Foodie Friday : Sunday roast chicken with pomegranate molasses

I've always loved food but as lock down continues, I can't stop thinking about it - what have I got in the cupboards, fridge and freezer ,and what am I going to cook today ?

Living four miles from the nearest shop in the middle of the countryside means I’ve always had to make sure we don't run out of stuff, but now of course during lock down, I'm only going out shopping about once a fortnight.

We're eating very well but I can’t get used to cooking for just the two of us. It  maybe less time-consuming, but I’m missing having my family around for late Sunday lunches and I miss the noise the laughter, the news and gossip around the table. I miss everybody greedily eating with gusto.

So what will I cook for Sunday lunch then, that first one after lock down when we can all be together again?

It's a roast chicken recipe from Joanna Weinberg in her book "How to feed your friends with relish" which was published by Bloomsbury in 2007.

Why everyone loves this roast chicken recipe

I know you're all probably thinking what’s so special about that, but this one is cooked in pomegranate molasses and my whole family love it. So much so my daughter had to buy her own copy of the book. Last week I even got a text from my youngest son asking for the recipe.

Here's a photo of one  I cooked last Sunday.

 You may think it’s a little black or even burnt in places, but don't worry, it’s the molasses which give it colour and make the skin so tangy and chewy. The meat inside is moist with a zinginess thanks to ginger. garlic and cumin.

But one good recipe does not make a great cookbook. Luckily, Joanna's book has many recipes|I turn to time and time again. One is Manuela's chicken with tarragon and cream which was the favourite for Joanna and her siblings when she was young. Manuaela was the family's Portugese housekeeper, the absolute saint who cooked every day for six children of different ages with different tastes .

There's plenty of other stories in the book, even  how Joanna first met her husband Ed, at a dinner she cooked.

I like a recipe book with context,  which draws you in to the authors life and Joanna's book does just that .She takes us to parties, barbecues , Sunday lunches, afternoon teas and meals around the kitchen table with her friends and family.There's also lots  of useful tips on how to create the perfect event and cater for most scenarios..

I feel as if I’m there with her in the kitchen before her guests arrive,  having a  good gossip and a glass of wine and then being in the middle of her gang eating supper. It's an addictive mix of recipes that really work and being part of the author's world , something which always sells food books to me.

So would you like the recipe ? Here it is then ...

Roast chicken with Pomegranate molasses

Ingredients 

1 red onion 

4 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses 

1 teaspoon of ground ginger 

half a teaspoon of ground cumin

1 clove of garlic pounded to a paste

1 lemon halved

 one medium free range chicken 

Method 

Preheat the oven to 220°C gas mark seven, and finely chop half of the onion leaving the other half intact.

Mix the pomegranate molasses,chopped onion ginger, cumin, garlic and a squeeze of lemon together in a small bowl and set aside.

Stuff the remaining half of onion in the cavity of the chicken along with both lemon halves.

When the oven is hot, roast the chicken  for 15 minutes , then remove it from the oven and slather the pomegranate mixture over the skin .

Reduce the oven temperature and continue roasting the chicken for 45 minutes the skin will look black and charred  but fear not it will be delicious. If the bird is larger it may need an extra 10 to 15 minutes cooking.

Remove  the bird from the oven, loosely cover with foil and let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes before carving.

And there you have it....it's so very  easy to make.

Joanna Weinberg recommends cooking this as part of a Middle Eastern wintry Sunday lunch accompanied by saffron mash and chickpea stew. This works well, but is also good with potatoes dauphinoise and vegetables too. I think its perfect for spring and summer lunches with roasted asparagus, perhaps a carrot and and peanut salad, or a fruity couscous. Or with the following....

Yes, that's my wonky writing...and yes, I write notes in cookbooks.

"How to feed your friends with relish" is still available as an e-book I believe, but copies are still available on Amazon or in secondhand bookshops.

Joanna's second book, also published by Bloomsbury, is "Cooking for real life". I just wish she'd get her skates on and write a third.....will there ever be a third one though?

A foodie friday reviewing Sarah Raven's recipes on a Saturday

September and October mean apples, and I've been picking them at the allotment for weeks now. I have three apple trees, two are cookers and the other is a variety with the warmest, rosiest glow.

There's been quite a number of them, and I've been using them every which way I can.

