Salad of Cannellini Beans, Chorizo & Tomatoes

Another week has gone past in a flash, as I have been busy preparing to leave for six glorious weeks on a yoga retreat in the Greek Islands - it’s a filthy job I know, but someone has to do it, and really who better than me.  If it’s any consolation, I am drafting this somewhere over the Pacific on the 10-1/2 hour flight to Singapore, where I hope to actually get it posted during the 5 hour wait for my 12 hour flight to Munich - by the time I finally get to Athens, I will have had about 37 hours of travelling, which is the downside of living at the bottom of the world.

After the last few months of stress, and more than a little heartache, following the Christchurch earthquake back in February, this trip offers plenty of reprieve - an opportunity to recharge both my yoga and emotional batteries;  a time for reflection and renewal;  a time to reconnect with my wonderful yoga teachers, Graeme & Leonie Northfield, as well as with special friends;  a time, no doubt, to make some new friends;  and almost certainly an opportunity for fabulous food, which you will no doubt hear more about over the next few weeks.  Oh, and did I mention swimming and the suntan?!

Speaking of fabulous food, it’s time for me to share my weekly contribution with the I Heart Cooking Clubs group.  You know that we are cooking with Jamie Oliver, who has an absolute abundance of fabulous recipes to choose from, and our theme this week is Pot Luck.  Everyone in the group loves it when we have our monthly Pot Luck, as that is the time they turn to that special recipe that they’ve had bookmarked for ages just waiting for the right occasion to share it.  There are some wonderful bloggers in this group and I know that everyone will  be pulling out all the stops this week, so for plenty of fabulous food and inspiration go and visit my friends at IHCC.

As for me, it was not so much a case of pulling out all the stops, as it was of pulling out a few remnants from the back of the fridge and pantry that needed to be used up before going away.  I discovered a chorizo sausage, some cherry tomatoes, and a bag of rocket, all needing to be turned into something edible.  Adding a can of cannellini beans to the mix, I made this salad which I had seen Jamie Oliver make on TV once - I think it was an episode of Jamie Does Spain, but I can’t be certain as I can’t find the original recipe anywhere.  So you are just going to have to take it on faith that I saw him make something like this, and this is my interpretation of it.

This makes a great light meal for two, served with some good, crusty, bread, or would also make a great accompanying side dish to some lamb chops or fish.

Salad of Cannellini Beans, Chorizo & Tomatoes Recipe

Inspired by a recipe by Jamie Oliver

(Serves 2 as a light meal)

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1 tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

flaky sea salt & freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 large chorizo sausage, sliced about 3mm (1/8”) thick

1 shallot, thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, peeled - leave cloves whole, but smash slightly

20 cherry tomatoes

extra virgin olive oil

red wine vinegar

Drain and rinse the cannellini beans, put into a medium size bowl, season well with flaky sea salt & freshly ground pepper, toss well, and set aside.

Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the sliced chorizo sausage to the pan, and cook until starting to brown around the edges.  It will render out quite a lot of its own fat.  Remove the sausage from the pan, leaving the fat behind in the pan, and add the sausage to the bowl with the beans.

Return the skillet to the heat, add the shallot and smashed garlic cloves to the pan, along with the cherry tomatoes.  As soon as the garlic starts to turn golden brown and the tomatoes start to pop, remove the pan from the heat.  Discard the garlic cloves, and tip the entire contents of the pan (including all of the oil) into the bowl with the beans and sausage.

Add a good slosh of the red wine vinegar (about a tablespoon) to the bowl, season again with flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper, and mix gently but thoroughly to combine.  Taste and adjust with more oil, vinegar or seasoning as necessary.

Lastly add the rocket leaves, give one last gentle toss, and serve.  This is great served immediately while the sausage and tomatoes are still warm, but also equally good after it has been sitting for a couple of hours and the flavours have really infused.  Either way, this should at least be served at room temperature - do not refrigerate.

I hope you enjoy it.

Interested in getting to know Jamie a bit better?  Then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and see what they've all been cooking up ....

.... or check out Jamies Italy and many of his other great titles, available from Amazon or Fishpond NZ.

         

Roasted Pumpkin, Pancetta & Pistachio Risotto

I need to begin this post by sending out a huge thank you to so many of you, from all around the world, for the wonderful thoughtfulness and kind wishes that you have kept coming my way since the Christchurch earthquake back in February.

