Tuna and caper pâté

The husband and I are fond of a pre-dinner drink (or two). The trouble is that with that pre-dinner drink, we usually feel the urge to indulge in a pre-dinner nibble. This, I have no doubt, is one of the key reasons for our overly expansive waistlines. (This, and our fondness for cheese, proper puddings and cake). Whilst we know that eating earlier would help ease this habit, we're not actually willing to forgo this favourite part of our day. It is the time we relax post-work, talk through the day's events and generally unwind whilst one of us potters round the kitchen creating dinner.

We try to keep our snacking under control and stick to reasonably 'healthy' nibbles. Low-fat hummous with carrot sticks, olives or tomato salsa spread on melba toasts are staples in this house. We love them, but we get tired of them too. When friends are here, or at weekends, we are more adventurous and make more fancy canapes but mid-week, it is all about low effort. Whilst browsing through some of my favourite food blogs the other day, I stumbled accross a tuna and caper pâté on the Kitchen Diaries Challenge blog which rather caught my fancy. I find the salty tang of foods like capers, olives or anchovies just perfect for awakening the taste buds prior to the main event. I had most of the ingredients to hand in the cupboard and simply improvised for the rest. It took mere moments to make - a 'bung it all in and whizz it all up' recipe. The best sort for mid-week really.

Served moments later with a crisp glass of white and some melba toasts, it was a very delicious 'snackette' (as we like to refer to such things). It would make a nice starter too and, as it uses low-fat mayo, is pretty healthy too.

Do you like a pre-dinner 'snackette'? If so, what do you tend to choose?

Tuna and caper pâté

Adapted from this recipe at Kichen Diaries Challenge

Ingredients:

1 tin of tuna, drained

half a small red onion or a shallot, finely chopped

2 heaped tablespoons low-fat mayonnaise

juice half a small lemon (to taste)

2 heaped teaspoons capers, well-rinsed

1/2 tsp paprika

handful flat-leaved parsley

1. Place all ingredients except lemon juice and capers into food processor and whizz to combine.

2. Add lemon juice a little at a time, tasting after each addition until the balance seems right.

3. Add the capers and pulse briefly so they are combined but not completely broken up. You want a little texture here.

4. Scrape into a serving dish and (ideally) leave for an hour or so in the fridge for the flavours to combine. If greedy and rushed like us, serve immediately with melba toasts or crudités. Or spread on crostini, as suggested by Maggie at Kitchen Diaries Challenge.

5. Serve with a crisp glass of white wine.

Delicious nibbles and a dreamy parsnip gratin

Often, I think how useful it would be if I could just hurry up and find 'the man of my dreams'. Nothing to do with the joy and wonder to be had in finding the person with whom to share ones life. Oh no. I'm far more practical than that (...though that part would be nice too). No, mainly, I think it would be handy to have 'another half' so that they could pour the drinks. And maybe take the coats. And possibly even hang those coats up somewhere. Or hide them in my bedroom so that people didn't have to venture in there themselves and discover that is where I've hidden the entire contents of the dining room to make it suitable for guests.

Seriously.

Last weekend I had seven friends over for lunch and it was lovely. But it would have been lovelier still had there been someone else who could have poured the drinks. And perhaps laid the table. What happened instead was this...

I spent all morning preparing a delicious feast and thought that I had it all under control. The kitchen was tidy, things were in the oven, the table was laid and I was changed. All was calm and perfect. I felt so organised that I even poured myself a pre-lunch gin and tonic. Then the first guest arrived. I took her coat and poured her a drink. I then explained that I had to just prepare the pudding - would she mind chatting in the kitchen with me, whilst I finished off?

I then realised that I'd run out of milk. I gave her back her coat, took her drink from her and sent her back into the cold to the corner shop.

Fortunately, I know her well.

In the meantime, in the middle of whisking eggs, the doorbell rang again. Two more guests. Two more drinks to make (one involving a trip to the basement to get ice), two more coats to deal with and eggs half-whisked. More door-bell ringing, plus the timer going off as the beef was done and that the Yorkshire puddings needed to go in.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, within half an hour, my calm controlled, clean and tidy kitchen had become a scene of total destruction. Tonic bottles, corks, half-sliced lemons, dirty pans and a half made pudding all jostled for space with my seven lovely friends who were kindly trying to assist by getting their own drinks/whisking more eggs/putting coats in the black hole of my bedroom.

