How to Make an Easy Sudden Lunch for Sudden Friends

A few times recently people have popped round to see us and stayed for lunch (as suggested by me) and I have put on a spontaneous collection of items that I’ve found in the fridge and pantry, some good bread, an offer of wine et voila! 

This is ideal for summer entertaining when you don’t fancy all the faff of cooking and being away from the party but, on the other hand, a few bags of crisps seems a bit stingy.  There is a middle road, however; I call it the Sociable Feast.

Simply put this is an assortment of complementary bits and pieces, some of which can be prepared ahead if you have time, bunged on the table so that everyone, including you, can snack and nibble whilst enjoying the scintillating conversation, flirting, gossip and what not.

Firstly, here’s a recipe for a perfect sociable feast followed by lots of food ideas.

Eating Al Fresco

~   Place the table in a flat and attractive space in the garden or on the terrace. This could be in the sun or the shade, according to taste.
~   Arrange the chairs around the table.
~   Look at the wine bottles and sort into two basic colours.  Chill the white wines, open some of the red bottles so that the wine can breathe (it is, of course, always possible to open more later).
~   Place your choice of plates, glasses, knives, forks etc. on the table.
~   If you have plumped for flowers scatter them randomly yet attractively on the table top or put into low vases and place at intervals.
~   Assemble your friends and place one on each chair.
~   Put some bottles of wine on the table.
~   Place the food on the table.
~   Invite friends to partake.

Alternatively, a picnic works well too although takes a little more planning (picnic ideas here) and even eating indoors can be great if you have good food and good company.

The Food ...

Cheese is the perfect foundation for a sociable feast. I always have mature Cheddar, Gran Padano, Herb & Garlic Boursin and a blue cheese such as St. Agur, Castello or Cambozola in the fridge.  Recently my guests were lucky enough to find me with some Vintage Gouda too!  

If you are planning ahead a mixture of cheeses; hard, creamy, pungent, salty etc. is good but just one great cheese can work well too .

Here are some cheese friendly sides …

Fruit & Nuts

Grapes, of course.  If you have got time to plan ahead you might like to try Sautéed Grapes.

A perfectly ripe pear is a humdinger with blue cheese and so are these Sugared Walnuts (be sure to add a good dose of black pepper). 

Nice fresh plump figs go well with most cheeses.

Meats

I like to add some chorizo (I always have chorizo for these 21 good reasons), prosciutto or pâté to the platter. Here’s a lovely cheese friendly idea if you do have time think ahead …

Chorizo in Red Wine

200g spicy chorizo sliced about this thick [  ]
½ tbsp olive oil

1 small red onion – finely chopped

a little garlic – finely diced

200ml red wine

1 tbsp honey

~   Fry the chorizo slices in the olive oil for a couple of minutes on each side then set aside.
~   Cook the onion and garlic in the residual oil till tender.
~   Add the wine, bring to a boil, return the chorizo to the pan, turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
~   Set the chorizo aside again!
~   Add the honey to the pan and boil till you have a syrup.
~   Turn off the heat and return the chorizo again.

Nicest served warm.

Roasted Garlic

This goes beautifully with goats’ cheese and blue cheese but with others too.  Serve the halves whole (so to speak!) and quests can squeeze them straight onto the good bread you are serving. See here for how to make delicious roasted garlic and lots of ideas for using it. 

Black Garlic

Lovely stuff which goes very well in a cold collation such as this! 

Salad

If you have the makings a green salad is a good addition to your feast or maybe some coleslaw. 

Sweet little tomatoes are also good either whole or sliced, tossed with finely chopped red onion, seasoned and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and a little balsamic or sherry vinegar.

Speaking of tomatoes ... 

Roasted Tomatoes

These are great with soft cheese, try them hot over mozzarella,   …

~   Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F/180ºC fan/gas 6
~   Halve cherry tomatoes, or keep whole if tiny, and toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.
~   Spread on a baking sheet and roast for about 10 minutes till soft and collapsing.

Here are Six Sexy Salads that would be suitable if you have a little time.

