Monica’s Agnolotti
Goats’ Cheese Tarte
This is a scrumptious goats’ cheese tarte, which makes for a great vegetarian lunch or supper.
Gremolata-coated goats’ cheese cubes, topped with honey and orange glazed shallots, beetroot and creme fraice, baked on a sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry. Looks delicision, tasts delicious, what’s not to like?
Thaw one sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry.
Parboil three medium-sized beetroot for 12 minutes, then drain and let cool down slightly. Put on some disposable gloves, peel and dice the beetroot, then toss with a tablespoon of good quality balsamic vinegar.
Peel a handful of shallots, cut in half and gentry caramelise with a tablespoon of butter, honey and orange marmelade each. I also like a red chilly in the mix for a little bit of background heat. After caramelization starts, pop the whole thing in the oven at 170 C for 10..15 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the gremolata: a bunch of parsley, two tablespoons of breadcrumbs, a tablespoon of pine kernels, a tablespoon of grated unwaxed lemon peel, a teaspoon of crushed black pepper. Blizz until smooth.
Dice enough goats cheese to cover 3/4 of the puff pastry sheet loosely. Toss the cheese dice in the gremolata.
Pre-heat your oven to 200 C.
Spread out the puff pastry sheet, then use a knife to mark a one inch border around the edges. All your toppings stay within that inner square: spread the coated goats cheese, add the beetroot dice, add an occasional half teaspoon of creme fraiche. Put the caramelized onions on top and drizzle a small amount of the onion’s cooking licquor across.
Finally, fold up the puff pastry edges to form a tray, and brush the outsides with a mixture of equal amounts of one egg yolk and milk.
Pop into the oven for 20 minutes or until the pastry looks just right.
Eat while warm, but note that everything on this tarte retains heat pretty well. You’ve been warned!
Pork Belly
It’s roasted pork belly to you and me, it’s belly of pork if you’re watching Masterchef. In either case, it is super finger-lickin’ delicious. It takes a few hours to make, but the actual preparation time is minimal.
Everyone has his or her favourite and fool-proof pork belly recipe these days. I am sure many of these work just as well. This works for me:
Pre-heat the oven to 220 Celcius.
I line the bottom of a suitably sized pyrex roasting dish such that the meat can rest on it, and won’t sit in its own fat. Onions and juniper berries, apples and sage, or -my favourite- fennel and a very generous amount of star anise. Cut the fruit or vegetable in chunky bits and line the dish. Perforate the belly skin with neat parallel cuts no more than 10 mm apart – you will use those later to cut through the crackling skin, so get this right. Rub a tablespoon or corse sea salt into the perforated skin, and place the meat, skin-side up, into the dish. Add 150 ml of water
Pop into the oven and roast at 220 C for 20 minutes, then reduce to 140 C and roast for 3 hours. Finally, give it a 10 minute quicky at 220 Celcius again to crisp the skin.
I usually serve this with a noodle soup in Chinese, Thai or Vietnamese style, or with a seasonal soup of garden vegetables. Whatever you serve it with, the pork belly will be the star of the show.
Carrot Soup
From the vegetarian department:
Carrot and Ginger Soup, served with a poached egg and herbs.
Simple and delicious, but takes a little time to cook.
750g carrots, trimmed and cut into chunks,
2 thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger, pealed and crushed,
1 medium sized onion,
1 large clove of garclic,
1 bulb of fennel, trimmed and cut into chunks
Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil and one tablespoon of butter, then add all the chipped vegetables and fry until caramelization begins. Add two teaspoons of freshly grond black pepper, two teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of crushed coriander seeds, 1..2 dried red chillies. Toast the spices, then add 1 1/2 litre cold water. Bring to the boil, then let simmer until the carrots are tender (approximately 60 minutes).
Meanwhile, finely chop a handful of parsely. Add a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of warm olive oil. Toss, let sit in a dish.
When the carrots are tender (but no need to cook them to death!), remove the ginger and chillies, then run the remaining soup through the blender to obtain a smooth paste.
Serve with a spoon of soured cream, topped with a poached runny egg. Drain the parsley with some kitchen tissue and sprinkle it on the soup. Add freshly ground black pepper and a drizzle of rapeseed oil or chilly oil.
Tarte Flambé
Here’s an all-time favourite. It’s Tarte Flambé to the French, Flammkuchen to us, and not very well known outside the southwestern Germany and northeastern French areas. But everyone loves it!
