Remembrance Day falls this weekend, when we honour the memory of all those in the armed forces who have given their lives in the line of duty. As I pinned a poppy to my lapel this week, I was reminded of a rare gem of a tea and coffee house I visited a few weeks back. It is a special place for mindful thought and reflection on the loss of friends, family and loved ones. Let me introduce The Starlight Tea Chapel.
‘Stumbled upon’ is no exaggeration. In Essex for a few days, we had planned a walk in Colchester that was set to pause for tea at a National Trust mill. It was only on arrival we found that the mill was closed – cuing up a hasty search of Google Maps for a nearby alternative.
The Tea Chapel is inside the grounds of the cemetery and crematorium, although you will not find it signposted from the road. Built in 1855, it served for many years itself as a venue for funeral services, but was then decommissioned when the nearby crematorium opened. For a few years, it was effectively a store for garden tools, before being leased out as a tea room.
It now serves as a meeting place for a wake, celebration of life or post-funeral reception. In a touching gesture, the wall around the arched entrance door pays tribute to those whose lives have been celebrated here by loved ones, with pasted covers from orders of service (see photo above).
However, it is actually so much more. The history, the green and peaceful surroundings, and the beautiful architecture of the building combine to make this a special place for quiet and mindful reflection generally, over a tea, coffee, lunch or cake.
As we discovered, it is also open to the general public for this purpose – check on opening times before you go. I can recommend the cake!
So what is the corresponding track for adding to the ADK Spotify Playlist? Coincidentally, around the same time as our visit, I managed to obtain tickets to see Muse, a band I really like, on their UK tour next year. The track Starlight seems particularly suitable for this post, not only because of the title, but the lyrics generally and the promise to Never Fade Away.
Continuing the recent theme of cooking with autumn vegetables, this dish brings together a variety of seasonal root veg in a subtle yet spicy curry that is suitable for both vegetarians and vegans. My meal, shown in the photo, used celeriac, mooli (or white radish), kohl rabi, carrot and parsnip, though other veg are available!
Servings
This will make enough to serve four.
Timings
10 mins to peel and chop the root veg, and 30 mins to roast. The rest of the prep can be done while the veg is roasting. Allow 10 mins more to combine and finalise.
You Will Need
a baking tray full of root vegetables, peeled and chopped into chunks. I used celeriac, mooli (white radish), kohl rabi, carrot and parsnip
oil to drizzle
1 medium onion
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 fresh chilli, or 1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp nigella seeds
500g passata
bunch of fresh coriander
400ml can of coconut milk
rice to serve
Method
Drizzle oil over the tray of chunked root veg and roast in the oven at 180C for 30 mins.
While the veg is roasting, heat some oil in a saucepan and toss in the garlic and spices until sizzling. Then add in the onion.
After a few minutes, add in the passata, Hold the bunch of coriander over the pan and, with scissors, cut in a generous amount.
Let the passata and coriander cook for a few minutes.
Add in the coconut milk and stir to combine. Cook for a further 5 – 10 mins. It will reduce slightly to give a thick, spicy sauce.
When the root veg is roasted, scrape it into the saucepan and stir in.
Serve with boiled rice.
Customise it!
Lots of scope to vary the veg. Butternut and other squash will work well in the roasting tray, also some chestnut mushrooms or peppers. Adjust the strength of the chilli and spices to suit your taste.
For musical choice, I have gone for a favourite track of mine, which also serves as an homage to the good people at our local community farm who harvest these lovely root vegetables from the soil – Can You Dig It by The Mock Turtles.
A feature of autumn is having lots of weird coloured and wonderful shaped pumpkins and squashes on our vegetable stalls. This recipe uses one of these to bring sweetness and moist texture to a set of freshly baked muffins. I recently made these on Halloween (as my photo shows!), but they are just as enjoyable for an autumn-themed breakfast, dessert or a snack with tea or coffee.
Servings
This will make 12 muffins.
Timings
10 mins to chop the squash, and 30 mins to roast it. The rest of the prep can be done while the squash is roasting, and the muffins will then take 25 mins to bake at 180C.
You Will Need
Pumpkin, butternut or other squash, peeled with seeds and pith removed, and cut into chunks. You will need 250g of chunks.
