Pears and Pumpkins
Three recipes and lots of cooking notes from the last couple of weeks.
I have done a lot of cooking in the last few weeks, significantly because it entertains my daughter to sit next to me at the table while I peel and chop things or make a pastry. She likes being given a task like putting peeled pieces of potato or fruit into a bowl or pan, or helping mix up ingredients. A heap of peelings often end up on the floor – but I am hardly the tidiest cook in any case.
Pear and Ginger Pecan Crumble
My mum brought over a bag of conference pears that I had ignored for a few weeks as I am not a big eater of raw pears; however I love them in puddings and last night when something sweet was required, I made the crumble below, which I really loved. The fresh ginger brought the pears alive and gave the dish a kick, and the darker sugar prevented it from becoming too sweet.
Filling
1kg ripe conference pears (I had around 10 smallish ones, or enough to cover the bottom of a baking dish), peeled, cored and quartered
5-6 heaped dessertspoons light muscovado sugar (a darker sugar is critical to this not being too sweet)
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced very thinly
3-4 hazelnut size pieces of unsalted butter dotted around
juice and sliced peel from half a lemon
100ml water
Crumble
6oz wholemeal flour (I used spelt)
2oz plain white flour
4oz unsalted butter, cold and cubed
good pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
2 tablespoons demerara sugar
75g roughly chopped pecans
How to make:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C (fan). Prepare the pears then arrange them in a baking dish (I used a medium falconware enamel dish) and add the sugar, butter, sliced ginger, lemon peel, lemon juice and 100ml of water and mix so evenly distributed. Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes until the pears are quite tender but not fully cooked.
Meanwhile, make the crumble: in a mixing bowl, rub the butter into the flour using the tips of your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the baking powder, cinnamon, salt, demerara sugar and pecans.
Take the pears from the oven and remove the foil. There will be quite a bit of liquid in the bottom; that’s OK. Tip all the crumble over the top and spread out so it covers the fruit. Put back in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until browned and bubbling.
Serve with creme fraiche.
Roast pumpkin with anchovy cream sauce, chickpeas and salad
My partner Sam raved about this and ate every morsel from the serving dish. NB. variety is key with pumpkins and squashes as they are all so different. Crown prince is sweet, rich and nutty. A stringier, watery variety such as those often sold for Halloween will not work for this.
Ingredients:
2-3 thick wedges of unpeeled crown prince squash per person (I had 5 in total), around 1.5 inches at thickest point
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
1 tablespoon olive oil
sprig of rosemary
700g chickpeas (I used Bold Bean Co Queen Chickpeas ones – they are big and soft)
2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled
Sauce
150ml double cream
4 finely chopped anchovies
100g finely grated parmesan
1 cooked garlic clove taken from the pumpkin roasting pan, squashed
Salad
a bag of peppery salad leaves, mixed or rocket
juice of ½ lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
How to make
Pre-heat oven to 180C (fan). Arrange wedges of pumpkin in a roasting pan (not too big) and toss with olive oil, a pinch of salt, chilli flakes and rosemary. Cook until fairly tender, around 20-25 minutes, then add chickpeas to the pan, a few tablespoons of their liquid, and garlic cloves and cook for another 15 minutes.
After adding the chickpeas to the roasting pan, prepare the salad and the sauce. Warm up the cream in a small pan and add chopped anchovies and parmesan and stir, allowing to melt, then bubble gently and infuse for a few minutes, while stirring. Turn heat off. Arrange salad leaves on a large serving dish, squeeze over lemon and add olive oil and a pinch of salt and toss well. Remove the pumpkin and chickpeas from the oven, take one of the garlic cloves out of the roasting pan and squash into a puree and stir into the cream sauce and reheat for serving. Arrange the pumpkin wedges and chickpeas on the plate with the salad and toss. Drizzle over cream sauce, with extra for serving.
Cod and Chickpeas
A really good and quick dinner last week made using one dish.
