Rabbit Recipes: Chilli Paneer

This is Bartimaeus' favourite dish, and the recipe is here as requested by the Monkey. I make it two ways - of late I've been doing it this way which is quicker, and I actually think, tastier than the long-winded recipe I used to use (where you coat the paneer cubes in a mix of ginger, garlic, egg and cornflour, fry, set aside and then add to the veg at the end). This is actually crispier (the egg coating actually slides off the cubes when you re-add them to the pan, leaving them soggy and without flavour). Some versions call for vinegar and tomato ketchup - they also make the dish soggy, and they just overpower all the zinginess of the chillies and ginger so I have always left them out.

This is a dish from a curious cuisine known as Indo-Chinese (I'll post up my recipe for non-deep fried "vegetable Manchurian" another day) which is basically an Indian take on Chinese food. That said, there is a distinct Indian-Chinese cuisine that developed in Calcutta as a result of Chinese migrant workers who lived there, as I found out from attending a presentation by a fascinating anthropology project - but I don't really know if this authentic Indian-Chinese fusion food bears any resemblance to its wildly popular Indian counterpart. There's also Chinese cuisines that use chilli and spices that are more reminiscent of India - basically, there's a lot of crossover going on!

Ingredients
1 red onion, sliced
1.5 tbsp minced ginger paste (I grate frozen ginger, it's much easier to work with)
1.5tbsp minced garlic
400g paneer block cut into cubes (I love chopping up paneer, it's so satisfying)
1 fat red chilli and 1 fat green chilli, sliced into rings (deseeded if they're too spicy for you - have a nibble at one to check!)
1/2 green pepper and 1/2 red pepper, sliced
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
5 spring onions, chopped
handful chopped fresh coriander

1. Add 3tbsp of sunflower or vegetable oil to your wok and heat until quite hot.
2. Add cubed paneer and fry untill golden brown on all sides and crispy.

3. Turn heat down to medium.
4. Add sliced red onions to the pan and fry briskly until a bit softened. Then add 1tbsp of each of the ginger and garlic, and the chillies, and mix thoroughly and fry off for a couple of minutes.

5. Add sliced peppers and turn up heat, frying them briskly. Add the remaining ginger and garlic. Add soy sauce so it sizzles, and then salt to taste. Allow peppers to char a bit. There should be a nice dark brown glaze by now, if not, add a bit more soy sauce.

6. Toss in spring onions and coriander, stir through, and take off the heat.

Recently, I've been serving this with spiced noodles, but I actually also really like this served with plain basmati rice - the cleanness of the rice and the savouryness of the paneer is just lovely. The proper Indo way would be to eat this alongside a couple of other dishes (like the above veg Manchurian) with a stack of fried puffed breads called puris.

A tribute to the best olives ever

Nocellara [Olive] Green by nazneen372 featuring cluster earrings

Cluster earrings
£33 - anthropologie.eu

Monsoon Blair Bow Back Shrug
£38 - monsoon.co.uk

Womens Casual Shoes - Henderson Band in Dark Tan Leather from Clarks...
clarks.co.uk

Darling Edie Frame Bag
darlingclothes.com

No, I'm not yet eating them with ice cream or anything so ridiculous. But I need to tell you about Nocallera del Belice olives.I am partial to a good olive, and stumbling across these stunning, bright jade green olives in Asda a while back, I've developed something of an obsession with them.

The olives are not like many you've probably tasted. They're buttery, creamy, rich, rather than bitter or aggressively piquant. They are exceedingly, exceedingly, moreish and I urge thee to get thee down to thy local Asda, Sainsbury's or Pizza Express to try some.

I can't quite capture nor describe the beautiful green colour of these olives. But they're pretty much the same shade as this dress. Which is funny, because when I showed the olives to Bartimaeus the first thing I said after breathlessly cooing about their tastiness is the fact that I'd love a dress this colour. Clearly the designers at Louche have a CCTV camera somewhere in my kitchen.

