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Pumpkin festival and butternut bruschetta

We headed to a pumpkin festival this weekend. I have to admit that on the way there I had a ‘wow, this is what my Saturdays are now about’ moment. But it turned out to be a really really lovely afternoon. It was on the Billesberger farm and as much as I was fearing a single stall with a couple of pumpkin there was tons on offer.

 They had set up one of the barns as a farmers market and were selling homegrown seasonal vegetables as well as fresh eggs and bread. There was locally made tofu, elderflower syrups, local beer and pumpkin chutney. The farm also grows spelt and produce their own spelt pasta which was being cooked and tossed with pumpkin in an asian ginger sauce by a chef.

There was pumpkin cake (good!) and apple layer cake (so very good) as well as Emilio coffee (yes please!). They had pumpkins for sale to take home or for you to sit and carve with the family. Most of it was lost on the baby but she loved the goats and the inquisitive farm dog and hanging out on the grass watching the world go by, stealing pieces of pumpkin.

We brought home lots of goodies and today I made a really good butternut bruschetta. Its nothing fancy, just the cumulation of really good produce. Local garlic, local butternut, roasted and then mashed onto dark bread and topped with some crumbly goats cheese. YUM!

Ingredients (serves 4)
Half a butternut squash peeled and cubed
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 sprigs sage
Pinch dried chilli
1 clove garlic
4 slices good bread
40g crumbly goats or sheep cheese

Method
Preheat your oven to 180C
Place the squash into a roasting dish and coat with the olive oil
Sprinkle over the chilli and add in the sage and the garlic
Roast for 25mins or until soft
Once roasted, rub the bread slices with the garlic
Mash the butternut squash in a large bowl
Spread generously onto the bread and top with a sprinkle of cheese
Season well and enjoy

 

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Cinnamon breakfast buns

I really dont have much of a sweet tooth. I like my chocolate as dark and bitter as possible and my favourite way to end a meal is with an espresso. But sometimes there are those days when only a cinnamon bun will do which is how I found myself kneading dough yesterday evening as the little one had bath time with her papa.

It was so crisp and sunny yesterday here and it felt like possibly the last of the summer heat in the sun. All we wanted to do was drink coffee and be outside. So thats what we did. We cycled our bikes, we played in the grass, we hung out with friends. But then, as the day was winding down, I felt a little lost somehow. Sometimes its like that on a Sunday night when you say goodbye to one week and you perch on the brink of the next. There are all the lists to be made and things to be done. You realise how much of last weeks ‘to dos’ will simply roll right in to this weeks. You wonder if you achieved enough or if you could have done more. Last night I was missing things. What exactly I’m not entirely sure. I was just missing the easy familiarity of life. I wanted the TV to be in my mother tongue and my family to be nearby. I wanted to be eating different food and to be hanging out in streets that I know like the back of my hand. In those moments it is so easy to compare everything and to wish the evening away, and believe me, we have done that many many times. So instead, I baked cinnamon buns. We lit some candles, snuggled up and watched a Nordic show (Lillehammer.. have you seen it?) and suddenly this flat felt more like home and we were a little team, things were cosy and the week ahead just had to wait a few hours.

To me there is something so cosy and comforting about baking and especially baking something so familiar plus the heady smell of sugar cinnamon didn’t hurt either. These buns are not your classic uber sweet syrupy version. They are more wholesome, more bready, more Nordic, more breakfasty but I promise they still come with the same amount of belly warming hygge.

