Tag: Cheese

Spinach Pancakes

Hello friends and welcome to a return to the wonderful vintage cookbook, The A-Z of Cooking. The last time I visited this book was back in 2016/17 when I cooked a LOT of recipes from it. There were only a few recipes left that I wanted to cook and this one for spinach pancakes with tomato sauce was top of the list! I love the combination of spinach and cheese – in spanakopita, in cannelloni and these pancakes did nothing to change my mind!

Spinach Pancakes 1

 

The finished pancakes looked very much like cannelloni!  And to be honest, while the taste was great, this was a lot of work.  The sauce needed to simmer for a few hours, the pancakes took some time to cook, the wrapping and rolling was fiddly.  Alas, no two of my rolled pancakes were the same size!  By the time these came out of the oven I was almost too tired to eat.  It was only the day after that realised this recipe was in the “Night Before” chapter of the A-Z.  It would have been far less tiring to make the sauce and pancakes the day before!  

Spinach Pancakes 2

Maybe because I was thinking of cannelloni, the method of cooking seemed a bit odd to me.  The recipe says to fill the pancakes, place them in the baking dish and then sprinkle cheese over the top. You were then meant to serve the sauce on the side.  

Spinach Pancakes 3

I did this but about half way through the cook, I gave into to the urge to pour the sauce over the top!  I then added more cheese.

 

Spinach Pancakes 4

Deeelicious!

Spinach Pancakes with Tomato Sauce – The Recipe

Spinach Pancakes Recipe

My notes on the recipe

  • I used frozen spinach
  • I subbed ricotta cheese for the cottage cheese
  • Leave yourself plenty of time – this took me around 3 and a half hours all up.  

 

And, if l like me you can’t get enough spinach and cheese, here are some other ways you can spin these flavours!

Have a great week!

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Manakish – ish

Hello Friends!  I was inspired to make Manakish by Appointment with Death, the latest book in the Dining with The Dame series.  The book is largely set in Jordan and although no Jordani food is mentioned (quelle surprise). I thought Manakish would be a good representative dish for that post. I made my version of manakish, took the photos, and then decided to do something else for the Appointment with Death post.  But the manakish was really tasty. Too good not to share!  So here it is…actually before that.  Let’s talk about what it is.  Manakish or Manouche is a traditional Jordani flatbread usually with a topping of zaátar or cheese.  Mine is a  not traditional. It is at best manakish adjacent or as I like to say, manakish-ish.  Now, we’ve got through that…here it is:Manakish1

The Recipe – Manakish

I used this recipe from Hungry Paprikas for the base recipe for my manakish.  Per the recipe, I used feta, mozzarella and nigella seeds.  And then I added a  little sprinkle of Zaátar, some red onion slices and a few chilli flakes.  I really had to restrain myself from adding olives, mushrooms, etc as if this was a regular pizza!  This was very tasty despite so few ingredients!  Sometimes, less really is more!

Manakish2

The salad you can see in the first photo and below is my version of this salad from Gourmet Traveller which felt Middle Eastern enough to work well with the Manakish.  Also, the cherry tomatoes and the parsley are from my garden!  I used olive oil and lemon juice in my dressing to keep it simple.  I had also decided to forgo the candied walnuts in the recipe for plain walnuts.  Do not do this.  They were divine.  I wish I had made far more of them than I needed because they were decidedly more-ish!

Salad for Manakish

I would love to see Petra, it looks stunning and is definitely on my bucket list of places to go!

Via Vogue

In the short term though, I will have to content myself with eating Manakish and reading Appointment with Death.  The post for which will be up in two weeks’ time!

I am literally at this moment watching The Deer Hunter for my film club. I can see why it’s seen as a classic but so far (about 1.5 hours in) it has been unremittingly grim and I am not expecting a change of tone any time soon.  Far less harrowing, this week I am hosting our Tasty Reads Cookbook Club where we are cooking from Recipetin Eats.  If you are not a fan, I can recommend it!

Have a great week!

 

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Raiff of Cheese

Hello Globetrotters and food lovers!  Given we can no longer travel in actuality I guess the next best is to travel virtually via our tastebuds.  And today, we are turning the page in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery to a whole  new continent!  And what better way to celebrate anything but with some cheesy pastries otherwise known as Raiff of Cheese!

Cheese Pastries 1

So, where are we off to?  Here’s a clue:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

Yes, my friends, we are going to be blessing the rains down in Africa for the next little while.  And I, for one, am here for it!  Africa is a real knowledge gap for me in terms of food.  I have cooked tagines and couscous, I have eaten Doro Wat and Injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and I have read about Bunny Chow and Sosaties. But that’s pretty much it for what is a massive continent!  So,  this will be a journey of exploration for me. Not that I am expecting Good Housekeeping from 1972 to provide any 100% authentic recipes but I”m hoping it will be enough to give me a taste of African food!

