Autumn on a plate - butter bean and butternut bake

I felt so bad about forgetting to take pictures of the fish and chips, that I decided to give you some action shots of my next Experimental Thursday offering.  It also gave me a chance to try and practice my food photography, which I will concede is currently pretty poor.  I was looking back at the Scallops with Pea Pesto.  That photo really does not come close to conveying how incredibly yummy that plate of food was.  I have a lot to learn.  Bear with me though and I will give it a go.

So, last Thursday, it finally felt properly like autumn.  We woke to my favourite kind of autumn morning - beautiful bright sunshine in a cloudless, almost aquamarine sky, but deceptively crisp and fresh once outdoors.  The kind of morning when you need a hat but a good cardigan (of which, as a knitter, I am pleased to say I have many) will suffice instead of a coat. Baby Bird and I headed to the park early in the morning and returned home chilled but not cold.  After snuggling her down for a nice nap, I headed to the kitchen to steal a march on dinner (safe in the knowledge the freezer was already full of soup options for lunch).  

Making dinner while Baby Bird is sleeping is infinitely easier than trying to contain or distract her while I make it when she is awake.  It means that I can serve her meal within a few minutes of it being required later in the day, either by standing it in a bowl of hot water or reheating gently on the stove, rather than having to wait for a volcanically hot oven fresh meal to cool enough for her to eat.  Plus it gave me a chance to properly road-test whether the latest Experimental Thursday meal is a candidate for becoming a family regular.  With just two and a half people, meals need to either be capable of being made quickly and in small portions or capable of being reheated or frozen so that they can feed us for a couple of days.  I find autumn lends itself to the latter kind of dish both in feel and in produce.  Lasagne, casseroles, stews, gratins, bakes.  All meals which could easily tip over into stodge; in fact, meals that should be a little stodgy, since the cold and the dark demand comfort and succour.  All meals that benefit from the addition of the plethora of beautiful root vegetables that start to appear in our shops and markets as the nights draw in and we head towards the pumpkin's annual moment of glory.

So, with that in mind, and after rooting around in the fridge and pantry to see what needed eating up, I pulled out Leiths Vegetarian Bible.  This is not a book I use often, and as I leafed through its many, many pages I simultaneously wondered and knew why.  This is not food porn, like most of my favourite cookery books.  There are no witty anecdotes, no unctious descriptions, but, most strikingly, there are no pictures.  This is a serious, hardcore cookbook in the old-fashioned style.  There is no celebrity chef's personality getting in the way of the food and no overtly preachy message.  Instead there is page after page of things you can do with vegetables.  There are salads, salsas, side dishes a plenty, but also page after page of dishes that would make any vegetarian house-guest sing your praises for years.  Dishes that can rightly and legitimately claim to be complete in and of themselves, without any pesky animals intruding on the action.   Looking at this book reminded me of why I loved being a vegetarian (back in the days when I did things properly and avoided fish) and why I should really make more of an effort to introduce Hubby to the wonders that can be achieved with a few veg and a little thought.   So, I knew I didn't use this book more because I get caught up in salivating over the luscious photos and the oozing prose in many modern cookbooks, but I resolved to look beyond the window-dressing more regularly and explore this fabulous vegetarian encyclopaedia more often.

What did I come up with?  Well, amongst the things lurking in the larder was a butternut squash.  What could be more autumnal than the bright orange flesh of this lovely tasty veg?  A gentle browse through the squash recipes yielded the Butter Bean and Butternut Bake on pg 320.  Since discovering succotash in a baby food cookbook a couple of months ago, I have usually got a tin of butter beans in the house (I know I should probably by dried and soak them but I rarely plan far enough ahead for that - I have the same problem with chickpeas and other pulses so mostly go for tinned unless you can cook them from dried).  As my eyes wandered down the list of ingredients, I got more and more excited.  This is a bright, colourful dish which includes many of my favourite vegetables.  

So, as you can see, we start with a base of celery and red onion.  I love red onion, with its caramelised sweetness, and it pairs so well with the fresh, bright flavour of celery.  And there, lurking in the background with the red pepper and garlic is one of my absolute favourite, but rarely used vegetables: fennel.  I love the aniseedy zing of fennel, but hardly ever cook it as I don't really know what to do with it and find can all too easily overpower a dish.  This is fine if you are cooking the fabulously cleansing fennel soup from Real Fast Vegetarian Food, since the fennel is the star of the show.  I love to make up a batch of this if I'm feeling low and sluggish: it... ahem... moves things along and puts a real spring in your step.  But I am wary of using it in casseroles and stews because, whenever I do, I struggle to balance the flavours, always using too much or so little you can't really taste it.  Plus I don't really know what to do with the leftover fennel - it always strikes me as a whole or not at all kind of a veg.

