Goat's Cheese and Sweet Onion Tart with Thyme

I have finally succeeded in making something savoury and, in an unfortunate turn of events for my colleagues, something I was unwilling to share.

For a while now I've been intending to make a tonne of food at the weekend so that all my food for the week ahead is sorted. Like many people who work full time, I get home most nights feeling like a limp piece of spaghetti - tired, floppy and useless. It's all too easy to collapse on the sofa with a plate of cheese and crackers and the obligatory glass of wine.

And forget about making lunch the night before. That's why I can be found trawling Waitrose most mornings and shelling out for what I will admit is very good food.

But this weekend I dragged myself out of bed on Sunday to make one of my favourite recipes, tart au chevre, or, for the non-French speaker, goat's cheese tart.

I've made this a couple of times - it's a Nigel Slater recipe and I absolutely love it. Unfortunately, the first time I made it was a disaster of the highest order. After blind-baking the pastry case I accidentally threw it in the bin (don't ask, just don't ask) and my then-boyfriend came downstairs, hoping dinner was nearly ready, only to find me having a full-on toddler-style tantrum, drumming my fists on the floor.

However, this time it went perfectly - I actually made three tarts, the one pictured above, a smaller version of that and then a version replacing the onions with a couple of handfuls of spinach.

I'll give you Nigel's original version with one small twist - I replaced creme fraiche in his recipe with Greek yoghurt. No particular reason - I've always done it that way and I like it.

You will need:

For the pastry case:
200g plain flour
100g butter, cubed
1 egg yolk
a little milk

For the filling:
400g sweet white onions, sliced very thinly
25g butter
2tsp thyme leaves
2 eggs
200g good quality unflavoured Greek yoghurt
100ml semi-skimmed milk
180g moist and crumbly goat's cheese
22cm tart tin with a removable base, at least 3.5cm deep, greased with butter

1. Put the flour and butter into a bowl and rub them together with your fingertips until a crumbly mixture is formed.

2. Make a well in the middle of the bowl and pour in the egg yolk and a splash of milk. Mix together until a loose mixture starts to form and then knead until it forms a dough. Use as little milk as possible, as it will make the tart shrink in the tin as it bakes.

3. Flour a clean surface and roll out the dough, then use it to line the tin. Push it into the corners with a lump of excess dough - if you use your fingers you may break through the pastry. Trim off any overhanging pastry. Put the pastry into the fridge for 20 minutes and preheat the oven to 200C.

4. While the pastry is chilling, take the butter for the filling and put it in a pan over a medium heat. When it has melted, add the thinly sliced onions and thyme and turn the heat down low. Gently fry the onions for about 20 minutes until very soft but not coloured.

5. When the pastry has chilled for 20 minutes, take it out of the fridge and line the tin with foil over the pastry, weighing it down with uncooked rice, dried beans or ceramic baking beans if you have them (it's a strongly held belief of mine that no one does).

6. Bake the tart for 20 minutes and then carefully remove the foil and beans/rice. Put the cooked onions in the pastry case.

7. Beat together the yoghurt, milk, eggs and seasoning and pour over the onions. Crumble the goat's cheese over the top and bake in the oven for 30-45 minutes until almost completely set but still with a small wobble in the middle.

8. Eat while warm. Will also freeze well.

I really would advise you to use a tin of the size Nigel directs you to, otherwise you will have to make three tarts to use up all the filling and then sit up the kitchen table barking: "TARTS, TARTS, LOVELY TARTS" while trying to decide which one to take to work for lunch.

Yes, that is precisely what I did on Sunday.

And just in case you're interested, I took the larger goat's cheese and onion tart. The smaller one and the spinach tart are still in the freezer - so that's my lunch sorted for another week.

Au revoir,

Ellie
xxx

Bitcoin Shortbread Biscuits

So I know I said I was going to do something savoury for my next bake. But this Wednesday night I was forced to do an emergency bake, when a friend sprung a surprise on me.

I knew that Billy, my former colleague and erstwhile deputy editor of Retail Banker International, was leaving his job for pastures new. But I didn't know when and so was surprised to receive an email on Wednesday evening saying that Friday was the big day and would I like to come to his leaving drinks.

