Leek and Mustard Cheese Tart

In the days when I was very poor, there was a recipe which was always a hit and that was: Tarte à la moutarde . The sound of all this mustard might make diners a bit suspicious but it is a nice, filling starter in which the taste of the mustard is barely discernible.

So I took the recipe with me and it became my signature dish. It was one of my first post on the net in the days when I wrote for the well-fed network but enough reminiscing. Back to the present, in fact back to last month, I spotted a new mustard tart in the Asda Magazine: Leek and Mustard Cheese Tart. Short of being as delicious as my Tarte tomate à la moutarde but still nice, easy to make and it might just take care of that grainy mustard which has been in your pantry for a little while.

Leek and Mustard Cheese Tart
25g butter
2 medium leeks, cut into thick slices (about 350g)
Ready rolled shortcrust pastry (sorry, I know it is easy to make from scratch but...)
3 tbsp coarsegrain mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
100g (3½ oz) mature Cheddar cheese, grated
2 large eggs
175ml crème fraîche
1tbsp olive oil plus extra for drizzling
50g mature Cheddard grated & 25 g Parmesan grated too
1 small bunch of chives chopped

Melt the butter and oil in a frying pan and add the sliced leek. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring well. Add 1 tbsp water, cover, reduce the heat for about 10 mins, stirring occasionally, until it softens.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 or 200°C. Roll out the pastry and put it in a tart mould (20 cm+)
Spread with the mustard

In a bowl mix the remaining ingredients but not the chives add the mixture to the cooled leeks

Pour on the pastry and bake for 35-40 minutes, get out of the oven and sprinkle with chives

Week-End Pictures

Only a couple of hours away from London is a county very seldom talked about. The smallest of them all in England is Rutland. At is center is a man-made reservoir large enough for people to fish and do all sorts of nautical things. Delightful villages: yellow-stones houses giving them a unity and bags of charm. So here are some photos from the week end

Curious Ingredient Number 3 : Paneer

Paneer: You have seen it in the cheese section of your supermarket, you may well have gone as far a picking it up and putting it down. It looks like a slab of...well a slab of...my best description is: "a slab of", it is off white, it is cheese, it is very popular in Indian cuisine. Unlike other cheeses, it does not taste very much when raw and does not have a strong taste when cooked but has a nice and soft texture. Paneer is used in a myriad of ways and Pebble Soup readers' in India might want to comment and give us ideas or alternatively here is what good old Wikipedia says about paneer.

I often buy paneer it keeps for a long time unopened in the fridge and makes a welcome change to the same old menus. Curious ingredients have this ability to turn dreary shopping lists into somewaht rather exciting daily feasts.

As mentioned earlier there are numerous ways of cooking paneer, but I have only know 1 recipe which I found in the Hairy Bikers' cook book. Don't worry if you don't have all the ingredients there are 3 main ingredients here: Paneer, semoulina and spinach, the rest can be swaped, replaced by similar or simply dropped.

Crunchy Palak Paneer

Ingredients

For the sauce
2 tbsp ghee or vegetable oil
2 onions, finely chopped
7.5cm/3in piece root ginger, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 whole red or green chilli
1 tsp salt
1 x 400g/14oz can tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tsp sugar
500g/1lb 2oz fresh spinach, washed

2tbsp water

For the paneer
2 tsp garam masala
50g/1¾oz semolina
200g/7oz paneer, cut into 1cm/½in cubes
vegetable oil, for shallow frying
small handful coriander leaves, finely chopped, to garnish
1 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. For the sauce, heat the ghee or oil in a saucepan, add the onion and cook for about three minutes until soft. Add the ginger and garlic and cook for a further minute.
2. Add the ground cumin, ground coriander, ground turmeric, whole chilli and salt.

Tip : Cooking spices releases their flavour
3. Add the chopped tomatoes and sugar and simmer for ten minutes.
4. Meanwhile, turn your attention to the main ingredient: paneer,

Pplace the garam masala and semolina in a large bowl and mix well add the cubed paneer in and coat well.
5. In a Frying pan or a wok, eat the oil add the coated paneer and fry until crisp and golden.
7. Add the washed spinach and two tablespoons of water to the tomato sauce, stir in and cook until the spinach wilts.
8. Fold the paneer into the sauce.
9. To serve, garnish with the coriander and squeeze over the lemon juice.

