Curried Lentil & Coconut Soup

It is definitely September, on the first day of the month the weather seemed to take a turn for the autumnal. Suddenly, a t-shirt was not enough in the sunshine, jumpers were looked out, boots come to the front of the wardrobe... hats and scarves don't seem too far away, and in the middle of all this wind, rain and cool temperatures, Now despite being later in the month and the nights drawing in, I am planning a camping trip. It seemed like a great idea a few weeks ago, now I'm not too sure. A flask of soup and a flask of rich beef stew will be coming with us just in case the wind blows out the flame of the camping stove.

My round-up of camping food will come next week but this recipe fits more into the planning stage as I am making it before we leave and eating it after we pitch on friday night.

So so so easy, this is the most beautiful smooth, creamy and light flavoured soup,child-friendly in its spiciness though easy to heat up if you add a teaspoon of chilli with the tikka masala paste. No-one has tried it without asking for the recipe and almost no-one believes there are only 4 main ingredients.

Curried Lentil & Coconut Soup
1 onion, finely chopped
1tbsp olive oil
2tbsp tikka masala paste
2 large handfuls of orange lentils
1 tin of low fat coconut milk

Warm the olive oil in a heavy based saucepan.
Saute the onion until transluscent, don't allow it to brown.
Add tikka masala paste, and saute a minute longer to allow the spices to warm up.
Throw in the lentils, coconut milk and a cupful of water.
Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the lentils have cooked and broken down.
Blend until smooth.

Green Apple Cafe Rocky Road

My very favourite treat at the Green Apple Cafe (and the one most likely to run out in the space of one hour due to people buying extra to take away!) is our Rocky Road. Some people think of this as more of a chocolate biscuit cake or no-bake cake, and almost everyone has a verision of this in their repertoire but this is my favourite. It is a great treat to make with children (especially if you use the microwave version for safety) and left at room temperature for a few minutes, tastes almost like chocolate fudge.... delicious.

Green Apple Cafe Rocky Road
125g  butter
75g golden syrup
200g dark chocolate,  broken into pieces
1 egg
50g chocolate digestive biscuits
50g walnuts or hazelnuts
50g mini marshmallows
50g cranberries
50g glacé cherries

Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper then set aside.
Melt the butter and syrup together in a small saucepan over a gentle heat until they begin to boil. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl suspended over a saucepan of barely simmering water (or in the microwave) , add to the butter and golden syrup.
Add the egg very slowly to the hot chocolate mixture (it needs to amalgamate well not turn into chocolatey scrambled egg) and stir well.
Break up the biscuits into good sized chunks and add to the chocolate with the marshmallows, nuts, cranberries and the cherries.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and leave to set in the fridge overnight (or around 4 hours if you can't bear to wait). Remove from the fridge and cut into slices.

Late Summer Meals in Ten Minutes or Less

This post should be labelled Very Late Recipes for Summer... I've been thinking about it for weeks now... Does your day-to-day cooking need a shake-up? Mine really does, I feel like I have started to rely on a few recipes for my weekday family food and I am getting bored and stuck in a rut. I've spent the last couple of weeks combing my notebooks, scraps of paper with ideas written on, cookbooks with yellow sticky notes popping out the top and have tried to come up with a week of fresh new ideas.

This blog is less formal recipe - more a bit of inspiration and some fresh ideas to bounce around the kitchen. There is a big myth about eating well that it has to take a lot of thought to shop for and ages to prepare... This is my next week's worth of dinners: I'll add some salad and crusty bread and hopefully these will feed a famished family after a day in the late summer sun.

• Tomato Bread Salad (pictured above) - sprinkle some cubes of day old crusty bread with a few glugs of olive oil and put them in the oven to crisp while you throw a salad together of fresh tomatoes, cucumber, red onions, basil and feta cheese. Top with the croutons and toss with a vinegarette of olive oil, salt and pepper and red wine vinegar. Defininitely substantial enough for a main course. You can also throw everything but the feta in a blender and make a mean gazpacho, top it with the crumbled feta to make it a little more filling.

• Take a bag of fresh mussels, throw in a big pot with a glass of white wine, two chopped fresh tomatoes and a pinch of chilli flakes. Bring to the boil and steam until the mussels are open. Sprinkle with parsley and serve over spaghetti.

• Open up some good quality sausage skins (I used spicy pork) with scissors, stir-fry the meat a couple of minutes till cooked through. Add a glug of cream, a tablespoon of mustard and bubble for a minute or two. Serve over a baked potato with a green salad on the side. 