He signed off this email by saying "I checked out your baking blog the other day. Made me hungry".

So now, obviously, I had to bake something. But what? I had less than half a block of butter, a little plain flour and some light brown soft sugar - nothing else. And I had only two evenings to prepare baked treats, so I wouldn't have time to buy a load of ingredients.

Luckily, there is one thing that requires only butter, sugar and plain flour. The humble shortbread biscuit. Usually I would use caster sugar, but I thought the soft brown sugar actually gave the biscuit a good crisp texture.

Shortbread is probably one of the least demanding bakes in terms of both ingredients and technique. It's the kind of thing a celebrity chef would refer to as being made with "staple ingredients that everyone has in their kitchen".
I hate it when chefs say this because:

1. If you cook/bake a lot you will inevitably use a lot of these ingredients and so constantly run out of them;

2. It makes them sound terribly snobby because it implies that if you don't have a never-ending supply of these staple ingredients you are a not a fully functioning human being;

3. They are always referring to things like shittake mushrooms, pink peppercorns and fresh white breadcrumbs as staple ingredients and THEY'RE NOT, THEY'RE NOT.

Nevertheless, flour, butter and sugar are very useful things to have and I had to adjust this recipe because I had not enough of any of those things. But I'll give you a recipe for a full batch, which can make around 20-24 biscuits depending on how thick you cut them.

A theme for the biscuits was much easier to settle on - Billy has a long-standing fascination with and affection for the virtual currency Bitcoin, which although it has no physical form is usually depicted as a capital "B" in a serif font with two lines through it. For more on this digital currency and my last Bitcoin-themed bake go here. Or you could just google "Bitcoin" but then you won't see my Bitcoin cake.

You will need:

For the biscuits:
250g plain flour
175g unsalted butter, cut into rough cubes.
75g light brown soft sugar
a lined baking sheet
a 2 inch round biscuit cutter

To decorate:
100g white chocolate
25-50g icing sugar, sifted

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Take the butter, sugar and flour and rub it together with your fingertips to make a crumbly mixture. Quick tip - if your butter is too cold to be rubbed in, put it in a bowl of lukewarm water for a few minutes before fishing it out and shaking off the water.

 2. Knead the crumbly mixture until it forms a smooth, pliable dough - but not for too long or it will be rubbery once baked.

3. Roll out the ball to the desired thickness, then cut out the biscuits with a biscuit cutter and place them on a lined baking sheet.

3. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown, then leave to cool a little on the sheet then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

4. While the biscuits cool, melt the white chocolate over a bowl of barely simmering water and then beat in enough icing sugar to make the mixture a little stiffer and more easily piped - I find white chocolate with its low melting point is too runny and difficult to pipe otherwise.

5. Pipe your desired decoration on the biscuits and leave to set. I also added a little gold edible glitter.

You're done! Unfortunately these cannot be used as actual currency, but you can eat them, which is rather more satisfactory.

Next time it WILL be savoury, I almost promise.

Yours Begrudgingly,

Ellie

xxx

Dark Chocolate and Ginger Cookies

Sometimes, my bakes are meticulously planned and involve me buying ingredients weeks in advance.

And then there is the secondary bake, which is what happens when I have bought ingredients for a specific recipe, haven't used them up and want to get rid of them somehow.

Sometimes this ends up with me buying yet more ingredients to use up the ones I already having, thus entering a vicious circle of interminable baking. Although I would question to what extent any kind of baking can be referred to as vicious.

Happily, this was not one of these occasions. This recipe was partially inspired by the Hummingbird Bakery's double chocolate cookies recipe and mostly inspired by me having an awkward amount of dark chocolate that I needed to use up and having almost none of the ingredients to make the aforementioned cookie recipe. It makes 20-24 cookies.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

You will need:
225g dark chocolate
50g unsalted butter
2 eggs
170g light brown soft sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp baking powder
85g plain flour
2 tbsp diced stem ginger, in the syrup it comes with

1. Preheat the oven to 170C and whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until fully combined.

2. Set the dark chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water (the water must not touch the bottom of the pan) and heat, stirring occasionally, until fully melted.

