Search Results for: Cool Kids Cook

Imi Bassett’s Guest Post – Cool Kids Cook

Hi i’m Imi Bassett and here’s my guest post on my mum’s BLOG!

Last Friday I decided to cook a three coursed meal for four people (Mum, Dad, Spare Granny Sasha and ME!)

I started off with a Spanish dish called Pan con tomate (bread with tomato in Spanish). This is a nice and easy dish all you need is tasty sourdough bread, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil and a pinch of salt. All you need to do is toast a slice of bread. Then whilst it is still warm rub a clove of garlic on it. After that squeeze the tomato on the bread and dispose the skins. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over the top. Take a pinch of salt and sprinkle over the bread. HEY PRESTO!
YUM YOUR DONE!!!!

The next course is my signature dish! Corn chowder, it’s a lovely soup. The main ingredients are bacon, potatoes, corn, milk and, if you want it, smoked fish. My favourite corn chowder recipe is the one from my mum’s book! (MUM DID NOT MAKE ME WRITE THAT!)

The first time I made jellies I used Mum’s recipe but nowadays I play around with the flavours! This time it was tropical! I served it with frozen mango kebabs and home made smoothie!

Thanks Imi for your lovely post – here are a couple of the recipes for the pudding .

Imi’s Tropical Jelly  (6-8)

5 sheets of gelatine
500 ml of whatever juice you like – Imi used a mango, banana, passionfruit juice (not too much pineapple in the mix or it won’t set properly)

Soak the sheets of gelatine in cold water, they will go soft and silky.

Make your smoothie or select your juice. It should taste sweeter than you would usually drink it because you will be serving it chilled.

Heat up about a 1/4 of the juice in a large saucepan, you don’t want it boiling – just hot. Remove the pan from the heat

Squeeze the cold water from the sheets of gelatine and drop them into the hot juice in the pan. Stir until the gelatine completely dissolves and disappears. Magic! Add the rest of the juice to the pan and give it all a stir.

Now, you choose, you can pour the jelly into moulds (metal are the best for turning out)  to turn out later or simply serve this from glasses. Chill in the fridge for at least 6 hours and then serve.

Turning out your jellies

Carefully dip the jellies into a bowl of hot water, one at a time, taking care that the water doesn’t go in the jelly. The idea is to melt the very outside of the jelly. Turn the mould upside down on to a plate and WOBBLE it. If it won’t come out try dipping again.

Imi put some of her jelly into silicone fairy cake cases and served them straight from these, the jellies she turned out were in metal dariole moulds.

Tropical Banana Smoothie

1 mango  (expertly peeled and chopped) + 1/4 banana + 1 cup pineapple chunks + pineapple juice to cover.

Whizz in the blender (we were borrowing a Nutribullet that worked brilliantly- may have to invest)

Imi did add 1 tsp honey as the pineapple was not quite sweet enough.

Imi’s “mango kebabs” – skewer cubes of mango onto cocktail sticks and freeze for about 2 hours.

Highlights:
Imi’s sense of achievement, a fantastic supper and her comment…….
When I’m a student I expect everyone will be saying “let’s go to Imi Bassett’s room for a chowder”

 

 

Cool Kids Cook and a Rhubarb, Rose Water Crumble

At last I can break the news (well, close friends and relatives have put up with months of my banging on about it already) I have a new cook book coming out in May.

Cool Kids Cook, Jenny Chandler May 2016

It’s all about getting children into the kitchen cooking REAL food. Imi and her friends have been my very willing guinea pigs as we regularly cooked supper at our “Monday Night Cooking Club”. It struck me that that whilst it’s fun to bake cupcakes and ice dainty biscuits Imi and her 9 year old mates were just as excited about rolling meatballs or making a Minestrone. We all know that children are much more adventurous about food if they get involved with the cooking and who needs encouragement when it comes to scoffing meringues? We need to get them excited about the good stuff. Don’t panic; there are recipes for tasty muffins, a basic cake that can be whipped up into all sort of different flavours and other sweet treats (any whiff of worthiness and we’ve lost the audience anyway) but the recipes are weighted towards healthy, proper food.

