This breakfast dish looks and tastes great – the bright blue and orange combination making for a lively, satisfying and healthy start to your day.
Servings
Makes one bowl for immediate consumption!
Timings
5 mins to prepare
You Will Need
4 – 5 dessert spoonfuls of rolled oats
1 dessert spoonful of pumpkin seeds
1 dessert spoonful of sunflower seeds
1 dessert spoonful of mixed dried fruit
a handful of fresh blueberries
1 fresh apricot, chopped
a few dessert spoonfuls of natural yoghurt
1 dessert spoonful of chopped nuts
Method
Combine all the ingredients, other than the yoghurt and nuts, in a breakfast bowl. Reserve 2 – 3 blueberries and apricot pieces.
Top with the yoghurt, sprinkle over the chopped nuts, and add the reserved blueberries and apricot to garnish. Enjoy.
Customise It!
Keep to the core ingredients of oats, seeds, fruit and nuts, otherwise swap in whatever is fresh and seasonal or whatever you have to hand. Raspberries or strawberries work well, and later in the summer I will be using freshly picked blackberries. Add milk in place of yoghurt, and add a swirl of honey if that’s your thing.
Delighted to have picked up this crop of fresh blackcurrants from our local community farm. As we’re currently bracing ourselves for the hottest day of the year here in the UK, I’ve decided to make some cooling blackcurrant ice cream with my Cuisinart ice cream maker, so am currently investigating recipes. All helpful ideas and suggestions welcome! Watch this space for a post later this week about the finished article.
This deliciously tasty side salad combines beetroot with feta cheese and chopped toasted walnuts, along with a mix of bulgar wheat and quinoa. The beetroot naturally colours the feta and gives the whole dish a pinkish hue.
Servings
Serving this as a side to a main should be sufficient for 2 – 4 people.
You Will Need
60g mix of bulgar wheat and quinoa
240ml water
one cooked beetroot
100g feta cheese
50g walnuts
Method
Put the bulgar/quinoa mix in a saucepan with the water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and leave for about 25 mins. Turn off, drain and rinse in a sieve under cold running water.
Dice the beetroot and the feta.
Toast the walnuts in the oven at 180C for 5 – 10 mins, then roughly chop in the food processor with blade fixed.
Combine the ingredients in a bowl and give them a swirl with a fork, fluffing up the bulgar/quinoa as you go. The juice from the beetroot should naturally infuse the salad with a pink glow.
Customise it!
You can omit the nuts if they’re not your thing. Replace with something green and small, like chopped fresh spring onions. You could also swap the bulgar/quinoa with couscous or even rice, if that’s what you prefer (or have in the cupboard!)
Summer green vegetables are reaching their peak just now, and this quiche brings out the best in them. Fetch a crop from the garden or market stall, and mix with creamy ricotta and salty blue cheese in this fresh and vibrant quiche.
Servings
Makes 4 generous slices, or 6-8 average ones!
Timings
About 15 mins initially to prepare the pastry, and another 15 mins to prepare the filling including steaming the veg. Baking time is an initial 10 minutes for the case alone, then 45-50 mins for the filled quiche.
You Will Need
For the pastry
115g plain flour
115g wholemeal flour
100g soft margarine
a pinch of seasalt
a pinch of paprika
a few drops of cold water
For the filling
Approx 180g fresh green veg (I used broccoli, french beans, runner beans and mange tout)
about 3 spring onions
3 large eggs
130g ricotta cheese
50g stilton cheese
twist of black pepper
Method
Grease a 20cm flan dish with some margarine or spread. I like to line the base with a circle of greaseproof paper in addition, as I find it helps to remove the quiche once baked.
Make the pastry by sieving the two flours into a food processor fixed with blade, along with the margarine cut into cubes. Pulse until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add a few drops of water and pulse again until you have a ball of pastry whirling around the blade. Take it out, pat into a ball and wrap in clingfilm, placing it in the fridge to stay cool.
Prepare the veg. Trim the ends off the beans and cut into 2-3cm lengths. Trim the ends of the mange tout, and cut any leaves and tough stalks off the broccoli.
Put the veg into a steamer over boiling water for about 10 mins.
While the veg is steaming, turn on the oven and set to 180C. Take the pastry from the fridge and roll out with a rolling pin to a size that will fit the flan dish. Carefully place it into the dish. Leave any pieces overhanging at the edges for the moment. Prick the base with a fork in 5 or 6 places. Place it back in the fridge while the oven is getting up to temperature.