In tribute to the prettiest dress I've seen in a while, I put together this moodboard. It's such a beautiful, simple design, letting the colour speak volumes, with such a lovely neckline detail, that in contrast to my usual add-unpredictable-colour-to-the-mix approach to dressing, I've kept it very simple with tan, cream and a little pop of complementary citrus. (Olives and lemons, born to go together, by the way). That said, I can also see this dress working with magenta, violet, fuchsia...

Rabbit Recipes: Lunch Ideas

Not so much a collection of recipes, but some of the most popular lunches in the Rabbit-Bartimaeus household. I always love reading about people's lunch ideas because if you get in a rut, packed lunches can be so boring and miserable! A lot of these are self-evident, but if you would like a recipe for any of these, do say in the comments and I will happily oblige.

We both work from home a fair bit so some of these lunches aren't as portable as some. I find having a huge range of (mostly spicy) condiments really useful when I'm making lunches with 7 minutes notice. Things I wouldn't be without:

sweet chilli sauce/chilli jam - great with cheese, but also spicy noodles
aubergine pickle - a delightful Gujarati chutney you can pick up in Asian supermarkets, it's sweet and spicy and is great in sandwiches
mango chutney
mustards - I have wholegrain and Dijon always at hand
salad dressings -in an ideal world, we'd always make our own, but I like to have a couple of variants in the fridge to add flavour to salads
nuts - great to add protein and nutrients to salads, noodles and to have as a snack (I love cashews)
chilli mayonnaise - I hate normal mayonnaise but chilli flavoured versions are very useful - makes for a brilliant, perky tuna melt!

So here are some Rabbit lunches:

- Indian spiced noodles with frozen vegetables and prawns/chicken breast, topped with a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce and a heap of peanuts and cashews

- Ciabatta rolls with breaded camembert and sweet chilli sauce, red onion and lettuce

- Indian spiced scrambled eggs on frozen potato and spinach stuffed paratha

- Non-pork "ploughmans" with smoked salmon/sliced turkey, cheeses, a boiled egg, foccaccia, avocado and carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes (Rabbit favourite)

- Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toasted croissants (lovely brunch too)

- Couscous with chickpea masala and feta cheese, pine nuts and rocket

- Chilli tuna mayonnaise and cheese melts

- Spiked minestrone (just tinned soup with some chilli flakes warmed up in it) with cheese on toast

- Mexican egg tortilla wraps - a fried egg, topped with salsa and greek yoghurt, with cheese, salad and coriander, wrapped in a garlic tortilla


What did you have for lunch today?

Rabbit Recipes: Persian Chicken Pilaf

This is a recipe that divides the Bartimaeus-Rabbit household. I love it. Bartimaeus doesn't. I think it's as a result of our differing South Asian backgrounds - Muslim Bengali cuisine always nods towards its Mughal connections to Afghanistan and Persia, with aromatics like cardamom, cinnamon, and bay used liberally in biryanis and lamb and chicken dishes. Gujarati food is plainer, simpler, flavoured more with asofoetida (I am just beginning to see its point) and mustard seeds. It's, in my opinion, Bartimaeus' loss as this is delicious, indulgent and rich. And really very easy.

The magic of this dish is that as the chicken roasts on the bed of rice and vegetables, it creates its own stock and that the sticky, caramel-coloured rice will be some of the most chickeny, savoury. flavourful rice you'll ever have.

To be honest this was a result of visualising something in my mind, having various things in my fridge, and bunging it all together - so while there looks like an awful lot of ingredients (suggesting muchos effort) it's really not the case. I roasted the rice under the spiced chicken pieces, but as it took hours for the rice to cook and some it still remained crispy (some people like it, but crunchy rice sets my teeth on edge) in the recipe here I'm recommend boiling the rice first. I do hate it when a recipe only tells you halfway in that it needs 24 hours' marinading time so let me tell you from the off: THIS RECIPE DEFINITELY TASTES BETTER WITH AFTER 24 HOURS' MARINADING TIME.