Cheese Pastries 2

These cheese pastries or Raiff of Cheese come from the North African section of World Cookery.  I chose to cook these because they reminded me very much of the Cheese Pastries we love at our local Syrian restaurant.  Believe me, I could sit and eat plate after plate of their Bourak B’jebneh!  I was also inspired by the menu at Shaam to use haloumi as the cheese in my pastries.

Raiff of Cheese – Recipe and My Variations

I used bought filo pastry because life’s too short to make homemade filo.  If you do want to do that, here’s a recipe and good luck to you!  I do want to try to make my own haloumi one day though.  I think it would have been nice (but maybe not very North African) to sub in some mozzarella for the haloumi to give the pastries some lovely melty cheesy stretchiness.  Next time maybe!

Cheese Pastries 3

Another little change I made to the recipe as given in GHWC was to add in a little sauteed leek and the very last of the chervil from my garden.  This combination features in many of the other North African recipes and it just so happened that I had half a leek in the fridge.  I had no idea that either of these were used so extensively in North African cooking.  Like I said, journey of exploration!

Finally, to serve my cheese pastries, I added a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses – the sweet-sour of this being a perfect counterpoint to the salty haloumi and some toasted sesame seeds to add some nutty crunchiness.  Any chutney or relish would be good with these.

Raiff of Cheese RecipeCheese Pastries 4

I’m not sure how authentically North African these cheese pastries are but they were really tasty. And as sure as  Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I’ll be making these again!

Have a great week!

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Welsh Rarebit- Dining with The Dame 6

Hello crime readers and food lovers!  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which is Christie number 6 has a special memory for me because this was one of the books we had oin the bookshelf when I was growing up. This was probably one of the first Christie books I ever read!.  It was also the book that made Christie’s name as a writer for the innovative twist at the end.  It has been recognised, many times, as one of the best and/or most influential crime novels ever written.  Never mind the accolades though, it also, beautifully and comically features one of my own favourite foods  – a Welsh Rarebit!

Welsh Ratebit1

One of the few good things working from home for the last… Good Lord five months now…. is that I can whip up a Welsh rarebit for lunch whenever I choose.  Turns out I choose to do so quite frequently!  It’s tasty, filling, perfect with a bowl of soup, a salad, or just on its own!  Of course, I ‘ am not alone in loving a bit o’ Welsh Rarebit!

The normally curmudgeonly Martin Lampen claims

Cheese on toast, its Welsh Rarebit to those in the know.  It’s the perfect British rainy day lunchtime snack – quick, cheap, easy to prepare….it’s a national icon”

– The Knickerbocker Glory Years

Albert Jack, however, draws attention to the rather  origin of its name by calling it

” the most insulting way to serve cheese on toast”

This is because the English thought it would be funny to mock the Welsh by insinuating that they were too poor to have proper meat and so had to have cheese instead!

Welsh Rarebit 2

 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd- The Plot

James Sheppard is the local doctor in Kings Abbot.  He lives with his sister Caroline who knows all the gossip and scandal in the town and who is currently interested in finding out all about the “foreign” gentleman who has moved in next door.

A wealthy widow in the town has committed suicide by drinking veronal.  Her fiance, Roger Ackroyd, is in a state of agitation because the day before Mrs Ferrars (the widow) confessed to him that she murdered her first husband.  She also told him that someone knew she had done it and was blackmailing her.

That night, Roger Ackroyd is stabbed to death in his study by persons unknown…

Turns out the foreign gentleman next door is no other than  Hercule Poirot who has moved to Kings Abbot to grow marrows in his retirement.  (BTW,  Kings Abbott is a real place and it looks absolutely GORGEOUS!)

Anyhoo, no one is getting away with stabbing people to death in the neck on Poirot’s watch. What follows are:

  • Mysterious phonecalls
  • Strangers lurking in the bushes
  • Chairs suspiciously out of place
  • Stolen money
  • Secret Marriages
  • And of course, Poirot using his little grey cells to solve the crime and out the murderer!
  • There is also a bit of slapstick when Dr. Sheppard gets hit over the head with one of Poirot’s marrows.  I mean it’s not as good as this classic from the Amazing Race.  But in terms of people getting forcefully hit with produce, it’s up there!  Also, who knew I was keeping that list?

 

 

The Covers

Only three covers this time –  the one from my childhood, the one I read which was a graphic novel! And my favourite of them all – I mean is it just me or does Roger look hot in that third one?