It has been an extremely traumatic and disturbing time, and your constant messages have truly kept me going.  We lost our home and our beautiful yoga school as a result of the earthquake, and have literally had to start building a completely new life for ourselves.  I can tell you that when you are in your mid-50s;  when the youthful part of you, who would once have thought this was an exciting new challenge, has been replaced by the wiser and more sensible one who knows it is just going to be damned hard work;  when your nerves are so shot to pieces that you think just the rumble of a truck going past is the beginning of another earthquake - the world begins to feel like a very scarey place.

And then, just when you are wondering what the hell is going to become of your life, the blogging world opens its arms, and a complete stranger out there in the blogosphere does something wonderful and heart-warming and remarkable.  Right when I was at a pretty low ebb, the lovely Alli of Pease Pudding (who I'd never met, but we'd connected a few times by visiting and commenting on each others blogs - as you do) emailed me and said that she had a flat attached to her cooking school (The Gourmet Gannet at Muriwai Beach) if I would like to come up and have a break away from Christchurch.  Well, by this stage we were already thinking that a move to Auckland (my old home-town) was the only option for us, so I emailed Alli back and, long-story-cut-short, she and Phelan have truly opened their hearts and home to us and enabled us to stay in their flat until we find a permanent home in Auckland.  To say that we are enormously grateful, is a gross understatement - we will forever be indebted for their kindness, and I hope that at some time in the future the opportunity will arise to repay some of that kindness in some way, by being as open-hearted and generous as they have been, to someone in need.

Oh, and did I mention the kitchen?  Let me repeat - this flat is Alli's cooking school = chef's kitchen!!  In my last kitchen - the one decimated by the earthquake (perhaps not so sadly, on reflection) - the sum total of my cooking equipment was:  one solid hot-plate element, slightly rusty (repeat one!);  a tiny "toastie" oven;  a microwave;  a Breville electric grill;  and a crock-pot.  Seriously - that was it - no surprise, now that you know, that I considered myself the queen of the one-pot-wonder!!  Consequently, I now think that I have died and gone to kitchen-heaven - now that I'm here, Alli may not be able to move me on so quickly!!  (It's ok, Alli, just joking)

And, thanks to having the opportunity to cook in this wonderful kitchen, and to relax and unwind in this beautiful part of the world, my "cooking mojo" which had seriously deserted me is slowly returning.  Probably not at all surprisingly, I have done a lot of "comfort eating" since the earthquake;  there have been occasions when I couldn't be bothered to cook, so have had toast instead, or crisps, or something else really crappy;  and there have been innumerable "fails".  But each day a little enthusiasm and confidence returns, and the other night I turned to this risotto which is one of my all-time favourites, and is especially good on a cool autumn evening.  Yes this is definitely comfort food, and this variation is probably my go-to risotto - the one that I make over and over again;  the one that never fails to warm my heart;  the one that I can make with my eyes closed;  the one that I make by instinct;  the one that I want to share with you, if I can just put that into a recipe ....

Roasted Pumpkin, Pancetta & Pistachio Risotto Recipe

Makes 2 generous servings

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

olive oil

2 to 3 cups diced pumpkin (about 2.5cm/1" dice)

flaky sea salt & freshly ground pepper

olive oil

6 slices pancetta, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 shallot, finely chopped

3 generous handfuls of arborio rice (see note * below)

1/2 glass of white wine (see note ** below)

3 to 4 cups of chicken stock, hot

bunch fresh thyme leaves (about 2 tablespoons of leaves)

butter - a generous "glob"

freshly grated parmesan cheese (about 1 cup)

flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

generous handful pistachio nuts, coarsely chopped

extra parmesan and thyme sprigs to finish

Note *:  If you plan on increasing this recipe to feed more people, I use the Gordon Ramsay method for measuring arborio rice, which is one large handful for each person plus one for the pot - hence 3 handfuls for two people

Note **:  If I don't want to open a bottle of wine for this, I often substitute 1/2 glass of vermouth mixed with the juice of 1/2 a lemon

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C (425 F).  Meanwhile line a baking tray with parchment paper and dice the pumpkin.  Toss the diced pumpkin with a little olive oil, sprinkle with flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and spread out in a single layer on the lined baking tray.  Place in the preheated oven and cook until the pumpkin is golden brown and starting to soften (probably around 20-30 minutes, depending on the pumpkin).  Remove from the oven and set aside.