• Cook up a big pan of scrambled eggs, season with salt and pepper. While they are cooking, chop a salad of  fresh tomato, feta or grated cheddar cheese and fresh chilli. Serve the eggs and salad on a wrap topped with a little sour cream and coriander. 

• Take some giant Portabello mushrooms, top with blue cheese and a drizzle of cream. Grill for a few minutes until golden and served ontop thick toast to soak up the lovely juices.

• Open a tin of cannelinni beans, toss with some crushed garlic, the juice of a lemon, a glug of olive oil and some freshly chopped parsley...  then dollop on some crusty bread and top with a little smoked salmon.

• Cook pasta bows and toss with with good pesto, peas and parmesan... ooh and you can add some cooked prawns for added protein.

• Mackerel pate - blitz in a blender a pack of cooked peppered mackerel fillets, a 250g tub of cream cheese and the juice of a lemon. Spread the pate on toast and serve with cornichons, pickled onions and a side salad. 

• In a pan, throw a packet of instant noodles, cook for a few minutes in chicken or vegetable stock then stir in a tablespoon of Tom Yam paste (Thai spicy soup paste) and half a bag of baby spinach leaves then bubble for a minute or two until the leaves have wilted. Toss in a handful of cooked chicken or prawns if you have some lying around.

Lemon Linguini with Sea Bass and Chilli Breadcrumbs

Yes, determinedly sticking to my guns, making summer salads and light healthy food despite the torrential rain coming down outside, despite an inner urge to make soup and despite wanting to get under a blanket, scour the channels for the X-factor and pretend its October. This weather will pass... probably the day the children go back to school, only then will the sun come out and the temperatures rise.

Either way, I wanted pasta but not a heavy wintery ragu or rich creamy carbonara but something light, (despite the addition of double cream, this feels incredibly light and fresh) fresh-flavoured and substantial enough to feed a crowd without needing salads and side dishes.... I used some sea bass that had been lurking in my freezer but any white fish fillet would be lovely with this zesty lemon sauce and chilli crunch.

Lemon Linguini with Sea Bass and Chilli Breadcrumbs

For the breadcrumbs:

100g fresh breadcrumbs 

zest of 2 lemons

2tsp hot chilli powder 

large handful fresh flat-leaf parsley

Toss the breadcrumbs with the chilli powder, parsley and lemon zest. 

Bake in a low oven for 10-15mins until crispy and lightly golden.

Set aside to sprinkle over the pasta before serving.

For the linguini

750g linguine

4 sea bass fillets

2 egg yolks

200ml double cream

juice of 2 lemons

30g butter

Cook the pasta according to pack instructions.

While the pasta is cooking, grill the sea bass fillets until lightly cooked.

Whisk together the egg yolks, cream and lemon juice. 

When the pasta is cooked, toss it in the butter till it melts and then add the egg and cream mixture. 

Serve a pile of pasta, topped with a few chunks of fish and sprinkled liberally with breadcrumbs.

Spicy Sweet Potato Cakes with Rainbow Chard

Rainbow chard is now a daily staple in my kitchen, the chard bed in the garden is growing wild and the more I pick, the more sprouts forth. I have been throwing it into every kind of soup, stir frying it, serving the baby leaves as salad, adding handfuls to bolognese sauce and giving it away to passers-by, but it still keeps coming. 

Fast becoming my favourite vegetable, chard (swiss or rainbow) is super healthy, full of vitamins and minerals and incredibly adaptable but almost impossible to find in the shops, the only way to get some rainbow chard is to grow it yourself. 

So every day this week I have been looking for a new way to use it. Potato cakes (or tattie scones as they are called in Scotland) are a huge favourite in our house as breakfast, after school snacks and even as canape bases, this spicy sweet potato version would make a gorgeous starter or light lunch. To use as canapes, add a little more flour and aim for a firmer mixture.

