Spicy Broccoli Pasta

Spicy Broccoli Pasta

Having no idea what I was going to eat for dinner, not very much in the fridge, and no desire to go back out into the cold (it has got freezing over the last few days!), I seem to have come up with a real winner of a dinner, just by chance. Inspired by a Yottam Ottolenghi creation (I must recommend his book, Plenty, again - I was drooling just reading it), I created this Spicy Broccoli Pasta.

It is unusual, delicious, and best of all, easy! I would definitely pay good money for this in a restaurant, and I am looking forward to cooking it for guests sometime, to see their reactions. I had never tried the combination of broccoli and mint, but it was really lovely. I think it's the combination of the fiery spices and refreshing mint that makes this dish so surprisingly good. But I will leave it up to you to try it out and let me know what you think of it.

Spicy Broccoli Pasta (serves 2)

Ingredients:

100g butter

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, finely sliced

300g broccoli, chopped into florets

200g rigatoni

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp chilli powder

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1/2 tsp salt

black pepper, to taste

handful of fresh mint, finely chopped

Method:

Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan over a medium heat and add the onion. Cook gently for 10 - 15 minutes or until the onion is soft. Meanwhile, put the broccoli into a steaming basket over a pan of boiling water and cook for 10 - 15 minutes. Cook the pasta in boiling water according to packet instructions. When your onions are nicely softened, add the spices, salt and pepper, and stir well. Take off the heat. Add the pasta and broccoli to the sauce, and stir. Serve on plates, sprinkled with chopped mint.

Brilliant Banana Bread

a.k.a. "When Kitchen Experimentation Goes Right"

Today, I decided to try and bake a banana loaf for the first time ever. I have tried a few different people's banana bread recently - with chocolate chips and without - and every single bite I have taken of every single different type of banana loaf, I have thought to myself 'I must try to make this one day'. So today was that day.

Having heard that banana bread is quite a forgiving type of cake, in that you can't really mess it up by putting in too much or too little of a certain ingredient, I decided to do without a recipe (I didn't see any that I liked 100%) and just have a go myself. And the results were completely delicious! So sweet, and moist, and banana-y, with a crisp sugar topping - everything I wanted my banana bread to be (and everything David wanted it to be too!).

I had always thought that the bananas used for a banana loaf had to be old, with blackened skin, but as you can see from this picture, I only had one old banana - the others were pretty normal bananas that I would usually eat as they are. And the loaf tasted great. So I think that really, while you can use older bananas for this recipe, it's not actually necessary. 

Also, I used a bar of chocolate and chopped it into chunks rather than buying a packet of chocolate chips - it's cheaper and also lets you dictate the size of the chunks (I think randomly-sized chocolate chips are the true sign of a home-baked cake!).

So I'm going to share my recipe with you. The only thing I would maybe do differently next time is add some bicarbonate of soda to make it rise more. I used self-raising flour (one of the things I didn't like about some of the recipes I saw was the amount of different raising agents in them - surely it shouldn't be that difficult?) and it was fine, but if you wanted your loaf to rise a bit more, then it seems that added raising agents might just be necessary.

This is how I did it:

Ingredients:
125g caster sugar (actually I used granulated, but I know you're supposed to use caster sugar in baking, so....)
125g butter, melted (plus extra to grease tin)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 medium egg, beaten
3 medium bananas, roughly mashed
100g milk chocolate (chopped roughly into chunks)
190g self-raising flour
1 tbsp light brown soft sugar

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 170ºC. Grease and line a 10x20cm loaf tin.
Mix the caster sugar, melted butter and vanilla extract together. Add the beaten egg , banana and chocolate chunks and mix well. Sieve in the flour, mixing well as you go.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the top. Bake in the pre-heated oven for one hour, or until a skewer comes out almost clean. Leave to cool, then cool further on a wire rack.

This recipe has gone down so well, we can hardly stop ourselves from going back for "just one more slice". I want to make this loaf every day now, it's that good (and easy!), but something tells me we'd both end up the size of houses if we were to have daily access to banana bread that good! If you're looking for a winner to take into a bake sale at work, or simply to impress your friends when they pop in for a coffee, this one will fit the bill, no doubt about it.