Heat a little olive oil (about a tablespoon) in a heavy based pan over medium heat.  Add the pancetta and cook until golden brown and crispy.  Remove from the pan (leaving as much of the fat behind as possible), and place on a paper towel to drain.

Return the pan to the heat - you will want about two tablespoons of fat in the pan so, depending on how much fat was rendered from the pancetta, you may or may not need to add more olive oil to the pan.  Add the shallot and garlic to the pan - cooking until the shallot and garlic just begin to soften - take care not to burn the garlic - almost as soon as you can smell the garlic it is time to add the rice to the pan.  Also add in one-third of the thyme leaves.  Continue cooking the rice with the shallot and garlic, stirring constantly, until every single grain of rice is coated with the oil - it will take on a kind of translucent look around the edges and will start to "squeak".

Now is the time to add the wine, and continue stirring until virtually all the wine has been absorbed by the rice.  Then begin to add the chicken stock, one ladleful at a time - stirring constantly until each ladleful has been absorbed before adding the next.  (Note:  You may want to turn your heat down during this process - sorry but you really have to feel and guage this for yourself, and a lot will depend on your pan, type of element/heat, etc - again, I apologise that I can't be more precise, but risotto-making is not an exact science - you really have to "feel" it.)

All of this stirring and adding of stock is going to take around 20 minutes, and in that time the grains of rice will swell up dramatically.  Round about the 15 minute mark, have a taste test - once the grains are still a bit chalky, but taste as if they might not have too much longer to go, add in the pumpkin.  You don't want to put the pumpkin in too early, otherwise it just turns to mush.  On the other hand, I like to incorporate it before the risotto is finished cooking, so it amalgamates with the rice more than if it was just stirred through at the end.

Once the rice is cooked add another half ladle of stock, stir it through, and turn off the heat (don't worry if it seems a bit "soupy" - this extra stock will be absorbed during the resting time and the finished risotto should definitely not be "dry").  Add the pancetta, balance of thyme leaves, butter and parmesan cheese.  Season generously with flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Stir to combine, then cover and leave to rest for 5 minutes to enable all the flavours to infuse.

Lastly, stir in the chopped pistachios and serve immediately, with a grating of parmesan over the top and some extra sprigs of thyme.

I hope you give this comforting and heart-warming dish a try, and enjoy it as much as I frequently do.

Thank you again to all of you for your kind thoughts and messages and for having the patience to keep visiting my blog while I've been trying to get my life back together again.  Your love and support has reinforced for me the knowledge that this blog is not so much about trying to churn out great food and photos as it is about making those connections with each and everyone of you.  A true reminder that our humanity grows when we understand and embrace the fact that we are all connected.

Pink Guava, White Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Ice Cream Recipe

At 4.30 on Saturday morning life as we know it here in Christchurch changed forever.  We were woken with the bed shaking violently and a loud rumbling sound - yes, we were in the grips of an earthquake.  Now here in New Zealand we live on the fault line and earthquakes are nothing new to us.  But it didn't take long for us to realise that this was something way bigger than we had experienced before and, once we could hear glass breaking and stuff crashing down all around our apartment, we knew it was time to get into a doorway - quick!  It turned out to be a 7.1 magnitude quake, and although it was all over in 15 seconds (apparently), those seconds were terrifying and seemed like minutes.  Equally terrifying have been the constant after shocks - over 100 of them now since the big one, and many of them in excess of 5 on the richter scale.

For all that, on a personal level, we have survived with nothing more than a bit of broken crockery and a few broken bottles which fell off the kitchen shelves - a shattered bottle of orange blossom water and a jar of teriyaki sauce that lost its lid and sprayed all over the kitchen walls - the combination of the two together left an interesting aroma in the kitchen!  So we have been incredibly lucky.

Many others have not been so lucky - there are many people who have had to be evacuated from their homes, and many who still have no power or running water.  Many of the old character and heritage buildings in the city, which give our city its particular charm, have been severely damaged and will almost certainly have to be demolished.  Our central business district, where many of these older buildings are located, is largely unsafe and has been completely closed off for the last four days.  Many of our smaller businesses (despite the immediate setting up of financial assistance by our government) will simply not survive.  Redevelopment and rebuilding of the city will doubtless take several years, and the character of our city will be very different, which is rather sad to contemplate. 

