in my larder - broad beans

Interesting thing about broad beans - they are rich in L-dopa, a substance used medically in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

L-dopa is also the drug used by Dr Oliver Sacks to 'awaken' patients who developed encephalitis lethargica which followed on from the global flu pandemic that killed millions after the first world war. The use of the drug had unintended consequences - the patients were 'awakened' but in the process developed tics and spasms and strange activity patterns to the extent that many asked to be taken off the drug even if that meant reverting to the catatonic state they had been in before.

This story is also the basis of a new dance piece by Rambert Dance which I read about in the Herald this week - which prompted me to think about how much I love broad beans and in eating them associate them with feeling healthy and strong - which given I have M.E. and Lupus is an important part of the link between what I eat and how it affects my health.

There is also apparently a link between L-dopa and the human libido - some use fava beans as an alternative to Viagra - but I couldn't possibly comment further.

Broad beans can be bought fresh in their pods, dried or canned. I am quite impatient and also not very good at remembering to soak things overnight so I tend to use canned beans - preferably in water - as you can just crack open the tin and use them.

My favourite broad bean recipes include -

Chorizo and broad beans

Egyptian beans [ful medames]


Take some cooked beans and add oil, garlic, lemon, salt and cumin and mix together - then eat with good bread

Pasta and broad beans
pasta of your choice
broad beans, drained
garlic
olive oil
parmesan - grated
mushrooms - chopped
red pepper - chopped

Cook your pasta as per the instructions

In a pan fry the garlic and oil for 2-3 minutes

Add in the choppped peppers and cook for 5 minutes

Add in the chopped mushrooms and cook for 3-4 minutes

Add in the broad beans and cook for 3-4 minutes

Add the contents of the frying pan to the pasta and stir together

Other options

At this point if you wish you could also add a cooked tomatoe based pasta sauce - but I like it plain with a good seasoning of pepper and grated parmesan

You could also add fried pancetta as a topping - the broad beans will compliment the salty meat.

in my larder - chorizo

Chorizo is one of my favourite things and when I would have it in restaurants I assumed it was some kind of tricky ingredient that required a lot of chef-y knowledge to use. But it isn't. It is basically a fermented and cured sausage and requires very little work at all to make into a tasty bite.

There are lots of different types of chorizo. You can actually get fresh chorizo that requires cooking before eating but it is much more common in its cured version.

Spanish chorizo and Portuguese chorizo get their smokiness and deep red colour from dried smoked red peppers. Mexican chorizo is usually made with chile peppers because the paprika used in Spainish chorizo is expensive to import. In Spain and Portugal the sausages are usually encased in intestines but in Latin America they are usually encased in artificial casings.


Chorizo can be eaten as it comes - it is lovely sliced up and served with bread and dips and cheeses or in a sandwich - and you can also fry it. It can be simmered in alcohol - particularly apple cider.

You get chorizo described as 'sweet' or 'spicy' - usually thin chorizo is sweet and short are spicy - but as this isn;t always true you should check the packaging or ask the staff.

Chorizo is made with pork - so remember to check with any dinner guests if this might be a problem.

My favourite chorizo recipes include -

Chorizo with scallops, beetroot salad and rosemary potatoes


Chorizo stew

Chorizo and bread
olives
olive oil
balsamic Vinegar
chorizo
goat's cheese
cherry tomatoes
2 small dipping/nibble dishes

Take two small dishes - with the first fill with a slug of good olive oil and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and with the second fill with some olives

Take some freshly baked bread - or some ciabatta or other tasty bread from the shop - and either slice up thickly as it is or, if it is a cold day, slice and toast under the grill

Take your tomatoes and slice into small quarters

Take a small frying pan, slice the chorizo thickly and fry gently in some olive oil. The slow fry will release the lovely orange oil from the chorizo meat

Take a slotted spoon and tranfer the chorizo slices to a small dish. Do not discard the oil

Take out the bread and pile on a plate - scatter the chorizo and the goat's cheese over the top and then drizzle with the oil from the pan

Put the tomatoes around the edge of the plate

Serve with the olives and oil/vinegar alongside. And a nice bottle of red!

I always find that the chorizo oil itself, while gorgeous, isn't usually enough for me and so I like the oil/vinegar combo to dip any left over bread in. This dish is good as either a snack for lunch or as a starter to a more elaborate evening meal. It is also sometimes good if you are in late and want supper - but not something too labour intensive. Of course, if you can't be bothered at all - skip everything apart from the chorizo and bread and make an even quicker bite.