At Pebble soup, we loved this recipe so much that it fast became a dinner favourite which I would like to share with the readers of Bangers and Mash via #TheSpiceTrail challenge.
 

Clementine Pudding Cake

This morning, I was scouring supermarket magazines as one would do and could not help being slightly outraged at the price of a Pear Tarte Tatin. Why would one pay £17 for something which is so easy to make?

So I decided to take you step by step through this equally nice recipe which will cost you £2.30 will serve 6 and takes 45 mins. It is moist and the citrus flavours are really refreshing.

Here is what you will need:

6 clementines
150g (5oz) butter
150g (5oz) caster sugar
3 eggs
150g (5oz) self-raising flour

Heat the oven to Gas 4, 180°C, fan160°C. Remove zest from 3 clementines, cut away remaining peel and pith with a sharp knife and slice to approx 1cm (½in), removing seeds.
Line a 20cm (8in) springform tin with baking parchment and arrange clementine slices over the base.
Cream together the butter, sugar and zest until light and fluffy, add 3 tablespoons hot water and whisk vigorously. Add eggs and whisk again – mixture may split but don’t worry. Add flour to sponge mix and fold in until smooth and evenly blended.
Spoon into prepared tin over sliced clementines, taking care not to move the slices. Bake for 30 minutes.
Remove and cool a little. Place a plate on top and turn the whole thing over. Release spring and remove cake tin and baking parchment. Sprinkle with a little sugar. Serve hot or cold.

I am sure sliced oranges or grapefuits will do the trick perfectly well too.
this is a Tesco's recipe

The Cadogan Arms a Gastro-Pub Review

The Cadogan Arms is a gastro pub situated on the Kings' road's black hole, not quite near enough Sloane square to be filled with fashionistas.

Though a gastro-pub of some pedigree (own by the Martin brothers who run another 5 highly acclaimed such pubs through London the Gun in Docklands, E14, the White Swan Pub and Dining Room on Fetter Lane, EC4, and the Well in Clerkenwell, EC1. The Cadogan Arms still remains a local boozer with good Ale.

Having 5 bloggers descending on you to review and unpick your menu is bound to be rather nerve racking but if it was the case, it certainly did no show: the General Manageress was relaxed & discreet, the staff watching your every need but not overly so, possibly albeit rather puzzled at the paparazzi effect every time drinks or food was brought to our table.

I declared straight away that I was not, I repeat not going to drink, that was before the first cocktails arrived. They looked so refreshing that I succumbed to a Caipirinha and was not disappointed. Cocktails, in my opinion, scored 8 out of 10, if only for the double espresso Martini which changes my views on double espressos forever.

But we were here to eat. That's what gastro-pubs are all about. The first time, I went to a gastropub many moons ago, I thought it was all gloss/no content or as they would say at my local: "Them gastros, all fur, no knickers" that is certainly not the case for the Cadogan Arms.

The menu has a wide range of options and apart from the occasional absentee (lamb) and the case of undercooked scallops and steak which both happen to land into Michelle's of The Greedy Gourmet plate, the rest was very satisfying.

My starter a wild rabbit, duck heart and pistachio terrine with a pinch of flaky salt, was a tasty assortment of complementary meats. As across the table, crayfish and avocado salad were abundant, Steak Tartare, raw quail's egg not often seen on menus was being highly praised by Johanna of The Passionate Cook, the oysters were avidly being talked about by Sarah of Maison Cupcake.

By now, the restaurant area had started to fill up. There is space for about 50 diners and on that Saturday night despite an empty King's road, the place was very busy, almost to full capacity which is a sign. Flash, flash, flash here comes the main course.

I plumped for the 35 days aged Aberdeen Angus rib-eye steak, Béarnaise sauce, hand cut chips and bone marrow jus. The Béarnaise sauce was out of this world, smooth to its right consistency and the steak was really tasty.