Condiments

You could also add mustard, pickles, chutney (especially caramelised red onion chutney), salad dressing if you are serving salad (obviously!) and truffle honey which goes very well with blue cheese and strong Cheddar. 

I would recommend serving good bread – not the pappy kind but something rustic, crusty and chewy, good butter, olive oil for drizzling and maybe some crackers.

Of course, other things you may have in your fridge will work too, for instance hummus, cold chicken, ham, melon (particularly good with prosciutto and ham) and, of course, leftovers!

Speaking of leftovers ...

Great preview here

OMG This Must Be THE Best Omelette Ever!

Sorry about the over the top title to this blog, I was going to call it Crunchy Chorizo Flecked Omelette but you know how it is – we have to try harder and harder to make ourselves noticed on social media and saying ...

“Mm, that was rather nice” 

probably wouldn’t do it!,

This rather nice omelette has been evolving over some time and, in fact, I have written about it in its earlier stages before but details below.  

This is just a quick post to tell you of a great idea I had …

I am very partial to chorizo and have often added it to my favourite omelette but the other idea I had a brilliant idea.  Instead of adding the chorizo to the filling I coarsely chopped it and gently cooked it slightly in a little oil in the proposed omelette pan.

I then cooked the omelette in accordance with instructions here so that, over the higher heat, the chorizo crisped up and flecked the outside of the omelette.  Good idea of what?

Gorgeous Omelette Recipe

There I go again!

This omelette filling has been evolving for some while …

~   Thinly slice a red onion and cook like this.
~   When the onions are soft but not caramelising add 2 or 3 small new potatoes, thinly sliced, plus just a splash of water.  Replace the foil covering and lid (you need so see how to cook the onions, here!) and continue cooking till they are completely soft.

~   These days I then stir in half a teaspoonful of smoky, medium hot chipotle paste, which I get from Asda.
~   Whisk up 2 eggs and make the omelette (with the chorizo as above) and, when the egg is almost cooked, add the oniony/potato/chipotle mix and grate over some mature cheddar cheese.
~   Fold in half, pour out a glass of red wine and eat.

This is a great way of making the most of a little leftover chorizo but, of course, omelettes are great for making the most of all sorts of leftover foods which, as you may know, are something of a passion with me!

See here for detailed instructions on making an omelette 

and 

See here for more about my book on cooking delicious meals with leftovers.

Three Cornered Leeks ~ eat as much of this naughty plant as you can!

I was chatting with my friend Carol the other day, about wild garlic, and she asked if I had tried three cornered leeks.  Tried it? – I’d never even heard of it!

 So, she took me into her garden and picked me some.  Very pretty with a milder but similar smell/fragrance to wild garlic. So naturally I had play …

Firstly, having done some research (see Wild Food UK for lots of useful information on three cornered leek) and read that the whole plant is edible I nervously nibbled a flower.

I then nibbled the stem and a leaf – and the taste was very similar to wild garlic, which I love, but maybe a little milder.



Yesterday, driving round Cornwall’s gorgeous wild flower filled lanes, I spotted a patch of these naughty flowers.  

As it says on Wild Food UK …

“An invasive species brought over to the UK from the Mediterranean, it is an offence under Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act in England and Wales to plant or otherwise cause to grow this species in t”he wild.”

So I thought I'd better try to help eradicate the buggers and picked a big bunch and here is last night’s dinner.

A simple summery dish of roasted salmon with buttery Jersey Royals, mange tout (Rodney), asparagus and three cornered leeks.  Glass of white, naturally.

Now then, as I said, three cornered leeks are very similar to wild garlic so it would be cheating, I feel, if I just repeated all my wild garlic ideas.  Instead see my post Wild Garlic ~ Calloo Callay! for lots of info and  ideas and do the same with three cornered leeks.

So, get out there and eat some three cornered leeks!

Windows 10 Update Completely Emptied my Computer!

I’ve just had an ‘orrible time with my computer.

A few morning as I was  on my computer, as usual, a pop-up popped up as they do, and told me that a windows update was taking place. I had no choice in the matter, although I would have accepted anyway.

Within a few minutes the update was complete and I was prompted to choose which language I wanted to use – I chose English UK. I was asked again I chose the same thing. This happened about 20 times and I could do nothing to get rid of the language screen so I said a rude word and switched off.