Chorizo and broad beans

I love this. I love the contrast beween the smokey, spicy, fatty meat and the fresh green beans.

glug of olive oil
can of broad beans, drained
chorizo sliced up thinly
garlic - crushed with the back of a knife
red onion sliced thinly [for some reason I like the onion half moon shaped rather than finely chopped]

In a large, shallow frying pan heat up some olive oil and add the garlic - allow to cook for 2-3 minutes

Remove the garlic - you just want to flavour the oil - and add the onions and cook gently until they are translucent - you don't want them singed/burnt

Add the green beans and cook gently for 5 mins

Remove the beans and onion and keep warm

Add the chorizo and cook gently to release the lovely orange oils

Take the pan off the heat and add the beans and onion back in and stir

You can then serve this three ways -

Over thickly sliced and toasted ciabatta or your bread of choice

With plain cooked pasta - the chorizo oil is enough of a dressing

With rosemary fried potatoes

Chorizo and pasta

tinned tomatoes
basil - a handful of chopped leaves
garlic - crushed
olive oil
chorizo
onion
pasta of your choice - I like chunky pasta for this
bread - to mop up the juices
some kind of green vegetable e.g. peas, broccoli

In a small pan cook the garlic in the olive oil then add the tomatoes and basil - this makes a basic pasta sauce which can be frozen - for best results make the day before

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and cook the onions gently - when they are transulcent add the chorizo and fry for 4-5 minutes

Put your pasta on to cook - if you are using broccoli or peas add to the pasta pot towards the end to cook with it [if you are using broad beans, fry with the onion and remove while the chorizo cooks]

Drain the pasta and plate up - ladle your pasta sauce over it - then top with the chorizo and onion mix - lovely!

Mop you plate with bread and accompany with a nice glass of red.

site visit

We went and saw how things were going down at the house at the weekend - our house hasn't seen much movement but the 'mirror' house on the other side of the church is further along and Bobby showed us round to get an idea of how ours will look in a few weeks time.

This is one of the beams in the main bedroom coming through the 1st floor -


This picture shows the way the ceiling copes with the very large church window - when you stand under it you are under a pointed roof bit and although I couldn't quite capture it here there is a lot of space between the lower part of the ceiling and the window.


This picture is of the ground floor stairs entry to the 1st floor [on the right] and the stairs going up to the mezzanine [on the left]. The 1st floor is where the kitchen, dining and reading/quite area will be.


Looking down from the mezzanine onto the first floor you can see the raised dining area and Andy in the pic gives it a bit of scale - there is a lot of height in the building. The beam you can see is the one in the previous pic that started off in the main bedroom.


And here is that same beam stretching right up into the mezzanine...


Andy is standing on the raised dining room area...


I love the shape the beams make high up in the roof...


This is the 1st floor looking at it standing on the raised dining area - the doorway goes through into the utility room and WC. The bit you can see under the mezzanine is where I will have my books and reading area. And the kitchen will be against the back wall and come out to teh far side of the beam from where I am standing taking this pic and the pine mezzanine pillar. The bit between teh beam and pillar will be a breakfast bar.


So, although this isn't our house it gave us a good feel, albeit the opposite way round, for how ours will be. It has been quite interesting because each house has taken ideas from each other and so while they will be different there are probably things we wouldn't have thought of ourselves and vice versa. For example, the raised dining area came from our house but the idea of a stained glass panel in the stair partition to capture light in the dining area came from our neighbour.

What we are quite pleased about though is that in a few weeks our house will look like this and then the site team will be focusing on our side of the building and we should be ready earlier than other houses for moving in. Right now that moment can't come soon enough!

coffee cake

It was Andy's birthday this week and I wanted to bake him a cake. I bought carrots for carrot cake but when it came to making it my hands couldn't cope with the cold [I have raynauds] and after a close call with a sharp knife I decided that fridge-cold carrots to grate were not a good idea.

