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I became fed up with the bananas in my kitchen spoiling before I could eat them, so for the first time in my life I've begun baking banana bread — just to use up the little yellow devils. (Actually, by the time I get around to dealing with them, they're mottled black and brown little devils.) I went through a large number of recipes before I found one that I thought was suitable, and then I tweaked it until I was happy with it.
Result? Banana bread dining pleasure. But the other day I had a devilish little impulse to tweak the recipe again by adding chocolate chips to it. However, being my snobbish self, I wasn't about to settle for any old standard chocolate chips... Instead, I went off in search of a suitably high end gourmet alternative.
And, to my delight, I found the perfect product right away — on the shelves of my little local Sainsbury's (Putney). There beside the mundane mainstream choc chips were these 70% cocoa Belgian dark chocolate beauties. Absolutely superb, and they worked brilliantly in the recipe. (As a more health-conscious alternative you can use organic sultanas, also delicious.)
I was really pleased that Sainsbury's had exactly the ingredient I needed, and the resulting loaf that emerged warm and fragrant from the oven is absolutely the Rolls Royce of banana breads. Here is the Betty Crocker recipe I use, although NB — I reduce the amount of sugar from two cups to half a cup (!). The result is still perfectly sweet and you'll live longer... And be able to enjoy more banana bread.
(Image credit: thank you My Supermarket for the pack shot.)
Nuñez de Prado is a legendary Spanish organic extra virgin olive oil which has long been a favourite of mine. It's lovely stuff and it only has one drawback — okay, two. The first is the red sealing wax you get as a kind of cap on the cork in the half litre bottle, which is a bit messy to remove. The second is the cost. It's a premium product, and has a commensurate price tag.
Well, Marks & Spencer has dispensed with both of these objections. Since they're selling the oil in one litre tins the whole sealing wax issue is a non-issue. And the litre tins are — astonishingly — selling for about the same price as I used to pay for a half litre bottle.
Consequently, I bought some Nuñez de Prado for the first time in years, and now I'm stockpiling the stuff from my local M&S. Such a great offer is bound to vanish like the too-good-to-be-true dream that it is. So, let's make the most of it while we can.
I did a little taste comparison when I opened my first tin (i now own several) of Nuñez de Prado. I put it up against Ecoato, which is another Spanish organic oil, similar in colour and packaged in similar livery, right down to the red sealing wax (imitation is the sincerest, etc...).
Ecoato is a nice extra virgin olive oil. It has the buttery character of a Spanish oil, but with the slightly throat-burning finish of an Italian specimen. Perfectly fine. But then I tried the Nuñez de Prado.
Straight out of the tin the Nuñez de Prado was stunning. There was an immediate, complex burst of flavours and fragrances. I experienced apples, almonds and a whiff of fresh growing lavender.
Tremendous stuff, and available at an amazing price. Buy as many tins as you can carry.
(Image credits. I searched long and hard for an image of Nuñez de Prado oilve oil in the litre tin at a Marks & Spence website, but could find none. Indeed if you go to the M&S site and search for "olive oil" you are told there is no such product. Anyway, I eventually borrowed the pic from another food blog, Frolic 72 where it's reviewed. It's a nice little blog even if they do think Nuñez de Prado is a Sicilian oil. The 500ml Nuñez de Prado bottle image is from Brindisa. And the Ecoato picture is from Kuzzina, although the bottle I actually have features a somewhat different (older?) label design.)
The search continues for edible tomatoes. Oh, there's no trouble finding tomatoes that look beautiful, but as I've bemoaned before, they generally have all the flavour of wet tissue paper.
So when I saw Tesco's Finest Sweet Emerald (you have to laugh at these names) green tomatoes on special, I thought I'd give them a whirl. Even though they are green.
I've bought speciality tomatoes before, including ones which claimed to be deliciously sweet. And, more often than not, I've been disappointed. But not this time. These tomatoes have an excellent flavour and, yes, considerable sweetness. I'm accustomed to using tomatoes to provide a bit of bright (red) colour to dishes, sliced on top as decoration as much as an additional vegetable. So using green tomatoes required a bit of a rethink.
I found they were at their best served thinly sliced on top of a nice chunk of smoked salmon in an open sandwich. (Mmm, I'm making myself hungry just thinking about it... Is it time for lunch yet?) But I'm sure you'll find plenty of uses for these Sweet Emeralds.
They're not cheap, but at least they are an example of a product that actually does what it says on the label.
(Image credits: Both shots are from Tesco's own site.)
I reckon that if you get one good recipe out of a cook book, then it's worth having. By this criterion, Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking makes the grade. The one recipe I've adopted so far is a simple and tasty butter bean salad. Here is my variation on it: You soften thinly sliced red onions (3 medium) and crushed garlic cloves (4) in extra virgin olive oil for about ten minutes. Add drained butter beans (one 420g tin) and cook gently for another ten minutes. Two minutes before you take it off the heat, add finely chopped fresh coriander. About three tablespoons.
My main innovation here, besides using red onions for the colour, is to use canned butter beans. Life is too short to endure the soaking and cooking of dried beans which Paola Gavin suggests. And the results are, I suspect, every bit as good.
But what are butter beans? When my brother in Canada said he'd never heard of them, his first question was whether they were the same as lima beans. I firmly told him no way. Lima beans are green and have an asringent alum-like taste. Butter beans are a pale whitish-yellow and, as their name suggests, have a creamy taste. I never liked limas but I find butter beans very palatable.