When I switched back on all I had was a blank black screen with just one icon – a completely empty recycle bin.  
 

Scary!!!

Anyway, I am not very savvy at this sort of thing and can’t really remember what I did but after about 4 hours researching on my partner’s computer I managed to get mine working – but still completely empty! 

This site, Windows Central, helped me a lot but I’m not sure what I did in the end to at least get my computer basically operational.  

So, I have been repopulating it. Thank God I keep all my documents and photos in Dropbox!

It is a slow job especially because …

~   Although I still have Dropbox (praise the Lord) I seem to have it twice and need to sort that out as not all files are in both versions. A long job, methinks.

~   Lots of programs I have downloaded have changed considerably from the version I had installed so there is quite a lot of learning to do.

~   The computer also seems much slower, to the extent that I assume things haven't worked, and, when first turned on it sometimes takes several minutes to boot so I have a worrying time looking at the black screen with my fingers crossed. 

~   Programs are frequently "not responding" for some while.

~   I have to do a lot of password changing as I, apparently, hadn’t kept my notes up to date on that.

I understand several people taking class action lawsuits against Microsoft for this error and I don't blame them.

So, if your computer updates, be afraid – be very afraid! 

So, the only thing I have to report, food-wise is utterly gorgeous Davidstow Vintage Cheddar, Cornish by the way, which I was lucky enough to find considerably reduced. 

Thankfully, that, with a glass of wine, calmed me down a bit.

  

6½ Super Flexible Recipes for Making the Most of Leftovers

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again …

The following 6½ recipes can help with this because they are all so very adaptable

1.   Flexible Fritter Recipe

There are several ways to make fritters; larger pieces of leftover food, such as pieces of fish, can be coated in batter or breadcrumbs and fried to crisp. If you have leftover mashed potato plus other leftovers mix them all together and fry.  Here, however, is a useful fritter batter recipe that can take almost any leftover.  These are Cauliflower Cheese Fritters made with leftover cooked cauliflower and, yes!, cheese.

Sweet fritters work too – how about leftover banana (sliced or diced, of course) with soft light brown sugar and a drip or two of rum?

2.   Soup from Leftovers

Of course, you could just run your leftovers through the food processor and dilute to soup consistency but there is a much better way! 

My all-purpose soup recipe is so damned useful I’ve even written a book about it (Soup (Almost) the Only Recipe You'll Ever Need), but the basic seriously useful soup recipe is here to get you started.

3.  Omelettes aka Omelets

So useful are omelettes for using up leftovers that a café I used to breakfast at, De Loose Mongoose, often had Trash Omelette blatantly on the menu, filled with whatever they had left over from the night before. See how to make a perfect leftovers omelette here.

3½.   Frittata

           

A frittata is a more substantial type of omelette (hence the ½) so, the good news is, you can use up more leftovers! Ham, bacon, chorizo, cheese, seafood, asparagus, mushrooms and lots more are great in frittatas.

If you use half a dozen eggs this should feed 2-3 people.

~   Fry raw onion, if using, gently in oil or butter till soft then add a little garlic, if you wish.

~   If adding leftover potatoes increase the heat and add these now crushing them slightly and cook till they start to crispen and colour. Add a little more oil or butter as necessary.

~   Now add any other cooked ingredients and mix into the potatoes, taste and adjust the seasoning, adding herbs and spices to taste.

~   Turn down the heat, whisk together  six eggs and pour them over everything else.

~   Preheat the grill.

~   Cook the frittata gently for a few minutes till the bottom is set but the top still moist.

~   Sprinkle with grated cheese, if using, and slide under the grill till melted and a little golden.

~   Cut into wedges and serve hot or cold.

4.  Risotto

I used to love making risotto when I was a chef – it’s a great excuse to stand still for a few minutes (apart from the arm doing the stirring) and maybe even to partake of a chef’s coffee. I do much the same at home – see here for the basic risotto recipe.  

In case you are wondering, here are details of chef’s coffee and also, fortuitously, how to make a frittata with leftover pasta! 