The book is aimed at 7-14 year olds (although quite a few adults have expressed an interest), there are step by step photos, fab’ illustrations, cheesy jokes and a selection of recipes that will set them up for life. I love to see children experiment and get excited about adding their own touches or favourite ingredients so the recipes have variations and suggestions to kickstart their imaginations. So do look out for it, shout about it, purchase numerous copies ( almost goes without saying) and get those young’uns into the kitchen; you may even be able to put your feet up whilst someone else cooks supper from time to time.

So that’s the pitch over and done with, now for the recipe…Crumble does appear in the book, with variations, it’s formatted in a fabulous child-friendly way – you’ll have to wait and see (if I reproduced the page I’d be in terrible trouble). Imi made this last weekend when we had some friends around for lunch, it was great to delegate the pudding to her – less work for me and a great sense of achievement for her

Rhubarb, Rose Water CrumbleRhubarb and rosewater

The crumble combination was inspired by an instagram post from the fabulous garden and food writer  Lia Leendertz, who was making a rhubarb rosewater tart. Reg the Veg was selling (and still is) glorious forced Yorkshire rhubarb, we happened to have 1/2 a bag of pistachios lurking in the cupboard and so this variation of the basic crumble was born.

Serves 4-6

You’ll need an ovenproof dish about 25 cm square and 5cm/2 inches deep

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/ Gas mark 6

The Crunchy Top

 

The Crunchy Top140 g/5 oz chilled butter
200 g/7 oz plain flour
pinch of salt
100 g /3 1/2 0z caster sugar, light brown Muscovado sugar or a mix of the two
a handful of chopped pistachios

Chop the cold butter into small squares and drop them into a large mixing bowl with the flour and salt.

Give everything a quick stir with your hands and then rub the pieces of butter into the flour using your finger tips. Try to use your finger tips; your palms are hot and will melt the butter making greasy, stodgy crumble.

Once the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, with no big lumps of butter you can stir the sugar and nuts in with a spoon.

Put the crumble mixture into the fridge whilst you prepare the filling.

The Rhubarb

 

900 g/2lb rhubarb
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp ground almonds
1-2 tbsp rosewater

Cut the leaves and any ragged ends from the rhubarb and then chop into logs.

Sprinkle the ground almonds into the bottom of the ovenproof dish.  Lay the rhubarb over the top, scatter over the sugar and sprinkle with rosewater – don’t go overboard or the entire dish can seem a bit bubble-bathy .

Spoon the crumble mix over the fruit and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until golden.

Serve crumble with vanilla ice cream, cream or custard

 

 

 

 

Kids, Cups and Head Recipes

Getting children into the kitchen is something I’m absolutely passionate about. There’s no doubt about it, cooking works on so many levels……… knife skills are perfect for developing fine motor skills, adapting quantities and weighing ingredients can be used to test mathematical proficiency whilst keeping on top of the mess and the timings calls for good organisation. Then, most importantly, there’s the opportunity to develop a love for,  and an understanding of, good ingredients and real food that will set up good eating habits for a lifetime.

Sometimes it’s great to have a recipe that really challenges, whilst at others a familiar and extraordinarily simple combination is wonderful for building confidence and creativity. There’s something really empowering about making something without even turning to a book. An omelette is a perfect example; once they’ve mastered the egg cracking a kid can decide between herbs, grated cheese, sliced spring onion, sweetcorn and a multitude of other bits that you find in the fridge. You will probably want to stand by as they fry depending on their age and ability but it really can be a meal in minutes.

American-style pancakes (Scotch pancakes or drop scones) are a fabulous “head recipe”  especially when you use measuring cups – most people use these in the U.S. and Down Under although I have to admit that I’d rather weigh if I’m looking for precision. However the beauty of cup measuring for simpler combinations such as the pancake batter is the speed and ease with which you can work and, even better, how easy it is to remember the recipe. There are plenty of cutesy cup measures around the shops nowadays or you can just stick with the basics.

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So, assuming that the child can remember the   1+1+1 recipe, they can head into the kitchen, have a cupboard/fridge forage (with your permission) and make any number of different combinations.

American- style Pancakes
– Serves 4  (about 12-16 pancakes)

The basic recipe

1 cup self raising white flour/ self raising wholemeal flour or a mixture of both.
pinch of salt
1 medium egg
1 cup milk
For the Frying: 2 tsp butter + 2 tsp vegetable oil

Put the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the middle.