Yet a quick search online suggests that the beans are related, if not the same thing. There are at least three competing theories: lima and butter beans are exactly the same; they are the same thing at different stages of development; they are different. Confusion reigns. My taste bud tells me the third option is the correct one.
(Image credits: the general butter bean shot is from IFNG. The Waitrose tin is from Ocado. The book cover is from the Great British Book Shop.)
Public health advice on food and diet is as changeable as the wind. Remember when eggs were public enemy number one? Until the experts did a 180 degree policy turn on them. Or butter, which was considered lethal, and people were encouraged to eat cruddy industrial margarine instead. Similar reversals have been visited on coconut oil and palm oil.
The only consistent piece of advice, and one I trust, is that we should eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. And there does seem evidence that one particularly beneficial vegetable is broccoli. (When no less an authority than New Scientist recommends the stuff, I pay attention.)
The trouble is, I hated eating broccoli. It was difficult to chop the damn stuff up, it stunk the place out during cooking (even when I added a bay leaf to the boiling water I used to steam the broccoli) and unless it was absolutely fresh it could taste disgusting — sulphurous.
But then two things happened. I discovered tender stem broccoli (a hybrid of broccoli and Chinese Kale which involves no tedious chopping) and my ingenious brother James recommended eating the stuff raw. No troublesome cooking, no objectionable smell, and absolutely no loss of nutrients (even steaming must lose a few).
So now all I do is wash the stems, then use them to dip into humous. Delicious. And I'm getting my greens. My preferred broccoli is Tesco's Organic Tender Stems, but it's been out of stock recently so I've been eating the Waitrose version. Both are fine, though it may not shock you to learn that the Tesco's product is often more competitively price.
(Image credits: the Tesco broccoli is from My Supermarket. The Waitrose image is from Ocado.)
Okay, I admit that this is virtually identical to an earlier Meal of the Week post, right down to the manufacturer of the bread. But this time it's the Crosta & Mollica Focaccia Pugliese which I used for the base of this mozzarella-tomato-and-basil treat.
And, good lord, what a base it was. This gorgeous, spongy, salty bread easily outclassed its ciabatta stablemate. It's the perfect vehicle for this Italian style sandwich and might well be unbeatable.
Anyway, it was such a great sandwich I just want to eat it all over again, right now. Besides the bread upgrade, there were other differences, too, compared to the Meal of the Week version. I used a different mozzarella and olive oil this time. The cheese was Sainbsury's Basic, since I'd run out of my favourite Tesco mozza (for a discussion of the budget mozzarellas, see here).
But the oil was the most notable variation. This time I used a glorious organic olive oil which some Spanish friends gave me (Hi Joan! Hi Gemma!). It's called Baronia de Cabacés and, holy moley, it's delicious. Tear the basil leaves, slice the tomatoes, chop the mozzarella, stack on the (warmed and sliced through the middle) focaccia, grind on some black pepper — and drizzle that fantastic oil. No, on second thoughts don't drizzle. Pour it on.
The most intriguing thing about the Baronia de Cabacés oil is that I'd put it at the back of the cupboard to save for a special occasion. Then, when I finally pulled it out, I was mortified to discover that it was several month is past its "best before" date. So I opened it and sampled it with trepidation. And it's just glorious, with a fresh, green, fruity taste. Somehow citric with being acidic, very light and refreshing.
All this is in stark contrast with a certain famous big brand "fruity" oil which was still a few months within its best before date and basically tasted — to me — like liquid cardboard.
(Image credits: The bread is from Waitrose. The olive oil bottle label, which for some reason — brand update? — isn't quite the same as the one on my bottle, is from Agrícola Cabacés. The other, somewhat dodgy, photos are by my own fair hand.)
In last week's post I promised to provide you with my wonderful beetroot recipe. Well, here it is. Simple and delicious. Not to mention inexpensive.
Take a large casserole and pour some good quality extra virgin olive oil into it. Chop half a dozen spring onions (I call them green onions) into one centimetre lengths and sprinkle them into the casserole. Take an anchovy fillet in olive oil and chop it finely (I use kitchen scissors). Scatter that around the casserole, too.
Add a couple of grinds of black pepper. Slice 500g of cooked beetroot and layer over the top of the onions and anchovy. (The thinner you slice the beetroot the quicker it cooks.) Add some more olive oil. Do not cover the casserole. Bake at a high-ish temperature, about 170˚C, for around 45 minutes. But your nose will tell you when it's done. Don't overcook. Carbonised beetroot isn't fun.
Served as a side dish (it's excellent with cheese and sourdough bread) this is very tasty and will accommodate 2 or 3 people. Doubling the quantities won't do you any harm though. The leftovers will be tasty straight from the fridge.
(Image credit: I confess. This is not my recipe. In fact the photo is of layered beetroot used to cover a beef hotpot. It's pinched from an excellent site called A Glug of Oil.)
I became fed up with the bananas in my kitchen spoiling before I could eat them, so for the first time in my life I've begun baking banana bread — just to use up the little yellow devils. (Actually, by the time I get around to dealing with them, they're mottled black and brown little devils.) I went through a large number of recipes before I found one that I thought was suitable, and then I tweaked it until I was happy with it.