255g self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
half tsp salt
2tsp mixed spice
140g caster sugar
1 egg
150ml milk
2 tablesp runny honey
90 ml vegetable oil
50 g dried fruit
50g chopped mixed nuts
a few handfuls of pumpkin and sunflower seeds to garnish
Method
Spread the chunks of squash out on a baking tray, drizzle with oil, and roast in an oven at 180C for 30 mins.
While the squash is roasting, prepare a muffin tin or mould.
In a bowl, sift together flour, bicarb, salt, spices and sugar. Add the nuts and dried fruit and stir well.
In a separate bowl, mix the egg, milk, oil and honey.
When the squash has finished roasting, remove from the oven. The chunks should be charred and caramelised at the edges. Lift them on to a plate and set aside to cool for 10 mins.
Whirl the squash chunks in a food processor with blade fitted, till you have a puree. This process should also help the squash to cool further.
Scrape the squash puree into the egg mixture and stir. Then add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir well to combine.
Spoon the combined mixture into the muffin tin or mould. Sprinkle a few pumpkin and sunflower seeds on top of each muffin. Bake in the oven, still at 180C, for 25 mins until golden.
Customise it!
Cut down on time to bake the muffins by roasting the squash earlier, perhaps when you already have the oven on cooking something else. Puree it and set aside to cool, then use as stated. Feel free to substitute other types of nuts and seeds as you prefer.
Musical choice for this post comes from Inspiral Carpets. I have just obtained tickets to see the band on tour in London next spring. I’m excited about this – I have grown to really like their music in the last few years but haven’t seen them before. I especially like the 60s sounding farfisa organ played by Clint Boon. They have lots of great tracks but this one seems particularly appropriate to the season – She Comes in the Fall.
So the ADK Halloween Party was in full swing, all my dream (or should that be nightmare?) guests having arrived.
I asked Jamie Lee Curtis to be in charge of jack o’lantern carving. She told me she’d first done this over 40 years ago, while babysitting. Clearly she’d been quite successful at it, having been asked by her employers to take it up again every few years since. I was very pleased with the results – see my main photo. She can come again.
Edward Scissorhands was sat at the kitchen table, doing his best to turn the carrots and celery into crudites. Opposite him sat Freddy Krueger, his nimble fingers at work on the party dips. I don’t want to carp, but they were both quite messy workers, and the ingredients weren’t as carefully or evenly chopped as I would have liked. But hey – it saved me having to get out the food processor.
Jack Skellington is a lovely chap, if mildly irritating. Every job I tried to give him, he just kept asking What’s this? What’s this? Eventually I put him in charge of sorting out the music.
Everyone seemed to be having a lovely time. I received a nice note from Michael Myers, saying how much he had enjoyed it, and that he would like to come again. At least, I think that’s what he meant – his actual note was left on the kitchen table, with the words on it, scrawled in blood, I’ll be Back!
What’s more, he had pinned the note to the table using one of my best Sabatier carving knives, damaging the tip in the process. I wasn’t best pleased with this, as you can imagine. Why the lad can’t just use a post-it note like anyone else, I don’t know.
All this really did happen, I swear. At least I think it did. The last thing I remember, we were all sitting round the table having a slice of the special Halloween Cake I’d baked, using those strange new mushrooms I picked down in the woods. It all went a bit hazy after that.
Jack’s selection for musical accompaniment is You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween by Muse. I think Matt Bellamy’s falsetto chorus reminds him of This is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas, although the track is still unmistakably Muse.
I’m sharing the video here as it is a lot of fun. The setting looks like a cross between Disney’s Haunted Mansion and The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. Not a place you would want to be alone. After dark. At Halloween.
Whatever you are doing this Halloween weekend, I hope you are having as spooktacular a time as me.
The signs of autumn are now all around us. I’ve been enjoying some beautiful wooded walks amidst glorious shades of red and orange leaves. The days are getting cooler, and this coming weekend, in the UK, our clocks will be going back one hour, bringing in earlier, darker evenings.
This dish was inspired by the arrival in the ADK Kitchen of a wonderful harvest of autumn vegetables from our local community farm. You can see these spread out in the photo below: butternut squash, another (as yet unidentified!) variety of squash, parsnip, carrots, onions, celeriac and mooli (white radish). Also included in the crop was some broccoli, green beans and fresh butter beans.
There was too much to use in one dish, so I focused on the squashes and root veg, which I think are lovely roasted. I added a tomato and onion sauce, with a maverick ingredient – black olives. It is topped with a crisp crust of wholemeal breadcrumbs, grated cheese and chopped nuts.
