I don’t really know what to call this, sausages and lentils seems a bit bald, uninspiring really and in no way conveys the lip smacking cosiness of it.  Also, I know several people not keen on lentils or indeed pulses of any kind which seems such a shame.  They work so well in a braise such as this or in soups, cold in salads, in dahls and curries….. Still if they are not your cup of tea I quite understand and believe I may have been slow to embrace them myself.

This one I believe is a winner however and, it being the school holidays, my daughter stood over me whilst I took the photograph asking when she could eat it.  You can either make this with good pork sausages or as I did today with venison sausages.  The gaminess of the latter works a treat with the lentils and I added half a teaspoon of redcurrant jelly  to reinforce the sweet flavour of the meat.  With the pork version I would be tempted to add a dollop of dijon to my plate.  Either way it is a one pot winner, wilted spinach, spring greens or some kale would be a delicious accompaniment.

Sausages and Lentils

6 sausages

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 leek, finely sliced

1 carrot, peeled and finely diced

2 teaspoons olive oil

100g puy lentils

500ml chicken stock

100ml red wine

Put one teaspoon of oil in a large pan and brown the sausages, removing them to a plate when done.  Add the second teaspoon of oil and soften the onion, leek and carrot for a few minutes until soft.  Stir the lentils into the vegetables and then add the wine and stock.  Put the sausages back into the pan and then simmer gently for 20-25 minutes until the lentils are done and the sausages cooked though (add the redcurrant jelly here if you are using it – see introduction).    This serves two but can easily be doubled.

It must be time for some fun.  I am truly a little bored of this dreary, cold weather.  Whenever I think I spot a sign of spring, boof, hopes are dashed and winter smirks and says he is hanging around a bit longer.   Still, there is no reason to let the weather get the better of us.  I have been thinking for some time of getting back into entertaining mode and out of my cosy winter hibernation.  Somehow it feels time to get friends over, crack open a few bottles alongside some good food and sit around the kitchen table chatting about this and that.

I have always loved those little bits to eat with drinks before lunch or dinner, but what to call them?  Canapes sound a bit smart, like those goodies that appear at weddings and grown up drinks parties, little rows of beauty, identical and perfectly crafted on slate or mirrored plates. Not, in all honesty what you should expect at my house.  Snacks sounds like something you might have when you get in from school and hors d’oeuvres seems old fashioned and I think is actually a starter rather than what you might have before.  Amuse bouche are those treats you get unexpectedly in restaurants and not what I mean here so, bits to eat with drinks it will have to be.

I adore being offered something before supper, not only from the greedy point of view but because it is a good idea when drinking.  Lunch always seems a distant memory and I’m not keen on the first glass of wine splashing down onto an empty stomach – I know how it will make me feel tomorrow…  More than this though, it starts the feast before you even get to sit down.  Perfect.

Onion tart is a regular offering from me, slow cooked melting sweet onions, criss crossed with salty savoury anchovies is superb pre-lunch and I have a tip top recipe I will post soon.  Cheese biscuits whilst simple in the extreme provide the necessary crisp bite – a recipe for these too will follow.  The crostini here are a current favourite, the irresistible taste of artichoke combined with zingy lemon and chilli work very well on a bit of crunchy toast.  A gentle garlic hum in the background and lots of verdant parsley add to the picture.

Sometimes I put this on the table in a bowl with a pile of toasted sliced ciabatta or ficelle – alternatively I might pile up the artichoke onto the little croutes and hand them around on a plate, as ever, it’s up to you.

Artichoke Crostini

1 jar chargrilled artichokes (around 280g)

1 small clove garlic

1/2 red chilli

1 small bunch of parsley

Zest of one lemon and the juice of half

Olive oil

Baguette/ficelle/ciabatta sliced and toasted

Put the drained artichokes, garlic, chilli, parsley, lemon zest and juice in a bowl or jug and blitz with a hand held blender (or chop it by hand and mix).  Now taste it, you may need more chilli or lemon juice as it is important to have both heat and sharpness.  Season with salt and pepper.  When you are happy with the taste, spread the mixture onto toasts or decant into a nice bowl.  Either way pour a little good olive oil over just before serving.  Depending on the size of your toasts, this will probably make about 12.

Mad baking today to get REDy (ready) for tomorrows cake stall at school in aid of Comic Relief.  I thought jam tarts were suitably round and red and it is easy to knock up a couple of trays of them.  I have also been painstakingly extracting all the red sprinkles, smarties, hundreds and thousands, chocolate beans etc from their mixed colour packets going almost cross eyed in the process.  These I will strew over a large chocolate icing covered cake to be cut into squares and pressed into hot little hands tomorrow in exchange for cash!

I am sure you don’t need a recipe from me for jam tarts but just in case, either buy your pastry or use the recipe I gave with the Bakewell Tart (March 2013).  Use it to line the holes in a bun tin, add a teaspoonful of jam and cook at 180 for 10 minutes then 150 for a further 10.