A very thin and crispy lean bread base with a sour cream, onion and bacon topping. Seriously, what’s not to like?
For 3 tarts or two people:
Kned a yeast dough from 300 g white wheat flour, 6 g salt, 8 g fresh yeast and 165 ml water, all at room temperature. Kned, let it rest for 15 minutes, then kned very thoroughly to develop the gluten. Gluten may not be fashionable, but it gives strength to bread. Roll out to three very thin sheets, as thin as 2 mm. Transfer onto baking parchment and set aside for 45 minutes.
Pre-heat to oven to as much as you can. Check the baking parchment for the maximum temperature (mine does 240 C), don’t go too much over as it might catch fire and generally gets brittle and of little use when overheating.
Cut 250 g striped bacon into thumb-sized strips, cut two medium-sized onions into thin rings. Mix 220 ml soured cream, a teaspoon of greshly ground corse black pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, a pinch or salt.
Prepare one tarte at a time, as you don’t want them to get soggy while waiting for the baking. Spread the spiced soured cream evenly across the base, sprinkly bacon and onions evenly across, then bake until the edges are almost burnt (a few minutes).
Cut into large pieces and eat right away. Use your hands.
Here’s a somewhat more detailed and not entirely serious version of the recipe for dummies.
Tomato Jam: A Lynch Job
Kevin Lynch of Closet Cooking inspired this Tomato Jam with his original recipe.
I never followed his recipe, but end up with a coffee-free and much spicier variety, which we find looks and tastes fantastic on bread with a fried egg, as the tomato layer on a pizza, or with egg-rich Pappadalle or Fettuccine. So, here goes one fairly large batch:
Wash and dry 4kg ripe tomatoes, then cut into eights. Place the pieces, skin-down, next to each other on large flat baking trays and slowly dry in the oven at 95 C for 2..3 hours. Stop when they are still slightly moist, but no longer wet. You may need to do this in batches, depending on your oven. I get 2 kg on each tray, but a convection oven takes 2 trays with ease. I open the door every 20 minutes to let the steam out and to wipe off the condensation. You’re trying to evaporate over 3 litres of water, so give your oven a hand.
When dried, let them cool down (and dry out even more).
To make the jam, do this:
Blizz the tomatoes into a puree, skin, seeds and all. This should have a slightly moist yet rich and thick consistency.
Toast one large tablespoon of coriander seeds, one large tablespoon of fennel seeds, 3 dried red chillies, a teaspoon of fenugreek seeds and 4 star anise. Transfer the hot spices to your pestle and mortar or spice grinder.
Add a splash of olive oil to the same pan and crisp 200 g of streaky dry-cured bacon or panchetta.
Meanwhile, grind your spices and enjoy the delicious aroma. Sieve to remove stalks and husk. Add a teaspoon of ground cumin.
Mix the ground spices with the tomatoes, then blizz the bacon into small bits and add to the mix.
Season to taste with balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and brown sugar.
Done.
Set some aside for tonight or tomorrow’s lunch.
Fill the rest into preserving jars and preserve in a Baine-Marie at 85 C for 90 minutes.
Chicken Soup
Here’s to a lovely rich and rewarding Chicken soup.
You need one mid-sized free range chicken, skin, bones and all.
A good thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, 3 star anise, two tablespoons of coriander seeds, one large onion, two cloves of garlic, a bulb of fennel, salt, pepper, 3 dried chillies or a teaspoon of chilli flakes.
Cut all the spices and stuff into thin slices and medium-sized cubes. Heat a good splash of olive oil and sweat everything until the onion begins to darken.
Add two teaspoons each of salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Place the chicken on top, add 2 litres of cold water. Add two large tomatoes, diced. The chicken should be covered only just.
Put the lid on, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 90 minutes, then turn the heat off but let it slowly cool down within the same pot, still on the stove. Residual heat from an electric cooker is no problem, it just cools down even slower.
Finally, debone the chicken. The good pieces of meat go into your bowl, the blood vessels, some of the grizzle and skin goes into the cat’s bowl, the rest into the food waste bowl.
Run the liquid through a sieve to remove the parts, then bring the liquid to the boil. 3 minutes before serving, add fresh or deep frozen peas, chopped mushrooms and fresh mustard greens (alternatively use pok choi or small Germaine salads). Add the meat to re-heat it in the last minute.