Add the egg and milk and whisk everything together until just combined Don’t worry about a few lumps, over whisking will make your pancakes tough.

Add 1/2 a teaspoon of butter and 1/2 tsp oil to a large frying pan and set the pan over a high heat. !!!!! Once the butter has melted, carefully add dessert spoonfuls of pancake batter to the pan. You can cook them 4 or 5 at a time.

If the pan begins to smoke turn down the heat.

Once the top of the pancakes are bubbly and the sides begin to firm it’s time to turn them over using a fish slice drawing or metal palette knife drawing

Cook for another minute or two, until golden and then place on a warm plate.

These are scrumptious eaten straight away but you can cover them with foil to keep warm until you have used all the mixture.

Add another teaspoon of butter to the pan, wait for it to melt and spoon in your next batch of pancakes.

Serve with bacon and maple syrup or a fruit salad with honey and yoghurt.

Jenny Chandler Cool Kids CookFruity Pancakes
Add 1 grated apple or pear (peel and all) to the pancake batter when you stir it all together. Great with sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice.
Or
Stir 1 mashed banana and the zest of 1 lime into the pancake mix and serve sprinkled with toasted coconut chips,  a pinch of brown sugar and lime juice.
Or
Add blueberries, raspberries, strawberries or blackberries to the pancakes as soon as you have spooned the mixture into the pan. About 3 0r 4 fruits per pancake will be plenty. Serve with honey.

 

Go Savoury
Stir 50 g grated cheddar cheese into the batter with a tablespoon of chopped chives.
Or
Stir 100 g sweetcorn kernels and 2 chopped spring onions into the batter. So, so good served with a dollop of guacamole!
Or
Make the pancake batter with wholemeal flour, a tablespoon of chives and chopped dill. Serve with smoked salmon and a blob of sour cream.

 

& the good news ……….I gave a presentation to Year 5 at Bristol Grammar School last week and we played around with some variations on these pancakes. When it came to tasting, more of the kids plumped for the savoury than sweet options……. RESULT!

Images are by Deirdre Rooney from my book Cool Kids Cook ( Pavilion 2016) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheesy Pumpkin Muffins

Halloween is fast approaching and hundreds of thousands of pumpkins will be carved over the next few days – we have two downstairs awaiting the Jack O’ Lantern treatment (this is actually one of the bits of Halloween that I love).

I don’t mind the “Trick or Treat”-ing around a few neighbours and friends, but loath all the plastic tat in the shops, ridiculous quantities of sugary crap the kids collect and all the commercialised hype ….of course, like most 11 year olds, Imi loves it all.

My one condition for buying our carving pumpkins is that we do eat the pumpkin flesh  inside (seems pretty obvious but apparently most people chuck it out). You can find the recipe for my favourite pumpkin soup  (from my book Pulse) on the fabulous food and wine writer Fiona Beckett’s website . Pumpkin flesh can also wind up in a risotto , or why not give my risotto cake on The Borough Market Website a whirl (any stock will work well, not just ham stock – this recipe was originally in an article about cooking ham!)

Last week I gave a kids demo at The Dartmouth Food Festival and we made some savoury muffins (baking doesn’t always have to be about lashings of sugar and they are about to gather a year’s worth of Haribos from your neighbours) This recipe is adapted from a courgette muffin recipe in my book Cool Kids Cook. I’ll attempt to track down some of the wonderful pic’s take at the festival ( I was to busy cooking and talking to take any) but at least you have the recipe to set you on your way!

Pumpkin, cheese and thyme muffins

Makes 12 ( or 24 tiny ones as we did at The Dartmouth Food Festival)

100 g olive, rapeseed or sunflower oil
2 medium eggs
4 tbsp natural yoghurt
200 g self-raising flour
200 g pumpkin or squash flesh
100g mature cheddar cheese, or a mix of cheddar and parmesan
100 g  sweet corn, frozen or tinned – drained
About 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
2 tbsp pumpkin or sunflower seeds

Pre heat the oven to 180 ºC

Grease a 12 hole muffin tray, use paper cases if you prefer, or press small squares of baking parchment into greased moulds so that the paper corners poke up above the top of each cavity (easy for pulling the muffins out once baked) .

Put the oil, eggs and the yoghurt into a large bowl and mix well with a fork.