Comic Relief do an amazing job and though the proceeds from our cake stall may be but a drop in the ocean, it all helps and it is fun to join in.   Enjoy your Red Nose Day!

There I was last week with my washing out on the line thinking hurrah, Spring is here. The sun was shining, it was positively balmy outside and our chickens were sunbathing.  How Mother Nature must have laughed as the cold wind set in and last night, when it started actually snowing, her sides must have just about split.

So, here we are again, chilly.  Putting the layers back on and discussing the weather endlessly as only the British can.  I have put on hold the “Here is Spring” recipe I had planned and reached once more into my cache of cosy, winter warmers.  I don’t mind this at all, soups, stews and roasts are all most welcome at my table and I know I will miss them when the warmer weather does arrive.  That lovely day last week was just a tease, a reminder of what is in store, a real here today and gone tomorrow.

Anyway, this was our pudding yesterday for lunch.  Not only warming and a tiny bit stodgy (in a good way) but also an absolute breeze for my children to make for Mothering Sunday.  It was delicious and I was very lucky to be presented with it.  Warm custard or double cream, either or both compliment this superbly and if there is any left, it is just the ticket with a cup of tea.

Bakewell Tart

For the pastry –

100g plain flour

1 teaspoon icing sugar

25g cold butter, cubed

25g cold lard, cubed

1 egg yolk

Cold water

Whizz together (or rub in by hand) the first five ingredients and then cautiously add water, a few drops at a time until the pastry just comes together.  Form into a ball, flatten, wrap in clingfilm and leave it to rest for 20 minutes.

For the filling –

100g soft butter

100g caster sugar

150g ground almonds

2 eggs

A few drops of almond essence

Two good tablespoons raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 180 and put a baking sheet on your oven shelf to heat up.  Mix everything except the jam together really well.  Once the pastry has rested, roll out and use to line a 20cm tart tin with a loose bottom.  Bake this blind for 15 minutes.  Leave it to cool for a few minutes and then spread the jam evenly over the tart case followed by the almond mixture.  Smooth this to cover the jam and then cook for 25 minutes.  You could dust with icing sugar if you like or just serve as it is. This is enough for 4 with a couple of slices left over for tea.

Note – please do use bought pastry if that is what you prefer and also, if you can’t bring yourself to use lard just replace it with the same amount of butter.

I have a vague memory of beetroot in a white sauce.  I don’t recall if it was a recipe I saw or just a mention but it stuck in my mind as it must, surely, be an oxymoron. Can you imagine beetroot in a white sauce, it is not possible, the sauce would of course turn pink.  Barbie pink I imagine and there you would be with a pink sauce containing darker pink lumps of beetroot, extraordinary.  The more I think of this the more I wonder if it was just a strange dream, surely it can’t have been a real recipe, although it does have a ring of the 70’s about it when all vegetables at one time or other were blanketed in a white sauce.

Anyway I don’t think I have ever eaten such a thing but I know it took me a while to come around to this vibrant coloured root and yet now, I can’t get enough of it.  At school the beetroot was bright purple, usually hard and skidded around as you tried to cut the regulation sized orbs.  It was soused in a vinegar so astringent that it made you cough and I remember girls drinking this in abundance believing it to be a tremendous weight loss aid.  The coloured juice seeped into everything else on your plate along with its sharp dressing and was entirely uninviting.  After school I managed to avoid beetroot almost entirely for years, eating it only when required to be polite and puzzling at the earthy taste and its ability to turn your wee pink.

So what happened, did I grow up, is it something to do with having children, embracing vegetables as never before?  I now love it and seem to cook it every week, either chucked in the oven with other root veg, say carrots or Jerusalem artichokes and eaten simply with a roast chicken, green salad and my beloved garlic yogurt.  Or cooked, then peeled and put in a salad, maybe with feta (Beetroot and Feta Salad, Nov 2012) or whizzed in a soup.  I had thought to make this weeks soup into something jazzier with ideas of adding this or that.  In the end however, I decided to keep it simple so that the earthy sweet taste of the beetroot shines through and along with its majestic colour, creates a lunch to make the soul soar.

Beetroot Soup

4 beetroot, roughly cricket ball size, quartered

1 onion, peeled and quartered

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons water

750ml chicken or vegetable stock

Creme fraiche, to serve (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200.  Put the beetroot, onion, oil and water into a baking tray, season and cover with foil.  Cook in the oven for 1 – 1 1/2 hours or until the beetroot is tender.  Put the vegetables and any juices into a large pan, add the stock and blend with a hand held blender, alternatively blitz it in a liquidiser.  Reheat when you are ready to serve it, check the seasoning and add a small blob of creme fraiche if you like.  Serves 4.

