Pear and walnut Bread

You can put anything onto bread. This one is for Autumn.

- Make some dough. I have a bread maker but it is easy enough to do by hand. I use about two cupfuls of flour to make a smallish loaf for two people.

- Slice a pear and gently fry the slices in a frying pan with some butter and a little oil, until golden brownish on one side. When I made pear bread the first time I didn’t cook the pear first and the bread came out more wet from the pear juice, but either way will work.

- Once the dough is ready roll it out onto a floured board until about half an inch thick.

- Lay the pear slices all over the dough.

- Roll some walnuts in a little oil (I use the left over oil from the pear in the frying pan) and scatter on top.

- Run over a little olive oil and sprinkle with soft brown sugar.

- Pop into a hot oven, 200, 220 centigrade, something hot enough to toast the walnuts and char the edges a little.

- Ten minutes later, onece the bread is crispy you’re done.

Makes a lovely accompanyment to the slightly sweetness of a plain pumpkin soup.

I love the Autumn.

Spaghetti with Walnuts, Parmesan and Cream

A new year has begun and what do I fancy to eat? - Walnuts, just walnuts. I suppose I could have just had a handful of them on their own but the children are having spaghetti and bacon and whilst gazing into the supermarket cold cabinet yesterday a sauce of cream and parmesan caught my eye . . . Being tight fisted of course I did not buy the sauce (2011 will be a frugal year as we, along with the rest of the 49% of New Zealanders try and get on top of our debts) but the idea stuck in my mind . . .

- Peel, slice and chop a small onion and pop into the warm frying pan with a little oil.

( you’ll be boiling some spaghetti as well of course!)

- Cook for a few minutes until browning at the edges but still a little crunchy.

- Add a handfull of Walnuts and cook for a minute or two.

- Pour in a cupful or so of runny cream, bring to a boil and cook until it thickens a little.

- Take off the heat and add in a handfull of grated parmesan and stir to mix then pour over your spaghetti.

- Season with a little salt if required.

A simple dish, made in the time it takes to boil some spaghetti, but just what I needed today and wouldn’t be out of place on a bistro menu.

Leek, Cheese and Walnut Pie with Wholemeal Cumin Pastry

I had a vision. A vision of leeks slowly cooked in butter and mixed with cheese, fragrantly relaxing onto my plate like a hippy earth mother at peace with the world. So I made a pie.

- Make some pastry. Take a cup of plain flour, a cup of wholemeal flour and 4 ounces of butter and a pinch of salt and rub them together with your fingertips until they resemble breadcrumbs. Mix in a teaspoon of ground cumin seeds and half a teaspoon of whole seeds then mix in just enough cold water to make it all stick together, 4 tablespoonsful in my case.

- Wrap the pastry in clingfilm and pop into the fridge for the time being.

- Now the filling. Put a frying pan on to heat with a iittle oil and a slice of butter.

- Peel and chop an onion and four or five leeks and put them in the pan top cook slowly for a good fifteen or twenty minutes.

- Turn the oven on to hot, say 200 celcius.

- once the leeks are nearly cooked, they should be translucent and turning honey coloured, drop in a handfull of walnut pieces and then stir in a dessertspoonful of plain flour.

- Roll out the pastry and line a deep dish with it, I could only find a flan dish so used a 7” cake tin. I think the metal tin helps keep the pastry crisp with the wet filling. Cut off the excess and roll it out again for the top.

- Now mix a handful or so of a nice cheese with some taste to it, cheddar in my case, into the leeks and themn spoon it all into the pastry case.

- Put the top on, squash the edges and cut a notch in the middle to let the steam out and put in the oven until golden brown on top.

- If you are lucky and allow the pie to cool a little you can turn it out onto a plate to reveal it’s full glory.

I served ours with some boiled and fried potatoes and a green salad of well . . . lettuce leaves and a honey mustard dressing.

It was lovely by the way . . .

ps the photo has the 70's retro look because it was getting dark at teatime and my photo had that bright orange look of artificial light. Come to think of it the cookery books in the 70's tended to have very colour saturated photos anyway so maybe it was appropriate after all.

Celery and Walnut soup

Pretty obvious combination really - celery and walnuts and it does make a lovely mild and creamy soup. Some grated cheddar would be lovely on top but on the way to the cheese I found a jar of ploughmans pickle and so . . .

- Peel and chop half an onion and a clove of garlic and pop in a saucepan with three or four chopped celery sticks and leave to cook slowly in a little olive oil for ten minutes or so
- Add half a potato and then pour over a pint of vegetable stock.
-leave to simmer gently until the potatoes are soft, another ten minutes I should think.
- Shell and crush a few walnuts I used four, and leave to soak in a bowl covered with some of the stock.
- Once the soup is cooked, pour it into a blender, add in the softened walnuts and blend it all smoothish.
- Return to the now washed saucepan, reheat and serve.