Then you add to the lovely greens and purples of the fennel and onion, a big dose of flamey orange and red in the form of the butternut squash and a sweet red pepper.  As I stirred the veg in a massive saucepan, gently sweating them, I couldn't help but think it looked like I had the view from that morning's trip to the park all mixed up in there.  Gorgeous blazing leaves, stirred in with the now lush again grass and the last few summer flowers... I should probably read less poetry...

But look at it.  Seriously, if this dish isn't autumn on a plate, I don't know what is.

The best bit comes after you gently brown the veg, when you add stock and tomato purée, cover and simmer for fifteen minutes.  When you take the lid off to give it a stir, the most amazing fug hits you in the face.  Warm, sweet and soothing, with an fresh aniseed top-note.  This is like wearing an alpaca cardigan on a cold crisp morning - comforting and invigorating all at once.

After cooking the veg, you add the butter beans and the vermicelli noodles, season and pop it all in an ovenproof dish, covering it with some hard goat's cheese.  I didn't have egg vermicelli in the fridge so made do with cooking some dried stuff that I did have in the pantry.  I suspect the fresh would probably hold its shape better, but I would equally be tempted to use good old spaghetti instead.

The goat's cheese that I used was actually a semi-hard, namely the Norwegian Snofrisk.  I hadn't tried this before but it was on special in Waitrose and I'm always a sucker for trying a new cheese.  It melts nicely and browned well as you can see from the before and after shots, but I think perhaps the dish maybe needs something with a little more punch to cut through what is otherwise a very mellow dish.




That, however, really is nit-picking about was a very tasty and wonderfully cosy supper, served  (successfully) reheated along side some green beans and peas and enjoyed by the whole family (although, as often happens, in three separate sittings).  The dish is complete in itself and even the carnivorous Hubby conceded that he didn't miss the meat.  If you have a vegetarian friend coming for supper, be brave, be seasonal and serve this to the whole party.  I really don't think anyone could be disappointed with this cheeringly colourful and wonderfully flavoursome dish.  Hell, even if you are all confirmed meat-eaters, you might still enjoy it.

Home-made fish fingers and home-baked fries, with tartare sauce and mushy peas

Despite the silence here, Experimental Thursdays have continued a pace.  It's probably time for a bit of a catch-up.

Two Thursdays ago, I told you about Hubby's request for fish and chips and my search for a version that did not involve a deep-fat fryer, both for the practical reason that I don't own one and the heart-attack preventing reason that I don't think it is a terribly good idea to put that kind of temptation into your own home.  It's rather like buying a packet of biscuits - once they are in the house, they call to you and before you know it, you've devoured the whole lot in an afternoon.

Anyway, Bill Granger did indeed come up trumps.  I'm certainly not saying we shall never again grab our wallets and head for the local chippy, but his home-made fish fingers and home-baked fries were delicious.  Absolutely delicious.  They made the perfect family tea when Hubby unexpectedly managed to escape the office early and get home in time for Baby Bird's rather early 5:30 supper time.

I used haddock for the fish fingers, being a little easier to come by round here than Bill's preferred flathead and brown bread for the Parmesan crumb on the fish, which I think added a pleasant feeling of substance.  Once shallow fried, they were a gorgeous mahogany brown colour and tasted fantastic.  The trick appears to be to only cook them for a couple of minutes each side so that the fish is just cooked through but it hasn't flaked into a million pieces.

The fries were surprisingly good: simply toss in groundnut oil and season with salt and pepper before throwing in the oven.  I dialled the salt right down for the cooking and then added a little extra to Hubby's and mine once I'd served Baby Bird's.  She loved the fries, and the broccoli trees that I steamed to accompany them.  She also wolfed down a good portion of the yummy upmarket mushy peas taken from Nigella Lawson's How to Cook.  Best of all, in her opinion, seemed to be the tartare sauce, which I took from the original James Martin recipe that prompted this whole adventure.  She loved this.  It seems that strong flavours really are her thing as she went nuts for the heady combination of gherkins, capers and dill that made this a welcome and piquant accompaniment for both fish and spuds.  In fact, probably the only bit she didn't really like was the fish fingers!  I think I may have to accept that she really doesn't like white fish.  Hubby and I, on the other hand, loved them.

