper food" down your gullet!

Well, that brings us to tonight and the rest of the week, which is shaping up as follows :

Friday : Mozzarella Bolognese Bake

Saturday : Ras-al-hanout Chicken with salad

Sunday : Chicken & Fennel Ragu with Jacket potatoes & peas

Monday : Sausage meatballs in gravy, with mash & vegetables.

I don't think anything there jumps out at you as being particularly special or even challenging - which is just the way I like it, at the moment!

The Mozzarella Bolognese Bake is based (lightly) on the Pasticcio idea, but with a view to using up the two Mozzarella balls that are left over from the Calzones that didn't happen.  I make a Mozzarella & Sausage Pasta Bake which is a family favourite, so it's going down those sorts of lines.

Saturday's Ras-al-Hanout chicken is an incredibly simple dish of chicken rubbed and marinated in Ras-al-Hanout, then grilled and paired up with a salad of chargrilled peppers, olives, cherry tomatoes and lettuce with some buttered new potatoes.  Nothing to frighten the horses involved with this, but hopefully will prove to be very nice, all the same.

Now the Chicken & Fennel Ragu on Sunday is something I'm looking forward to cooking.  I picked it up from the internet somewhere - but for the life of me I can't remember where and I forgot to note down on the page where I got it from.  Hence, if it's your recipe - do let me know and I'll credit you with it!  I've managed to get some of the lovely Marabel baking potatoes again, which were so nice the last time we had them.  I can't see it requiring much more than a few peas to bring colour to the table, so again, another simple but (hopefully) lovely meal.

Hubby's in charge on Monday again, and he's further exploring his sausage meatball line.  This time, it's going to be sausage meatballs in gravy (I'm hoping for onion gravy), with mashed potatoes and vegetables - probably involving carrots and broccoli.  Well, if that doesn't get us back on our feet, nothing will!

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So Jenny - what's the plan for this week, then? 21-27 June 11

That, is a very good question.  After last week, it could be anything at any time, it seems to me!  We did a spectacularly good job of swapping meals around and exchanging them for other incarnations of the same basic ingredient.


So I'm crossing my fingers that this week stays a bit more settled!


For starters, it's unusual that I'm in a position to write the meal plan post on the day it kicks off!  I blame the Strawberry Stacks, they were so gorgeous I just couldn't not blog about them - so then the Beef stew needed blogging - and so here we are.

In actual fact, we've just returned from doing the food shop at the supermarket and everything came to much less than I was fearing it would, cost-wise.  I had an enormous shopping list going in there, so either we've shopped very well or the prices aren't as bad as I thought they would be!  Fresh salmon was a bit of an eye-opener, as from the fish counter it was £7 a kilo, whereas pre-packed it was £14 - yes, FOURTEEN! - a kilo.  The wet fish counter didn't even have it on special offer, either.  It just proves how it's worth looking at all the options before buying!


So anyway - to business.  This week (she says, whilst emerging from a shed and adopting a West Country accent - and if you haven't seen that T.V. Programme, just ignore that bit) we shall mostly be having :

Tuesday : Warm Salmon Salad with Little Gem, Asparagus, Avocado and Jersey Royals

Wednesday : Onion tart, salad and Jersey Royals

Thursday : Meatballs and Pasta

Friday : Kedgeree

Saturday : Red Dragon Beef Pie with steamed Pak Choi & carrots

Sunday : Shepherd's Pie with carrots, broccoli and peas

Monday : Prawn & Pea risotto.

There now.  That all sounds just lovely, doesn't it?

Today's salmon salad started out life in my head as one of the BBC Good Food recipes for a warm potato & tuna salad with pesto dressing.  It required some fine tuning, in that almost everything on the ingredients list someone had something they objected to.  So, I swapped Salmon for the tuna (Son & heir doesn't like tuna), swapped green beans for asparagus (hubby doesn't like green beans, we all love asparagus) and swapped baby spinach for little gem lettuce (Son & heir doesn't like baby spinach used as a salad leaf).  Truth be told, it doesn't resemble the original recipe in the slightest any more.  The only resemblance is in the structure of the salad and the pesto dressing!

I've bought some garlic & herb tear'n'share bread to have with it, as although hubby likes Jersey Royals they are still potatoes and he won't cope with too  many of them on the plate.  Son & heir will be disgusted by the fact that it's a salad and the bread is to make the whole thing seem worthwhile to him.  I know, I'm a pushover.