2 cups of basmati rice (I used a mix of brown and white for texture and fibre)
half a butternut squash cut into 0.5 cm cubes
1 aubergine cut into 0.5 cm cubes
1 red onion, chopped
1 bulb of garlic (keep half unpeeled)
1 lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp pine nuts
2 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
garam masala
cumin
ground coriander
3 tbsp frozen peas
1 tsp green sultanas (or regular sultanas if you can't find them)
6-8 prunes
1/2 tsp of saffron
3 tbsp greek yoghurt
6 chicken thighs
1 cup good chicken stock

1. Soak saffron in 1 tsp of hot water and crush 4-5 garlic cloves into a pulp.
2. Mix the saffron and the water into the greek yoghurt with salt and pepper and add the pulped garlic. Add one lemon's juice to the mix.
3. Mix the chicken thighs into the yoghurt marinade (score the pieces to get the flavours into the chicken).
4. Leave for at least two hours, or if possible, overnight.
5. Preheat the oven to 200C.
6. Boil the rice until just cooked (but not soft).
7. In a large roasting dish, combine the rice with all the remaining ingredients (fruit, spices, peas, squash, aubergine, onion, unpeeled garlic cloves). Drizzle some olive oil over (not much as the chicken fat will also soak into the rice). Flatten it down with a spoon to create an even surface.
8. Place chicken pieces on top of the rice/vegetable bed. Pour over remaining marinade over the chicken and the rice. I place the chicken skin side down first and then halfway through cooking, I turn them over to crisp up.
9. Bung in the oven!
10. Check on it intermittently. If the rice looks dry, splash over a bit of the chicken stock.
11. Remove when the chicken is cooked and nicely browned (45minutes ish?)
12 Serve to guests with refined (i.e. non-Gujarati) palates.

Rabbit Recipes: Arancini (Or: Why I Always Make Too Much Risotto)

I have, until very recently, had a deep phobia of deep fat frying. I am a scaredy cat and I'm clumsy, and the two together + boiling oil has never seemed like the best idea to me. Marrying into a Gujarati family has meant I've had to face this fear as perhaps 50% of Gujarati snacks and breads are deep fried. I in no way aim to emulate this ratio in my diet but every now and again I do like a freshly cooked samosa or a puffed puri.

This is an Italian recipe that I first came into contact with in Carluccio's (I love Carluccio's!) The taste of these delicious, crispy risotto balls filled with melting cheese, remained there in my subconscious until I was faced one day with a massive batch of leftover risotto and couldn't face eating it for the third day in a row. And then, DING! I remembered.

This is ridiculously easy if you have leftover risotto to hand. I would actually also like to try making an Indian version using leftover khichuri, a type of lentil risotto - possibly filled with mincemeat or paneer.

All you need is leftover risotto (fresh isn't gluey enough to make the balls from so you'll just have to make a bit extra!), breadcrumbs, a relatively hard cheese (I used Edam here but cheddar is excellent too), and a beaten egg to use as egg wash. And one of these (I'm not sure what they're called but available from any good Indian hardware/cookware shop!), which has considerably lessened my fear of deep frying. I can stand half a metre away and gingerly poke the cauldron of oil!

Cube your cheese into 0.5cm ish pieces. Mould the cold risotto around the cubed cheese into balls.

Then get a conveyor belt type thing going (preferably photograph yours in the right order) with risotto balls, egg wash, breadcrumbs and empty plate at the end, with forks in each to stop things getting too messy.

Get your oil nice and hot (drop a grain of risotto in it and if it sizzles and rises to the top, it's ready, if it sinks, it needs to be hotter. If the oil is smoking, it's too hot and you need to - carefully - take it off the heat for a bit).

Drop 4-5 of the breaded arancini into the oil (you can use the spoon to do this ) and fry for 5-6 min until golden brown.

Remove with the sieve-spoon/similar implement and place on a plate with sheets of kitchen roll. Repeat with batches of arancini.