3. Add the chocolate mixture to the eggs and sugar, whisking all the time. Fold in the ginger. 

4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and drop about 6 equal spoonfuls of the dough onto a lined baking tray, spacing them up to 2 inches apart to allow for spreading.

 

5. Bake for 10-15 minutes until glossy and cracked on top. Leave to cool on the trays for a few minutes before scraping off and cooling on a wire rack. Or just eat them.

These cookies are quite gingery, so you might want to tone them down a bit if you don't enjoy the kick. You could replace the diced ginger with chocolate chips - if you did you'd be closer to the original Hummingbird Bakery recipe.

Personally, I like these cookies how they are - rich, fiery and chewy.

I really must do some more savoury baking soon, before I and my victims - sorry, I mean friends and colleagues - start to get diabetes. 

Bye for now,

Ellie 

xxx

Creepy Crawly Pumpkin Cake

Happy Halloween!

I know it's a couple of days late, but I've been busy turning out industrial quantities of gingerbread and making pumpkin-based food for a work lunch and then a friend's Halloween party on Saturday night.

Regular readers may remember I made first made these last year. You can find the recipe here.

I also made pumpkin risotto and a pumpkin cake, using the small homegrown pumpkin my dad proudly presented me with on my last trip to Surrey. It is this cake that I am going to give you the recipe for today.

To make this cake, I basically replaced the carrot in a carrot cake recipe with pumpkin. Instead of using the cream cheese frosting usually used in a carrot cake I used buttercream, because cream cheese frosting, though delicious, is less reliable for decorating purposes. This cake will serve 8-10 people.

You will need:

For the cake:
250g grated pumpkin flesh
225g self-raising flour
3 eggs
250ml vegetable or sunflower oil
225g light brown soft sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
2 cake tins of equal size, greased and lined

For the icing:
450g butter
450g icing sugar
170ml boiling water
1 tbsp orange flavouring
170g caster sugar
3 tbsp powdered egg whites (can be found on the internet as ‘meriwhite’ or Dr Oetker has a version that can be found in most supermarkets in the baking aisle)

For the decoration:

100g dark chocolate

1 packet of Malteasers 

1 piping bag with a very fine tipped nozzle fitted

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Beat together the sugar and oil for the cake in a bowl.

2. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition and then add the grated pumpkin.

3. Add the self-raising flour and spices and fold in. Pour into the two tins and bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown, cooked through in the middle and well risen.

4. Make the icing by mixing the powdered egg white and caster sugar.

5. Add the boiling water and whip the meringue mixture into stiff peaks, using an electric whisk or standing mixer if you have one.

6. Beat together the icing sugar and butter for the icing.

7. Beat together the two mixtures, again using an electric or standing mixer until smooth, glossy and stiff enough to hold its shape.

8. When the cakes have cooled, level off the tops with a sharp knife, making them flat. Sandwich together with the buttercream icing and then spread the top and sides of the cake with icing, using a spatula or palette knife. Smooth as much as possible.

9. Melt the dark chocolate by breaking into pieces in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, then spoon into the piping bag. Pipe a spiderweb on top of the cake and pipe a line downwards from each corner of the web. Dip the Malteasers in the remaining dark chocolate and leave to set.

10. When the Malteasers have set, put one at the bottom of each line of chocolate you piped down the side of the cake. Arrange the remaining Malteasers on the cake and pipe legs around each Malteaser.

Your creepy cake is finished! And here is a picture of the gingerbread men in situ:

I was dressed to match:

Byeee,

Ellie
xxx

Italian Chestnut Cake

On my return from Spain, I went for a walk in the woods with my parents, followed by a very fine pub lunch.

While we were ambling through the trees, I came to notice that the leaves underfoot were littered with that most autumnal of things, the sweet chestnut. I began to pick up these prickly objects, shell them and stuff my pockets with them.

I love sweet chestnuts, so by the time I was finished, with some help from my parents, my hoody pouch was hanging low with its tasty burden and the pockets of my jeans were bulging. I looked like I had some kind of odd deformity. Like piles or something.

