Dinner With Crayons – Page 4 – Colourful Family Food

Padron peppers… oh how I love thee

August 13, 2013

I ate these at a blog event recently although I’ve been racking my brains which one it was. Then I spent a weekend with Helen who served them as an appetiser. They’re kind of addictive.

If you’ve never heard of padrun peppers then I urge you to seek them out, they’re currently around £1.99 a bag in Waitrose although I’ve heard reports of Sainsbury’s stocking them too.

They’re barely bigger than hot chilli peppers and their preparation merely requires a quick stir fry in olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt.

Padrun peppers are mildly hot although now and again you get one that blows your head off. They’re the culinary equivalent of Russian Roulette.

The packs from Waitrose claim that around 1 in 30 has a kick although I’d say it’s closer to 1 in 10.

Maybe don’t feed them to the kids just incase they take a bite of rocket fuel but they’re marvellous as an appetiser when you’ve got friends round.

I cooked them for my parents in law the other weekend. They like growing green peppers in Serbia and my father in law isn’t averse to hot chilli so I thought these would amuse him.

Now I’m keeping my fingers crossed we’ll get them imported all the year round rather than them being a seasonal flash in the pan. Or maybe I’d appreciate them more if they were seasonal. Probably that’s preferable. But please please don’t let the season be too short.

Lemon yogurt tahini dressing

August 12, 2013

Lemon yogurt is one of my favourite flavours because it’s flexible to use in non-sweet dishes as well as more obviously dessert or breakfast.

I have marinated chicken in lemon yogurt to great effect and during the current heat wave we have enjoyed a cooling salad dressing made from Muller Light Greek Style lemon yogurt. Mix 2 tablespoon of yogurt and 1 heaped tablespoon of tahini with a fork in a mug. Add seasoning and an equal volume water and mix well. Drizzle with some olive oil and spoon over salad leaves, it’s especially good with rocket. If you make a mug full you’ll have enough for a couple of days.

Uses for tahini and lemon yogurt dressing:
Spread on flatbreads rather than mayonnaise
Drizzle over rocket salad
Omit the water and use as a dip

Someone asked me on Facebook whether using a sweet yogurt meant this dressing was sweet. I don’t think so, the texture of the tahini balances it out fine.

What’s your favourite instant salad dressing?

Smoked salmon potato salad with hearts of palm

August 9, 2013

This is the potato salad I made using the dill and rapeseed mayonnaise in my last post.

I was wondering how to use this can of hearts of palm shown below and read on the side that it went well with smoked fish. I tend to keep a wallet of smoked salmon in my freezer, they defrost within little more than an hour meaning you have smoked salmon pretty much whenever you fancy it without hurrying to use it after purchase. You can buy frozen smoked salmon from IKEA but I don’t recommend this as the fish is very pale and lacks flavour.

So whenever I spot a reduced pack of fresh smoked salmon in the supermarket, into my freezer it goes.

Hearts of palm are a vegetable I would use again – they’re soft and not strongly flavoured, a kind of fusion between bamboo shoot, asparagus and mushroom. They’re soft and mix in well with potato. I also stir fried some hearts of palm in left over rice the next day. An interesting backdrop vegetable rather than a main star of the dish. Handy to keep in the cupboard to add extra bulk or interest to a salad.

Smoked salmon potato salad with hearts of palm
There’s no fixed amount for most of the ingredients, just use as much or as little as you fancy depending on your favourites!

Ingredients:
dill and rapeseed mayonnaise
smoked salmon
sliced radish
cooled boiled new potatoes
sliced hearts of palm
salt and pepper to season
extra chopped fresh dill to garnish

This would make an excellent ideal picnic or lunchbox dish. Or a light lunch.

With thanks to Cooks and Co for product samples.

Fridge diving dessert: peach and raspberry galettes

August 8, 2013

Take one peach that’s been sat in the fridge so long you’re sick of the sight of it (even though there’s nothing actually wrong with it) one narrow strip of left over puff pastry (from Charlotte’s courgette tart) and half a dozen raspberries out of the garden.

Cut the puff pastry into circles with a crinkly cutter and drape over slices of the peach with a raspberry. Add a sprinkling of sugar (or in my case a quick grinding of Lakeland cinnamon sugar).

Bake at 200c for around 20 minutes. A speedy fridge diving dessert!

Dill and rapeseed mayonnaise

August 8, 2013

This may surprise some people but I had never made my own mayonnaise before.

I wasn’t scared or put off by tales of splitting, I just hadn’t got around to it.

So I waited specifically for when I wanted some mayonnaise and didn’t have any conceivable alternatives in the fridge.

I used one beater on my trusty electric hand mixer and the cup for my stick blender.

The trick is to not add the oil too quickly at first, I read in Rosemary Shrager’s Absolutely Foolproof Home Cooking that you should dip a spoon into the oil and let drops drip onto the eggs as you beat. Her mayonnaise recipes use 2 egg yolks and much more oil than I found necessary so my version ended up somewhat different to the one in the book. Also I used rapeseed oil because I hadn’t got enough non extra-virgin olive oil in the house. I didn’t want to waste extra virgin in mayonnaise as it would taste too strong. The bonus using rapeseed oil is the attractive golden colour – it looks more like a Hollandaise.