I like to serve them with a crisp salad to cut the fried-ness, and two or three dips (sweet chilli-mango, chilli mayonnaise and ketchup, usually!)

p.s. burning a candle is THE best way of getting rid of frying smells. That's your Diptyque/Yankee/Jo Malone addiction justified, isn't it?

Rabbit Recipes: Dhokla Muffins

Dhokla is a Gujarati steamed fluffy savoury cake made with gram flour and topped with mustard seeds, desiccated coconut and coriander. As they're steamed and made from protein-rich chick pea flour, they're one of the few relatively healthy Gujarati snack foods and are very, very popular with Bartimaeus, my mum, and most folks who try them. There's a lot of different kinds, and different levels of difficulty in making them. It's possible to just buy a Gits packet and add water but having tried this recipe, I really don't see the point and it's much cheaper this way. In place of "curd" I used greek yoghurt and used 2 tsp baking powder instead of "eno fruit salt", but I think using probiotic yoghurt would work to help the batter rise too. I also omitted the ground green chillies and put a pinch of red chilli in there instead.

Pre-topping

I can't really take any credit for this recipe, because it's not mine. However, what I can take credit for the presentation/method. Previously, I've used my mother in law's steaming technique of pouring the batter into a foil lined steamer and hoping for the best. This is pretty disastrous - it's a wet batter, and most of it leaks, you have to stab holes in the foil which don't really work and there isn't enough air then circulating for the dhokla to rise nicely. You end up with a sad, flat, wet yellow pancake and no fluffiness at all.

But when thinking up recipes as I drifted off to sleep one day (as I am wont to do) I realised silicone muffin cups would solve all this - and result in cute little individual dhoklas. I would recommend greasing the liners with a little oil/ghee (especially in the edges/nooks as that's where the most sticking happens) and leaving to cool before turning out. Each set of 8 muffins took me about 6-8minutes to steam and the recipe I've linked to made over 30 of the lovely little things.

With the topping

The traditional way to eat them is with Gujarati green chutney but I didn't have any (!) so I served them with sweet chilli-mango sauce (a hybrid of sweet chilli sauce and mango chutney. it is so much awesomeness!) and chilli ketchup.

Whilst they're technically a snack, they're breadlike and I think can be used in the place of blander carbohydrates quite easily. We had them with my Indian spiced scrambled eggs (which I will post about another day) for a tasty twist on brunch. I like the idea of dunking them in soups - lentil, carrot and coriander, chilli bean. And I want to experiment with fillings - particularly a chilli paneer centre, but I think I'd need to make full sized muffins to get enough structure to hold it (watch this space). They're definitely going to be a staple in the Rabbit-Bartimaeus household!

Hello again

So I have been AWOL, again. This time, for health reasons which have meant I've had to remove myself from lots of different obligations and commitments (something that as a "cannot-say-no-er" I've really struggled with) and which also meant I just cut social networking (and real-life socialising) from my life as I hid myself away. I'm getting back on track now (though many friends still haven't seen my actual face for several months now and getting better is still being, at times, a frustratingly slow process.)

I do love blogging, but I've always found it hard to fit into my long and busy days, doing a job where almost any time off feels like it's stolen. That said, I've realised I need to keep a balance, and that things that make me happy are also good for me. So, I've come back to the fold, and I hope you'll forgive this second long absence. I have some new project ideas coming up I would like to share with you, as well as a heap of makeup, budget dress acquisitions (Ebay is enemy to many a seller but has until now been my friend!) and nail polishes.

For the mean time, by way of thanks for sticking around, please let me offer you a virtual cupcake...

recipe. Which is kinda a Rabbit invention (well, a heavily adapted Hummingbird Bakery recipe, anyhow). There are a heap of Chai Tea Latte cupcake recipes out there - but many are overly sweet, too heavy on the cinnamon at the expense of other spices, and do not feature a totally delicious mascarpone topping. Aside from cream-cheese frosting, it's the only icing I can eat enthusiastically (I have an almost-savoury sweet tooth and cannot bear buttercreams and fondants) The addition of tea-infused milk to this recipe makes for a melt-in-the-mouth cake; the cocoa gives the slightly-bitter depth that proper, builder's brew, endlessly boiled chai has.