Ingredients (makes 12)
Use the same recipe as here for the dough
In addition you also need:
4 tbsp coconut oil or butter
2 tbsp cinnmaon
2 tbsp pureed apple
6 tbsp unrefined sugar
1 banana (or an additional 2 tbsp butter)

Method
Once the dough has proved roll it out until you have a large rectangle
Preheat your oven to 170C
Blend the coconut oil (or butter), apple, banana, cinnamon and sugar together
Spread over the dough
Roll the dough up into a log (starting with a longer edge)
Once fully rolled, place seam down and slice into 12 slices
Place the rolls into a well greased baking dish
Bake for 30mins

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Healthier marzipan

Great British Bake off got a little Nordic last night with their marzipan moments. I think all Norwegians love marzipan. No matter what season or occasion it would seem that the answer lies in a dyed, shaped figurine of marzipan. Winter is especially full of it with everything with shelves brimming with chocolate coated almond pigs. I too love it but not the commercial kind. It makes no sense to me that sugar comes first in list of ingredients. Surely its in the name, almond paste. So where are we going wrong?

I was inspired to make a new kind of marzipan because of Alex. Its his favourite sweet treat. He inherited that Nordic gene. We dont like to talk about it but there was an incident involving a 1.5kg box of marzipan, a hungry Alex and well, the rest is history.

Almonds are actually a stone fruit related to cherries, plums and peaches. Most of the almonds that we buy today tend to come from the USA and they are normally pasturised.

The vitamin E in almonds can help protect against both UV light damage and also boost brain activity. Eating almonds will help provide your body manganese, which helps form strong bones and also regulates blood sugar. They are packed with magnesium, which is essential for organ, muscle and nerve function and can help regulate your blood pressure.

By making almonds the main ingredient, you are getting all the taste but you are also getting the heart healthy LDL lowering oleic acids rather than inflammatory causing sugar.

This is a sweet treat made healthier. You need three ingredients, they taste amazing & take five minutes to make.

You can keep these naked but I can only recommend rolling them in melted raw dark chocolate and then in cocoa nibs or flaked almonds.

Ingredients
150g blanched almonds
1.25 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp rosewater

Method
Place the almonds into a food processor & pulse until you have a fine flour like powder
Add in the syrup & rosewater
Pulse until you have a dough
Roll into balls or any shape you like
Store in the fridge for up to a week
Enjoy

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Billionaires Shortbread

Billionaire shortbread or as i like to call it: the baby has a cold and is teething so she can only sleep upright on me & I am so tired my own teeth hurt and I need something sweet to get me through the afternoon shortbread. Seriously, I know the baby has bone cutting through her gums and that up till now I have tried to protect her from pain (bare one unfortunate dropping her off the bed incident) but can I get some sympathy too? Just for a second, I just need a hug…you can find me face down in a mug of coffee. 

Honestly though, when I’m this tired, as much as I want to power eat espresso beans & cake I find that I have to take extra care. If your body isn’t getting rest, then at the very least it needs nourishing. I’m making sure to do a quick strength training session and to walk outside for a few miles each day. I’ve been running before dawn on the mornings that I have managed to extricate the baby from my bussom. 

Every morning I start the day with hot water. I started drinking hot water because my history teacher drank it in school & I had a major crush on him. I would love to tell you that I started because of the liver cleansing properties etc etc but nope, this healthy habit is the result of a teenage infatuation. Thankfully I have a great knowledge of the World Wars & I drink hot water allday everyday which must be a win win. Then comes coffee, because I’m human. Lately I switched to oat milk because the Swedish firm Oatly brought out “barista” oat milk. It’s the only non dairy milk that i like in coffee. It doesn’t separate or float or taste oily. It’s creamy & rich & you can froth it. Seriously go Sweden!

Most days are filled with food tasting & various versions of thrown together Buddha bowls. But by the afternoon I need a little something. Women more disciplined than me may have a green juice & 12 organic almonds. I on the other hand have created billionaires shortbread. This sweet treat saves me in those exhausted afternoons when all you really want to do is lie down in bed and eat cadburys mini rolls.

I figured if millionaires got a shortbread with a caramel layer, then billionaires would get a salted caramel chocolate later. It’s a modified version of a millionaires shortbread. I would call it a healthy version but what is healthy? One mans poison and all that. What it is, is that it is made with wholesome ingredients in their natural form. Foods that your body can recognise and that it knows what to do with. And in this case, sugars that occur naturally which means no sugar crash an hour later. It’s rich and decadent. It feels like it should be terrible for you but it isn’t. It’s an instant mood booster & a perfect tea time tray bake to share (if you feel like it).