This is a bit of an in-between time of year culinary speaking – cold enough that we still require some hearty ballast to keep us going but I am also looking for a bit of spring time zest and greenery to perk up the taste buds.  To commence the farewell and see you later in the year to the stews and rich roasts of winter if you will.

We have also, without trying to bore you, been eating less meat for a while.  Not that we don’t love it, I live with a committed South African braai master carnivore after all.  Just that I wanted to up the vegetable intake partly for healthy reasons but also to encourage the you know who’s that our green and purple and orange friends are fabulous.  This quest continues with mixed results.  Last week as a half term treat (just kidding) I made a garlicky aubergine dip, a sort of baba ghanoush.  My son ate what he had been given, said it was quite nice but firmly refused seconds.  My daughter meanwhile looked as if I had fed her a spoonful of wet sand.

Along with aubergines then, courgettes are one of the vegetables that appear more for my husband and I than for when we are gathered en famille.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not one for dancing around my children offering them only what I know they will eat.  No, no, no I constantly try new things, or old things in new guises.  It is just that I remember the misery, as a child, of being faced with something I simply hated eating and see no point forcing the issue.

So the courgette, chilli and garlic to go with pasta.  An easy, quick lunch, the chopping taking less time than the pasta does to cook.  I used penne today but often use linguine.  The capers are optional but add a bite to counter the sweet softness of the courgette and you do need some heat, I start with half a chilli and add more if it turns out to be a mild one.

Courgette, chilli and garlic with pasta

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large clove garlic finely chopped

Half a red chilli, finely chopped

1 courgette, ends trimmed and grated

1 heaped teaspoon of capers

Small bunch of parsley, chopped

Pasta of your choice, enough for 2

Put your pasta on to cook.  Heat the oil on a frying pan, add the garlic and chilli and cook gently while you grate the courgette.  When the pasta is nearly cooked add the courgette to the frying pan and turn up the heat.  Keep stirring so it doesn’t catch, you want the courgette to soften and lose a little water but not so much it becomes a khaki sludge.  When the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the frying pan along with the capers if using.  Give it all a good stir, season well and sprinkle with parsley.  Serve with parmesan if you like.

At this time of year I feel a little envious of those folk who enjoy eating, and therefore make, marmalade.  It seems such a happy and sensible seasonal tradition and I am a great fan of such things.  I imagine them pottering in a warm fug of a kitchen, the table covered in sticky dripping pots, happy in the knowledge of their marmalade lined larder shelves for the coming year.  The problem for me is I don’t like marmalade, or rather the bits. I do like orange jelly, shredless in other words, particularly on sausages but feel rustling that up might be an insult to those special Seville oranges.  I could of course, be entirely selfless and make pots of the proper stuff for those who love said conserve but in all honesty I have other things to do.

My children love blood oranges which of course are around at the same time as the Seville and we amuse ourselves with cutting one into sixths and sucking them, monkey like, our lips covering the skin and then grinning to reveal.  Honestly, endless fun.

So I needed to do something with oranges this cold, grey February and all that monkeying around got me thinking.  Blood Orange Granita is the delicious and gratifying result.  Sharp and sweet, a stunning colour and a perfect light refreshing pud after a rib sticking winter stew and dumplings supper.

Blood Orange Granita 

40g caster sugar

60ml water

250ml blood orange juice

Dissolve the sugar in the water over a gentle heat.  Then mix with the blood orange juice and pour into a plastic container with a lid.  Freeze for 3 hours and then give it a good stir, mixing the frozen edges with the probably still slushy middle.  Freeze for another couple of hours and then scratch into crystals with a fork and serve in small tumblers.  If you have  made this ahead and it is frozen solid, take it out of the freezer about 30 minutes before you want to serve it.  This would fill four small glasses but can easily be doubled.

Come on, it wouldn’t be February without some soup.  Cosy, warming, cheap, healthy soup.  Usually vegetable for us but that is not to say that a hot and sour prawn broth or a chilli spiked, coriander strewn chicken one wouldn’t be delicious, it is just that soup is often a quick easy lunch made from whatever I can find in the larder and perhaps needs using up.  Now, whilst I love the deep brown and savoury French Onion Soup, sometimes I like something a bit gentler and softer around the edges – more a hug than a rugby tackle.  This is just the ticket.  Easy peasy and cheap to make, it seems less identifiably oniony to children as well once blended.  Some quickly made crunchy oven baked croutons would be perfect here.

1 tablespoon oil

2 large onions (approx 750g), peeled and chopped

500ml vegetable stock

100ml milk

Salt

Sherry, for grown ups

Cream, a swirl (optional)

2 thick slices of bread

1 tablespoon oil

Heat the oil in a large pan over a gentle heat.  Add the onions and a good pinch of salt and cook without colouring for about 30 minutes until very soft and much reduced.  Add the stock and milk and simmer for a few more minutes.  If this is just for grown ups and you want to add a slosh of sherry, now is the time so it gets a chance to cook and lose the raw alcohol taste. Blend in a liquidiser or with a handheld blender and serve with the lovely crunchy croutons and that swirl of cream if you like.