I'm also planning on making some muffins today, as the ones I made for Son & heir's break time snacks have all disappeared now.  It's an intriguing recipe, being a Camembert and Redcurrant muffin.  Should be absolutely gorgeous, but I'll let you know!

I'm looking forward to making tomorrow's dinner, the Onion tart.  I was always terribly allergic to onions to the point where I couldn't eat them at all - not even cooked away to nothing in a stew.  My system would still know they were there, with the ensuing consequences - the worst being that I'd spend some time calling to God on the great white telephone.  Which is what makes it all the more remarkable that, having been pregnant, I can now eat onions again.  ~shrug~  Don't ask me how it happened, but I can now risk a cheese & red onion sandwich, which was such a no-no in the past!  Hence, to make an entire tart dedicated to my nemesis of old is something of an triumph.

Thursday is hubby's day to cook and he's going down the sausage meatball route again, except in a rather more classic sauce this time.  Meatballs and pasta has always been one of Son & heir's favourite dinners, so it should be a trouble-free meal time.

Son & heir is bringing one of his friends, J, home from school for a sleepover on Friday.  I recalled when J was here last (when we had the Shoulder of Pork) that he commented on how much he enjoyed fish.  Everyone here loves my Kedgeree, so I thought that would be a nice thing to make for J.  It has the added benefit of being incredibly easy to produce, too!

I'm aiming to make a rhubarb & ginger upside down cake for dessert (just a little one - 4 slices big) that day, too.

Saturday brings the return of the Red Dragon beef pie, now that I'm fully armed with the Aduki beans!  All I've got to do is remember to put the blinking things on to soak on Friday evening!  lol  @MartinK10 - if you're reading this and you're around on Friday evening, send me a twitter to remind me!  *chuckle*

Hubby's volunteered to cook again on Sunday and he's doing one of his gorgeous Shepherd's Pies.  It really IS a Shepherd's Pie, as it will be made with lamb mince.  Oooh, I can hardly wait, as Shepherd's Pie is one of my very favourite meals.

I'll be aiming to make a Gooseberry & Almond Cake on Sunday morning, so long as I get time!  I'm intrigued by how the gooseberries sink from the top of the cake while it's cooking, and have to see it in action.

All of which brings us around to Monday again, when hubby is promising us a prawn & pea risotto.  Being the Risotto King, I just know this is going to be a success - to the point where I can almost taste it if I think about it for long enough.

So there we are!  Sounds like a bit of a busy week, one way and another.  I reckon I'd better get on with those Camembert & Redcurrant muffins, because they won't cook themselves!

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Meatballs in a Thai style sauce

I am very pleased to report that our summary failure with the Gnocchi did nothing to shake hubby's enthusiasm for his meatball dish.

The meatballs themselves were made from some Cumberland sausages bought from our local butchers.  It's just an easy matter of unzipping the sausage (or taking it out of it's skin) and breaking off chunks which are then formed into balls.  Job done!

He put some basmati rice on to cook and made an omelette to cube up and include in the rice when it was done.  In the last couple of minutes of cooking the rice, he added some frozen peas for colour and to provide a sweetness in the rice.

The thai-style sauce was provided by melting a knob of butter in a deep frying pan and sweating a couple of shallots until they were transparent.  Then, the Red Thai Curry Paste was added and cooked on for a minute or two before adding a tin of coconut milk.

The raw meatballs were then added and poached in the sauce until cooked.  You couldn't get away with doing this with cheap sausagemeat because of the fat content, but our butcher's sausages have little or no fat.  Towards the end, a handful or two of baby sweetcorn that had been cut into small pieces was added to the pan to cook through.

The end result was good looking, but a tiny bit confused as it didn't really know whether it was Thai, Italian or Chinese.  Hubby's intention with this recipe was to create something that was a) quick to cook, b) tasty and c) interesting.  Well, he certainly scored with the first one.  As to whether it was tasty or not, yes it was - but there was just something missing or out of place.  I suspect it was the very British sausage which had no place in a Thai sauce.  I felt they would have been perfect in an Amatriciana sauce with pasta, or if you were after something less predictable, perhaps in a Mexican chilli sauce.  For me, the sausage and the sauce did clash a little bit.  Which doesn't mean that it wasn't tasty!

As for being interesting, well, I suspect we've talked more about this recipe and it's adjustments than any other!  I think that next time, he's going to go down the Mexican route.  These sausage meatballs are really too good to not have again - just in the right context, this time!

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