Ingredients
10 tbsp oats
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 banana
20 pitted dates (medjool or other soft ones work best – if you can only get dried dates then soak them in hot water for 20mins before using)
3-4tbsp hot water
0.5tsp salt (optional)
6 tbsp oat cream (or other cream)
60g dark chocolate (70-90%)

Method
Place the oats into a food processor and process to a flour
Add in the coconut oil and the banana and processor until you have a dough
Press the dough down into a layer in a lined baking dish (should be about 3 cm thick)
Bake for 15mins and then set aside to cool
Place the dates into a food processor, whilst the dates blend slowly drizzle in the water until you have a thick paste. You don’t want it too runny
Heat the cream in a pan, remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stir until the chocolate has melted
Add the chocolate cream and the salt into the food processor with the date mixture and blend together
Leave to cool and set and then spread over the oat base
Set in the fridge or freezer for 20 mins and remove 5 minutes before eating

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Butternut mac and ‘cheese’ with a buttery sage and oat crust

I did a little poll on Facebook the other day into what peoples comfort foods were.Mac and cheese kept getting mentioned and so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Ill fess up now, that I have never eaten mac and cheese and that is for one simple reason. I really really don’t like melted cheese. I dont even like the smell of melted cheese and this is a real problem come lunch time in Central London. Most lunch places are rammed with folks ordering sandwiches and many of these sandwiches contain cheese (it is England after all) and lots of said sandwiches need toasting. This means that the entire place smells of slightly charred cheese. Even my beloved Fernandez and Wells isnt immune to it and whilst I am sure that they are carefully toasting a homemade sourdough with locally churned white cheddar and a cheeky pickle…I still cannot enter the smokey premises during the noon hours. It is only once the afternoon settles in and the tea pots are put to use, and the world starts thinking of cake that I can go and get my lunch.

That said I wanted to make mac and cheese but I wanted to try the ever popular butternut squash version.The logic is that you can either half the cheese in your normal recipe by adding butternut squash or you can swap it out totally. In normal mac and cheese there is a whole heap of cheese as well as butter, flour and milk or cream forming the basis of the white sauce. When you use butternut puree you do away with the need for a white sauce as it is naturally thick and clings lusciously to the pasta. I used nutritional yeast as we had some in the cupboard and I had always been a little apprehensive about trying it.

Even though it looks (and smells) a little like goldfish food, it is in fact a total powerhouse of nutrients. For anyone on a plant based diet it contains the magic Vitamin B12. It also, when used in cooking tastes remarkably like parmesan. If you want to add cheese, go ahead, try ricotta, feta or a tangy cheddar.

The topping here is toasted buttery oats flavoured with sage. They add texture, bite and a salty richness to the dish. This version is perfect comfort food. Creamy, rich and comforting but with a little hit of autumn vegetables. It is a great family friendly recipe too – the baby loves it!

Ingredients
1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp rapeseed oil

4 tablespoons nutritional yeast (or 6 tbsp grated cheese)
0.5 tsp paprika
0.5 tsp ground nutmeg
200ml oat or other milk
300g dried macaroni

50g oats
2 tbsp chopped sage leaves
1 tbsp butter or butter alternative

Method
Preheat your oven to 180C
Rub the butternut squash with oil, salt and pepper
Place into a baking dish with the garlic and roast until tender
Whilst the squash is roasting, cook the pasta according to the packet until it has a firm bite
Once cooked, drain and set aside
Place the roasted butternut squash, milk, nutmeg, nutritional yeast, and paprika into a blender and process until totally smooth
Combine with the pasta
Pour the mixture into a baking dish
In a frying pan place the oats,  butter and sage and allow to ‘fry’ until golden and crispy
Top the pasta with the oats and bake for a further 15mins

 

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