Failure, or a pretty cool way to crack walnuts

My soup making has gone off lately, nothing seems to taste right. Being bunged up with flu probably has something to do with it. So instead of making soup this weekend, my youngest and I built a small trebuchet.


And then spent the afternoon throwing walnuts around the garden.


Lunch was Courgette, Cumin and Chick Pea soup from the freezer.

If your cooking mojo seems to have left you, don't worry, open a tin or look in the freezer and do something else for a while.

A Vegetable and Walnut Broth

It is wet and very wild here this weekend. Not the sort of weather you want to be out in. Not unless you have something warm and filling to come back to. Like a broth made with barley and dried peas. I was brought up on Scotch broth that my mum would make in the pressure cooker with a small bit of lamb flank or neck. It was fatty, glutinous and tasted delicious on a bitterly cold day. But down here in Hawkes Bay it is somewhat warmer and although there is plenty of lamb I have made a vegetable version with a few walnuts thrown in as well for variety and because they go with the nuttyness of the barley.

You can buy a mixture of barley and dried peas - yellow and green, called (fairly obviously) “broth mixture” or do as I did and mix your own. It is best to think ahead though, because although you can cook dried peas straight from the packet they will take hours and hours to soften. So it is better to pop some in a bowl and soak them in water overnight. Next day rinse in new water, drain and then use.

- Ok so start by slowly frying a peeled and finely chopped onion in some olive oil until soft. This will take longer than you think, a good ten to fifteen minutes.
- Meanwhile peel and grate some vegetables. I like to go heavy on potatoes (a small one) and carrots (two) with some turnip (a small piece) but use whatever you have.
- Also crush up some walnuts, say three, by shelling them, putting them in a ziplock bag and whacking with a rolling pin.
- Once the onion is soft put in a cupful of the drained broth mixture along with the vegetables and walnuts.
- Pour in a pint and a half of vegetable stock and simmer at a gentle boil until the peas are soft. This could take anywhere from half an hour to an hour so just keep checking until they are as soft as you like.
- Finally check for salt and pepper and serve. Some chopped parley or coriander is nice as well if you have some.

This is the sort of soup that is even better next day and will freeze well. But if you haven’t got the time for all of that I have also made a much simpler version here.

Broccoli and Cheese soup

Broccoli is now available pretty much all year round, which is a shame I think because it's time is Autumn. When it is getting cooler and your body starts looking for heavier more filling but at the same time nutritious food - Broccoli shines in my opinion and if we were not all so bored of seeing it every week for the rest of the year it would be celebrated much more.

- For Autumn soups I like a deeply comforting base so I have started with an onion a couple cloves of garlic and a couple of celery stalks all peeled, chopped and left to cook slowly on a low heat in some olive oil and a quarter inch slice of butter. A couple of slices of bacon would also go well here if you are not vegetarian.
- After twenty minutes or so the onion will be translucent and golden brown and the butter slightly sticky and honeyish. Now add a head of broccoli roughly chopped, stalk and all, and about a pint and a quarter of vegetable stock.
- Leave to simmer until the broccoli stalks are tender, say twenty minutes or so then liquidise the soup smooth in a blender.
- If you are not going to eat it until later I would stop here and leave the soup in the pan or pop it into the fridge. Why? well cheese is a difficult one and if you allow the soup to boil with it in the cheese will separate out into grittyish bits in the soup. Mind you I have to say that this has never stopped me eating it in the past when it has happened! But to get round this I usually reheat my soup and add the cheese just before serving so it just melts through.
- So add the cheese, a couple of handfuls grated, I like cheddar but use whatever you like, blue cheese is nice.
- Finally some salt and quite a lot of black pepper and serve with some more grated cheese and something green sprinkled over such as thyme leaves. If like me you have avoided this type of soup because you think it might taste and smell like some sort of institutional over boiled vegetables - have a go, try it because it is actually surprisingly mild and very filling.

Oh and the prefect accompaniment? - Walnut bread, delicious.

Carrot and Walnut soup

Autumn is officially here in the southern hemisphere so what better way to celebrate than with a soup that includes a real autumn ingredient - nuts. Walnuts in this case. Nuts add texture and flavour and of course don't require cooking, just grinding up and softening a little by soaking in some stock - lovely!

- Slowly fry a small onion (peeled and roughly chopped) in some olive oil and a piece of butter until soft and pale brown.
- Meanwhile grind up about two ounces of walnuts. I do this by putting them in a little ziplock bag and bashing them with a rolling pin.
- Pop the walnuts into a bowl and pour over enough vegetable stock to cover them.
- Peel and chop two or three carrots and add them to the onions.
- Pour in a pint and a quarter of vegetable stock, bring to the boil then turn down the heat to a gentle bubble and leave until the carrots are soft.
- Blend the soup along with the reserved walnuts and their stock until all is as smooth as you want.
- Pour back into the saucepan and reheat adding no more than half a teaspoon of ground cardammon seeds. Go carefully here as the aim is just to get a hint of cardammon and they are quite strong.