For the cake
120ml whole milk
3 regular teabags
2 tbsp chai spice powder, or  a mix made of: 2 tsp of ground ginger, 2 tsp of cinnamon,  tsp of crushed black cardamom seeds (or seeds popped out of 6 cardamom pods and crushed)
100g plain flour
17g cocoa powder (sifted)
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter at room temperature
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
For the mascarpone frosting
2 tbsp of icing sugar
6tbsp mascarpone
1 tsp of chai spice powder or above homemade mix
little bit of chai spice powder or cinnamon to sprinkle on top
 a 12-hole cupcake tray, lined with paper cases
Makes 12
1. Put the milk, 1tbsp of the chai spice mix and tea bags in a saucepan, and bring to the boil. Take off the heat, and leave to cool, with teabags left in the milk.
2. Preheat the oven to 170C (325F) Gas 3.
3. Mix flour, salt, baking powder, cocoa together and remaining tablespoon of chai spice mix in a bowl. 
4. Cream butter and sugar together with the vanilla in a separate bowl, then add egg and beat until fluffy. Add the cooled tea to the mix (squeeze all the tea out of the bags to get as much tea-flavour out as possible!)
5. Add a tablespoon of flour mix to the batter at a time, and mix.
5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until two-thirds full and bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the sponge bounces back when touched. A skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
6. For the mascarpone frosting, beat together icing sugar, chai spice mix and mascarpone. I've suggested 2 tbsps of icing sugar, but sweeten to taste.
7. When the cupcakes are cold, spoon the frosting on top and decorate with a light sprinkling of chai spice powder or cinnamon.

Summer Salads

It's been a while since I did a food post and this is one I've been thinking of for some time. Lunch is a tricky meal, I find - you want something substantial, that will stop you snacking later, but not heavy and sleep-inducing (unless you're actually planning on a nap)... I tend therefore to favour soup in the winter and salads in the summer. And I have a lot of fun inventing salad combinations but tend to forget successful ones. So here's a list of combinations I've tried out lately. Salads don't really require recipes (I find the idea a bit absurd actually - 8 lettuce leaves or 9? 7 or 8 cherry tomatoes?) so I'm going to just list the main ingredients in three parts (main ingredients; dressing; salad stuff) and star them in deliciousness. They were all tasty, but some are just more delicious than others!

• Garlic marinaded grilled halloumi and chickpeas; pomegranate molasses, honey and chilli dressing; lettuce, cherry tomatoes, spring onions. *****
• Feta and watermelon; lime juice, mint, black pepper and parsley; rocket, cucumber, iceberg. **** (***** if it's really hot weather)
• Smoked mackerel, baby new potatoes, pickled baby beetroot; honey, lemon and wholegrain mustard dressing; cucumber, lettuce, spring onions. ***
• Brie, grapes, walnuts and pumpkin seeds; honey and red wine vinegar dressing; lettuce.
• Falafel and feta; parsley, lemon juice and olive oil; spring onions, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber. ****
• Smoked salmon, brie and beetroot; lemon and honey dressing; spring onions, cucumber and lettuce. ***
• Tinned tuna, boiled egg halves, green beans and olives; wholegrain mustard, lemon and honey dressing; red onion, cucumber and lettuce. **
• Garlic marinaded chicken pieces, couscous, raisins, pine nuts; olive oil and lemon; spring onion, tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber. ***
• Cheddar cubes, apple, walnuts; honey and red wine vinegar dressing; lettuce and cucumber. **
• Couscous, feta, raisins and pine nuts; lemon and olive oil; spring onions, lettuce and tomatoes.
• Prawn cocktail, avocado; lemon and olive oil; rocket, lettuce, cucumber, spring onion.
• Feta, green lentils, shredded chicken; pomegranate molasses and honey dressing; spring onions, cucumber, lettuce.