Miraculously, however, the human toll has been minimal.  Not one life has been lost, and despite quite a few minor injuries, there have been only two serious injuries.  I believe we are amazingly blessed to live in a city with a small population (we have only 330,000 people here), so we don't have buildings which are over-crowded;  we have relatively good building and construction standards in New Zealand;  and essential services have been able to swing into action with relative ease.  But the greatest miracle of all must surely be that the quake happened at a time of day when our city buildings and streets are largely deserted - even just a couple of hours earlier the results would have been catastrophic.

There's no doubt that an event like this, even when you come out of it largely unscathed, leaves you feeling shaken up and vulnerable.  It has clearly reminded me of the value of living from moment to moment - I definitely feel very uneasy, and every after shock scares the hell out of me, but all my yesterdays and tomorrows have never felt less relevant.  Despite my nervousness, right now, I am alive, I am safe, I am healthy - what more could I possibly ask for?!  I am grateful to have a yoga practice which sustains me at a time when I need it most, and I am also immensely grateful for all the emails and comments I have received from so many of you out there in "blog land" - that so many people from all over the world, who I've never even met, have taken the time to spare a thought for me and the other people of Christchurch is deeply humbling and I thank you all.  I will reply to you all, but please don't be offended if I haven't gotten to you yet.

And since I'm so grateful to you all, I thought I should share a recipe with you - would be rude not to, wouldn't it?!  To be honest, I haven't been cooking much the last few days, but I sure as heck have been "comfort eating".  Now when it comes to comfort food, favourites come in the form of chocolate, brownies and ice cream, and making a batch of ice cream seemed like just the thing to satisfy, as well as providing a good distraction.

I made this adapting my favourite vanilla ice cream recipe by David Lebovitz as my base - I left out the vanilla bean, although I did include the vanilla extract, and I added an extra egg yolk.  To this I added a couple of tins of pink guavas (pureed) and some chunks of macadamia nut white chocolate.  The result is a beautifully delicate flavour (I think next time I would cut the vanilla back a bit, as it does dominate the guava a little); a gorgeous, pale, pinky-peachy colour;  and, a smooth, creamy and luscious texture interspersed with hits of crunch from the white chocolate and macadamia nuts.  I will definitely make this again - perfect for a celebration meal, or when you just need a bit of comfort and indulgence.

Pink Guava, White Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Ice Cream Recipe

Adapted from David Lebovitz's Vanilla Ice Cream

Makes about 1.5 litres

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

250ml (1 cup) full-fat milk (preferably organic)

pinch of salt

150g (3/4 cup) sugar

500ml (2 cups) heavy cream

6 large egg yolks (preferably free range)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (maybe reduce to 3/4 teaspoon)

2x 410g tins guava halves

1 tablespoon cassis (optional)

125g macadamia nut white chocolate, cut into small chunks

Drain guava halves of all their syrup. Using a food processor or stick blender, process the guavas until you have a smooth puree, then strain to remove the seeds (you could probably do this in a food mill if you prefer). Add the cassis, stir well, then cover and refrigerate for several hours, ideally overnight.

Next, strain the cream into a 2 litre bowl, and then stand that bowl in an ice bath.

Lightly whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl and set aside.

Combine milk, salt and sugar in a small saucepan and gently heat. Then slowly pour about half of the warmed milk into the egg yolks, stirring constantly to ensure the eggs don't curdle.

Return the warmed egg yolks and milk to the saucepan.  Then cook over a low heat, stirring constantly, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon or spatula.

Strain the custard into the cream, which is standing over its water bath, and keep stirring until the custard is completely cool.  Stir in the vanilla extract.

Cover with cling film, pressing it right down onto the surface of the custard, and then refrigerate for several hours, ideally overnight.

Mix the custard and the guava puree together, and then churn in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Remove churned ice cream to a cold bowl.  Stir through the chopped up chocolate.

Serve immediately, or freeze in a suitable container until ice cream has firmed to your desired consistency.

For ice cream inspiration and perfection, I recommend:

Available from Amazon, Book Depository UK, and Fishpond NZ

I'm submitting this post to the Two for Tuesdays blog hop.