Dill and rapeseed mayonnaise

Ingredients:

1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon yellow mustard (I used French’s)
120 ml rapeseed oil
1 tbsp coarsely chopped dill
1 tbsp lemon juice
large pinch of sea salt flakes

Directions:

Beat the egg yolk and mustard with an electric hand mixer, dribble oil into the egg mix by dripping it from a spoon at first. As the mayonnaise starts to bulk out you can add the oil more quickly, eventually pouring. Add the dill and then the lemon juice and salt to taste. The mayonnaise will keep for up to 5 days in the fridge, stir it before using if it separates slightly.

This mayonnaise pairs beautifully with smoked salmon.

Chargrilled courgette salad with feta and chilli

August 7, 2013

Food with stripes is always more fun with my @lecreusetUK a reliable means to scorch stripes into steaks, peppers and today, courgettes.

Yes it takes some time, yes it takes some babysitting but honestly the flavour from chargrilled courgettes cannot be matched by cooking them any other way. I once bought some ready made chargrilled courgettes in olive oil from the orange supermarket and they were ok but home made is way better.

To make this salad you need:

3 courgettes cut into lengthway strips and chargrilled until stripey
50g feta cheese cut into dinky cubes
a handful of small cooked pulses such as puy lentils or these tiny brown chick peas from the ethnic foods aisle (chana something or another)
chopped mint
lime juice
chilli flakes

…And devour!

Confession: I received my Le Creuset grill pan as a wedding gift nearly 9 years ago and don’t use it as often as I ought.

Piedmont peppers

August 7, 2013

Delia didn’t invent them but I always associate piedmont peppers with her Summer Collection.

They’re almost a serving suggestion rather than a recipe – roast peppers filled with tomato, olive and anchovy. Usually my anchovies are artfully criss crossed fillets, these ones today were crumbled chunks of Belle Ile whole anchovies from one of their outlets in Brittany.

I make them now without referring to Delia so I can’t guarantee I’ve actually stuck to the recipe. It’s just one of those things I’ve read in a book once and carried on making from memory ever since.

Do you have any recipes like that?

Almost instant garlic and herb tortilla

August 1, 2013

We had potatoes left over from a potato salad I’ve not blogged yet and it was time for Ted’s tea. For a speedy supper for one six year old I fried left over potato slices in butter and when they were nice and crispy I added two beaten eggs and some cubes of Boursin garlic and herb soft cheese from these new dinky packs.

Top with some fresh basil and it’s rather fine dining for a six year old, I hope he appreciated it!

Best of all, it was a bit big for a tiny tummy so I enjoyed a snack at the same time too.

With thanks to Boursin for sample cheese.

Cichette Venetian style appetisers with salami and chilli

August 1, 2013

Last month I visited Venice for my 40th birthday and one of the things I was eager to try was cichette style appetisers in a Venetian bar.

I will publish a Maison Cupcake post with the various Venetian dishes we tried but here is something I reproduced myself at home having been inspired during our trip.

Chargrill some red peppers – I am using my Le Creuset griddle pan which was also used in the courgette salad I published on Tumblr recently.

Now honestly, I did try to buy real polenta. But actually I could only get hold of a ready made block. Venetian white polenta would have been hard enough to find but I didn’t expect to struggle finding yellow polenta in a gigantic branch of Sainsbury’s. So ready made we have.

It slices up and carries tiger stripes extremely well and it tastes good too. Although admittedly you can’t soup it up with parmesan like you would if you made it from scratch.

To fire up my red chargrilled pepper I am using Fiery Chilli Sacla pesto which as you can see is one of numerous flavours – I have already instagrammed the wild garlic one in some stuffed mushrooms and there’s a tart post in the pipeline for Maison Cupcake using the classic basil.

This fiery chilli pesto packs a punch. I was rather taken aback how strong it was and it beefed up the Three Little Pigs salami beautifully.

To assemble the cichette simply stack polenta squares, pepper, a teaspoon of chilli pesto and a disc of salami and fix together with a cocktail stick. I could almost be in the backstreets of Fundamente Nove.

I had a trio of these cichette for lunch and when Ted saw the pictures he wanted them too. So my six year old had cichette for supper. Next he’ll be begging me to take him to Venice but that can wait.

Had you ever come across cichette?

With thanks to Three Little Pigs and Sacla for sample products.

Lamb chops with coriander pesto

July 30, 2013

Lamb chops with coriander pesto – a super speedy supper.

I have as you see below had something of a Sacla mountain lately, I received 8 jars and have been gradually incorporating them to different meal ideas at home.

The lamb chops had been forgotten and unloved in the freezer but after defrosting I smeared them with Sacla’s coriander flavour pesto and popped them in the oven for 25 minutes at 190c.

They don’t say “slam in the lamb” for nothing!

With thanks to Sacla for pesto and sauce samples.