3 toppers for the new book

This post was first made on 27/11/2019

As today I had some left over mushrooms and newly harvested onions, I looked back with great joy and remembered the time we made stuffed mushrooms with Alice, Carmen, Li, Erika, Irine, and Sima. I have not seen them for such a long time. I hope they are well.

As I am hoping to get the 3rd cookery book published in the next couple of weeks, I wanted to put in 3 recipes that we had done before, tasted delicious and fancied eating them again.

A bit of a strange combination but a hit nonetheless.
We first made the chickpea chocolate brownies, a gluten free recipe which went down very well. Sema our newest member who claims that she cannot cook, treated us to some gorgeous brownies. We added a cherry from the cherry jam we made last year, and a dollop of greek yoghurt. 

We also made a cheese roll wreath, 

a wonderful recipe, easy to do and great for parties when people can just help themselves to a roll (or two) We use the Lazy dough recipe and then added a block of cheese and the parmesan and italian herbs in oil to spread on top     

Our main meal was the stuffed mushrooms, if only we could have had more of them.
   

  

Carmen suggested that instead of an empty ramekin in the middle of the bread wreath, we could have put in the stuffing we used for the mushroom; colourful and extremely tasty.

Will no doubt make these recipes more often, but for now they will end up in the recipe book.

half term: shoba noodles with Fake lo Mein and broccoli soup

Today was a small group as a couple of regular members were ill and on holiday as it was half term
So making egg noodles was perfect entertainment with a small group.

We then made this delicious fake Lo Mein that was out of this world. We sprinkled a few sesame seeds on top when we served the dish, but this is optional.


Although the morning started sunny (but chilly) by the time we went into the allotment to pick the broccoli for the broccoli and coconut milk soup it was dull and dreary.  Great to be back into the house which was warm and cozy.

All in all a very tasty meal with lots of sharing of information.

Japanese inspired meal

Last week Irina spoke about another fermented food that she liked very much but only the Japanese friends seem to know. Natto.  They tried to explain what it smelled and tasted like, and to be honest they did not sell it well. Apparently it smelled and had an acquired taste.  Sounded interesting though and we all wanted to try it so Erika very kindly brought some for us to use today.

We made a egg fried rice with Natto, cabbage, carrot, garlic topped with pea shoots and some soya sauce. We all loved it.

To start our meal we had this beetroot, feta and radish soup we sprinkled some sesame seeds on top and made it look very much in keeping with the rest of the meal.



As a dessert we made some Kanten, an agar dessert with tangerines and pineapple.


Today we also sowed, tomatoes in tea bags. This is an experiment as I saw it on FB. The seeds were from tomatoes we had eaten last autumn, so not sure how they will come up. Will write an update once I have more news

Sweet potato, pumpkin and kefir soup, with cabbage parcels

Last week, Julie gave me a bottle of Kefir to give to my friend. It turned out that she had left for holiday so what better to do then use it ourselves.
I found this spiced pumpkin-sweetp otato soup with Kefir it was a creamy velvety soup, which we had with a lazy dough bread roll.  We used the dough that we made on Monday, so Thank you to the monday group for making this lovely dough.


Then Carmen came with a page out of Velvet magazine op page 38 the Allotment diary .Stuffed Savoy Cabbage Leaves.


Ingredients
Large savoy cabbage
oil
3 carrots Shred
300g mushrooms - chop very finely
1 leek- chop very finely
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 cloves of crushed garlic
50g toasted hazelnuts
50g fetta cheese

Method
Carefully pull the 12 outermost leaves off the cabbage and set to one side. Remove the core from the remaining cabbage and finely shred (we have decided to also shred the first full dark green leaves as they were a little tough.

Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan over a medium heat  and add the shredded cabbage, carrots, mushrooms and leek. Sprinkle a good pinch of salt and pepper and cook for approx 5 minutes until starting to soften
   
Add the cumin seeds and garlic. Cook for a further 10 minutes stirring occasionally until the moisture of the mushrooms has cooked off and the veg is just starting to turn golden.

Put a large saucepan of water on the boil and pre-heat oven to 180 degrees. Take the cabbage leaves you removed earlier and shave some of the thick stem in the middle of each leave. Once the water is boiling, plunge the leaves in for 1-2minutes and then drain. (if your leaves are dark green, boil a little more as they could otherwise be tough)  




Chop you toasted nuts and crumble the feta- taste and add extra seasoning if necessary.




To assemble, lay your cabbage leaves out flat on a work surface and spoon the filling mixture evenly between the 12 leaves. Fold both sides in then fold over the bottom and top to make a little parcel. Place in an oven proof dish, fold side down. drizzle with oil and bake for 10 minutes. Serve warm for diner or cold for lunch the next day  (Velvet, recipe by Katie Moore of Allotment) January 2020
 
We went out into the allotment to pick Yacon, Oca,Carrots, Corn Salad, rocket, edible flowers like corn flowers, yellow and orange calendula, viola, rosemary flower and daisies for a lovely fresh salad
Stuffed Savoy Cabbage leaves

   

Pancakes, Spinach and sweet potato curry

I ran out of eggs, milkman was late and 9 friends were about to arrive for this mornings session. So what did we do?

 Made oat milk for the pancake mix,
   

vanilla extract for the oat milk. 
Used the orange and lemon juice for the crepe suzette sauce, the peel for orange and lemon extract. We used rum instead of vodka as we had a bottle we would otherwise never us.


   

We mixed Meghan Holmes wild rice that she gave to us as a Christmas present with some basmati rice and then topped it with spinach, sweet potato and coconut curry..


 

he vegan pancakes were delicious especially with the orange topping.

Leek and Potato Chowder

Today we will make Leek and Potato Chowder

in a gougère ring.


 

We also made Alice's tea scones which turned out light and fluffy,
 a big hit.



As an easy standby we made some cinnamon palmiers
    
and puff pastry christmas trees.
    





Lots of baking and all worth of being in the 3rd cookery book!