All in all, this was a great family meal.  The cooking was relatively simple and fairly quick, easily accomplished in just over half an hour while listening to Hubby read stories to our little one (although I confess I did make the tartare sauce earlier in the day while she was sleeping - home-made mayonnaise requires concentration I find).  The eating was fun, lending itself to fingers rather than forks and so perfect for little ones.  It also felt like a much healthier and more nurturing alternative to plonking some orange reformed fish fingers and oven chips on a baking tray (but believe me, such things lurk in my freezer for the days when life is just too hectic), so it ticked all my Mummy boxes too.

My only mistake?  I didn't think about taking a picture until we'd devoured the lot...

Fish and Chip Supper

Hubby sent me an email the other day.  No text, just this link - it didn't take a genius to figure out what he wanted me to do.  So this Thursday will be fish and chips.


We love fish and chips.  We have many fond memories of fish and chip suppers together.  The first meal we ate in this house was fish and chips (although I may have had scampi), eaten straight from the papers, with our fingers, sat on the living room floor as we had no furniture, and washed down with wine drunk, oh so classily, from the bottle because, in my excitement about collecting the keys, I remembered the wine but not the glasses.    We've used fish and chips to cater for large groups - our local chip shop was amused by but accommodating of our large advance order.  We've used it to cheer ourselves up at the end of a long week when neither of us can be bothered to cook.  It is a meal that instantly conjures images of childhood, of beaches, of fun.  But it is also, quite unashamedly a take-away meal.  Even though I probably cook fish three times a week, I have never attempted to re-create this supper at home.  Would it be the same without being wrapped in layers of greaseproof paper and raced home as fast as possible?


I wasn't sure but I was game to try.  Then I hit a snag.  My husband is great with the ideas, but, not cooking much himself (through lack of interest rather than lack of ability it seems), he doesn't always consider the execution.  Step 1: "preheat a deep-fat fryer to 190C/375F".  Ah.  Therein lies a problem.  We don't own one.  Hubby's family had one when he was little - they had to get rid of it because they found they were too tempted by it and were deep-frying every meal.  Admittedly this was the unreconstructed Eighties, when people were a little less health-aware than now, but even so, knowing our fondness of food generally and fried food in particular, we had long-since agreed we should never, ever own such a contraption, for fear of opening Pandora's Box and not being able to close it again.  


So, I was going to have to be a little bit creative.  I reached for the cookery shelf, certain someone would have some alternative cooking suggestions to give us a taste of the chip shop but in a healthier way.  Sure enough, the guru of a little bit of what you fancy but done in a healthier way, Bill Granger came up trumps.  So, tonight it is home-made fish fingers, with oven-baked fries.  I'm keeping the tartare sauce from James Martin's original recipe and adding some upmarket mushy peas, from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat.  Hmm, I can't wait.

Best laid plans

Last week was a busy one, but Thursday was pencilled in as a quiet one.  The perfect opportunity to do some cooking, and get myself organised.  On Monday, the weather was looking pretty grim.  Tuesday failed to live up to the weather forecaster's promise of a heatwave.  So, while in the supermarket, I bought the makings for a nice autumn soup (Butternut Buttercup Soup from the wonderful Vicar's Wife's Cook Book, by Eliza Beynon - I will inevitably talk about this book at length in the future, so won't now, save to say "READ THIS BOOK!") and fish pie (in a bid to be a little healthier, we always use the Luxury Fish Pie recipe from 200 Low Fat Recipes by  Judith Wills - I promise you it is not at all as joyless as it sounds, and is a thoroughly delicious winter regular for us).  I had already earmarked some apples from the tree in our garden for Experimental Thursday, and again, I was channelling autumn, planning to make my first ever apple pie.

I know.  It seems surprising that I can put forward such a standard, staple pudding as an Experimental Thursday offering.  I can't quite believe I haven't made one before either.  Surely everyone who has ever made Sunday lunch will have dabbled with a pie.  But, when it comes to Sunday lunch, or cooking with apples in general, I rarely make it past crumble.  It's so simple, and so tasty, and if I'm truthful, I am ever so slightly frightened of pastry.  I find it tricky.  I struggle to roll it out.  How on earth would I ever manage to get the top on a pie without breaking it?  And, perhaps more importantly, I was afraid it could never live up to the wonderful memories I have of my grandmother's apple pies when I was a kid.

