Mushroom Paté with Red Asparagus

I was in the supermarket the other day, and they had a glut of reduced mushrooms for sale. And not just your boring button mushrooms either. Posh ones. Proper ones. Ones which I don't let my husband buy because I don't know how to cook them.

You see, as you will know if you've had me round to tea - I don't like mushrooms. This is pretty unlucky as they are in everything. Everything. I've mastered the art of picking them out of dishes swiftly. However... I am somewhat blessed in that I love the flavour - I'll even order things that come with a mushroom sauce and pick out the mushrooms, so I really don't mind mind cooking with them.

I seized the opportunity to be nice to my husband, for once, and I bought a pack each of Chestnut, Oyster, and Shiitake mushrooms, and a pack of red asparagus to see what that was all about too. It all came to about £2.50... Bargain.

 I came across this recipe whilst deciding what to do with them, and it suggested all the mushrooms I had bought, and very tasty it is too. This would make a great starter, or a nice dish at a buffet if you've got a vegetarian coming. NB - You need to start this recipe a few hours before you want to serve it, or the day before.

Ingredients

100ml vegetable oil
400g mixed mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
200g unsalted butter
A large pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tsp nutmeg
1 chopped garlic clove
Juice of a lemon
Cracked black pepper

Instructions

The Day Before: In a large frying pan, heat the oil over a medium heat and add the mushrooms and cook for 10 minutes. Stirring occasionally till everything has softened. Drain well in a colander, leave to cool for an hour and then put into a covered dish to go chill in the fridge, ideally for 24 hours.

The Next Day:  Use a food processor/hand blender to whizz half of the mushrooms with 125g of butter, the cayenne pepper, nutmeg, garlic lemon juice, and some black pepper till it is almost smooth.

Stir in the unblended half of the mushroom mixture.

Pour into 8 ramekins, or a terrine if you want to serve it at a buffet. (Bear in mind you wont decant this to a plate, whatever you put it into should be what you serve it in.)

Melt the remaining 75g butter to top the paté with, this will give it a nice seal. Put in the fridge till cold.

You can serve this with some chutney (after going to this effort you can easily get away with store-bought!) I have served it with the Red Asparagus I picked up next to it - which you eat raw, making it a perfect stress-free dish. Leave a pepper grinder out on the table so people can give the paté a bit more kick if they require.

Enjoy.

Herbed Cabbage

I didn't like cabbage as a child. Realising I did actually like cabbage was a sign of maturity - I was 24.

Children aren't supposed to like cabbage. If other people didn't like it then I was just certain that I wouldn't like it either... Like sprouts. They're just "urgh" aren't they?!

Umm, no. Aside from being delicious, and good for you - cabbage is also very pretty. It shouldn't make a difference in whether or not something is edible, but it totally does. 

This recipe is another I have pilfered from BBC Good Food although I'd change it a fair bit. As flavoured as this dish was, it should be more. More herbs. More garlic. More yum.

There are 3 ways of making this dish, the way the recipe says, the way I made it in these pictures, and the way I will try next time. Sorry to make it all too complicated, I know it's only cabbage.

I didn't have any goose fat as per the original recipe. I'm a bit fed up of buying expensive only use once ingredients - but I think the plan here is that you make this cabbage on Christmas day and you would already have some for your roasties. (Have you that yet? You really should.) You can buy a jar and keep it in your fridge for months, so if I can find it I will try next time, I reckon it will add some va-va-voom.

Also - the original recipe says to remove the herbs you add in once you flavour the shallots. I did a bit of both for this dish - because I left in some chopped rosemary. Next time I'm going to crush one garlic clove and add that in with even more chopped rosemary. I didn't have shallots and I used leeks as they were in the fridge. It still tasted nice, but I will probably try it with onion next time.

Serves 4- 6

Ingredients

1 savoy cabbage

1 tbsp olive oil (or 4 tbsp goose fat)

1 medium leek. (or 4 shallots, or 1 onion)

2 sprigs of rosemary

2 garlic cloves

Instructions

• Finely chop your your leek/shallots, 1 sprig of rosemary and 1 clove of garlic. Leave to one side
• Quarter the cabbage, remove the core and shred thinly
• Quickly blanch the cabbage in salted boiling water for 3 minutes

• Then tip it all into a colander in the sink, and hold under cold water till cool. Drain well.
• Heat the olive oil (or goose fat) in a pan till hot and sauté the leek/onion/shallots, rosemary and one whole garlic clove and one crushed garlic clove for 5 minutes

• Discard the whole clove of garlic, and rosemary sprig
• Add the cooled cabbage and heat through. This gets steamy!
• Season & enjoy.

I'm trying to resist the temptation of adding bacon to this. You know it would taste SO good. In fact, the bacon might save you the purchase of goose-fat. Bacon flavour that also saves you money? Well all right then. 

Potato Cakes

This recipe is another from the book, the British Food Bible. Potato Cakes are delicious for a snack, with bacon for breakfast, or as a nice change with dinner, served with some lamb. It's also a handy way of using left over mash from the night before. According to the book, for a truly perfect potato cake you must use fresh, piping hot mash, but I've done otherwise and it still tastes gorgeous to me!

Ingredients:

550g mashed potato
25g butter
Seasoning
1 egg (optional)
115g plain flour

Instructions:

Whip your mash (either hot or cold) with the egg, butter and seasoning.

Mix together with the flour.  Add 100g of flour at first and keep adding flour when necessary going till you get a good doughy texture.

You could take an opportunity now to mix in an optional extra or two - such as small bits of crispy bacon or some spring onion. I've used some tiny bits of chopped leeks here to match in with the rest of our dinner.

When it has all formed a dough, place onto your work top, which should be well dusted with flour, and sprinkling the rolling pin with flour to give you a helping hand - roll out till the dough is 2cm thick.

Use a pastry cutter to cut into the sizes you desire - larger for a snack on their own, smaller if you wish to serve them breakfast or dinner. If you are preparing these for a dinner party you can make them in advance, dust them well with flour, and place them in between sheets of baking paper. Leave in the fridge till you're ready to cook & eat them.

To cook (from freshly made or chilled and waiting) -  oh a high heat, preheat a griddle (or a frying pan) and sizzle off a small dash of butter.

Cook each potato cake for 2 minutes on both sides, till they turn golden brown. Serve straight away.

Sugar Crusted Lamb

This recipe is delicious and quick to prepare for a dinner party - and pretty unique too. This lamb generally comes out pink > a teeny bit undercooked so be cautious if you're thinking of serving it to a fussy eater. And a small advanced warning about getting an urge to sprinkle sugar on all your dinner - I'm sure it wont taste as good!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

8 lamb cutlets - 700g

Seasoning

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 large sprigs of rosemary

2 tbsp demerara sugar

A smearing of olive oil

Instructions:

• Preheat the grill to high, and place a baking tray underneath it to heat up
• Prepare the lamb by seasoning with salt and pepper
• Strip the rosemary sprigs by stripping the leaves off and discarding the stalk
• Mix the lamb with the rosemary and mustard - ensuring it's well coated
• On a separate plate, spread out the sugar and dip each side of the lamb cutlets onto the sugar
• Take out the baking tray from under the grill, quickly place the cutlets on and return to the grill for 10-12 minutes. Or as long as you can stand the smoking! The sugar does burn - but don't worry, it does not taste burnt.

Recipe is adapted from BBC Good Food, which is a fantastic resource.