Boxing Day Bakes

26th December comes round again- and I have a few more ideas for your Christmas leftovers. Read on if you have parsnips, nuts, veg or chocolate to use up (and I know you do..)




If you've already made your turkey bones and leftover veg into soup- here are some tasty quick rolls ( no need for yeast or proving) to go with it- made with parsnips and chopped herbs:

Parsnip and Herby Rolls:

220g grated parsnips
275g flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp chopped herbs ( eg rosemary or thyme)
1 tsp salt
2 beaten eggs
2 tbsp milk or natural yoghurt






1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and add the grated parsnips
2. Make a well in the centre and add the eggs and yoghurt or milk
3. Mix together with a knife and then tip the dough onto a floured board. Divide into 6-8 rolls and place on a greased or lined baking tray.
4. Bake for 25 minutes or so until golden.

Baked rolls

They freeze well too.


The baking powder bread mix is excellent for a quick pizza base too. I make a frying pan version- just roll out your dough to fit your frying pan, fry on one side and then flip it over to fry the other.

Frying pan pizza

Cover with a topping of your choice and bake.


If all yesterday's rich food leaves you craving a vegetarian main dish, which is super-quick to prepare ( and a bit of a cheat- but so what?) then look no further than my Not-Pot.
The cheat's ingredient is tinned (yes tinned) Potato Dauphinoise. This is readily available in Lidl in France (and widely served up in restaurants masquerading as home made!) - but might be harder to source in the UK. Of course you don't have to use tinned- you can make your own (!) or use another supermarket version.

Not-Pot

Just rub a clove of garlic around a buttered gratin dish and layer up potato dauphinoise, cooked leeks or onions and/or any other cooked veg you want to use up- I used chard and Jerusalem artichokes (as I grow them) but parsnips, kohl rabi, carrots, squash  etc will be just as nice. Pour on 1/2 cup of stock. Sprinkle with grated cheese and breadcrumbs (you can mix in leftover bread sauce if you have some) and bake in a hot oven until golden.

Not-Pot

If you still have cooked parsnips to use up- try them in this savoury loaf. We had it as an accompaniment to the turkey on Christmas Day, then sliced with a salad another day and then hot with a spicy tomato sauce as a vegetarian main the following day!

 Parsnip and Chestnut Loaf

Serves 6 (with accompaniments)

2 large parsnips

Oil, to grease 1 small savoy cabbage, 4–6 outer leaves only  150g hazelnuts 40g butter or oil 1 red onion, finely chopped 150g chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped 100g cooked chestnuts, roughly chopped 100g cheese, crumbled
100g brown breadcrumbs 2 tsp fresh or dried mixed herbs 1 egg, beaten

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Peel and quarter the parsnips, and cook in boiling, salted water until tender, drain well.

2. Grease a loaf tin approximately 20cm x 10cm x 7cm, then line with foil, and grease this generously. Blanch 6 savoy cabbage leaves in boiling, salted water for 2 minutes: you'll need enough to line the tin with overlapping leaves, but how many depends on the size of your cabbage, so make sure you have enough before you tip away the water. Lay on a tea towel to dry (and snip out the hard central rib)

3. Toast the hazelnuts in a frying pan over a high heat until starting to colour, then set aside. Turn the heat down to medium, add the butter and chopped onion and cook for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook for another 7 minutes until nicely softened. Blitz in a food processor along with the parsnips.

4. Blitz the hazelnuts and put them in a large bowl along with the chopped chestnuts, crumbled stilton, breadcrumbs and chopped sage. Add the parsnip, onion and mushroom mix followed by the beaten egg. Season and stir together well.

Mix all together in a bowl

5. Line the prepared tin with overlapping cabbage leaves,  

Line the loaf tin with leaves

leaving any excess hanging over the sides, then spoon in the mixture, pressing it down well, and fold any overhanging cabbage leaves back over the top. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes. (Alternatively, you can keep it in the fridge for a day or so before baking.)

6. Remove the foil from the top and put the loaf back in the oven for another 15 minutes, then take out of the oven, trim off any singed cabbage leaves and put a large serving plate over the top of the tin. Holding the tin with oven gloves, turn the plate over so the loaf inverts on to the plate.