Serve with bread.
T’is perfect on a cold day. T’is perfect against a common cold, a heartbreak or common heartache. I even love it on a hot day.
Kippers Salad
A fairly quick and delightful summer salad. A base of new potatoes, raddish, cherry tomatoes and asparagus with a rouille dressing, hard-boiled quail eggs and kippers.
Kippers are smoked Herring from Scotland, but other smoked oily fish like Mackerele will also work well.
Clean and steam small young potatoes, skin on.
Clean and cut an assortment of raddishes into chunky pieces.
Cut the cherry tomatoes into neat halves.
Blanch some asparagus briefly, then shock in iced water so that it keeps its colur and a little crispness. We use green asparagus for a lack of options, but white asparagus would be good, too.
Add chives and a light sprinkling of fresh lemon thyme leaves.
Make a rouille: whisk four egg yolks vigerously, slowly adding olive oil until the mix emulsifies into a mayonnaise. Then add a pinch of salt, half a teaspoon of mustard, a crushed clove of garlic, a pinch of cayenne pepper and three pinches of smoked paprika powder. Add a splash of lime juice and whisk, then cool the rouille until it is time to serve.
Boil quail eggs (6 per portion). They take approximately 4 minutes to boil from room temperature into boiling water. Shock them really well in very cold water, then peel.
To assemble the salad, mix the base ingredients together with the rouille, then add the quail eggs and chunky pieces of smoked fish (kippers, mackerel). Toss lightly and enjoy.
Croque Man
Croque Monsieur is a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. Croque Madame is the same, with an added fried egg on top.
I say, forget the ham. Use 3 rashers of dry-cured smoked streaky bacon instead. Fry them in a pan until they begin to caramelize, then leave to cool on kitchen tissue so that they crisp up.
I say, forget the toast. Use a thick slice of Rye or Sourdough bread instead, rub generously with garlic, then rub both sides with olive oil. Fry the bread in the bacon fat until both sides turn golden, then leave to drain on kitchen tissue.
Crack a free-range egg into the very hot pan. Season with salt, crushed black pepper and a sprinkle of smoked paprika. Egg whites firm, yolk still runny, please.
I say, forget the subtle cheese flavour. Be bold, use blue cheese, or Reblochon, or at the very least use Gruyere.
Now make a sandwich: bread, then bacon, then cheese, then egg. Optionally top with a few capers or dress with a spoon full of Sauce Bearnaise or Sauce Hollandaise.
Voila. This is now known as a Croque Man. It’s my favourite bachelor meal, but it is so good that even the Missus would like it.
Open Spanakopita
Spanakopita is a Greek spinach tarte. This is a slightly up-market version: instead of a flat tarte with a varying degree of density, soggyness and puffyness, our open Spanakopita is baked as a stand-up roll of filo pastry with the traditional spanakopita filling of spinach, feta cheese and pine kernels.
This makes a generous lunch for two, or a delightful starter for four.
500g frozen leaf spinach
100g Feta cheese
flat green parsley, toasted pine kernels, egg, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg
Optional: rich strained yoghurt (strained sheepmilk yoghurt preferred)
Optional: ground almonds
Pack of frozen filo pastry sheets
Begin by thawing the spinach, then squeeze it as dry as you can. Mix it with a handful of flat parsley, chopped, a handful of breadcrumbs, 2 whole eggs. Optionally also add 2 heaped tablespoons of yoghurt. If you can’t find strained yoghurt, strain it with a sheet of muslin. Mix this well, best using the hands.
For the filo, prepare 75g slightly salted soft butter.
Spread out one sheet of filo pastry, brush with soft butter. Optionally, thinly sprinkle some ground almonds across the sheet, then cover with the next sheet. Repeat this process to get three of four filo sheets combined in this manner.
Crumble the feta cheese and distribute evenly across the filo pastry. Sprinkle with the toasted pine kernels, then add the spinach mix (strain if too wet!) to form an even layer. Now roll the flat cake into a roll, and glue the ends together with buttered filo. Wrap with a sheet of baking parchement if necessary, then cut into thick slices.
Use the remaining filo to make a little bottom for each slice.
Bake at 190C for approximately 20 minutes. Decorate with a poached quails egg, or edible flowers.
