Stuffed baked potatoes

Like baked potatoes, only stuffed.

Baked potatoes, stuffed. What, you expected something else? See also asparagus and pea fricassee, which was a good deal more exciting.

These stuffed baked potatoes are for those with a delicate heart.  No surprises await within these skins.

Basically, you get some potatoes and bake’em.  Then instead of smothering in cheesy goodness like any sane person, for some unknown reason you scoop out the potato, mash it, mix it with some (butter fried) onion and some sweetcorn, and put it back in the shell.  Then it gets baked, again (though admittedly with some of that cheesy goodness I was complaining was lacking).

Why you should do any of this is a mystery, because it tastes exactly like baked potatoes, with some onion (and sweetcorn).  That is not a bad thing, of course, but I would usually expect enough cheese so that I can’t see my potato any more.  Not so here – there is just enough cheese to remind what cheese can do to a potato – if it had been good.  This potato wasn’t bad – it didn’t rob anyone, and it paid its taxes – but it wasn’t a saint either. It did not help little old ladies across the road. It probably laughed, just a little when nobody was looking, when said little old lady fell over.

What?  I appear a little distracted?  What was I talking about again?

Oh, potatoes.  Meh.

Next time I’ll bake them as usual then smother with butter and cheese and maybe fried onions.  The saddest thing is that they looked amazing.  But tasted no better than the sum of their parts.

Who made it: Dan and Anna jointly.

Recipe: “The daily cookbook” by Love Food, December 18th.

Asparagus and pea fricassee with eggs

The photo of this in the cookbook makes it appear to be just some veg, mixed up. I’m pleased to say that the end result is much more than that.

Asparagus and pea fricassee, Loaded potatoes and a pasty. Why not?

The key to this dish is the sauce.   It is 250g of shallots gently fried in 50g of butter, with 3 tablespoons of flour mixed in to make a roux.  Then 200ml of white wine and 200ml of vegetable stock is slowly added (and at the end, it is seasoned) and the mixture gently simmered.  (we halved those numbers).  This results in a very pleasant and subtle flavouring that really complements the vegetable’s natural flavour.

Surprisingly, the recipe suggests microwaving the vegetables themselves (250g of asparagus and 250g of peas).  This works really well, leaving them tender but not overcooked, as is so easy to do when boiling or steaming.  Of course, the (hard boiled) eggs are an optional extra – you could leave it out, or add something else.

This was a great way to serve vegetables and we’ll be trying this or something similar again.  Highly recommended!

Who made it: Anna lead the charge, but it was a joint effort

Recipe: “The complete vegetarian cookbook” by Sarah Brown

PS: In the picture you can see we had this with pasty.  I don’t know why, I just thought it might be a good idea.  It kinda… well it kinda wasn’t.  The pasty recipe was from a leaflet and was fairly plain – it really needed tomato ketchup, lots of ketchup – which nothing else on the plate did… adding ketchup to these veggies would have been a food crime.

Nuggets of Gold

These cheesy bites are a tasty savoury treat.

Cheesy and bitesize.

Flour, butter, cheese.  Yes, you might expect these from cheesy nuggets.  Add mustard, paprika and onion and things are looking a little different.  Something between a pastry and a scone, these little guys are as tasty as they are confusing!

Best fresh, they do keep fairly well and would probably be awesome with a garlic dip.  But they are a tasty little bitesize snack.

Who made it: Anna.

Recipe: “Baking making and sharing” by Susan Over, page 54.

Herb Souffle

For a three course meal, we made 3 “light dishes” and had two as a main course.  This soufflé was part of the main course.

They do rise, but we obviously didn't fill the dish quite high enough...

After we tried a soufflé-like Broccoli and Stilton Roulade we thought we’d try the real thing.  I’m pleased to say that it didn’t disappoint.  Soufflé is a subtle dish, with most of the flavour and texture coming from the egg (beside the herb flavouring it only contains egg with a small amount of butter, flour and milk).  Of course a fair dash of fresh herbs provide a great taste, but the texture isn’t a million miles from scrambled eggs.  Baking, and folding in stiff egg whites leads to a slightly more interesting experience, and its not really that hard.  Ours rose nicely but flattened a little when we took them out of the oven.

Worth a try sometime – I’d have these again!

Who made it: Joint effort by Dan and Anna.

Recipe: “the  complete vegetarian cookbook”  by Sarah Brown, page 171.

Giant mushrooms with rice and roasted onions

This was the starter to our three course meal this weekend.  The recipe calls for wild rice (which is very long, thin, black, and looks nothing like normal rice) but we couldn’t get hold of it so we used brown rice.

Like an ordinary sized mushroom, only bigger, and filled with rice and roasted onions.

Basically, all you do here is roast some onions, shallots and leeks, roast  the mushrooms (separately, to get them to cook properly), whilst boiling the rice.  Then pile everything on the mushroom and throw it back in the oven.

The end result is… a bit dull.  The only flavour here is coming from the vegetables themselves, which are good roasted but not enough on their own.  As a starter we thought this was just OK.  However, we had some of the rice and vegetable mixture left over and had it with our main course, and it tasted amazing – a really flavoursome rice dish.  I think the general idea would make an excellent alternative to risotto, but the poor mushroom doesn’t have enough flavour on its own for this recipe.

We will definitely be trying something like this again, but will be tweaking the recipe beyond recognition.  This would have gone well as part of a main course.

Who made it: Dan and Anna jointly.

Recipe: “the Complete Vegetarian Cookbook” by Sarah Brown, page 173.

Baked Creamy Vegetables

We had some cream to use up, so we did some experimenting with

Baked creamy vegetables

Inspired by a blog post about baked creamy brussel sprouts I thought it might be fun to do this with the random veg that we had in the house.  It turns out to be an excellent idea – baked vegetables are the best sort, and by pre-browning the vegetables in a frying pan, the dish was done in about 30 minutes from start to finish. This makes it is a very handy side to go with potatoes, pies, sausages, etc instead of boiled veg and gravy.

Ingredients (serves 2)

Vegetables (any will do, but we used these):

• half an onion
• 1 stick celery
• a few runner beans
• 1/3 courgette

150 ml cream (anything from single to whipping cream is fine)

Knob of Butter (or oil if you prefer)

Flavourings (we put in a small amount of salt, pepper, garlic, and fennel seeds)

Method

1. Chop up the vegetables (and garlic) and shallow fry in butter until browning and softening.  Add the flavourings.
2. Lay shallowly in a baking pot, and cover with the cream.
3. Bake for 20 minutes in a preheated oven at 200 degrees, until golden on top.

Easy!

Who made it: Dan did the planning, Anna helped with the cooking.

Recipe: Our own creation!