Croutons – cut the bread into cubes, pop them in a small baking tray and turn in the oil, bake at 200 for about 10 minutes until light brown and crispy.

I was in the farm shop yesterday and spotted some cavolo nero, that beautiful dark green Tuscan kale and it reminded me of a regular lunch last winter.  One day the clock was ticking towards lunchtime and the fridge was pretty bare – kale, mushrooms and chilli on toast was the unexpectedly rewarding result.  As ever with kale you feel it is really doing you good, the chilli adds further pep.

Kale is a funny old vegetable, fresh and invigorating but can be a little bitter.  It came as no surprise to find my children weren’t that keen when served kale simply steamed so I had to find an alternative (I am trying to find a way to make every vegetable if not delicious then at least palatable to my two).  Having heard about kale crisps I thought I would give them a try.  Bingo – even my daughter who would normally recoil in horror at anything cabbagy loved these and indeed there was the usual argy bargy for the last crisps in the bowl.  All you do is turn some chopped curly kale in a little olive oil, spread on a baking sheet, sprinkle with a little sea salt and bake at 200 for 10 minutes.  It becomes crispy, savoury and deeply moreish.

Kale, Mushrooms and Chilli on Toast

2 handfuls of kale, curly or cavolo nero, chopped up

6 mushrooms, sliced

1/2 a red chilli, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 slices robust bread, ideally sourdough, toasted

Olive oil, plus some extra virgin olive oil for a final dressing

Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan or wok over a medium heat.  Add the mushrooms and cook until soft and a little coloured.  Add the garlic and chilli, stir and then put in the kale.  Continuing stirring until the kale wilts a little.  Put the slices of toast onto two plates and divide the kale and mushrooms between them.  Season with sea salt and pepper and a final, generous trickle of really good extra virgin olive oil.  Serves 2.

Many, many years ago, I went on holiday with best mate Kate and her parents to Spain.  It was in those heady single days when the most important factor on holiday was to get a good tan.  Very little else mattered much although eating well probably came a close second.  Funny how these two things would be entirely the other way round to me now.  I remember it as a happy, sunny lazy holiday and feeling a million miles away from London and work.  One evening we went out for supper along dark winding roads, occasionally encountering that often slightly crazy driving adopted by the locals until finally we came to what was little more than a shack on the sand – we had arrived at Fred the Beach.  We were invited into the kitchen, we studied the specials but there was only one thing to order, one very special reason for the trek to Fred’s – the paella.  It was sensational – proper, authentic, truly delicious paella.

Quite something to live up to then.  Fortunately I can’t remember the precise ingredients so recreating it exactly is not an issue, only that I loved every mouthful.  Paella is a regular with us and goes down very well.  We had a family over for lunch recently and when one of the little girls saw the paella on the table she announced she would not be eating it, only to have three helpings.

Whilst it may not seem the obvious choice for January, as I am not going to cook it outside over wood but inside on the hob, the weather and season make no difference. It is a superb one pot number full of thoroughly yummy things and perfect for a weekend lunch.

I have it in my head, erroneously or not, that paella is either inland or coastal, that is based on the ingredients found in either location.  Prawns, mussels, squid for the beach version and chicken, rabbit, snails for the inland.  The recipe that follows, I am afraid with total lack of regard for authenticity, marries the two containing as it does both chicken and prawns.  As I said, I am not recreating Fred’s masterpiece, just making something we all like to eat.

Paella

100g chorizo diced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 yellow or orange pepper, chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 heaped teaspoon paprika

400g chicken thigh, skinless boneless and cut into small pieces (or rabbit)

250g bomba (paella) rice

150ml white wine

1 litre chicken stock

Pinch of saffron

150g green beans, topped and halved

200g prawns, defrosted if frozen

Parsley, a good handful chopped

In a large frying pan or paella pan saute the chorizo, add the olive oil and the chopped onion and pepper and cook until soft.  Add the garlic, paprika rice and chicken and stir to mix it all together.  Make the stock so that it is very hot and add the pinch of saffron to it.  Now add the wine and the stock, put the beans on top and push them down slightly under the surface.  Leave to cook for 20 minutes without stirring until all the liquid has been absorbed and the rice is cooked.  Add a bit more stock or water if it seems to need it.  Put the prawns on top and again, push them just under the surface, cover the pan with a lid or foil and leave for 5 minutes.  Sprinkle with the chopped parsley and serve, with some lemon wedges to squeeze over if you like.

I bought some green beans for this but forgot what they were for and gave them to the children for tea the previous day, thus you see peas which were absolutely just as good.