More Ottolenghi - Marinated Buffalo Mozzarella and Tomato

Yesterday I wrote a bit about how fussy Yotam Ottolenghi can seem when writing about his recipes in his book, Plenty. So fussy that it would almost put me off trying some of his recipes, actually. But I decided to give myself a challenge and see if I could do his Marinated Buffalo Mozzarella and Tomato any justice using bog-standard, supermarket-bought ingredients. After all, I figure that this is what most people will end up using. I actually went one step further and bought the cheapest mozzarella I could find, just to be bad! (Um, ok, and to save money...) So I tried this recipe using Tesco Everyday Value mozzarella and Tesco 'juicy cherry tomatoes' (that's what the box said they were!). All other ingredients were for the marinade, and I had all of these on hand, with two exceptions. I had no lemon to get lemon zest, so instead I opted for a splash of lemon juice from a bottle (shock! Horror!), and I didn't have any fresh oregano, so I used dried instead (remember to always reduce the quantity if you're using dried herbs as an alternative to fresh, as the flavours are intensified).

Now, I have to give top marks to Mr Ottolenghi on the simplicity of this recipe. It really is extremely easy to prepare and takes hardly any time (if you don't count the 15-30 minutes' time that the mozzarella is to sit in the marinade - which I don't). I'll give you a quick run-down of how I made this, so you can get an idea of just how easy-peasy it really is.

My makeshift mortar and pestle!

The first step is to dry-fry 1/2 a teaspoon of fennel seeds until they pop - at this point, transfer to a mortar and pestle and crush the seeds. I don't have a mortar and pestle (hint hint, if anyone wants to buy me a present!), so I just crushed the seeds with a teaspoon in a ramekin (but any small bowl could be used), and this worked very well. Tip into a small bowl (if you have crushed the seeds in a bowl rather than a mortar and pestle, then obviously just keep them in that bowl, and congratulate yourself on saving on a bit of washing up) and add the following ingredients: grated zest of one lemon (or a splash of lemon juice), 15 finely chopped basil leaves, 2 teaspoons of chopped oregano (or 1 teaspoon of dried), 2 teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil, 2 teaspoons of rapeseed oil, 1 garlic clove (crushed), 1/2 a teaspoon of sea salt, and black pepper. This is your marinade.

The marinade

Ottolenghi suggests ripping the mozzarella (250g) into chunks and then smearing these with your marinade. But to me, it makes a lot more sense to just add the mozzarella chunks straight into the bowl and mix it up a bit to ensure all the mozzarella is covered by the marinade. That way, no marinade is wasted and also it's a less messy process. Win-win!

You then let the mozzarella sit in the marinade for 15 to 30 minutes, then chop your tomatoes into wedges and serve together with the mozzarella. The recipe suggests drizzling with extra olive oil, but I didn't do this, partly because I was so excited to try out the salad that I forgot (oops) and partly because I don't really feel it needs any extra oil.

Mozzarella in the marinade

So what was the verdict? I really enjoyed this. I had originally intended to taste some tonight so I could blog about it and take the rest into work for my lunch tomorrow, but it was so good that I gobbled it all up!  (I hasten to add at this point that I had only made a half portion, so although I am greedy, I'm not as greedy as it may have just sounded.) The fennel really shines through and gives the dish an unusual taste, and it looks beautiful, with all the ripped up basil (and I'm sure if you had fresh oregano it would only look even better).

The finished product - delicious!

But what about the 'poor' quality of my ingredients, I hear you cry! Well, I have to say, that with the mozzarella the star of this dish, I might buy slightly better quality cheese next time. But it would all depend on the occasion. If it were just to be a lunchbox filler, I'm quite happy with the cheap mozzarella - it tasted nice enough to me. But if I were serving it to guests, I'd probably prefer to know I was serving slightly higher quality fare. And the tomatoes? Actually, I really enjoyed my straight-from-the-fridge tomatoes in this salad! Yes, I'm sure it would be absolutely delicious with a lovingly homegrown fruit instead, but honestly, I wouldn't waste any time or money searching for the perfect tomato for this recipe. Go with a type of tomato that you enjoy, and you'll be fine. I am not a huge fan of regular-sized tomatoes, so tend to substitute the sweeter cherry tomatoes in a lot of dishes that call for ordinary tomatoes. So doing the same here worked just fine.

Marinated mozzarella and tomato 

I am hoping that perhaps I can get some tomatoes growing in my wee patch of garden next year, so perhaps at that point I will try this recipe with home-grown tomatoes instead and see what I think, but I can't imagine it making that much of a difference. What do you think? How important is the quality of ingredients to you? And does anyone grow tomatoes (or anything else that could grow well in a pot in the harsh Scottish climate) that could give me some tips? (I'm not the most green-fingered, but I am enthusiastic and hope I will learn quickly!)