The next photo shows the finished article, warm from the oven. Served with a nice glass of red wine, it makes a great comforting meal on an autumn evening, now that the nights are drawing in.
Timings
10 mins to prepare and chop the veg, which then roasts for 30 mins. The rest of the prep you can do while the veg are roasting. Allow a further 20 mins for the assembled dish to roast further.
Servings
This will serve 6 people.
You Will Need
A pyrex dish-ful of chopped seasonal veg: I used butternut squash, celeriac, parsnip and mooli, and added some chestnut mushrooms and red pepper
A sprinkling of herbes de provence
Some olive oil
A 500g carton of tomato passata
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
75 g pitted black olives, whole or chopped
5 or 6 slices of wholemeal bread chopped into crumbs
75g grated cheddar cheese
75g chopped mixed nuts
Method
Chop enough veg to half fill the pyrex dish that you will use. The veg should be in chunks roughly about 2-3cm square. Tip them into a separate metal baking dish and sprinkle with the herbes de provence. Drizzle with olive oil and roast in the oven for 30 mins at 180C. Spread them so that they are in a single layer, and use a second metal dish if necessary.
While the veg is roasting, chop the onion and add it to some hot olive oil in a saucepan, with the garlic clove, crushed. After a few minutes, tip in the passata and black olives, and mix. Let it bubble for around 10 mins so that it is slightly thickened in consistency.
Separately, combine the breadcrumbs, grated cheese and chopped nuts in a bowl. Get your hands in there and give it all a good mix. You want the cheese to be intertwined with the other ingredients so that, when it melts, it will bind it all together into a crisp coating.
When the veg has roasted, combine it with the tomato sauce, and pour into the pyrex dish. Pat it all down with the back of a spatula so there are no gaps.
Sprinkle over the bread, cheese and nut crust, evening it out and patting it down with the backs of your fingers. Give it a final drizzle of olive oil.
Cook in the oven for around 20 mins, or until the top is crisp and golden. With some ovens, it may help to give it a final 5 mins under the grill to crisp it up. Serve.
Customise it!
Lots of scope for customising here, starting with choice of veg. Really, you can use whatever is in season and whatever particular veg you prefer. There are many varieties of squash and root veg around this time of year, most of which benefits from roasting, helping it sweeten and caramelise on the outside and succulent to bite into.
With the crust topping, you can use other bread for the crumbs, and other cheese. Grated blue cheese would give it a lovely taste twist, as would some parmesan. The next time I make this I will include some pumpkin and sunflower seeds in the crusty mix.
You can omit the olives if they’re not your thing. I love them, and had the idea to include them in the sauce and serve the dish with a warmed, sliced black olive ciabatta (see my photo), which all worked really well.
The dish is suitable for vegetarians. To make it vegan, simply omit the grated cheese, though the topping will be a little looser. However, you could always use a vegan cheese. As ever, feel free to experiment!
This time of year also means that Halloween is approaching. I’ll be saying more about this in this coming weekend’s post, and hopefully having a little fun. For now, I’ll choose a track from a Halloween Playlist I have on Spotify, to share as musical accompaniment.
Cue Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Nothing more to say!
I made these recently to share with friends as a dessert after a dinner party. They look good, taste fresh and tangy with a hint of sweet and sour, are a little different from the norm, and not that difficult to make. They can also be prepared well in advance of mealtime. It is a Mary Berry recipe originally, so thanks to Mary for the inspiration!
My recent photo post on Twitter for this dish received a new record number of likes for A Different Kitchen, so I’m sharing the full recipe here.
Timings
20 mins to prepare, at least two hours to set in the fridge.
Servings
This will make six pots.
You Will Need
6 passion fruits
juice of 1 lime
600ml double cream
100g caster sugar
Method
Tip the cream and sugar into a saucepan. Heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved, then step up the heat and boil for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat.
Halve 5 of the passion fruits and scoop out the juice and seeds. Whirl the juice and seeds in a food processor with blade fitted, until smooth. Push through a sieve so that you have a smooth juice, and discard the seeds.
Add the passion fruit juice to the warm cream and sugar mixture, so that the cream will start to thicken.
Add the lime juice also to the mixture, and stir in so that it thickens further.
Pour the mixture into six ramekins and let cool. Once cooled, place in the fridge to set for at least 3 hours.
When ready to serve, cut the remaining passion fruit in half and scoop out the juice and seeds. Scatter this across the surface of the 6 pots, and serve.