Keep the flour in a separate bowl.

Grate the pumpkin and cheese on the coarse side of your grater. No fingers thank you !!

Tip the flour, pumpkin, cheese, sweetcorn and thyme into the bowl with the egg mixture and give it a quick  stir. Spoon the mixture into the muffin moulds straightaway and sprinkle with seeds.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until the muffins are ready. Give them the skewer test. (Miniature muffins will only take about 15 minutes)

Other ways for other days

  • Swap cheeses – any hard cheese will work it’s a good way to use up bits from the fridge
  • Try using grated courgette, carrot or beetroot instead of the pumpkin. 
  • Add nuts instead of the sweetcorn. 
  • A teaspoon of finely chopped  rosemary would be good here too.
  • Sprinkle with rolled oats instead of the seeds
  • For super healthy muffins use self raising wholemeal flour instead of white. 

 

I’ll update with some pictures from the wonderful Dartmouth Food Festival as soon as I have some ( I’m writing this at 10pm on a Friday night- no social life! No, actually just a sauce class to teach tomorrow) The Festival really is one of the best,  get it in your diary for next year –  fabulous programme, some amazing chefs and writers and a stunning setting too.

So there you have it – no excuse not to eat up every last bit of that pumpkin.

Happy Halloween!

 

 

Festival Season – Spilling the Beans

No sooner is the summer music festival season over than the flurry of food festivals begins. It’s harvest, the perfect time to get excited about all of our local fare and artisan producers, and to indulge too (you’ve got months before all those irritating people begin shouting about detoxes and beach bodies). This year I’ve been blowing the trumpet for pulses, as many of you are already well aware.

First stop was beautiful Ludlow, one of the original food festivals ,that started out in 1995. The main festival venue is the castle but there are events all over the town, and what a stunning town it is. Sorry, I only managed a few snaps whilst I did some speedy sightseeing before making my appearance on the stage. I managed to gather some fabulous bits from the stalls too – plates to die for from Sytch Farm Studios, chorizo and saucissons from Charcutierltd , Ludlow Blue cheese from Ludlow Food Centre and then the most divine custard tart, that I ate straight away, from the fabulous Harp Lane deli’ right off the market square. Now if you’ve been clicking on all those links it’s a miracle you’re still here, so well done.

I cooked up my favourite green pea fritters (here’s the recipe).I did put some fabulous local chorizo on top this time, delicious cooked up with some red onions and a splash of Herefordshire cider. The second dish was a freekah and butterbean number with roasted cauliflower (here’s a red rice version but do use freekah instead – just boil in lightly salted water until tender and drain.)

On my way home, as I drove from Ludlow to Bristol through some of England’s most stunning countryside, I got all excited. I’ve now made a pact with myself that whenever I’m on a long journey I’ll turn off up a random lane and stop for a few minutes just to breathe and take in the scene. First stop Ocle Pychard, who could resist? And just look what I found!

The next weekend it was off to Abergavenny, to work with kids cooking up some British baked beans. I’m a firm believer that getting children in the kitchen is a great way to encourage adventurous eating and invaluable life skills. We used Hodmedod’s red haricots to make our beans with fried onions, carrot, celery and garlic and a tin of chopped tomatoes. With a little seasoning and a dash of local cider vinegar those beans put the supermarket beans-in-gloop to shame. There’s a recipe in Cool Kids Cook. We added a little chilli and lime juice to our beans and toasted them in a wrap – hey presto! Quesadillas! I’ll get Imi on the case to give you a demo’ very soon.unspecified-2

Now I have to admit that I was so taken up (in a good way) with the kid’s workshops that I only had a couple hours flying around the amazing festival, I managed to squeeze in one of Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company ‘s lobster and seaweed butter rolls. One day I’ll make it to their original beach shack, Café Môr, in Pembrokeshire, in the meantime I’ll sniff them out at every possible festival opportunity. Random stop this time was overlooking the Usk valley just a few miles outside Abergavenny: plenty of sheep, very green hills and blackberry brambles for some opportunistic picking.