So I decided to go off piste and make a coffee cake instead.

ingredients - cake

150g of caster sugar
150g self raising flour
150g of butter
3 eggs
1 tbsp of [good] instant coffee
1 tbsp hot water
1 and a half tsp baking powder

ingredients - icing

Some walnuts
225g icing sugar
100g butter
1 and a half tbsp [good] instant coffee

method

Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3

Grease and line a cake tin

Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl [or cheat like me and use the food processor]


Whisk the eggs in a mug


Add the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar in stages alongside a tbsp of flour and mix well each time you add

Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder and fold in gently

Dissolve the coffee in the hot water and add to the mixture still folding



Spoon the mixture into the tin and cook for 40-50 mins [my cooker is rubbish so it may take a bit shorter for a fan oven]

While the cake is cooking you can make the icing

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

Dissolve the coffee in the hot water and then add to the butter and sugar

If it seems a bit runny let it set in the fridge for a while - if you do this though you will need to let it come to room temprature again before icing the cake or else it will be so cold it won't spread easily and will tear up the cake

When the cake is done take it out of the oven to cool for five minutes then remove from the tin

Let it cool for a further five minutes before carefully removing the greaseproof paper

Cool fully on a rack before icing

While the cake is cooling, select 7 whole walnuts - one will go in the middle of the cake and the rest spaced out around it's edges

Take a handful of walnuts and chop up - not too finely as you don't want walnut dust

Ice the cake, place your whole walnuts and then scatter the chopped walnuts over the cake

Brew a fresh pot of coffee, grab a good book, put on some music and relax!

You can double the cake mixture and then divide it between two sandwish tins if you want a really big, deep cake - make sure you double your icing too though for the filling.

As you can see from the pic the cake was half gone before I got to use the camera...

indexed chopping boards - yes please!

I like practical but stylish kitchen equipment. I want items to be simple - too complicated means you are less likely to want to use them and try out that new recipe and too decorative means cleaning and storage is difficult. Anything that has a glut of twirls and carved bits is a haven for food to get stuck and for cleaning to be a right chore.

Joseph Joseph is a company run by two twins, Antony and Richard, and grew from their family's glass business. The kitchen items are modern in design so perhaps more traditional cooks may not find them appealing, but I love the very simple and practical designs that have a look and feel that takes them out of the ordinary.

One of the issues I often have is my rather odd assortment of chopping boards that has been built up over several years. There are different sizes, colours, designs but despite the variety there is no sense of organisation or that the collection actually houses the right types of board. We keep 'the white chopping board' for just meat but I would like to be much better at having chopping boards for specific uses. In fact, really the only 'good' chopping board I have is an amazing block wood number my sister's [Alice] friend, Ruth, got us when we got married - it has survived the past ten years admirably and sometimes it is used to serve food as well as be used in its preparation.

I woudl be happy with any item from this company but I was very pleased to unwrap our Christmas gift from my sister Emma to discover the Index set of chopping boards from Joseph Joseph.


There is one for veg, cooked meat, raw meat and fish. The come colour co-ordinated and in a smart 'file' - and each board has a file tab telling you what it is to be used for - perfect.


And because they look so good having them out on the work surface in our new open plan kitchen will be great.

tagine

I have posted previously the recipe I tested for morrocan lamb - I made it in a pot but at Christmas my lovely sister gave me a beautiful tagine dish. Not only does this mean my New Year's Eve dinner could be made in a proper dish - the dish itself is black and aubergine in colour - perfect for the new kitchen!

I was trying to cut down on time in the kitchen over new year so I made up the morrocan lamb dish up until the point you add the chickpeas. I then froze it. I defrosted it overnight and then popped it in the tagine with the chickpeas and followed the instructions to slowly heat the dish in the oven. This worked very well - even though I am sure some will frown upon it - and I added the fresh herbs and toasted pine and pistachio nuts just before serving. This meant that on the day the preparation was only about an hour giving me more time to drink wine and chat to Andy and Calum.

It was great to be able to serve it directly at the table and you could keep the lid on to keep it all warm for serving seconds. Also, taking the lid of to reveal the dark tasty sauce and meat, with the bright green flashes of parsley and coriander topped of with the crunchy nuts was a good 'reveal' - food deserves to have a bit of the spotlight.

new year's day dinner

After a big fry up breakie - and a walk up the Wallace - I made New Year's Day dinner which for us is good old steak pie, roasty potatoes and veg followed by trifle.

I was up against the steak pie we have had the past two years from the excellent butcher in Innerleithen and so wanted a recipe that was particularly moreish. I went with Jamie Oliver's steak, guiness and cheese pie which I made in my lovely new pie dish - a great Christmas present from my Mum.

I usually make our trifle so stuck to the tried and tested trifle sponges, jelly, custard and whipped cream. The jelly asked for 2 pts of hot water but I put in one and three quarters as I like my jelly quite solid - and the boys seemed quite happy with it.