Remove the veg from the steamer and drain in a colander. Set on one side.
With the oven up to temperature, remove the pastry dish from the fridge. Crumple a square of greaseproof paper with your hands and place it in the dish. Fill the paper with baking beans, spreading them out with your fingers so they cover the whole of the base and are gently pressed up to the sides. Place in the oven for 10 mins.
While the pastry base is baking, top and tail the spring onions and cut into 2-3cm lengths. Chop the stilton roughly into cubes. It will crumble a bit as you do.
Mix the eggs and ricotta in a jug, and give it a few twists of black pepper.
Remove the pastry dish from the oven and carefully lift the paper and baking beans into a separate bowl to cool. Don’t worry too much about any pastry overhanging the edges – it will drop off as it bakes, either at this stage or the next one.
Spread the steamed veg across the pastry base, and crumble the stilton over it. Carefully pour the egg and ricotta mix into the pastry base, making sure it gets into all the little cavities between the veg. Dot over the chopped spring onions, making sure they are lightly pushed into the mixture so they don’t burn.
Bake in the oven, still at 180C, for about 45 – 50 minutes. The mixture should have risen and the top should be slightly browned. Remove and leave to cool in the dish.
When cool, chop into slices and serve!
Customise it!
Main opportunity for going freestyle here is in the choice of veg. Sticking broadly to the theme of seasonal green/garden veg, you can use whatever you have to hand – perhaps introduce some greens, spinach, kale or chard. Herbs will also go well. Any combination should work, but keep it to a total of around 180g so as not to overfill.
You can also use any other crumbly blue cheese in place of stilton e.g. Dorset Blue Vinney. If you’re short of time, or don’t want to bother making the pastry, then you can use some ready made shortcrust pastry.
Ahhh! Really disappointed today to hear that the Tears for Fears concert I was due to attend tomorrow at Warwick Castle has been cancelled, as poor Curt is unwell. And the picnic was all planned, built around a spinach and ricotta quiche! Totally understand however – health and wellbeing always comes first and no doubt the band will play again in the future. Apparently it is a serious rib injury. Ouch – that must make it hurt to sing. Hope you are well again soon Curt, and fully able to shout, shout, let it all out. I feel a song coming on…
I love following the Gods of Cookery and getting great inspiration from their books and TV shows. However, have you ever noticed that, whether it is Nigella, Delia, Hugh or any of our many other heroes, they seem to have one thing in common: everything always goes to plan? It’s a far cry from my daily experience. Don’t get me wrong – I can produce some fairly decent meals, but every once in a while I encounter a kitchen disaster.
Pastry and baking is a case in point. At one time in my development it was always touch and go whether the amazing creation I had slaved over would leave the dish in one piece, after emerging from the oven. I made the mistake of believing the manufacturer’s claim that came with the dish – we clearly had different ideas of what was meant by the term ‘non-stick’.
I thought I had cracked it when I invested in what was promoted as a state of the art tray, using technology developed by astronauts as part of the space programme. My disappointment was obvious, however, when it became clear that significant parts of the underside of my cake had become welded to the tray. A chisel would have been a more appropriate serving utensil than a cake slice.
Perhaps I should have been more sceptical about that claim. Haven’t they got any work to get on with at the Space Station? Aren’t they supposed to be analysing rock samples, or out fixing satellites or something? What were they doing – knocking up a nice Victoria Sponge? Was it somebody’s birthday?
I soon put in place a workaround for my next bake, involving a cut and paste exercise. I don’t mean that in the IT sense, it was a literal cut and paste using scissors and greaseproof paper. I smeared fairly cheap margarine over the base and sides of the tray, then measured and cut a strip of paper the right width and length to cover the base and two facing sides. The bit left over was then already the right width to cut two ribbons to stick to the two remaining sides. Hey presto, a truly non-stick traybake dish.
If this sounds like some kind of kitchen origami exercise, that’s because it’s exactly what it was. I still use this as a workaround – it gives me the confidence to proceed with making my cake mixture in the knowledge that nothing else can surely go wrong. Can it?
The moral is not to be deterred when things go wrong – it happens to all of us. Cue the next track for the ADK Playlist, channelling the wise words of Elvis Costello…
A Different Kitchen 