The musical accompaniment to this dish should be smooth, mellow and sophisticated, with just a hint of an edge to reflect the combination of sweet and sour. I’ve opted for a band getting a lot of play recently in the ADK kitchen, and that is Massive Attack, here with the excellent vocals of Tracey Thorn. Enjoy Protection.
This weekend just gone is one I had been looking forward to for some time. Tickets to see Roxy Music at the O2 Arena in London were a lovely surprise birthday present, and the day had finally arrived!
Roxy have directly influenced so many trends in music, from glam rock, punk and new wave to the new romantics and so much indie and electronic music since. It is difficult to convey how markedly different they were when they first arrived on the scene – an eclectic blend of suave crooning over buzzing guitar, blasting rock sax and experimental keyboards. Unique and original, they really were unlike anything we had seen before.
I have always been a fan of Roxy, and this show did not disappoint. The band performed lots of tracks that I have been listening to for years on vinyl and cd, and still nowadays on Spotify – Virginia Plain, Do the Strand, In Every Dreamhome a Heartache, Love is the Drug – to name a few.
Of course, with the passage of time, Ferry, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson are all a little older and mellower. However, it still feels a privilege to be in the presence of the original band members when performing these era-defining songs.
My favourite track was Editions of You, played out at the O2 before an Andy Warhol-inspired backdrop, featuring garishly coloured lino prints of that famous Campbells Soup tin, and stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Jackie O. To these had been added vintage portraits of the band members from their heyday, in the same pop art style, acknowledging their own place in the pantheon of modern cultural icons.
I don’t know if we will see a tour like this again from Roxy, but if not, this is a fine way to remember the band and celebrate their wonderful legacy.
It’s a great pleasure to introduce our latest guest post this week on A Different Kitchen. My good friend, and accomplished cook, Eva, shares with us an old family recipe from her native Austria. Eva treated me to a generous slice of this recently (see my photos) and it was delicious!
Hi, this is an old family recipe of mine from Austria, where I grew up. It’s special to me as it reminds me of my childhood. Mum used to make this cake for when we had friends round for coffee. It’s a recipe that was passed down from one of her aunts to my Mum. Also, this is a typical Austrian “fruit cake” where you use the fruits according to the season, especially plums, apricots, pears or cherries.
Ingredients
160g unsalted butter
160g sugar
160g self raising flour
3 eggs
Zest of half a lemon
2-3 spoons of dark rum
3 cooking or dessert apples
Flaked almonds
Icing sugar for dusting
Method
Beat butter, sugar and egg yolks in a bowl until fluffy and pale in colour. Add the lemon zest and rum, then add the flour. Whisk the egg whites till fairly stiff and fold into the mixture. Put the cake mixture into a baking tin. I used a spring form cake tin of 23cm diameter. Then peel the apples and cut into thin slices and arrange them on top of the cake. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake in the oven at 180C (fan oven) for about 45 minutes.
Finish with a dusting of icing sugar before serving!
My choice of musical track for adding to Kevin’s ADK Playlist is the “Hallelujah Chorus” from the Messiah by Georg Friedrich Händel. I sung this piece many years ago when I first joined a choir in this country and thoroughly enjoyed it then. Many years later and with a different choir I sung it again at Winchester Cathedral, which was so special and one of my best moments in life. I find the Messiah totally exhilarating and uplifting which makes it one of my favourite pieces.
As summer slips away into autumn, the space in our garden occupied by sunshine-infused tomatoes and cucumbers is gradually giving way to curly kale.
Kale is highly regarded as a source of numerous vitamins and nutrients that keep our bodies healthy. It is also one of my favourite vegetables to cook with – watch out for some more kale dishes posted before this autumn is through!
This dish started out as a Mary Berry bubble and squeak-type recipe (thanks for the inspiration, Mary!), which I modified to take advantage of the copious amounts of fresh kale that have been appearing each day over our garden wall. I also added scallions/spring onions, which go down a treat.
I served the cakes with a rasher of good back bacon on top, along with a soft poached egg and a twist of chilli flakes. The cakes can be prepared in advance and shallow fried as required. They make a tasty and healthy midweek meal or weekend brunch.
Servings
This will make 8 cakes.
Timings
The first stage of preparing and boiling/steaming the veg (which can be done up to 24 hrs in advance) takes about 20 mins. Once slightly cooled, combining and shaping the cakes (which can also be done in advance) will take about another 10 – 15 mins. Allow 10 mins to shallow fry the cakes before serving.
