Pea and Parmesan Gnocchi

 With the last of the potatoes dug up, I used the not so good looking ones to make some of Gordon Ramsay's recipes. Gnocchi.   This is  great video too They turned out beautifully. I normally make ridges with a fork, but this time making the little pillows and a dimple in it made these fried delicate eats into a glorious meal.

I don't think I will ever go back to the original recipe. A great find.

Chickpea brownies

 Today we harvested Amaranth seeds for microgreen sowing next week,

 

planting of broadbeans and some elephant garlic. We harvested the rocket 

for the delicious leek and rocket soup 

1 leek finely chopped

3 shallots finely chopped

2 medium potatoes chopped

4 handfuls rocket (roughly chopped)

1 litre vegetable stock

1/3 cup (non)dairy cream (vegan version)

1 tablespoon mustard

1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg

Fry the onions and leek then add the potatoes and stock and simmer until the potatoes are soft

Finally add the cream, rocket, mustard, pepper and nutmeg

Blend with hand blender until completely smooth

Ingredients for the topping

1/2 tsp pepper

1/4 thinly sliced cucumber

1/2 tsp sugar

3 tablespoon dry roasted pine nuts

Mix sugar and salt and pour over the cucumber

Serve the soup, garnish with a little cucumber mix and pine nuts

and then the total surprise for all

to enjoy was the chickpea chocolate brownie with yoghurt and raspberries.

Ingredients

1 can chickpeas drained and rinsed

2 (chia) eggs

1/2 cup cacao powder

3 tbsp rapeseed oil

1 tsp coffee grinds (optional)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

In a food processor blend all ingredients (apart from Chocolate chips)

Add the chips, pour batter in a prepared baking tin and bake 20mins on 180C (or until inserted knife comes out clean)

Allow the brownies to cool for at least 20minutes before cutting up and serving. Try pulling a dollop of cherry jam and yoghurt on top

Leeks need harvesting

 Today we were blessed with a lovely sunny day, after a wet and window week. 

Miho arrived and Kota was still asleep, so we decided to go straight to the allotment to get the ingredients for our vegetarian sausages, (*) mashed potatoes, caramelised apple and leek and potato soup.

(*) we used chickpeas rather than butter beans.

Then we went home and prepped the vegetables, picked herbs from the garden and made the leek and potato soup.

 

First session back after lockdown

Today was a special day in our calendar as for the first time, we saw each other again in person.

Miho (who was pregnant when we last saw her) came with her baby son, who slept all the way through the  session, Simone our first ever member was back again for a few weeks before she starts work again and then we welcomed Maiko a new member.

Armed with hand sanitisers, masks and face shields, we made picked raspberries from the garden for our dessert,

 

The chickpeas we used later in a chickpea salad,  we made some Lazy dough which was then turned into some flatbread to go with the salad.

We had a little walk to the allotment, where we cut some runners of the strawberries, to plant into the bottles of our vertical bottle garden. We tasted the apples, tomatoes, yellow raspberries, nasturtium flowers all fresh from the garden.

What a lovely start we had.

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

Carrot Soup, Scones,, risotto and chick pea browny waffles

Carrot Soup was lovely, we added 1 chopped red pepper and 1 celery stalk to the mix, after blending it, we topped it with chopped almonds and parsley

Our main meal as Leek, Pea and pesto risotto, although it called for 200 gr kale, which we did  pick in the allotment, by the time we were back, Carmen and Julie who stayed to stir the pot, felt there was already so much in the risotto it would have been over kill. So we left it out.
When we plated it up we stirred some gorgonzola and parmesan through it and topped it with pea shoots.

The chickpea brownie waffle went down very well too.
we used the chickpea brownie recipe from the 3rd cookery book but rather than pouring the batter in a baking tin and put in the oven for 30 minutes. We put a dollop in the middle of the waffle iron to make them into little waffles,  we then topped them up with lemon mousse.

For this we had 400g cream cheese, 1 cup icing sugar, juice of 1 lemon (we used 3 small limes) pinch of salt and 1 cup of the whipped aquafaba. We mixed everything except the whipped aquafaba, then folded it in.  Part of the mousse we put in small dishes (to give away to some of the residents of Victoria Homes) the left over was put in the fridge for 1 hour and used to top the chocolate brownie waffles.

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!