April Recipes

It’s ages since I last blogged any recipes! That’s not because I’ve given up eating or cooking, but just that I’ve not made anything worth talking about. But the last wee while, I’ve rediscovered my interest in baking, so here is a brief update on what I’ve been up to in the kitchen.

Figgy Flan
Most of a packet of dried ready to eat figs
Double slosh of Madeira wine
Two oranges
Two large spoonfuls runny honey
Half a cinnamon stick

Chop the figs into odd size pieces; peel the oranges then whizz in a whizzy machine till slushy. Put all into a pan to heat until it all goes very sticky and the little seeds come out of the figs. Add this filling to a whole-wheat sweet flan case that has been baked blind and cook for a little time in a moderate oven. Feed to appreciative guests.

Banana Raisin Buns
I only had one banana deteriorating in a lonely fruit bowl*, which was not enough to make proper banana bread, so I made a small amount of mix with mashed banana, vanilla extract, egg, whole-wheat flour and lots of raisins, brown sugar and milk to mix . This went into six bun tins in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes.

* For clarity: the banana was lonely not the fruit bowl.

Coffee Walnut Buns
I used this rather good Canadian whole-wheat flour as in the previous two recipes for these buns. I used four times the amount of instant coffee any other recipe indicated so that I could actually taste the coffee flavour and plenty of chopped walnuts. The rest is a fairly standard mix. After baking and cooling these, I slathered them in butter cream icing made with maple syrup.

Sweet potato spinach casserole
This is a footery dish but worth it.
Mashed sweet potato and ordinary potato in a ratio of 2:1. Stir in plain yoghurt and a generous quantity of crumbled up feta cheese. Season.
Wilt a whole packet of baby spinach in good olive oil, add a few fresh chopped tomatoes and season with lots of paprika and veg stock.
Place the potato mixture over the spinach and bake until golden and a little crispy topping forms on the potato.

Lentils and Grains
Most cuisines have their local version of legumes and grains and in the effort to have a balanced veggie diet I keep experimenting with these types of ingredients. Luckily, my daughter loves this sort of food and happily scoffs the end results. Below are two versions I’ve made recently.

Caribbean influence rice and peas
Take roughly equal amounts of black eyes peas and long grain white rice. Cook both separately then combine with very finely chopped fresh chilli or a good pinch of chilli flakes, coconut milk and lots of fresh chopped tomatoes and coriander. Season with S&P and veg bouillon powder. Cook all together for a short time, then sprinkle finely chopped spring onion on top to serve. Can be eaten hot or cold, but I think hot was better for this dish.

Version 2: Lentils and Bulgur Wheat
This time I boiled up yellow split peas and some bulgur wheat. I combined these when cold with heaps of flat leafed parsley and celery leaves and a handful of sunflower seeds. I added lemon juice and my best olive oil and left this for several hours to let the flavours meld together. It probably could have been heated through to make a warm salad, but I enjoyed it cold.

So, not too much scoffing going on these days, but this brings me up to date and records what was nice to eat so I can make it all again sometime.