Recent baking and cooking exploits

Made last Sunday, all within the space of 2.5 hours. I was impressed with myself, I must admit.

Cherry Pie:

We had a box of disappointing Spanish cherries so I decided to make them into pie. Rubbish fruit always = pie in Naz Cooking Maths. However, the recipe I used wasn't great, and didn't include any liquid so the fruit didn't get the lovely sticky sauce that usually comes with a cherry pie. But it was nice nevertheless.

Courgette and Cheese Muffins:

I made these after my sister told me about Hugh Fearnley Whittingsall's recipe in the Guardian. I liked the sound of these, but in reality they're not as tasty as I thought. It might have been because I didn't have parmesan and used a medium cheddar, though - I think it calls for a strong flavoured cheese. But Bartimaeus loved them, so go figure. They do go well with soup or salads.

and banana bread (you don't really need a picture of it, it's not the prettiest stuff in the world! and it got munched before I could take a picture). I make a couple of adjustments to Nigella's recipe: I take out the boozy sultanas as my mum doesn't drink and I think they'd just make it oversweet, and I add more walnuts and salted butter. I also cut out 50g of the sugar. Upping salt and decreasing sugar tends to make cakes more moreish I find! I usually make them in cupcake cases - they don't rise like cupcakes but they're much easier to eat and transport, and only take about 15 minutes to bake.

Inspired by the World Cup Come Dine With Me, I made Baked Eggs Florentine yesterday, which was made by someone called Neil "Razor" Ruddock this week! I never thought I'd be doing recipes inspired by footballers, but it did look lovely. Traditionally, it's made with poached eggs and hollandaise but I don't like either. I sauteed the spinach with a clove of garlic first and then cracked eggs on top, baked in a water bath for 10 minutes and then topped with cheese sauce and cheese. I served with crusty bread and it was lovely! There's something about baking eggs that really brings out their flavour.

Tonight, I'm doing Carlton Palmer's crab pot recipe! It was a special request from Bartimaeus, who loves the stuff. TWO recipes from footballers! Wonders will never cease. I have to say I was way more impressed with their efforts than the dull offerings of the WAGS in the previous episode!

Valentine's Dinner

As promised, here's what I made for V Day. I can't bear restaurants on the ickiest day of the year, so I made this:

Crab linguine with cream and chilli

followed by

fluffy chocolate mousse and shortbread

(all of which are Bartimaeus faves)

I used tinned crab for the linguine because I couldn't find fresh. I've come across lots of recipes that use tinned crab (I think Nigella uses it) but I've always been quite sceptical - given fresh crab can be quite fishy-smelling I thought tinned would be way worse. It was much more reasonable (£2.09 a tin, which isn't sardine priced but not bad) and  was expecting a fishy, tuna-y mush. I was so surprised to see little claw-shaped whole white chunks when I opened my tins finally (I'm left handed in everything but writing and I really struggle opening tins!) which looked like pearls! Now I'd definitely recommend tinned crab as a cheap way to get more seafood in your diet.

Crab Linguine


The recipe was one I tweaked as I went along, and goes something like this. Can I just emphasise that the parsley is pretty much essential to this dish, as is the rocket - both lift the flavours and cut the richness. It tasted kinda bland and overrich until I added both - when suddenly it transformed to deliciousness.


Serves 4

Ingredients

8 shallots, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 red chilli or 1/2 tsp crushed chilli flakes
1 large glass of white wine
olive oil
2 tins of white crab meat, flaked
200ml double cream
juice and zest of half a lemon
1 large bunch of parsley, coarsely chopped
bag of rocket leaves

dried linguine

Add 1 tbsp of olive oil to a pan and fry 1 clove of chopped garlic and the chilli over medium heat. Add the crab and mix through. Leave to one side.