Turn the loaf out onto a plate

7. Cut into slices to serve.

Parsnip and Chestnut Loaf

Finally for something sweet.

I am grateful to Yvette for cooking this up at our Atelier de Cuisine. The recipe is hers.

Speedy Choco-Mint Cake

In a 2 litre measuring jug, pour in 125g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 75g icing sugar, 100g melted chocolate, 1 pinch of salt, 3 eggs and  100ml of oil or melted butter. Mix well.
Pour into a greased 23cm cake tin or mould and bake for 35 minutes at 180 degrees.

Mix well and pour into mould

Allow to cool.

Chocolate cake ready for icing

For the chocolate mint topping, melt 100g of chocolate with 25ml of crème de menthe or peppermint essence ( or melt 100g of chocolate mints) either in the microwave or in a bowl over a simmering pan of water.

Pour on the icing

Spread over the cake - et voilà...super speedy.

Speedy Choco-Mint Cake

Christmas over, Boxing Day sorted. Time to veg out in front of the telly.

No-Meat November

So, you managed a Dry January and survived being Sober for October. Just one more life-style changing month before plunging headfirst into Decadent December.




For health reasons, we are cutting right back on meat and processed foods for a month. Perhaps you would like to join me? I am aiming for a veggie vingtaine- 20 out of the 30 November meals to be meat-free.

I estimate that it will be not just better for our health, but also better for our budget and for the planet.
So here goes.

In addition to the usual pasta, quiches, soups, salads and stir fries which make up our standard meat-free meals- I am looking to expand my repertoire with some new recipes too.
I began with a Vegetable Satay Chow Mein- a selection of veg from the fridge ( courgettes, spring onions, bean sprouts, red pepper, mushrooms ) fried in a wok with some cooked egg noodles added in. The Satay sauce is made quickly from 2 tbsp peanut butter, 2 tbsp chilli sauce, 1 tbsp lemon or lime juice, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 200 ml coconut milk and 2 tbsp boiling water. Mix it all up and add it to the stir fry. Add more chilli or soy to taste.

Vegetable Satay Chow Mein

The leftovers will go into a Miso Noodle Soup

'Leftovers' Miso Soup

and these yummy little pancakes - Ban Khoai.
Make a pancake batter with 1 egg, 1 cup of plain flour, 1 1/2 cups of milk, a pinch of salt and a pinch of turmeric for colour.
Fry little saucer sized pancakes and stack (keep warm)
Fill each one with a spoonful of the re-fried noodles and veg. Fold and serve in a lettuce leaf with a chilli dipping sauce.

Ban Khoai

Next challenge- a really good veggie burger.

I think I've found it in this 5-a-day Burger.
Ingredients:

150 g  fresh mushrooms
50g dried mushrooms
2-3 spring onions
1 clove of garlic ( finely chopped)
1 cup cooked Puy lentils
1tbsp hummus
1 cup grated fresh carrot
1 veg stock cube
1 cup soft white breadcrumbs
1 cup toasted breadcrumbs ( for coating)

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in a tbsp boiling water.
2. Blitz the fresh mushrooms, spring onions and garlic in a food processor

Blitz the mushrooms

3. Squeeze out the soaked mushrooms (keep the liquid), chop and add to the fresh ones.
4. Fry the mushroom mixture, adding a crumbled stock cube and the (filtered) mushroom liquor
5. Cook rapidly until all the moisture has evaporated.

Fry the mushroom mixture and season well

6. Allow to cool and then place in a bowl along with the hummus, carrot and lentils.

Your 5-a-day in a bowl

7. Mix well and then add the soft breadcrumbs to soak up any liquid.
8. Chill for an hour or so, then coat in the toasted breadcrumbs.

Toasted breadcrumbs on

9. Fry in hot oil

Looks like the real thing!

and serve with chips and extra salad.

Now, how about Carrot, Sweetcorn and Courgette Fritters with Fried Halloumi?

Put 1 grated carrot, 1 grated courgette, 1 cup of sweetcorn, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 egg and 1 heaped tablespoon of plain flour in a bowl.

Mix to a batter and then fry spoonfuls in hot oil until golden.