Ingredients
2 pieces of cod (I had skinless loin)
4 inches from a chorizo sausage ring, cut into 1cmx1cm dice
1 tin chickpeas and its liquor
2 medium tomatoes diced
1 small onion, sliced
2 large garlic cloves, slice
pinch of chilli flakes
120ml dry white wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
To serve: 2 wedges of lemon
How to make
Pre-heat the oven to 200C fan. In an oven dish (I used a terracotta one on this occasion), place the chickpeas and liquor, chorizo, onion, garlic, tomato, chilli flakes, white wine and 1 tablespoon olive oil. Put in the pre-heated oven for 20 minutes. Rub the second tablespoon of olive oil on the pieces of fish and season with salt and pepper. Stir the chickpea mix then put the pieces fish on top of the chickpeas and put back in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until cooked and flaking. Taste for seasoning and add salt as desired.
Serve with wedges of lemon and cooked spinach.
Eating notes (or more accurately, cooking notes)
I have made this pumpkin soup from GoodFood website twice and it was superb both times. I didn’t bother with croutons and pumpkin seed garnish and did finely grated parmesan instead with buttered toast on the side. As it’s such a simple recipe, a rich sweet pumpkin is essential. In the past I have over-spiced or messed around with pumpkin soup in ways that detracted from the beauty of the pumpkin. One of the times I ladled it through a sieve before serving which made it extra smooth. The second time I made it I used one onion instead of two, which I preferred.
A cooked breakfast plate I made myself for a solo lunch at home. I used a leftover baked potato to make wedges very quickly by frying them in the pan alongside the egg. I used a leftovers sausage too, cut in half lengthways and fried to make it crispy.
Some small plums came in the vegetable box delivery, and I halved and stoned them, put them in a glass oven dish sprinkled over a few tablespoons of soft brown sugar and a few tablespoons of water, covered with foil and cooked until soft and the sugar was dissolved. This method produced a delicious plum syrup. We ate them over a few days, with porridge and with Greek yogurt.
We ate roast chicken early in the week but then fell ill with a bug brought home by our daughter and it wasn’t until Friday morning that I did anything with the leftovers. We had only eaten the legs when it was hot, so all the breast remained. I removed the breast meat and set aside and made a stock with the bones, onion, carrot, leeks, bay leaves, 6 whole peppercorns and some leftover fennel in lieu of celery, which I did not have. I added water so the contents of the pan were just covered and some salt and simmered it for an hour and a half on a low heat after skimming some froth off the top when it came to the boil.
Then at lunchtime I made a soup. I strained the stock, and added in new carrots, peeled and cut into thick rounds, one more leek in thin slices, and a few handfuls of basmati rice. I simmered this until the rice was cooked, then shredded in all of the leftover chicken breast and some of the jellied cooking juices and heated through until hot. I served immediately.
I made this butternut squash soup, with only one chilli in in case my daughter wanted to try it. It was excellent. I sieved it to make it extra silky before serving.
Plum pie! A shop that sells kitchen things and fridges in my town was closing down and I bought a small metal US-style pie dish half price, along with a mini whisk, a gingerbread man cutter, and a teapot. It came to £7.50! I made a shortcrust pastry (8oz of flour, 4oz grated butter, water) and made a double crust plum pie, arranging plums, sugar and cinnamon in the pastry base and then arranging the crust on top and glazing with milk and sugar.
A made a quiche for Ursula and some visiting babies - that Ursula loved. First I made a quick shortcrust pastry with 6oz flour, 3oz unsalted butter and some water. The filling was two eggs, a tin of tuna, 1/2 small tin of sweetcorn, a softened, finely sliced leek, some grated cheese and some creme fraiche. Baked in the same small circular metal pie dish as the plum pie. I cut out leftover pastry with a star cutter and rolled in some grated cheddar cheese and chopped chives and baked for 10 mins in case some of the babies did not want quiche. This turned out to be a good idea - as one baby ate c. 10 pastry cheese stars instead of quiche.
Slow baked rice pudding – also for the visiting babies + their parents – to the Moro restaurant method. 1ltr whole milk, 100g pudding rice, 70g sugar, 1 cinnamon stick, two pieces of orange peel. Add everything to a buttered oven dish and stir to mix. Bake at 140C (fan) for 1.5-2 hours. The milk emerges wonderfully scented and the top is bronzed. It’s quite a ‘wet’ rice pudding. The beauty of this is that it’s 5 minutes to prepare, then just sits in the oven while you do other things and emerges looking burnished and gorgeous.