Spicy Sweet Potato Cakes with Rainbow Chard
1 tbsp olive oil
3 large handfuls rainbow chard (or spinach), chopped
1 large clove garlic, crushed
1 hot red chilli, finely chopped
3 spring onions, finely chopped 

1kg sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
100g plain flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil 
Dipping sauce
2tbsp soy sauce
1 hot red chilli, sliced


Heat the olive oil gently in a frying pan or wok, then add the chard, garlic and chilli and cook for a few minutes until the spices are aromatic and the chard wilted. 
Remove from the heat and stir in the spring onions.
Boil the sweet potatoes until tender then drain and cool. 
Mash together the potatoes with the flour and salt then stir in the chard mixture.
Using wet hands, form the mixture into patties (around 5cm in diameter).
Heat olive oil in heavy based non-stick pan and fry the patties for a few minutes on each side until golden brown. 
Serve with dipping sauce made from soy sauce with a few red chillis floating through it.

Bruschetta with Chard, Anchovies, Garlic & Lemon

At last, I am starting to see the fruits of my labour, (if you can call scattering a packet of seeds from a height very quickly on a wet day, labour) ... the vegetable patch is a late starter this year because of all the rainy weather, but today it has come good and I picked a huge bowlful of rainbow chard. The leaves are small enough to use in a salad but I wanted to make my very favourite chard dish. Super healthy, and super tasty and can easily be made with baby spinach or even spring greens (though aren't the jewel colours of rainbow chard beautiful? Do find some if you can. )

This is not hard to make, takes only a few minutes to prepare and doesn't have a huge list of ingredients. It is simply one of those Italian-inspired recipes where the freshness of the ingredients shines through - made for eating outside in the sunshine with a glass of red for lunch.

Bruschetta with Rainbow Chard, Anchovies, Garlic & Lemon

4 thin slices of baguette or crusty bread
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
2 handfuls of rainbow chard (or other leafy greens: swiss chard, spinach, cavalo nero etc)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 anchovy fillets, chopped finely
juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
1tsp sea salt
                                                      drizzle of olive oil

 Heat a griddle pan (or pre-heat the oven and bake till crisp) and toast the slices of bread until crisp. 
Rub the clove of garlic across the bread  and set aside.
Saute the chard in the olive oil and garlic until wilted then add the anchovies, lemon juice and lemon zest and warm through.
Serve the chard on top of the bread and sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with olive oil.
Quite lovely.

Indian Lime Chutney

I thought I loved curries best during the winter months - with frozen breath floating over icy pavements, the need to rush home for something hot and spicy, rich and filling seemed to provoke a lot of curry cooking. Then spring came and I became quite sure that I loved curries best during the spring months - mild days with cold evenings, lighter nights but still a need for food that warms your bones from the inside out. But now it is summer, and despite a dearth of hot, hazy summer nights, the urge to linger over spicy food on a warm clammy evening is definitely with me.

Like cooking a Mexican menu, Indian meals in particular benefit from a plethora of side dishes: parathas; nan; scented rice; dhal; raita; poppadoms; and the ubiquitous chutney.

Lately I have become completely addicted to the hot and sour flavours of Indian Lime pickle. It introduces a sharp note to a mild creamy curry, adds a tangy heat dabbed into a paratha with spiced mackeral or adds balance simply served on the side of barbecued chicken or fish.

Many versions abound the internet, most taking weeks to age before they can be eaten (I do have one such version sitting maturing in a cupboard but I was too impatient to stop there so needed to find a flavourful but far more speedy version.) This is based on a chutney recipe but has no sugar to sweeten the end result leaving the most perfectly sour and spicy condiment.

Indian Lime Pickle

300 g of chillies (green or red or mixed)
1 kg limes
200 g grated fresh ginger

1 large bulb fresh garlic, peeled
5 or 6 curry leaves, shredded
900ml white vinegar
2 tsp turmeric
1 Tbsp salt
3 Tbsp mustard seed
1 Tbsp fenugreek seeds
500ml rapeseed (or veg)  oil
5 Tbsp rapeseed (or veg) oil

Heat 3 Tbsp of oil in a large frying pan until hot.
Sauté the limes turning them over and over until their skins are a golden brown.
Cut the limes into about 6 thick slices and then half the slices.
Add 2 Tbsp of oil to a blender with the chillis, peeled garlic, grated ginger and curry leaves. Blend to a paste
Heat the remaining oil in a pan until hot. Add mustard and fenugreek and warm till the seeds are toasted and start to pop.
Add the chilli paste, stir and cook gently for 15 minutes.
Add the turmeric, lime and vinegar and stir until thoroughly mixed.
Cook for a further 10 minutes...  to reduce and thicken
Put the pickle into sterilised jars then cover with any remaining liquid. Seal and leave for a couple of weeks, if you can bear to - if not open immediately and serve.