Nothing But Onions

Cauliflower Cheese for dinner last night.

You can't see it in the photo, but there's a layer of vegetables in the base, stir fried until soft. I used onion, garlic, courgette, red pepper and chilli this time. Often I add some stir fried chicken breast to the base too.

The cauliflower is steamed and then put on top of the bed of vegetables.

I then made a cheese sauce, adding some mustard and cayenne, which is poured over the cauliflower.

Finally top with grated parmesan and another sprinkling of cayenne for good measure. Bake in the oven until golden brown on top.

Bread and butter pudding traditionally has dried fruit in it, but I don't really like that, so I tried using banana instead. I've used brioche here as it gives it a wonderfully light texture. You could use ordinary white bread if you prefer, in which case I would cut off the crusts.

I was really pleased with the way this came out. It was cooked perfectly - beautifully crispy top with soft silky custard base. It was delicious too. Definitely one to make again.

Here you can see it fresh out of the oven.

Brioche, sliced - about eight to ten slices or so, depending on size.
Butter
1 pint milk
2 eggs
1 1/2 oz caster sugar
3 bananas
lemon juice

Thickly butter the brioche on both sides. Mash the bananas with a squeeze of lemon juice. Take a slice of brioche and spread some of the banana mixture on to it and then place another slice of brioche on top - basically, you're making a banana sandwich. Put this to one side and repeat with another two slices of brioche. Keep going until you've used all the brioche and now have a nice stack of banana sandwiches. Take each sandwich and cut it across the two diagonals so you end up with four triangles.

Beat the eggs and milk together.

Take a baking dish (2 pint capacity) and butter the inside. Lay half of the brioche triangles in the base and sprinkle on half of the caster sugar. Lay the other half of the brioche on the top and finish of with the remaining sugar.

Pour the milk and egg mixture into the dish. Put to one side for about half an hour to allow the brioche to soak up some of the liquid.

Bake in the oven (160C) for about 45 minutes. The top should be crispy and slightly golden - if it isn't, leave it a little bit longer. Don't overdo it though.

Serve, in generous portions. You don't really need anything with this, but you could pour over a little cream if you really wanted.

I made lasagne last night. I'd already made the filling some time ago and put it in the freezer, so I only had to make the bechamel sauce and assemble it.

No recipe this time - next time I make it from scratch I'll post the recipe and photograph it properly...

I've been trawling through the archives, and found some old recipes which I'll post up here over the coming days. Here goes with the first: Advocaat.

More of a pudding than a drink...

Read the full article for "Advocaat"»

• 4 lb Shoulder of lamb, boned (but not rolled)
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp yoghurt
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 oz basmati rice
• 1 oz butter
• 1 oz pine kernels
• 2 oz chopped, dried fruit (e.g. sultanas, dates, peach, apricot)
• Juice and zest of 1 large orange
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• Salt and pepper
• More butter

Get your butcher to bone the shoulder of lamb for you, or if you're like me, do it yourself and make stock out of the bones. If your piece of lamb is rolled, cut the strings and unroll it.

Beat the olive oil and yoghurt together, and stir in crushed garlic clove. Lay the lamb, skin side down and rub the yoghurt mixture into all the nooks and crannies. When done, loosely roll the lamb up, pop it in a bag (or cling-film) and pop it in the fridge to marinade for a while - preferably overnight.

Preheat the oven to 190C.

If the lamb has been in the fridge marinading, take it out now to give it a chance to come back up to room temperature.

Melt the butter in a small pan (one with a lid), and gently cook the onion until soft and translucent. Stir in the rice and pine kernels and cook gently for another couple of minutes.

Put the orange juice into a measuring jug and make up to 1/4 pint with water. Pour into pan, sir, cover and let simmer very gently for about 10 minutes. By this time, the rice should just about be cooked and all the liquid gone. The rice should still have a little bite to it - the lamb juices will help soften it further later.

Grind the coriander seed in a mortar and pestle. Chop the dried fruit. Use whatever mixture you like here - I don't really like raisins and sultanas, so I tend to use things like dates and dried peaches.

Add the coriander, orange zest and dried fruit and stir well. Put to one side to cool. (If you're running behind schedule, you don't really need to leave it to cool, but be prepared to burn your fingers in the next step.)

Roll out the lamb, skin side down, and lay the rice mixture evenly over it. Make sure you push bits into any of the nooks and crannies created by the boning.

Roll the lamb up as tight as you can without squeezing the stuffing out and tie up with string. If you're good at this, you will get a nicely formed cylinder of meat, perhaps tapering slightly to one end. If, like me, you're not, you'll get something that looks like a very lumpy old cushion with its stuffing hanging out. Never mind, it will taste the same whichever...

Put the lamb in a roasting tray and dot a few pieces of butter over it. Season with salt and pepper.

Place in the oven for 1 1/2 -2 hours until cooked, remembering to baste occasionally.

Serve hot, sliced thickly, perhaps with a green salad.

This kind of sandwich is very quick and easy to prepare, and is very satisfying. There are many variations - here's just one:

Serves 2

• 1 ciabatta (or any nice crusty bread)
• 2 chicken breast
• juice of half a lime
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 finely chopped spring onion
• watercress (or some other salad leaf)
• 1 tbsp mild olive oil
• salt and pepper

If the ciabatta needs to go in the oven, pop it in.

Cut the chicken breasts into small pieces. Cook them in a frying pan with the olive oil until cooked through - don't stir them about too much, if you keep them still, they'll develop delicious crispy bits on the outside.

Add the spring onion and lime juice and cook and stir gently for another minute or so.

Transfer the chicken to a small bowl, mix thoroughly with the mayonnaise.