You would have thought that by now we were about to implode, but certainly not Jeanne of Cook Sister! and I shared the dessert which suited me fine as I like my cheese before the pudding and by sharing nobody noticed my widely French habit. British cheeses consisted of

• Wookey Hole Cheddar
• Tunworth
• The Isle of Avalon
• Bosworth Ash
• Barkham Blue

and last but not least our Roasted Pineapple with a touch of chilli with a caramel sauce and a creme fraiche sorbet and that was refreshing, not too sweet, the pineapple had roasted slowly for 2 hours and was melting in our mouths, the flower was edible and ate it was.

The portions were very generous, the menu was well thought out and overall, the food nicely executed, the price £38 (drinks not included). I will always associate Bearnaise with that meal and if you can come out of a restaurant with one long lasting memory, that means that the place must be doing something right.

Disaster Revisited: The Cake

I never really understood why my cakes were soggy in the middle and hardly ever rose.

You would think that such creations would never see the light of the day. Au contraire. I always took them dished them up, mostly at picnics, never realising that in doing so I was consolidating a certain reputation.

Till not long ago, a friend arrived for lunch complete with a hand made cardboard box full of pepper-flavoured cookies, presented with the following sentence : " you have bought me some non edible desserts in the past, now it is my turn" who could blame him really and by the way, the pepper cookies were delicious.

So when I read an invitation to revisit my dessert memory vault and take another look back at...a dessert disaster. I was in. You could too: Sugar High Friday is the The Domestic Goddess' brain child.

Slightly worried though I decided to approach the cake from a "one portion angle". I also broke my rules and bought all the ingredients. To make sure of sure I got the recipe out of what I consider the best baking cook-book: The Baker by Leanne Kitchen and to leave no room for the devil to do is work I follow the recipe for Little Jam-Filled Cakes step by step.

Perfection, loveliness, risen to plume height in the sky ( may be not that high), cooked in the middle, light, great recipe ..........at least for the first batch. For the second, I decide to put a little paper-cup in the holes....disaster: the cakes ate the paper which in turn meant that if we wanted to eat the cakes we had to cut off the edges.

Little Jam- Filled Cakes

IngredientsMakes 12
75g (2 1/2 0z) unsalted melted butter, plus more for tin
170 g 960z/ 1/4 cup) granulated sugar superine
2 large eggs
280g 910oz/2 1/1 cups) self-raising flour
250ml (9fl oz/1 cup)milk
6 tablespoons strawberry jam or preserves
1/2 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
6 small strawberries, hulled and thinly slice
icing (confectioner's) sugar, for dusting (optional)

Method
1.Preheat oven to 200C (400F/Gas6). Butter a standard 12-cup muffin tin; set aside.
2. Sift the flour into a large bowl, add the sugar and stir to combine. Make a well in the center
3.In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla and butter. Pour into the well in the flour mixture and gradually stir until just combined, using a large metal spoon.
4. Spoon 3/4 of the cake batter into the muffin holes. tope each with 1/2 teaspoon of the jam then cover with the remaining batter.
5. Fan the strawberry slices over each cake, gently pressing them in.
6.Bake for 20 minutes or until lighly golden or until a cake tester inserted in top cake layer comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to coll in the tin for 5 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack to coll completely.
7. Dust with icing sugar if desired
8. Little jam-filled cakes are best eaten the day they are made but keep well in a cake tin .......and I have just got one.....hand made by a friend.

What is in Your Pantry? Californian Prunes

It is a bit of a misnomer, Californian prunes were not in my pantry until I contacted the Californian prunes board who very kindly send me a sample of 6 individually wrapped prunes and a very classy marketing pack.

-"What" screamed another blogger, mate of mine, 6 prunes, they must be kidding! You are not going to write something about 6 prunes?
-"well yes, I am" and you know why? because in the pack there is a mouth watering recipe
Prune, Amaretti and Citrus Tart. And also I think that prunes are undrated, have an undeservedly bad reputation.