I had mine with a big splodge of Yoghurt and some more black pepper along with some flatbread with a few curry leaves on top.

Bread

Bread of course, is the ideal accompaniment to any soup. There is a lot of mysticism attached to bread making, but a simple flat loaf is fairly straightforward to make. A couple of ingredients will make the result more predictable. Firstly, use a strong or breadmaking flour. This has more gluten and makes a more springy dough, so trapping more bubbles and giving a lighter loaf. Secondly use a dried yeast with flour improvers in. Here in New Zealand it is called “Surebake“ but there will be a type in your supermarket, usually next to the flour. You can use ordinary plain flour and normal dried yeast but I find that it makes a more solid loaf. Finally, and this is probably the most important part, remember that your dough is alive! So keep it warm and always treat it gently but firmly.

For a small bread, enough for two or three people, take a warm mixing bowl and pour in two cupfuls of flour. Add in a teaspoonful and a half of yeast, a teaspoonful of salt and the same of sugar or honey. Mix them all around a bit then add in 200ml of warm water. That is warm to the touch but not hot, blood heat I suppose. Mix it all together and you will get a sticky dough. Tip this out onto a floured surface and knead it. You can look up any bread book for how to knead , but basically you flatten out your ball of dough from the middle with your hands then fold it back into the middle and stretch it out again. Do this for a good ten minutes, gently but firmly - it and should become smooth and elastic. If the dough is quite wet then use some sort of spatula to knead it with, scooping it from the outside over and into the middle. It will pick up more flour as you work it and get drier.

Now put some olive oil into a bowl, pop the dough ball in and roll it around a bit. Cover the bowl with Gladwrap (clingfilm) or a damp tea towel and place the bowl somewhere warm for an hour. I use the airing cupboard or a sunny windowsill. The dough will get bigger eventually threatening to engulf the whole bowl!

Put the oven on, I use 190 centigrade. Flour a baking sheet or tray and tip the dough out onto it. Knead it a bit and flatten it out to about ½ an inch thick. Pop it in the middle or bottom of the oven for about ten minutes until cooked and as brown as you like.

I am not a great fan of flavoured breads but I do like toppings – walnuts, cheese, garlic, onions, herbs, olives etc, etc. To stop the drier toppings burning I mix them in a bowl with some olive oil and spread that on the bread before it goes in the oven, pressing it all in as much as possible. Walnuts will come out beautifully toasted this way. They tend to drop off again once cooked, but you are going to pick at them and nibble at them anyway so it makes little difference.

That's all there is to it really. The kitchen will smell glorious.

Mushroom and Walnut soup

Sunday 8.30am

This is a soup that I have been thinking of for a long time but for some reason have never got round to making. Shame really because it is quite delicious. Walnuts can be quite strongly flavoured but when cooked on top of bread are much milder, so I have roasted them this way first for my soup. - Put the oven on to heat, say 190 centigrade.If you are making bread as well you'll need it on anyway.

- roughly chop a small onion and a celery stalk and put them on to cook slowly in some oil and butter, enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
- make up some vegetable stock - a pint and a quarter.
- put a handfull of walnuts on a baking tray, pour on some olive oil and roll them around a bit until coated. Put them in the oven to toast.
- while everything is cooking, chop up a good couple of handfuls of mushrooms say eight ounces.
- keep an eye on the walnuts because they burn very quickly, take them out as soon as they start to change colour and go golden brown.
- once the onions and celery are translucent and golden coloured as well, add the mushrooms and stir about a bit to mix and let them cook gently until all the liquid that come out has just about disappeared.
- meanwhile put the walnuts in a ziplock bag and whack them with a rolling pin until well crushed and then put them in a bowl covered with some vegetable stock ( half strength rapunzel as usual )
- the rest of the stock goes into the pan and left to simmer gently until the mushrooms are cooked, not long say ten minutes.
- now for the messy bit. Put the walnuts and stock into a liquidiser and whizz them up a bit. Gradually add the rest of the soup from the pan and continue until it is all as smooth as you like.
- and thats it, just return the soup to the now washed out saucepan to reheat.

Mine did not need any salt or pepper but you'll try yours to check. At first the soup tasted quite mushroomy so I roasted another handfull of walnuts and whizzed the whole lot in the liquidiser again. Now it tasted quite walnuty so I suppose you could vary things using anywhere from 2 to 4 ounces of walnuts depending on what you fancy.

I had mine with some bread to which I had added a teaspoonfull of garam masala. It had quite a weird flavour, a bit like hot cross buns but went well with the soup. Some of Nicola's sundried tomato bread would have been great as well.