Fry shallots in olive oil over low heat until softened. Add 1 clove of chopped garlic. Turn up heat and add glass of wine. Let it bubble, and smell it - when it doesn't smell of alcohol anymore, it's all evaporated. Turn the heat right down and stir in the cream. In another pot, ass linguine to boiling salted water (it cooks in 6 minutes so keep an eye out and drain when al dente!) Add the crab to the cream sauce and season to taste. Add the lemon juice and zest and stir well, and chuck in the parsley.

Plate up, and serve with generous amount of rocket leaves and a lemon wedge.


Shortbread

This is the easiest thing ever to bake, the only thing you have to do is make sure your butter is soft (I microwave mine on the lowest setting for 30 seconds at a time because our kitchen's so cold it'd stay rock hard even if it wasn't in the fridge!)

Ingredients

Makes about 15 small or 10 large biscuits

125g butter, softened (I used salted because I like my shortbread salty but it's up to you)
55g caster sugar
180g plain flour

Preheat oven to 190C (gas mark).

Beat the sugar and butter together until pale and fluffy. Stir in flour a bit at a time until it mixes to a crumbly dough.

Flour your work surface and roll out the dough gently. Cut into fingers, rounds or novelty heart and butterfly shapes depending on cutters available and how twee you are. Place on greaseproof paper, prick each shape with a fork a couple of times, and sprinkle with some more caster sugar. Chill in fridge for 20 minutes and then place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes until lightly golden.

Don't remove from paper until fully cooled or they'll crumble!


My Fluffy Chocolate Mousse

Now this is a Gordon Ramsey recipe I tweaked so much I feel no shame in claiming it as mine. Whilst I do like a dark, rich chocolate mousse sometimes, I much prefer a lighter fluffy creamier kind. Plus Bartimaeus' favourite pudding is dunking shortbread in mousse for which, obviousement, you need a dunkable mousse. A thick chocolate pot type isn't going to get you very far, and may result in broken shortbread (gasp).

Sooo this is my version. Some of the measurements (well, the cream) are approximate because I whisked, tasted, added until I was happy with it.

100g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
500ml double cream
2 large egg whites
50g caster sugar

Place chocolate into large bowl. Boil 150ml of the cream and pour over chocolate, stirring until it is all melted (if it doesn't all melt, put in microwave for 30 seconds at a time and stir every interval until it is). Cool chocolate cream over bowl of iced water.

Add rest of the cream and whisk to soft peaks (don't overwhisk or the next bit will be difficult!)

Whisk the egg whites, adding sugar, tablespoon at a time until you get stiff peaks. Fold this into the chocolate cream very carefully so as not to whip out any air.

Spoon into glasses or heart shaped ramekins, again depending on how twee you like to be with your special occasions (me, much!)

Et voila.

Roasted Salmon and Spinach Pasta Bake

Can you tell that posting more entries is also a bit of a vague resolution? I've been up since 5.30 today to help my mum walk to her car and make sure she got to work ok and am going to make myself some porridge in a minute, but this is what I made for dinner last night. I actually concocted it about a month ago when I had some roast salmon leftovers to use up - but it was so good that I decided to recreate it from scratch again!

You will need:

3 salmon fillets

for the marinade:
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 lemon squeezed
sea salt
pepper
1/4 tsp chilli flakes

cheese sauce (I use Delia's recipe here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/anykindofcheesesauce_70007.shtml but I use cheddar only and I add 1/2 tsp of English mustard at the finish)
1-2 tbsp green pesto

500g spinach sauteed in butter with 1 clove of garlic

200g broccoli cut into mall florets, steamed

600g pasta (I really like using 3 colour pasta in this recipe as it brings all the colours together: reddy pink of the salmon and green of the veg!)

extra cheese and (this is really old school this bit) crushed ready salted crisps to top


1. Marinade salmon. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Make up cheese sauce and stir in pesto.
3. Roast salmon fillets in oven (Our heat-demon Rangemaster takes 15minutes but I guess normal ovens would be more like 20-25?)
4. Boil pasta until al dente, steam broccoli and sautee spinach.
5. Break up salmon fillets into large flakes (setting a bit aside for your cats is optional).
6. Stir pasta, vegetables and salmon into cheese sauce and pour into a large oven dish.
7. Top with extra cheese and crisps, some extra black pepper and then place back in oven or grill until cheese is golden brown.