Fry until golden

Serve with slices of fried halloumi and a salad with a lemon vinaigrette.

Carrot, courgette and sweetcorn fritters with fried halloumi

Next, Miso Aubergine with steamed rice.

Slice 2 aubergines, brush with oil and bake in a hot oven for 30 minutes or so until tender. Mix up 2 tbsp miso paste, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp chili sauce, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp sherry ( or mirin or Muscat depending on whether you're in the UK or France). Pour over the aubergines and continue to cook in the oven until the sauce becomes thick and caramelized (15 minutes or so). Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and finely chopped spring onion. Delicious!

Miso Aubergines

And final dish this month- Butternut Falafel.

Steam or roast (whichever you prefer) 500g of butternut squash, then mash it with a potato masher until it makes a coarse puree.
Blitz to a paste a can of (drained) chick peas with 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, 1 handful of chopped parsley, 1 tsp each of ground cumin and coriander, juice of 1/2 lemon and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Mix together with the squash and shape into patties ( an ice cream scoop does this well).Place on an oiled baking tray and chill for half an hour or so.

Scoop out your falafel onto an oiled baking tray

Bake for around 20 minutes in a hot oven until golden and firm.
Serve with salad, pitta bread and hummus.

Butternut falafel- yum!yum!

And so, how did it go? Did you manage to resist meat? We are finding that we love this new diet.It seems a shame to go back to eating meat- even though Christmas is coming. 

Perhaps we won't.

If he can do it....

Food for Free

Once again it is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
No more so than here in the Auvergne, where the hedgerows are bursting with autumn fruit and the little paths that wend their way round our friendly local volcano are lined with brambles begging to be harvested.
So, a few Sundays ago we braved the hunter's guns which were blasting around us and filled as many containers as we could with this free bounty.



Once we were safely home, the berries were washed and sent on the first part of their journey to become Bramble Jelly.

For each kilo of berries, you need 2 cooking apples ( cored and roughly chopped but peel still on) and 500 ml water.
Put these in a large preserving pan and simmer for 10-20 minutes until soft.

Apples and blackberries ready to simmer

I like to give the softened fruit a quick blitz with a hand blender or mash with a potato masher, before spooning the mixture into a jelly bag, suspended over a large bowl.
Leave overnight, weighted down with a heavy tin to press out as much juice as possible.
Make the remaining juice up to 1 litre with water or red grape juice and put in the pan with a kilo of sugar.
Boil on a full rolling boil for 5 minutes and then whisk in 4g of agar agar.

Boil until you have a set

Continue to boil until you have the beginnings of a set ( at 104 degrees if you have a thermometer or a spoonful placed on a cold saucer wrinkles when you press your finger through it, and leaves a clear trail.)
Pour into strerilized jars, cool, seal and label. (A litre will fill around 9 jars).
The jelly will be set by the following day.

Bramble Jelly

With another 500g of blackberries, you can make Blackberry Vodka too.

Wash the berries and crush them roughly with a potato masher. Spoon them into sterilized kilner jars and cover them with either alcool à fruits (readily available here) or use vodka in the UK. Seal and leave in a cool place for at least 1 month, turning the jars every week or so.

Then dissolve 400g of caster sugar in a pan with 200ml of water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 2 minutes before leaving to cool.

Open your kilner jars and filter the blackberries from the liquid, add your sugar syrup and mix well then pour into sterilized bottles and seal.

Blackberry Vodka

Another couple of blackberry ideas from the blog are:

Blackberry and Ricotta Bars
https://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/55c22278e4b0982f0205da53/1660303

or Summer Pudding ( mine here looks a bit like The Blob!- but it is so simple, economical and lovely it really is worth a try):

Summer Pudding
https://lizsleftovers.blogspot.fr/search?q=summer+pudding

Something very much more savoury, which I have been pleased to try recently, is sorrel.

I discovered a clump of it pushing its way up through the tarmac on our driveway. It's spear-shaped leaves and distinct lemon flavour are unmistakeable.

Sorrel

Made into a soup with a couple of potatoes, an onion or chopped leek and some vegetable bouillon it is scrumptious. Just pull the ribs from the leaves, chop them roughly and simmer with the other veg in the bouillon. Blitz before serving and add a little milk or cream if you like.