5.  Bubble & Squeak aka Hash

Firstly, of course, Bubble and Squeak is a great way to use up leftover cooked potatoes whether they be boiled, mashed, baked, roasted, etc. and also works well with sweet potatoes (leftover of course).

Secondly, all sorts of leftovers; vegetables (leftover cabbage is traditional in Bubble & Squeak but is by no means obligatory), fish, meat, poultry, cheese, bacon, ham, sausage, chorizo etc. can very happily be incorporated.

Oh, and you could fry it in leftover bacon fat or schmaltz for added deliciousness.

~   Fry some finely chopped onion gently in a little oil, butter or fat for a few minutes till soft. Add some garlic if you like!

~   Increase the heat, add the leftover cooked potatoes crushing them slightly and cook till they just start to crispen and colour. Add more oil or butter as necessary.

~   Stir in other leftover vegetables and continue to fry and turn till all is hot, crispy in parts and delicious.

Serve the hash as it is, quite possibly topped with a fried egg, or form into little cakes or pile onto a pie filling to make a super-duper fish pie, cottage pie or similar.

6.  Bread Pudding ~ Sweet or Savoury

This is not the manly rib sticking Bread Pudding which is like cake, it is a rich creamy custard based dessert similar to Bread and Butter Pudding but, instead of using slices of buttered bread, I use random bits and pieces of leftover bread – whatever I have.  Stale or slightly oven dried bread is best.

Normally we associate bread (and butter) pudding with sweet ingredients but a Strata is a savoury bread and (no) butter pudding layered up with whatever other ingredients are being used. Leave out the sugar and season the egg mixture with salt and pepper and anything else appropriate according to taste. Mix in cheese and other ingredients before pouring over the custard.

Serves 4

  

100g-150g stale bread in small chunks

200ml milk

100ml double cream

2 eggs

75g-100g leftovers

For a sweet dish …

80g sugar plus a little for sprinkling
flavourings appropriate to your leftovers eg. vanilla extract, a little brandy, chocolate chips or what have you

For a savoury dish …

salt and pepper

whatever seasonings will complement your leftovers, such as garlic, herbs, spices, grated (possibly leftover) cheese etc. – to taste

~   Put the bread into a lightly greased ovenproof dish.

~   Add your leftovers and toss to mingle well.

~   Whisk together the milk, cream and eggs plus the sugar OR salt and other seasonings you are using.

~   Gently push the bread under the surface to soak it. Set aside for 30 minutes or more – even overnight will do.

To cook …

~   Preheat oven to 350˚F/180˚C/160˚C Fan/gas 4.

~   Sprinkle the pudding with the extra sugar OR grated cheese as appropriate.

~   Bake for about 40 minutes till risen, golden and slightly wobbly when nudged.

Serve hot, warm or cold but warm is best.

In my book, Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers, I give numerous ideas for 450 different leftover foods including more ideas and details for the above recipes.

Great Preview Here!

The Hidden Hut ~ how I wish I was younger!

Just a quickie because I really want to tell you about this place, which is strange as I haven’t even eaten there – yet!

The other day some friends and I went to The Hidden Hut at Porthcurnick Beach and I am now suffering from a very serious case of Café Envy. If I was younger and bouncier I would love to do something like this again.

The Hidden Hut is a bit hidden but not that difficult to find, it's on the coastal path near Portscatho on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall. A simple hut which does takeaway food but with lots of outside seating, with lovely views of the beach, so you don’t have to take it very far!

The menu looked so tempting and is, I believe, constantly changing; 

“Organised according to the weather forecast and produce availability.” 

... which is always the best way with menus, I find.  Ice cream is handmade from clotted cream, ingredients are sourced freshly and locally and cooked in their outside kitchen. 

And just look at their Feast Nights!    

Very sadly, we had already eaten when we visited The Hidden Hut and only had hot drinks, but I hope to return with someone hungrier soon!

Even the area for returning trays and trash was inspiring with directions for recycling various waste into different containers, and my friend reported that the toilets were a joy to visit.

So – if you are in Cornwall this summer give The Hidden Hut a visit. Might see you there, I’ll be the one staring longingly at the kitchen.