The next night, I roasted some of my chestnuts and scattered them over a salad of figs and blue cheese on a bed of wilted spinach. It was fit for the queen I believe myself to be.

Why didn't I just stop there?

But instead, I spent interminable hours scoring and then roasting chestnuts. Peeling, chopping and roasting them again. Blitzing them in a blender and sieving them to remove any lumps.

And I made this:

This is castagnaccio, an Italian 'cake' make with chestnut flour, water, raisins, rosemary and pinenuts.

I say 'cake' but it's actually quite a savoury flavour and not a cakey texture at all. Although chestnuts are naturally sweet, there was no sugar, fat or eggs added and these are the very ingredients that give cake its usual qualities.

Still, it's nice to try something different and once you have the chestnut flour it is simplicity itself to make.

However, making chestnut flour is not something to be taken lightly. I am not exaggerating when I say it took me several hours over several days. I have included instructions on how to produce the damned stuff, but if you can possibly obtain it by any other means for pity's sake do! It won't be easy - the health food store I thought would stock it didn't and Sainsbury's was sadly lacking too.

You may be wondering what the attraction of this cake is if it's so difficult to get chestnut flour. I'll tell you: it's gluten-free, vegan, high in protein, contains no added sugar and the only added fat is a bare teaspoon of olive oil. So if you are afflicted by coeliac's disease or worse, veganism (joking, vegans! Sort of...) this is a treat for you that needn't trouble your tummy or your conscience.

If you have got chestnut flour rather than chestnuts, start from stage 4 of the recipe.

You will need:

250g chestnut flour (or far, far more chestnuts than you think you need)
400-600ml water
1 tsp olive oil
20-30 rosemary needles
75g raisins
50g pine nuts

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Score the chestnuts in a deep cross at the top and peel the shell away slightly - this will make the chestnut easier to peel later. Throw away any nuts where you see signs of discolouration or mould - they will contain maggots. Roast for 30 minutes.

2. Peel the chestnuts, taking off both the tough outer shell and inner skin.

3. Roughly chop the chestnuts and return to the oven on a low heat to dry out. When the chopped nuts are dried out (but not burnt!) blitz them on a high setting in a blender or food processor and pass through a sieve. Preheat the oven to 200C

4. Mix the flour with the water a little at a time, aiming for a consistency that falls off the spoon but is not watery or sloppy. Add the raisins, pine nuts, and olive oil and pour into a greased and lined tin - the batter should be about 1cm thick.

5. Scatter the rosemary needles over the top of the cake and bake for 30-40 minutes until the batter is set and cracks appear in it.

6. Remove from the oven and serve.

I showed a picture of the finished castagnaccio to an Italian friend called Giulia and she said it looked exactly as it should - although as you can see it's caught a little on the sides. To avoid this you'll want to use a smaller tin than I did. You can see the castagnaccio is nearly as big as a dinner plate so just be sure to use a much smaller tin.

The cake will keep for a few days wrapped in foil but may dry out a little. Sometimes the Italians eat it spread with ricotta apparently.

Lovely.

Ciao!

Ellie
xxx

What I Did On My Holidays: Andalusian Cookery Class

Regular readers (and people that I actually know in real life) will know that I recently went on holiday to Spain, specifically Andalusia.

We stayed in a small family-run eco-hotel called El Geco Verde in the Antiplano de Granada region - a mountainous, rocky region that produces a great deal of olive oil and almonds. 

While I didn't do any baking during my holiday, my mother and I did in fact spend a morning learning how to cook some of the typical dishes of the region under the tutelage of a local woman called Felli and with our hostess for the week, Ilaria, translating.

That's Ilaria on the left and Felli on the right.

So Mother Chambers and I prepared an array of Andalusian delights, while Father Chambers amused himself by biking up and down hills in the surrounding area.

We made tortilla española, a lovely thick soup called maimones and arroz con leche (cold rice pudding), although I have tweaked the recipe for that before giving it to you - we found it a little too sweet.

So today I am taking a break from the usual baking to give you recipes to make these Spanish foods. Not my usual style, but think of it as a bonus - I got a lovely holiday, now you're getting some lovely recipes to make up for my absence over that week.