So on my day off, it was time to hunt through my recipe books to make something different. I've already stewed pounds of apples ready for crumbles this winter and made a few apple cakes. But I wanted to make something different.


And I struck gold with this book from Sarah Raven, which was published back in 2007 I think....and I'm pretty sure I bought my copy about five years ago.

Now this what I call a generous cook book. And by that I mean, this is one of those labour of love books where the author has given we readers  her life time's experience of growing and cooking fruit and vegetables. This is not one of those  a hundred recipes a book if you're lucky type of thing ..one on a double page spread type of book. Oh no. It's not a fancy pants type of cookery book either, with long, infinitely long winded and show off recipes either.

It literally is full to brim of tasty, workaday recipes to make the most of the produce from your garden and allotment. And as I've begun to grow more vegetables and now have fruit trees, I'm discovering different sections of the book.


The first new recipe to try was celeriac and apple soup...another way to use up  apples. This is a pale, silky textured and comforting soup. The sweetness of the celeriac married with the sharp freshness of the apples worked really well for me. Unfortunately my other half wasn't so keen.

But he did like the next new recipe very much... ...a Kentish apple cake. Now, I've made a Dorset Apple cake before but never one from Kent, and it's quite different in method and texture.

Here's the recipe....

Ingredients
225g unsalted butter plus a little extra for the tin
350g self raising flour
1 tspn ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
110g of sultanas or raisins soaked for an hour in water
175g castor sugar
75g toasted hazelnuts , chopped
450g cooking apples such as Bramleys
grated zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
plenty of Demerara sugar for dusting

How to make

1.Preheat  oven at 180 degs /gas mark 4 and grease and line the bottom of a 20cm loose bottomed cake tin

2.Pulse the sifted flour, cinnamon, salt and butter in a food processor until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Put the mixture in a bowl and stir in the sultanas, sugar and toasted nuts

3.Peel, core and chop the apples and add to the other ingredients with the lemon zest. Lightly beat the eggs and put them in.

4.Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for one to one and a quarter hours or until firm to the touch. You may need to cover the cake with foil to prevent it from becoming too brown on top.

5.While it's still hot, sift over plenty of Demerara sugar, and let it cool in the tin or a wire rack.

As Sarah Raven says, it's a good cake for tea or you can serve it warm as a pudding with lots of thick cream. I've now tried both ways of serving...and both are equally as good!

The more I use this book , the greater is my admiration for the sheer breadth of recipes..and there are some lovely photographs by Jonathan Buckley.

Incidentally, you can still obtain personally signed copies of this book - Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook published by Bloomsbury  from Sarah's own website.

A day of cooking from the Riverford Farm Cookbook

I usually have Fridays off. Phew...I love the anticipation of a day when I perhaps meet up with my writer friends for a lunch where we all bring a dish, have a feast, and talk about books and our writing. If not, I'm probably at the allotment or in the kitchen cooking , or at this time of year, making jam.

Now, this is an old favourite cook book of mine, published back in 2008 by 4th Estate...which I found out about when I met the team from Riverford at a local food fair shortly afterwards..

That's what the cover used to look like - it has now been "customised" by my terrier Eric...who decided to rip the front cover off and chew some of the pages.





But as the saying goes, you should never judge a book by its cover, and this old battered copy is a trusted and tried favourite. Written by Guy Watson, an organic farmer who's been growing vegetables for years and years, and Jane Baxter , who seems to have worked everywhere, including the River Café, this is an immensely practical book with pages and pages of quick and easy, but above all  tasty and seasonal recipes to make the most of your vegetables.

I've made so many of these recipes time and time again...especially the delicious sweetcorn fritters on page 370 and the braised red cabbage on page 83 which is made every autumn and winter. But the whole point of these foodie Friday posts is to try new recipes from my ever growing collection of cookery books.

And so, I delved into the previously untried pages of beetroot recipes. You see, I've always hated beetroot. I can remember the yucky taste of beetroot in vinegar as a child, and I vowed with hand on heart, that when I was a grown up, and I could choose what I wanted to eat, I would never, ever eat beetroot again.

And it's a vow I've stuck to for years, until my friend Debbie made a gorgeous Ottoleghi beetroot and walnut salad. I was intrigued, this was really nice! So this year, for the first time, I grew beetroot, only three rows though...just in case, that recipe was a one off and I found out I still didn't really like it.





And as soon as they were big enough, I opened the Riverford Farm cookbook to try some new ways of cooking them.