What joy it would have been to have a handy man around to entertain them all for ten minutes in the sitting room, fix their drinks and hand round the rather delicious nibbles that I had made in advance. My friends would then perhaps have thought me to be the height of effortless entertaining. (Actually, I think they know me better than that).

Fortunately, the chaos was salvaged when we sat down to eat and I realised that beyond the mountains of mess in the kitchen, I'd managed to produce a reasonably good lunch. What a relief! Next time though, I'll be serving a dessert that I can make in advance. And perhaps I'll employ the services of a butler. And also, in my next house, I'll have one of those kitchens where people can sit and chat and nibble while I potter behind the safety of an island which hides all the mess and chaos.

Anyway, onto the food. These great nibbles came from the queen of relaxed entertaining, Nigella. They are in her Christmas book and elsewhere too, I think. The combination of parma ham, mild goats cheese and dried fig is a winner. These are super simple to make and can even be made up a couple of hours in advance and popped in the fridge until needed. I'd suggest taking them out around 30 mins before you want to eat them to take the chill off which tends to numb the flavours.

Parma ham, fig and goats cheese rolls
Makes approx 24

Ingredients

12 slices of parma ham (2 supermarket packets)
125g mild, creamy goats cheese
6 dried figs

1. Carefully cut each slice of parma ham into strips - mine went fairly neatly into two strips, but you may find you can get three. Lay the strips out on to a chopping board.

2. Snip the figs into quarters (I used scissors).

3. Smear a small teaspoon-or-so of goats cheese onto the cut side of a fig quarter. Place cheese side-down at the end of one of the strips of parma ham and roll tightly together.

4. You're done. That's it.

With the rib of beef, I served Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, glazed carrots, peas and this dreamy parsnip gratin. If you love parsnips and you love cream, then this you HAVE to make. I really do insist. It is seriously good. And particularly good with beef, I think.

The recipe for this came from the great BBC Good Food and so I won't repeat it here. It is made in much the same as pommes dauphinoise though with the addition of grain mustard. I made no amendments to the recipe. All that I will say is that I used Parmesan cheese instead of the Twineham Grange suggested. I also found it quite hard slicing the parsnips thin enough so I used the slicer of the food processor. I suggest you do the same.

So, here is the recipe. Please go away and cook it now. You won't regret it.

One Perfect Ingredient: rocket and cashew pesto

Along with many food bloggers, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of the new book by Marcus Wareing: 'One Perfect Ingredient'. In this book, Marcs uses everyday ingredients to create 120 dishes aimed at the home cook. It is organised by ingredient, so, for example filed under 'peas' you find pea and broad bean salad with Manchego cheese, gratin dauphinoise with peas and leeks and pea and bacon velouté. He pushes the idea of 'everyday ingredients' somewhat in my mind - how often do you just happen to have a pot of brown shrimps sitting forlorn in the fridge? Ditto mangoes. But on the whole I like the idea.

I'm always wary of cookery books written by chefs. All too often they are full of overly cheffy recipes that are hard to reproduce at home in a domestic kitchen without a brigade of sous-chefs chopping and clearing up after you. On the whole though, I was impressed with this book. There are the occasional signs that this is a man who probably doesn't do his own washing up (a tasty sounding recipe for Savoy cabbage with nut butter sounds simple but in fact uses a whopping four different pans). But most of the recipes seem fairly simple, well-explained and wholly achievable. And most of them are enormously tempting; an initial read-through found me eagerly grabbing the post-it notes to start bookmarking recipes to try soon. Amongst those that caught my eye were sea bass with a pine nut crust and red wine vinaigrette, carrot and coriander galette and orange syrup cakes. Photos in the book are simply and beautifully shot and are refreshingly short of cheffy flourishes. I would have liked to see more though personally - I'm a very visual person and am probably over 50% more likely to try a recipe if it is accompanied by a photo.

I decided to start with one of the books simplest recipes: linguine with rocket and cashew pesto. I'm pleased to say that it was a resounding success and I'm sure it will become a regular addition to my weeknight suppers. Everything is whizzed together in a food processor and the flavour makes a good change from basil pesto.

For four people, you'll need around 100g rocket, 100g cashew nuts which should be toasted in a dry pan, 40g freshly grated Parmesan and 100 ml extra virgin olive oil. Add the oil slowly - you may not need to use it all.

The pesto was great with the suggested linguine but I found some other used for the leftovers - I also found the flavour better the next day, once the flavours had had time to mingle. Spread on crostini and topped with a slice of cherry tomato (or sundried tomato), the pesto made for pretty and delicious little canapés...



