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The Vicar’s Wife’s Cook Book. Elisa Beynon
Читать онлайн.Название The Vicar’s Wife’s Cook Book
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007494989
Автор произведения Elisa Beynon
Жанр Кулинария
Издательство HarperCollins
First, quinoa is pronounced ‘keen-wah’, and second, it’s lovely, as well as healthy. (Just don’t drop an opened bag of the stuff on the floor unless you want your kitchen to look like a beach.) If you can’t find quinoa, you could use couscous or bulgar wheat.
enough quinoa to come up to the 250ml mark in a measuring jug (approx. 250g)
500ml cold water
2 peppers – one red, one yellow
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 cherry or baby plum tomatoes, quartered
4 spring onions, trimmed and chopped
1 forefinger’s length of cucumber, cut into small dice
200g feta – partly crumbled, partly cubed
large bunch of fresh basil, torn
salt and pepper
Rinse the quinoa in a sieve then put it in a pan with the cold water. It needs to come to the boil and then simmer away for 15–20 minutes or until the water is absorbed and it is soft and fluffy. Meanwhile, preheat the grill to high.
De-seed and halve the peppers and pop them under a hot grill, skin-side up, until the skins are black and charred. Once they are ready, remove and wait a bit before pulling the skins off. (I never can be bothered and end up nearly burning my fingers off.) Cut the peppers into thin strips – it’s easiest to use kitchen scissors for this, as de-skinned peppers are slippery little things. Once the quinoa is done, tip it into a serving bowl and add all the other ingredients. Stir to combine and leave it on the side until you are about to eat.
about 400g baby spinach leaves
For the dressing:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon French mustard
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
salt and pepper, to taste
You don’t need me to tell you to put the spinach leaves in a bowl, combine the ingredients for the dressing and toss them both together. Oops, I just did.
This menu didn’t feature a heavy main course, so for pudding I beefed things up just a little. Here, I give you my version of the old-fashioned dessert, ‘Queen of Puddings’. Mine, made with mellow apricot jam, is less oh-so-sweet and has a kind of hidden depth. Like some men. So, my version got a gender change.
575ml full-fat milk
40g butter
150g fresh white breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons ground almonds
150g caster sugar
finely grated zest of 1 lemon or orange
4 generous tablespoons good-quality apricot jam
4 large eggs
You can make this in an oval pie dish or a big shallow ovenproof bowl. It should be around 1.2–1.5 litres in capacity.
Bring the milk to the boil in a pan. Once it’s boiling, take it off the heat and stir in the butter, breadcrumbs, the ground almonds, 25g of the sugar and the zest of whichever fruit you have opted for. Leave on the side for ½ hour to allow the bread to swell and the flavours to combine.
After that time, melt the jam and pour half of it over the base of the dish and preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Separate the eggs: put the egg whites into a large, clean mixing bowl and the yolks into a cup. Beat the yolks briefly with a fork and add them to the breadcrumb mixture. Pour this over the jam and bake in the oven for around 25–30 minutes until softly set.
Meanwhile, whisk together the egg whites until they form soft peaks and then gradually whisk in the remaining 125g of sugar until stiff. When the pudding comes out of the oven, pour over the remaining warm jam, spreading it to cover all the breadcrumb mixture. Pile over the meringue and swirl it out with the back of a spoon to make a seal with the edge of the dish. Put the dish back in the oven for around 10 minutes or until the meringue is golden.
A whole salmon, preferably eaten in the sun
My baby cousin and her husband are staying. Blonde and tiny, I can’t believe she’s now a grown-up, married woman. Yesterday they took us out for a lovely lunch. Today, it’s my turn to cook and I want to give them a treat. The air is soft and muggy, so I have plumped for lunch in the garden and a whole salmon. I’d bought some oysters to kick things off and my cousin and I enjoyed the performance as the men vied with each other in a manly display of oyster-opening prowess. You don’t have to have oysters if you don’t want them (especially if you are of the opinion that they taste of salty snot!) but for me they were just what we needed before the delicate creaminess of what was to come.
Salmon is quite a rich fish, so an invigorating slap in the face beforehand, in the form of oysters, set me up to appreciate its flavour. As for the pudding; it’s just as rich, but somehow it doesn’t seem so. Heady with oranges, it retains its lightness and the only thing in it that’s likely to make you want to nod off is the generous quantity of Cointreau.