And here is the recipe that I have tried first....and I fear this may become an addiction.

Beetroot Gratin

Ingredients

1kg of beetroot, peeled
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
100ml double cream
2 sprigs of summer savoury, chopped or rosemary or thyme (I prefer thyme)
sea salt and black pepper

How to make

1.Thinly slice the beetroot..it should be 2-3mm thick

2.Mix the garlic and cream in a small pan and bring to the boil.Remove from the heat and leave to infuse for 10 minutes. Mix well and season with salt and pepper.

3.Put the sliced beetroot in a bowl and add some seasoning. Add the cream mixture and herbs and mix thoroughly so the beetroot is coated with cream. ( I must confess I added some extra)

4. Arrange in a 30cm gratin dish, ciover with foil and bake in a  preheated oven at 160 degs/gas mark 3 for 40 minutes.

5.Remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes or until the beetroot is tender.

And that's it. So easy and full of garlicky goodness which marries so well with the sweet softness beetroot. You will love it! Now I know you may think that's a rather sweeping statement. OK, I suppose it is, but so many beetroot haters I know simply adore this recipe.My son for one, and his girlfriend Ellie .She had joined us for supper last Sunday night for a roast. She was starving, but when she saw the deep pink creamy dish, she said an unequivical No!

"Try a teaspoonful "we all urged. She eventually did, with the greatest reluctance I might add, and before I knew it, she was piling her plate high. And she ate every mouthful.

I'm now making my way through the other beetroot recipes in this book. Chocolate beetroot brownies anyone?

But the Riverford Farm Cook Book isn't just a collection of tasty recipes. We learn how the vegetables are grown, there's tips on storage and preparation from years of experience from an organic grower, and the connection between growing organically and we are what we eat.

Meanwhile, I 've already decided that I'm definitely growing far more beetroot next year at the allotment!

A day of cooking from the book "Lucy's Bakes"



So, you may recall I discovered the other week that I own ninety books about food. Recipe books, cookery books, history of food books, travel books with recipes in....I have them all. And I love reading them all.

But recently, I have been rather remiss and rather lazy when it comes to trying out new recipes and dishes. So, each Friday if I can manage it, I'm going to try something different....whether it be a brand new cake, dessert, or a savoury supper dish.

So, what book do I choose to test first? Why, the latest in my collection of course....one which I bought about three weeks ago. Well actually I bought two copies, one for me and one for my daughter.

"Lucy's Bakes" was published in April by Hardie Grant Books, and it's full of gorgeous traybakes, cakes, biscuits and bread.





I've known Lucy Cufflin, the author for years. She knows her food, as a former chef to the Britsh Ambassador in Sweden, the Executive Chef for Skiworld. She has her own food business and I worked with her on a British Red Cross fund raising committee for a number of years. She's funny and feisty, and a no nonsense type of gal...and good to have a few glugs of wine with.

Anyway, we met for lunch a few weeks back.

Also there, and also on that committee was the other Lucy, Lucy Lee-Tirrell who has collaborated on this book. The two Lucys are friends who are joined at the hip when it comes to cooking, baking, and devising recipes...and neither of them can stop talking about food.

I've eaten lots of their food before , so trust what they tell me to do in a recipe, which is just as well, when I tried their "weird and wonderful banana cake".

The title intrigued, but how can you resist the first line of the recipe which says "Brace yourselves!"
Well, I couldn't.....but almost flinched when next come the words "this cake is made with mayonnaise."

Now, I've been making banana loaves for years, and have always gone back to Nigella's recipe. But  I trust the two Lucys. And you should too, even though you might be initially slightly put off by the sloppy mixture with a whiff of mayo coming from the bowl.

Because what you get, is the most beautifully light, moist banana cake, which keep in the tin for four or five days and still tastes fabulous. I've made this cake twice now, testing it on my family and friends at work. Everyone loves it and no one suspected that mayonnaise was involved in its making.

One of my sons hasn't  been eating cake for a number of months now , he's juicing, detoxing , eating healthily , you name it etc....but he seemed to be  mysteriously drawn  to the kitchen as the cake came out of the oven. I cut a slice for him . The cake, still warm, disappeared in a a few nanoseconds. Like Oliver Twist, he held his plate out and asked for more.