Mixed with natural yoghurt, the pesto was also delicious along with cold sliced lamb stuffed into pitta breads, following last week's Sunday lunch.


I'll definitely be trying other recipes from the book. As far as chef-written (as opposed to cook-written) books go, Marcus Wareing has succeeded on coming up with a selection of interesting and exciting recipes which on the whole use simple ingredients and basic techniques. As such, the book had a fairly broad appeal - there is enough to interest the experienced cook and yet the recipes are clear enough for the less confident.

Black salsify and hummous that works

Sometime the week before last, I returned from work and sat outside with a glass of wine. It was a touch on the chilly side, but it felt pretty great to be sitting in the garden again, enjoying daylight at 7pm. Since then, we have had snow, hail and rain. A little sun, but not enough to warrant another evening al fresco. I can't wait until it warms up and I can eat the first meal of the year outside.

To accompany the glass of wine, I decided to have another go at making hummous (or hummus, if you prefer). My previous attempt tasted rather... horrible. I didn't want to be defeated by what should be a fairly simple snack to prepare. I think the reason for my failure last time was a little over-enthusiasm on the tahini paste. Less is clearly more. I held back this time adding just 2 tablespoons worth and the result was spot on. If only this sight awaited me every evening after work...



Before I divulge the secret of my hummous success (...no real secret, as I fear I am slow on the uptake and most have been making their own for years...), let me introduce an extremely unattractive vegetable: black salsify.



Not the prettiest of vegetables, is it? No. I received these black, muddy twig-like roots in last week's veg box and wasn't too sure how to tackle them. Hey, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to tackle them at all. It is quite hard to believe that they could be tasty. I sought advice from various sources - most people told me that they had never come across the vegetable. I read that it is also known as the 'oyster plant' due to its faintly oyster-like flavour. Hmm - kind of hard to imagine. Oysters kind of taste of the sea. I couldn't really imagine that in root vegetable form.

I decided that I would prepare them fairly simply so as to taste the full flavour. I decided to boil them until soft and then pan fry the pieces in a little butter. Once peeled, the roots looked a little like thin parsnips. It took over 40 minutes until the little pieces began to soften. I was getting impatient - it had better taste good if I had to wait that long! I served the black salsify with roasted duck breast and I have to confess that I was underwhelmed... It was still a touch undercooked really, which was part of the problem. The flavour did not remind me of oysters. If blindfolded, I think I might have thought they were artichoke hearts. Only not quite as nice. Not a vegetable that I'll rush to buy again, but perfectly inoffensive. Next time I find it in my box I think I'll try to be a little more adventurous. Any suggestions most welcome!

* I've just taken a look at 'The Great Vegetable Challenge' entry on black salsify - their experience with this vegetable sounds rather similar to my own, including the somewhat embarassing after-effects!!*

Anyway, onto better things. Here is the hummous...

Hummous with sun-dried tomatoes



Ingredients

1 240g tin of chickpeas
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped or crushed
juice of a lemon
2 tbsp tahini
olive oil
2 tbsp chopped sun-dried tomatoes
pinch of salt (to taste)
paprika

1. Drain the chickpeas and whizz in a blender along with the garlic, tahini, tomatoes and lemon juice.

2. Add olive oil with the blender whizzing until everything comes together in a nice smoothish paste (around 3 tbsp). If too dry, you can always add a little water to loosen.

3. Season with salt and a little paprika to taste.

Notes - you could omit the tomatoes, of course, or substitute them for roasted peppers, pesto, or anything else that takes your fancy!).

Coming soon: kiwi fruit muffins, a deconstructed Mont Blanc (!), two simple salmon suppers, really good chocolate brownies.

Smoked mackerel pâté

Whilst I love going all out when entertaining and spending time creating three, or even four courses to laze over, the truth of the matter is that I don't really have enough plates, knives or forks to allow this. Or rather, I do, but they don't all go together. Furthermore, I have a 'slimline' dishwasher which most certainly doesn't fit all the paraphenalia dirtied by serving multiple courses for eight. Call me selfish, but I loathe washing up.

What I tend to do therefore, is serve a maincourse and pudding (occasionally two) and then make some substantial eatie bits for everyone to tuck into with drinks before siting down to the main event. Sometimes this means getting small and dainty with some nice canapés, but more often than not I'll make something a bit more hearty for everyone to dig into in a messy, informal sort of way. Pâté of some kind or other is usually my top choice, served with wedges of crusty bread - people can just dig in and have as much as they want. Usual favourites are chicken liver or smoked trout. Last week, I dished up the usual favourite chicken liver but decided to make a smoked mackerel version as well.