May be six prunes is the way to use prunes if you don't want the side effects which comes from the fact that prunes are high in fibre. Beside they provide high levels of antioxidants and potassium and after a long long winter we need potassium + they are low in calories.

To be honest I could not make the difference between these prunes and Agen prunes which are also plump and juicy so the trick is to choose prunes which are not shriveled up and ugly if that make sense.

I'll leave you with the recipe, it is a good one to prepare for any occasion the moisture of the prunes mixed with the tanginess of the lemon curd is a delight.

Prune, Amaretti and Citrus Tart.

Serves 8 Prep/cooking time: 1. hours this recipe is copied from californianprunes website with a few adaptations in italic

Ingredients
•300g California prunes
•100ml Armagnac (optional but some kind of alcool is necessary)
•180g plain flour
•pinch salt
•20g caster sugar
•100g unsalted butter chilled and diced
•1 egg yolk
•50g ground almonds
•1 large egg
•beaten
•55g caster sugar
•200g creme fraiche
•natural yoghurt and ground cinnamon to serve.

Method
Place the prunes in a bowl with the Armagnac and leave to marinate for 1 hour.
To make the pastry, put the flour, salt and sugar into the bowl of a food processor and process until just combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. With the machine running, add the egg yolk and 3-4 tsp of chilled water and process until the pastry comes together.
Chill for around 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas mark 6. Roll the party out and use to line a 25cm flan tin. Prick the base with a fork and chill for another 10 minutes before lining with greaseproof paper and baking beans.
Bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove the beans and paper and bake for another 5 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 190°C/375°F/ Gas mark 5.
Drain the prunes, reserving the Armagnac. Add to this the ground almonds, beaten egg, sugar and creme fraiche and mix together well until smooth.
Place the prunes over the base of the party case then pour over the almond mixture. Place the tin on a baking sheet and bake for 40-45 minutes until golden.
Serve cut into wedges with a dollop of natural yoghurt sprinkled with ground cinnamon.

PER SERVING 492 kcalories, protein 10.5g, carbohydrate 43.5g, fat 30.6g, saturated fat 15.4g, fibre 3.6g, sugar 26.1g, salt 0.1g

The Week-End When I Bought an Oil Painting By Mistake and Cooked Lumberjack Cake

There is an auction house around the corner, I seldom visit it as the owner and I harbour a grudge for a reason long forgotten, if it ever existed. But Friday being a bank holiday, he and I went to the viewing. Me being ready to hear the not-charming owner welcoming me with is usual "Not dead yet?"

I spotted a frame described in the catalogue as regency frame with print. Grubby yes, print no. Being on non-talking terms with the expert, I could not let him know that this was an oil painting of a golfer so I turned to him whose eyebrows furrowed which usually means "are you sure of what you are saying? they are experts you know" but he liked it, too.

So Saturday I got myself a bidding paddle. When number 10 came up, I gaily lifted my paddle, sadly somebody else in the room was bidding against me so we quickly reached the top end of the estimate: £20, up and up it was going, this is when a women coming out of nowhere, kicked me in the guts in order to reach a seat where she had plonked a bag, my attention span flew out of the window. "Selling at £28" NOOOOO, Paddle, "£30 with the lady" "Sir, £32?" "sold for £30 to the lady". That is me! I am the lady and proud owner of a elegant black and gold regency frame but what is in it?

Came 3.00 o'clock after a well earned pub lunch in one of Greenwich best kept secret, we went to retrieve the object. It took a little longer than expected since my name had been misspelled and the receptionist eyebrows furrowed a couple of times which meant "are you sure you know your name? we are experts you know"

Back home, armed with a bottle of window cleaner and a hammer, I started on the frame, the glass, the back, the glass again, YYYES, this is an oil painting; blue field of heather dotted with pink dots, and elegant gentleman in a tailored suit playing golf. Signed by JC Drummmmmmmn or name very close to that. possibly not worth much more than the monies I handed over to the experts.

It was time to make Lumberjack cake, takes quite a long time, certainly much longer than the 30 minutes stated in the recipe but is a real winner, moist and delicious.