Roger collage

The Recipe – Welsh Rarebit

I need to set the scene a bit on this one. Dr. Sheppard invites Poirot round for lunch.  However, there were only two chops available for the lunch table.  In order to save face, Caroline Sheppard pretends to be a vegetarian and lunches on a Welsh Rarebit.

‘With magnificent mendacity, [she] explained to Poirot that … she adhered strictly to a vegetarian diet. She descanted ecstatically on the delights of nut cutlets (which I am quite sure she has never tasted) and ate a Welsh rarebit with gusto and frequent cutting remarks as to the dangers of ‘flesh’ foods.’

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

The Recipe for Welsh Rarebit I used comes from Cookery The Australian Way which was my high school home economics cookbook!  As you can see from the state of the page, this has been used a LOT!   I have tried other recipes for Welsh Rarebit but this is the one I have returned to time and time again for the last…hmmm…lets  not count the years since I was in high school!

 

Welsh Rarebit Recipe

Other Food Mentioned in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Stay safe friends and have a great week!

 

Cheese-Stuffed Chillies

These cheese-stuffed chillies are based on a recipe from the Ceylon section of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery Book.  So…I know a little bit about Sri Lankan cooking and never have I ever heard of a cheese-stuffed chilli.  Never.  Not once.  Just in case I am not being entirely clear – no one in my family, not my grandmothers, not my mother, not my aunts, cousins, no other writers of Sri Lankan cookbooks have ever made or even mentioned cheese stuffed chillies in the context of Sri Lankan cooking. 

Until now.  

cheese stuffed chillies 1

I became a little obsessed with this recipe because I started wondering if this was the original Jalapeno popper.  Turns out the term jalapeno popper came to prominence in Texas in around 1972 so the recipes are definitely contemporaneous in time if a continent or two apart in space.

The recipe was vague about the type of cheese to use.  Mum said that in Sri Lanka when she was growing up the only types of cheese available were Kraft cheese in a tin and Edam.  Neither of which I happened to have on hand.  

I did have some goat’s cheese and I remembered that my friend Leesa once brought an amazing dish to cookbook club that was feta baked with thyme, honey and walnut. Which also accounted for the other thing that was bothering me which was the inclusion of sugar in the recipe.  

Hmm…so goat’s cheese to sub for the cheese in a tin, honey to sub in for the sugar.  Looks like a recipe is coming together!

cheese stuffed chillies 2

These cheese-stuffed chillies were delicious!!!!

There was some heat from the chillis, creaminess and a little bit of salty tanginess from the cheeseand the mustard, sweetness from the honey, crunchy toastiness from the nuts and a hit of herbiness from the thyme.

Perfect drinking snack!!!

I could have eaten a dozen of these with an ice-cold beer on a sunny afternoon.  And I would have been in total bliss!  They were also nice with a glass of red wine on a cold winter’s night too!

A Digression in the World of Major League Eating

Which reminds me.  I found this amazing factoid on Wikipedia when doing some research on the origin of the jalapeno popper.  

“Joey “Jaws” Chestnut holds the Major League Eating record for jalapeño poppers, eating 118 in 10 minutes at the University of Arizona on 8 April 2006.”

This of course took me down a path of Major League Eating.  Turns out our boy Jaws (known on the MLE site as “the greatest eater in history” and “the apex predator” does not restrict himself to the jalapeno.  He also holds records for downing Chicken Wings (both long form and 12 minute),  pulled pork sandwiches, hot dogs, meat pies, donuts, eggs, asparagus, corned beef sandwiches, pork ribs, Philly Cheesesteaks, funnel cakes, fish tacos, mutton sandwichs, traditional tacos, shrimp wontons, pulled pork,  horseshoe sandwiches (???), pulled pork sliders, long form burritos, short form ramen, gyros, Twinkies, boysenberry pie, tamales, gyoza, gumbo, ice cream sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, poutine, shrimp cocktail..there are more but I lost the will to live whilst typing that lot out. 

Sadly,  the prize for French cut green beans (2.71 pounds in six minutes) went to Joey Jaws arch-rival Crazy Legs Conti.  Shine on you Crazy Legged Diamond! 

cheese stuffed chillies 3

Cheese Stuffed Chillies – The Recipe

Stuffed Chillies Recipe

I also put my stuffed chillies under the grill to melt the cheese, toast the nuts and get some nice roastiness on the chillies.  But you could serve them as is per the recipe if you wanted.

The ultimate verdict on these cheese-stuffed chillies is that they are not at all Sri Lankan but are totally delish!  Just don’t invite Joey Jaws Chestnut over if you plan on making them.  Or make a LOT!  

cheese stuffed chillies 4

Next stop on the good Housekeeping World Cookery Tour is China!  Let’s see what inauthentic food we can find from the land of dragons and emperors!  I’m hoping for some dumplings!

Have a great week!