I suppose you could make it less of a faff by frying off the salmon and boiling the spinach - but I think it's the roasting and sauteeing that give the bake more flavour.

It's perfect comfort food for this weather!

Food, food, glorious food. (Or: baath, baath, moja moja baath).

Last week there was a ripple of excitement amongst foodie-Bangladeshis I know (i.e. most of them), for Bangladesh was on tv, not on a news special about floods, poverty or climate change, but purely from a culinary perspective, as the final destination on Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey (I was puzzled by Bangladesh and Sri Lanka’s inclusions as part of the Far East, but whilst the moniker might be geographically odd, I can see the connections between Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan food with Malaysian and Thai more clearly than Lahori/North Indian cuisine, which is so much richer, heavier and more meat-based).

Now I felt quite smug about this – I’ve always thought that given Bangladeshi food revolves mostly around fish, this’d be the perfect place for Rick Stein to go. I in fact had visualised (and as is my daydreaming wont, mentally sold) a series featuring Stein travelling around BD sampling its different regional cuisines. So this wasn’t quite a series, but an hour was more than I had ever imagined would be dedicated to proper deshi food on the Beeb.

I found the episode to be a mixture of things: informative, amusing (hilarious Steinisms such as “colonial tea plantations had their own schools and hospitals, there really wasn’t any reason for workers to leave” but also the ridiculously over-posh pretensions of a Bengali couple) but mostly evocative and moving. I’ve not been to Bangladesh in almost two years now, and my heart ached for Dhaka whilst watching.

As Stein observes, whilst 90% of Indian restaurants in the UK are owned by Sylheti Bangladeshis, the food you get in them is usually a world away from authentic deshi dishes. Everyone knows of the chicken tikka masala, but even the rogan joshes and baltis of the restaurant trade lean much more towards Lahori cooking and aren’t things we as Bengalis would eat at home. Fish is definitely a major feature – Bangladesh is the world’s largest delta, and criss-crossed by rivers, so this makes sense, and Stein made curries using rui and hilsa, our two most prized of fishes. I’d also have liked a mention of pithas – sweet and savoury cakes made with riceflour, of which there are hundreds of regional varieties (some of which are really ornately decorated). – Actually it is an ambition of mine to do an anthropological sideproject titled “The Pithas of Bangladesh” in which I’d travel around Bangladesh sampling said cakes and recording recipes and stories. It’d be tough, and I’d probably get diabetes, but such sacrifices must be made for the cultural good...

Anyway, it’s still on iPlayer until Thursday, so please do watch it for yourselves. It made me glow with pride and sob with homesickness. The only other disappointing omission, for me, was the absence of a mention of shutki, which is sun-dried fish (and of which there are many different varieties), a mainstay of Bangladeshi cooking.* It is pungent and smoky (somewhat akin to Thai fish sauce in taste and scent), used sparingly or in chunks in curries, or pounded with garlic and onions to a paste and eaten with plain rice. I’m totally addicted to the stuff – but it is an acquired taste (my sister and brother, for example, can’t stand it). This is a curry my mum cooked last week, with the freshest, sweetest fine green beans (on the right of the plate; a simple spinach bhaji is on the left). Yum. I’m hungry now!

*I was amused by an astute entry on a Facebook note titled “You know you’re Bangladeshi when…” which said “when you or a relative have tried to smuggle shutki through customs in your hand luggage.” Of course, neither I, nor any of my family, have ever done this – we dry our own in the blistering Surrey sun ;)