And although it does taste delicious still warm and fragrant, please leave most of it until the following day, and the next day, when it just gets better in terms of flavour and moistness.

As for my friends at work, well , they loved it too. I loved it, and will have to ban myself for making it more than once a week.

 I've also made Lucy's soft cookies...another oh so easy recipe which is cheap and cheerful too. My cookies didn't look exactly like Lucy's  I have to admit, but boy, they went down a storm.

There's over 200 recipes in this book, and what I like is the no nonsense directions when making each recipe...concise but informative, with lots of suggestions for ways for adding different ingredients to adapt the cakes or biscuits etc.

 For example, Lucy Le Tirrell's weird and wonderful banana cake can be also adapted to make a carrot cake too. There's plenty of short cuts in this book too...making every recipe accessible to complete beginners. Plus, each recipe has been tested by volunteers, and their comments are also included.

I also like the little details of how they found or devised each recipe. Anyway, what do I bake next from the book? I'll definitely give the carrot cake a go, but not until I've tried after I've made the lemon curd cake and the parsnip and ginger cake. Oh, and the biscotti and bread and.....


But before I get carried away, here's the recipe which I know you will love....

Weird and Wonderful Banana Cake

250g (9 oz) very ripe bananas (about 3 after peeling)
200 g (7oz or 1 cup) soft light brown sugar
250g (9 oz/ 1 cup) mayonnaise ( I used Hellmans mayonnaise, which Lucy also recommends)
100g water or strong coffee (I used water)
250 g (9oz/2 cups) plain, all purpose flour
10g (half an ounce) bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
pinch of salt
Demerara sugar for  sprinkling

So here's what you do....

1.Preheat the oven to 180C (350 degF/Gas  4).Line a 1 kg (2 lb) loaf tin with baking paper.

2.Mash the bananas to a smooth paste.

3.Add the sugar with the mayo, mix well with a wooden spoon, add the water or coffee.

4.Add in the dry ingredients and mix well.

5. Put into the prepared tin and sprinkle with the demerara. Bake for 40 -45 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. Turn out onto a wire rack, remove the paper and leave to cool.

6.Store in a cool place in an airtight container or well wrapped in cling film (plastic wrap) and foil.

Days of loving my cookery books.

Erm...there's 90 of them. Yes, I have 90 recipe books and books about food.

I didn't realise I had so many ....at a guess last year I thought there may be 60. Oops...
Some of them are on the bookshelves in the kitchen

Others can be found on the dining table,

by my bed, on the coffee table...wherever I sit and read, there's bound to be a book about food close by.

My collection of books holds the usual suspects that can be found on many shelves....offerings from Nigel, Nigella and Jamie. There's two from Otam Ottalenghi, a couple from Skye Gingell, a tattered , original old copy of Elizabeth David's French Food as well as several paperback copies of her others, there's quite a few books on Italian cookery, Australian fusion food, thai food, books on fruit,and mother and daughter Jane and Sophie Grigson put in a couple of appearances. And if you want to read a book about cowboy food, well I have one right here.

There's even one that I helped to produce with Kim Hall....a book compiled of 25 years of recipes from Miranda Hall which was published by the British Red Cross to raise funds.

Reading a cookery book isn't just about the recipes, the best , for me, give  an insight into the culture of the country where they came from, and I'm a sucker for personal stories which accompany the recipes themselves.

There's something so comforting about being able to nestle down and read about food. There's something exciting about planning a different meal, to search for inspiration. Plus, there's something so satisfying about looking for a recipe to make  something delicious from fruit and vegetables I've grown myself.

The thing is, I do have my favourite books and my go to recipes of dishes I know and love. Especially if friends are coming around. Better be safe than sorry is my motto.

I also tend to use what I've got...sometimes I'm not organised to select a recipe and make sure I've got all the ingredients in advance!

However, in the spirit of being more organised, and trying out some different recipes , I've decided that each Friday I'm going to be taking two of my favourite or two completely new recipes from a different book in my collection and making them. I'll share them with you.....and let's see where it takes us. Here on this blog, Friday will be Foodie Friday!


In the meantime, why not listen to this?

It's a broadcast from a couple of Fridays ago on BBC Leicester. My friend at work Ed Stagg invited himself around for a late lunch...he wanted to record me making an easy peasy recipe.

So here is what I made....and this is what it sounded like! Go on, you know you want to listen....and the recipe is there too.

 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02wqp92