Cut the ciabatta in half (horizontally). Cover one half with the chicken, add a layer of watercress (rocket would go nicely here too), and place the other half on top. Eat.

My favourite breakfast, so long as there's time to enjoy it...

Potatoes, diced and then boiled until almost cooked, tossed in olive oil and finished off in the oven until golden brown. Sprinkled with Maldon sea salt.

Sausages, fried slowly until brown and caramelised. Bacon, fried until crispy round the edges. Fried egg, yolk still runny...

And on the side, a dollop of brown sauce, although you can have tomato if you really must.

The sausages here are home-made - pork with red pepper and fennel, made during one of my sausage sessions a few months ago, then frozen until needed. There's something quite satisfying about having a freezer well-stocked with nice sausages...

Here's the evening meal from a few days ago. Not a traditional cottage pie, but a variant based on what was in the fridge and pantry. Vary the ingredients as you see fit.

Gently fry chopped onions and leeks in a little olive oil until soft. Add some diced carrot and fry a few more minutes. Add some diced beef and continue to stir fry until slightly browned. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and a dash of worcestershire sauce. Simmer until cooked and the sauce reduced. Taste and season as needed.

Whilst cooking, peel and dice some potatoes, and steam until just cooked.

Pour meat mixture into bottom of casserole dish. Top with the potatoes. Sprinkle with a little Maldon sea salt. Bake in oven (180C) for half an hour or so - the potatoes should start to go golden and crisp.

Here, it is served with steamed green beans, fresh from the garden.

I've been a bit pushed for time this week and didn't manage to find any interesting mushrooms, so these are plain old chestnut mushrooms. Other varieties would work well too.

Based on Nigel Slater's risotto. Serves 2.

1 small onion, finely chopped
125g mushrooms, chopped into chunks
1 glass Marsala
140g arborio or carnaroli rice
500ml hot vegetable or chicken stock
30g Parmesan cheese, grated
50g butter

Gently fry the onions in half the butter until soft. Add the mushrooms and stir fry gently until they are soft. Add the rice, and fry for a minure or so. Add the marsala and cook, stirring all the time until it;s mostly absorbed.

Add the stock, a wineglass full at a time, and keep stirring. Wait until the stock is absorbed before the next one is added. This should take between 20 and 30 minutes for all the stock to be used. The rice should be cooked,but not soggy - it should retain some bite. The whole thing should have a creamy texture and taste.

Add the remaining butter and cheese and stir until thoroughly mixed in. Serve at once.

There was a french market in Daventry last weekend - I've only just got around to getting the photos up on flickr.
This isn't a regular event, just a one off, so we went to have a look around.

Lots of nice things to eat there, but the thing that stood out most was the fruit stall. We bought various types of fruit (greengages, mirabelles, peaches, apricots) and they were all utterly delicious. Juicy and full of flavour. It's so hard to find nice fruit in this country that I hardly ever bother buying any. Fruit in supermarkets is always picked underripe and is usually hard and tasteless, and decent greengrocers are increasingly hard to find.

It was nice to be reminded what some of these things taste like - it's just a pity the market isn't there every week.

Warning: If made properly, this recipe is very hot. Don't let that put you off though - it is absolutely delicious. If you want to wimp out and cut down on the chillis, do so, but this is a real treat if you go for the full heat. The combination of the soft juiciness of the chicken, the crunchy peanuts and beans and the pervading heat of the chillis are just something to die for.

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts, skinned
2 cloves garlic
20 (or thereabouts) green beans, or mange tout
Chillis (see below for quantity)
4 tbsp roast salted peanuts
8 tbsp water (or stock)
3 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
Groundnut oil

Prepare all the ingredients before you start cooking.

Slice the chicken breasts thinly and across the grain. Peel the garlic cloves and slice them thinly.

If you're using green beans, top and tail them and then cut them into pieces about an inch in length. If you're using mange tout, leave them whole.

Now the chillis. The best chillis I've found for this are those dried red ones, very thin and about two inches in length. They are also quite hot. You can sometimes get them in shops that sell Thai ingredients, but I don't tend to see them often. If you can't find them (and I often can't), you'll have to use fresh. It's very hard to define the number of chillis in a recipe as they vary in heat enormously. If you're using the dried ones, you need about a dozen. For fresh, if you've got very hot birds eye chillis, six to ten will probably be sufficient. The long thin green ones often found in Indian grocers are good here too - use about a dozen of those. This might sound like an awful lot, but don't worry...

If you want to cut down on the heat (shame on you), try using milder chillis rather than just cutting down the quantity - chillis provide a lovely flavour as well as just raw heat. You could also try removing some of the seeds and surrounding flesh to reduce the heat a little. Don't get rid of all the heat though - the whole point of this recipe is that it has a bit of bite.

Anyway, once you've counted out your chillis, cut them into one inch lengths.

Now, heat a wok or a large frying pan over a high flame and put in a couple of tablespoons of groundnut oil. When hot, put in the garlic and toss it around a little. It should start to turn colour slightly, but don't let it burn. If your pan is really hot, this part should only take a few seconds. Next throw in the chillis and stir them around for another few seconds.

Now add the chicken. Stir fry this for a minute or two until the chicken is turning opaque.

Throw in the beans and stir well. Then the nuts and give another good stir.

Now add all the other ingredients and keep cooking for another minute or two, stirring all the time, until the chicken is properly cooked.

Serve with plain, boiled white rice.

Note: If you find the chillies in this (or indeed in any other dish) were hotter than you expected whilst eating it, drink a glass of cold milk alongside it. There's nothing like milk for soothing away the heat of chillies.