With hindsight, I should really have got Nanny to teach me how to do it.  She made utterly fabulous pies.  Apple, blackberries, rhubarb, red currants, blackcurrants, strawberries and raspberries.  I can remember all of them being sealed in fabulously neat pastry cases, carefully pricked to release the steam and served up with lashings of custard, cream or ice-cream, depending on the type of pie and the time of year.  But, I'm five years too late for that particular lesson.  What about ready-made pastry?  I use it a lot for savoury cooking (although mostly puff pastry, rather than the shortcrust I prefer for a desert pie).  Yet somehow it didn't seem like the done thing for an apple pie.  The dish is so simple in itself, I think it needs the lightness that only really comes from fresh homemade pastry.

I pulled down a host of books from the cookery shelves looking for support and inspiration:  Nigella Lawson, Rachel Allen, Eliza Beynon and Nigel Slater all had encouraging things to say about pastry making.  I knew I could do it.  I manage mince pies each Christmas and they are always well received.  I managed the chard tart the other week.  Yet I remained nervous.  Mince pies are tiny disks of pastry, easily managed.  The tart was forgiving of the split in the casing when I laid it in the dish - a bit of podging and modging smoothed that over and the blind baking fixed the problem.  But two large disks of pastry, needing to be moved from board to dish.  Could I really pull off a pie?

I almost didn't try. Not because I was afraid.  No, challenges such as my pie phobia are exactly what Experimental Thursday is about.  On Wednesday afternoon, the weather transformed.  We were suddenly thrust back into the middle of summer.  The sun shone, the mercury rose, Baby Bird and I slowly simmered.  Thursday was even hotter!  Ridiculously hot for England.  Plans for soup were abandoned and the fish pie was hastily recast as pan-fried fish with potato salad and green salad.  Hubby called and said he wouldn't be home for dinner after all.  A pie suddenly seemed like a huge amount of effort for a hot summer's day, with only me there to eat it.  Then I thought about Hubby, slaving away, and about how much he loves apple pie. Maybe, even if he couldn't get home for dinner, he would still fancy a little slice with some ice-cream and a cup of coffee to help him unwind when he did finally get back.


So, I scanned the various suggestions on my shelves once more and got stuck in.  I didn't use a particular recipe.  I borrowed tips from here and tips from there.  I used Nigella's pastry recipe from the Blackberry and Apple Pie in How to Be a Domestic Goddess.  I confess I struggled with rolling the pastry out.  Too much water?  Not enough water?  A too heavily floured board?  I'm not really sure but it took about 6 attempts to roll out the base, remove it from the board and get it into the pie dish, and a similar number for the top.  By the end the pastry was not really very workable.  With hindsight, I should perhaps have simply used the recipe I use for mince pies.  As I do every Christmas, I think I may call my mum for the old faithful Be-Ro Book's recipe (although not eating meat, I always sub the lard with Trex).  I should really write it down  somewhere proper to keep, rather than on the back of an envelope like I normally do when, in a Christmas baking panic, I realise I have lost the scrap I wrote it on last year and need the recipe NOW!

For the filling, I simply peeled, cored and sliced the apples, put them in a pan with some brown sugar, cinnamon and a couple of tablespoons of water, simmered for a few minutes until the apples softened and then stirred vigorously to pulp some of the apples, while still retaining plenty of firmer slices.  I then poured this into the waiting pie-case and took a deep breath before attempting to apply the top.

It did not go well.  The pastry split in several places and then broke altogether as I tried to repair the damage.  I resigned myself to the pie looking "homely" (I would love to say "rustic" but really that would be a stretch too far) and left it on the side to await Hubby's call to say he was heading home.  His journey would be conveniently just long enough to cook the pie and allow it to cool ready for eating.

And so, at ten o'clock on Thursday night, at the end of one of the hottest days ever recorded in the UK in September, Hubby and I sat down together for apple pie, ice-cream and coffee.  It might not have looked brilliant, but it was the best meal we had eaten together all week and we were both exceptionally glad I had done it.  The apples still had a little bite, the cinnamon was just strong enough, the filling just sweet enough and even the pastry, despite my ham-fisted efforts, tasted good.  My pie may have lacked eye appeal, but it was toothsome, tasty and exactly what my poor tired husband needed at the end of a crappy day.  Pies will definitely be making a reappearance in our kitchen.