You Will Need
1kg potatoes – I used Maris Piper
40g butter
100g fresh curly kale
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
50g cheddar cheese, grated
3- 4 scallions/spring onions, finely chopped
40 g plain flour
a few pinches of sea salt
oil for frying
Method
Peel, chunk and boil the potatoes for 15 – 20 mins in water with a pinch of sea salt added. Drain well and leave in the warm saucepan to cool slightly – this will ensure that any excess moisture evaporates, leaving the potatoes dry.
While the potatoes are cooking, place the kale in a steamer over the saucepan for about 10 mins. Remove the steamer and spread the kale out on some kitchen paper on a tray. With another piece of kitchen paper, pat the tops of the kale leaves to make them as dry as possible, then shred with a sharp knife.
Add the butter to the warm potatoes and mash until smooth. Add in the shredded kale, scallions, cheese and mustard and combine well. Check the seasoning and give it another twist of sea salt if necessary.
By this stage, the combined mixture should have cooled sufficiently to enable you to grab a handful and shape it into a pattie, or cake, the size of a burger.
Sprinkle the flour on a plate and coat each cake on both sides.
Shallow fry the cakes in the oil until brown and crispy on the outside, while soft in the middle.
Customise it!
I put some rashers of bacon in the pan to cook alongside the cakes, and poached some eggs at the same time. You can serve each cake with a rasher on top, and then a soft poached egg, topped with a twist of chilli flakes – see my photo.
For a veggie option, try chopped tomatoes on top, with or without the egg. Another good combo would be smashed avocado with egg and bacon. Be creative!
Choice of musical track is influenced by the gig tickets I managed to secure while working on this dish. I’m excited to say that next year I shall be seeing the Arctic Monkeys on their UK tour. Consequently, their music has been featuring quite heavily recently in the sounds playing in the ADK kitchen.
I am very interested to hear the new album which is due out in a few weeks’ time. I have always liked the band and saw them live on the AM tour at Earls Court, London in 2013. My favourite album of theirs is still Humbug. I liked the 2018 sci-fi influenced Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino album, though it was quite different from what they had done before. All in all, I’ll award it Four Stars Out of Five…
This week on A Different Kitchen we welcome our latest guest post. Our contributor is my wife Lesley, a keen gardener and cyclist, who has been making the most of this summer’s tomato harvest from our garden!
Hi. I grow Gardener’s Delight tomatoes, a really tasty cherry tomato. At the end of the season I usually compost the green ones when tidying up the garden for winter, having had a magnificent crop of warm juicy tomatoes when picked fresh.
This year I decided it was more in keeping with my desire to reduce food miles and increase self-sufficiency to convert the green tomatoes into chutney. I inherited some vintage Kilner jars from my parents who used to make jam from gluts of fruit. The skill and desire to preserve a home-grown harvest has been handed down to me, even though I thought it was boring at the time. This recipe was super easy to make and, as the following photo shows, we now have this rich sticky chutney to pair with cheese, ham and bread for much of the winter to come.
This made just under a litre of chutney. Here’s a ‘How to’:
Slice the green tomatoes and an onion. Sprinkle with the best salt you have and leave. The salt will draw liquid out of the tomato onion mixture, then discard by straining it. Don’t rinse the salt away, its all part of the salt/sweet/sour balance of the chutney.
I used 200g muscovado sugar and half a litre of cider vinegar to my 1kg tomatoes to make it rich and tasty but any sugar and vinegar will do. I have windfall apples from my tree so I added about 4 medium-sized ones peeled and cored with a handful or 2 of sultanas or any similar dried fruit. Add in whatever spices you like.
All this gets boiled up till it is pulpy and sticky (about 1 hr) and then carefully spoon into the sterile jars that have been warming in the oven. I don’t have lids for these so have put greaseproof paper squares over the jar with an elastic band and popped it in the fridge once cool.
I always say to my children when eating anything we have grown in our garden, “this was made from Hampshire sunshine”. Eating it will remind me of a ridiculously record breaking sunny summer, sheltering inside from the heat, watching cycling teams on TV dousing copious amounts of water over their heads in le Tour de France on punishingly hot roads. Being a keen cyclist, I have chosen this excellent Kraftwerk tune to go with my chutney.
A Different Kitchen 