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I was really pleased with this moreish treat - the leftovers didn't last long the next day and it was clear that my furry companion for the day was rather put out that I'd scoffed the lot without so much as a sideways glance...

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Smoked mackerel pâté

serves 8 as a starter

Ingredients

3 smoked mackerel

200g soft cream cheese (I used half-fat Philadelphia)

1 heaped tablespoon low-fat natural yoghurt

1 heaped tablespoon horseradish sauce (more or less to taste)

handful chopped spring onions or chives

small handful chopped parsley

juice of half a lemon

1. Remove skin and any obvious bones from the mackerel, flake with a fork.

2. Place in food processor along with all the other ingredients and blitz until you have a reasonably smooth consistency (I like a few lumps in mine so tend to leave it quite chunky - you could even mash everything together in a bowl rather than using the processor).

3. Taste. Season with black pepper. Add more lemon juice if required.

4. Serve with melba toast, crusty bread or toasted pittas.

A tale of two pâtés...

From three salads to two pâtés... Chicken liver and smoked trout. Not together, of course. That would be revolting.

There are certain foods that are under-rated in life. Humble foods that you might easily pass by in favour of other, more elaborate concoctions are sometimes those which actually give most pleasure. I adore this chicken liver pâté. For so many reasons. First and foremost, it reminds me of home. It is a recipe of my mother's that we all adore though we only ever used to have it at Christmas. A once-a-year treat. The sort of thing that you'd think nothing of until you popped a bit in your mouth. And then the table would fall silent. And then suddenly everyone would be reaching for the pot to scoop out some more before they had finished the first lot, just in case there was none left by the time you were ready for seconds (I come from a large family; its every man for himself). It is still the food thing I look forward to most at Christmas. I suppose it is a symbolic food for me - I associate it with family, warmth, laughter, seasonal cheer.

I is only recently that I have started to make this myself. I felt sure it wouldn't be as good as my mother's. But, you know what? It was pretty good. I love to make a big batch and serve it to friends in place of a starter, with drinks. I just place the dish on a table, carve up some baguette and let them help themselves.

If you think this recipe has a lot of butter in it, ........ it does! Get over it. Ok. So its not the healthiest thing in the world, but you don't need to eat the whole pot at once (however moreish it may be). It keeps pretty well due to the brandy. And it is not something to have everyday. It may be simple. But it is definitely a treat. Try it, I'm pretty sure you'll like it...

My Mother's Chicken Liver Pâté

Ingredients

6 oz chicken livers
4 oz butter
1 medium onion
1 bouquet garni
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon brandy
Seasoning

1. Trim the chicken livers of all white bits. These make the livers taste bitter.

2. Chop the onion and garlic finely and soften in 1oz of the butter until just turning colour.

3. Add the chicken livers, bouquet garni and season well. Fry for around 3-5 minutes, until the livers are just cooked through but a little pink.

4. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

5. Pour mixture into a food processor (or push through a sieve!) and pulse to smooth consistency whilst adding the remaining butter and brandy.

6. Pour into a china pot. Smooth over the top and top with clarified butter (or in the case of my photo, not so clarified!). Chill until set.

Notes - most recipes similar to this suggest flambée-ing the livers in the brandy. This burns off the alcohol of course and to some might be preferable. But I like it this way, with the slight 'kick' that comes from the raw brandy. In fact, I have been known to let the hand slip slightly when adding in the brandy....!

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A total contrast, but super easy to make, is a quick smoked trout pâté. I actually prefer smoked trout to salmon, but this would work with salmon too. I'd probably use slightly less horseradish with the salmon.

Smoked Trout Pâté


Ingredients

200g smoked trout

200g cream cheese (I used low-fat to make up for all the butter in the chicken liver pâté)

Juice of half a lemon (less or more to taste)

1 tablespoon horseradish sauce

1 tablespoonful chopped chives

Seasoning

1. Simply place trout and cream cheese in the processor and whizz to a paste. Add horseradish and lemon juice to taste, plus plenty of black pepper (go easy on salt as the fish is salty). Add snipped chives and whizz to blend.

2. Scrape out into a serving dish and smooth over the top. You may like to garnish with some chives as per the photo. Or you may not like to!