Sorrel Soup

Hugh F-W makes his into a sweet tart amongst other things:

Sorrel Tart

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/04/sorrel-recipes-hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

And so, my foraging comes to an end this week but, whilst the hunters blow their horns, my other neighbours are snuffling about in the undergrowth, looking for mushrooms.

Here's a selection someone found nearby:

Foraged mushrooms (photo courtesy of Madeleine)

I am not brave enough to tackle these yet- but who knows? Maybe next year. Watch this space.

Runaway Pumpkins!

Lots of things really thrive here in the Auvergne. Swiss chard, courgettes, pumpkins.....And me, of course.

When we arrived back to the Potager, the pumpkins had taken over.
The leeks were frantically waving for help, and the beetroot, celeriac and radishes were all but in invisible under a tangle
of pumpkin leaves and runners.
Some had even made it over the fence into my neighbour's garden.

It is definitely the time of year to dust off my pumpkin, squash and courgette recipes.
See    http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.fr/search?q=smashing+pumpkins
or http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.fr/search?q=harvest+festival+recipes

But first, this year, I thought I would try something new. starting with tackling this giant courgette:

Makes me look tiny! (That's a good thing..)

I tried out a recipe for Courgette and Ginger Jam- and it is surprisingly delicious. The courgettes are a bit tasteless when they get to this size - so provide a good vehicle for strong flavours like ginger and lemon.

Courgette and Ginger Jam

1.5kg of courgette or marrow flesh, peeled, de-seeded and chopped into small chunks

1 kg of granulated sugar

grated zest and juice of 3 lemons ( keep the bald shells in the freezer for adding to marmalades and jams later)

100g of crystallized ginger, chopped

3 tsp ground ginger

250 g pectin

1. Layer the vegetable in a large mixing bowl, sprinkling each layer with sugar and lemon juice until the sugar is all used up.

Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice

2. Cover and leave for 24 hours.

3. A huge amount of liquid will have come out of the flesh, so drain that off into a preserving pan along with any undissolved sugar.

4. Add the lemon and ginger to the mixture and boil rapidly for 20 minutes or so.

Boil rapidly

5. Add the chopped marrow/courgette flesh and cook for a further 10 minutes until tender, skimming as you go.

6. Use a stick blender to roughly blitz the flesh and ginger into a course puree and then add the pectin.

7. Boil until your jam has reached setting point ( when a spoonful sets on a cold saucer and wrinkles up) and then pour into hot, sterilized jars.

Courgette and Ginger Jam

The medium sized courgettes were made into an old favourite- stuffed with leftover bolognaise sauce and cooked au gratin in the oven:

Stuffed Courgettes/Marrow Au Gratin

And any other assorted overgrown veg from the garden were put together with Moroccan spices, dried fruit, chutney and tomatoes for a tagine:

Veg for a tagine

http://lizsleftovers.blogspot.fr/search?q=tagine

Finally, I am going to use up one of the giant pumpkins to make Spiced Pumpkin Butter ( a bit like a treacle spread for toast, pancakes, waffles etc).

Spiced Pumpkin Butter
2 kg of pumpkin flesh, peeled and cut into cubes
500g brown sugar and 1 tbsp treacle or 600g  brown sugar ( if you don't have treacle)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp grated nutmeg
6 cloves
finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

1. Put the cubes in a steamer over hot water and steam for 10 minutes or so until tender.

Steam rather than boil the pumpkin initially

2. Place in preserving pan and blitz with a stick blender until you have a puree.
3. Add the sugar and spices, the lemon juice and zest
4. Simmer on a low heat for an hour or so until the mixture is very thick. (I am going to use a slow cooker for several hours instead.)
5. When the puree is very thick and leaves a clear channel when a wooden spoon is drawn through- it is ready to be potted up in sterilized jars.

Spiced Pumpkin Butter
(Photo courtesy of Thane Prince)

That takes care of one of the pumpkins. My friends assure me that the rest will keep well in our cool cellar over the winter.

No chance of getting the ones back which have run away into the neighbour's garden anyway- he has placed them under armed guard!

Pumpkin patrol!