This will make a Spanish omelette about the size of a large dinner plate and enough maimones for 4. When we were cooking, we kept the olive oil from frying the potatoes and onion for the omelette and used it for the maimones, so it was already flavoursome. One thing I would say with the omelette is that you will need a good non-stick pan. Or it will stick and disintegrate.

First lets make the omelette.

You will need:

5 potatoes
8 eggs
½ onion
2 tsp salt

A lot of olive oil

1. Peel the potatoes and then slice very thinly - you can even use the peeler to slice the potato. Also slice the onion into thin strips. At the same time, heat up a large frying pan on the hob and only add the oil once the pan itself is hot. You will need enough oil to almost cover the potato and onion.

2. When the oil is smoking, add the potatoes and onions to the pan and turn the heat down as low as it goes. Use a slotted spoon or spatula to turn the potatoes and onions every few minutes so they do not stick or brown too much.

3. Beat the eggs and salt together in a bowl until the eggs are of an even colour and consistency. I'm aware there are only 6 eggs in the picture below - that's because Felli decided later that we needed more.

4. When the potatoes and onions are tender and just starting to brown a tiny bit, take them off the heat and add to the eggs, stirring together.

5. Drain off most of the oil and put it aside, leaving about 3 tbsp to stop the omelette from sticking. Return the heat to medium and then, when the oil is hot, put the egg mixture in, turn the heat back down and move the eggs and potato around constantly as if scrambling eggs. 

6. When the mixture looks like very wet scrambled eggs (see below picture) flatten it out in the pan and stop moving it around. Just use the spatula or a palette knife to fold the edges over towards the middle every few seconds - this gives the omelette its rounded edge.

7. When there is almost no liquid egg left on the surface of the omelette, get a large plate and place it top down on top of the pan. Flip the pan so the omelette is on the plate, return the pan to the heat and gently ease it back into the pan to cook the other side. 

  

8. Cook the omelette on the other side for about 2 minutes, then take it off the heat but leave in the pan for a further 5 minutes before turning out onto a plate.

So now your main course, the omelette, is ready. Lets move onto the starter. You can of course start cooking the maimones from the minute you drain the oil off the potatoes and onions, as that's the oil you're going to use.

You will need:

2 potatoes roughly chopped

half a dried red pepper roughly chopped

300g oyster mushrooms, torn into large strips

1 green pepper, diced

1 quarter of an onion, diced

2 large cloves of garlic, chopped finely

1 peeled and chopped tomato 

2 tsp sweet paprika

4tbsp semolina flour

1l water

2tsp salt

1. Fry the potatoes and the dried red pepper together in the oil drained off from the potatoes and onions for the omelette.

2. When the potatoes are starting to become tender and are golden brown, add the paprika, tomatoes, onion, pepper, garlic, mushrooms and salt.

3. When the vegetables are cooked through and have released their moisture, add the semolina flour and stir well to coat them in it. Then add the water. 

4. Simmer the maimones until it is thick and you can no longer taste the semolina flour.

Now for pudding. If the weather is hot, you will want to make this first and chill it so that it is cold before the rest of the meal is ready. If you're in Britain in late October, as I am right now, you will probably not want to let it cool before you wolf it down.

You will need:

200g quick cook long grain rice (if you can't get quick cook then cook rice for 10 minutes in boiling water before draining and adding to the milk)
1 litre of milk
100g light brown soft sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
grated zest of one lemon
1 whole nutmeg

1. Put the milk, lemon zest and cinnamon sticks in a pan and bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Add the rice and simmer gently for 20-30 minutes, stirring almost constantly as the rice starts cooking to avoid it sticking.

3. When the rice is cooked though and opaque and the milk has reduced down to a creamy mixture, remove from the heat and quickly add the sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Carefully fish out the cinnamon stick - preferably using kitchen tongs or similar so you do not scald yourself.

4. Ladle the rice into glasses or pudding bowls. Grate a light dusting of nutmeg over each.

5. Either serve immediately or chill in the fridge.

Your Spanish banquet is complete:

So there you go, Spanish delicacies with which you can impress your friends, family, colleagues, enemies, pets...

Adios, amigos,

Ellie
xxx