Next up Bradford, The World Curry Festival, a long train journey but so worth it; part of a week-long festival celebrating curries of the world with chefs such as Ken Hom and the broadcaster /comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli. I was giving a dal demo, I did worry that I might be teaching grandmothers to suck eggs and so I pulled all the stops out with this magic Sambar recipe. For any of you who came to the demo you’ll find the chickpea Sundal Accra recipe here and the simple Tarka Dal recipe here

DSC_1625.jpgSouthern Indian Vegetables with Dal  – Sambar

Sambar is a southern Indian staple. It’s essentially a dal cooked with whatever vegetables are in season, so don’t worry about the long ingredient list, just use what you have to hand..
Traditional sambar has a very loose and almost soup-like consistancy and is served alongside rice, dosa or flatbreads. I like to make mine a little thicker.
For the curry – (serves 6 with rice or flatbread)
100 g red lentils (or more authentically  toor dal) well rinsed and drained
1 tsp turmeric
2 onions, sliced
2 small potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tomatoes, cut into wedges
1 aubergine, diced
100g pumpkin or squash
a handful of french beans
3-4 tbsp tamarind paste
salt
For the spice paste
1 tbsp oil
3 shallots, diced
100 g dessicated coconut (unsweetened please)
2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 dried chillis
For the Tarka
1 tbsp ghee or oil
1 tsp black mustard seeds
10-15 fresh or frozen curry leaves
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
Put the lentils in a large pan with the turmeric and cover with 600 ml/1 pint of water.
Simmer, covered, for about 45 minutes or until the lentils are soft ( you may need to add a dash more water). Add the onions, potatoes, tomatoes, aubergine and pumpkin and cook, stirring from time to time, until tender. 
Meanwhile take a small frying pan and heat up the oil. Fry the shallot until soft and then add the coconut, coriander, cumin and chillis. As soon as the mixture is aromatic and golden remove it from the heat. Make a fine paste using a pestle and mortar, a spice grinder or small processor.
Add the green beans, tamarind paste and spice paste to the lentils, stir and cook until the beans are tender. Do add more water if you like the traditional, soupier consistancy
Re-use the frying pan and make the tarka. Heat the oil and cook the mustard seeds until they begin to splutter, add the curry leaves and chilli, stir once and then tip over the sambar.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my little diary of events, more like a newsletter this month, I assumed you’d jump to the recipe if you got bored! Next stop on my “Pulsathon” is Brussels and then on 22nd October you can find me at The Dartmouth Food Festival. I’ll be cooking with kids and also doing a beany demo’ too. Come along, I’d love to see you.

 

 

Iced Lemonade & Hot Green Peas

Warm August days and there’s really no better place to be than Britain. I did wonder a few weeks ago, whether I would regret our decision not to go abroad this summer. Right now, having looked after a friend’s glorious garden just down the road in Clifton (with cabin – see the amazing pic’s below) for a couple of weeks, and with a little sortie to see my sis’ in Devon planned, I’m very happy.

Fresh lemonade is always a winner and a really simple thing for children to knock up. This picture of Imi and fabulous friend Alpha (who also appears in the Cool Kids Cook book) was taken by  John Holdship for the Borough Market Magazine (you can find the original honey and rosemary lemonade on the market site here). Today I’ll give you the simplest of recipes.

lemonade 3

Iced Lemonade                                       Serves 6-8

The most thirst quenching drink imaginable, as long as it’s not too sweet.

6 large, juicy lemons (ideally unwaxed)
5 tbsp sugar
250ml water
Plenty of ice and cold water to top up.

Peel the zest from 2 lemons (avoiding too much bitter white pith) and place in a small saucepan with the sugar and water. (If your lemons are waxy and shiny it’s worth dropping them into boiling water for a couple of minutes and then wiping away as much of the sticky wax as possible with some paper towel before zesting)

Heat up the pan to boiling point and then leave it to steep whilst you squeeze the lemons. People talk about microwaving lemons to make the juicing easier, I just roll the whole lemons around on the work surface , pressing and squashing as I go, to loosen up the flesh.

Pour the fresh juice into a jug and, once it is cool, add the steeped syrup from the pan,  along with a few pieces of the pared zest. Top up to taste with plenty of ice (don’t forget that this will dilute the lemonade as it melts) and some cool water.

Lemons vary in size and acidity so I’d have a couple of extras standing by, in case you need to sharpen this up a little.

& Hot Green Peas

The fact is, when it is really, really hot in the UK, we just aren’t prepared for it. Last month I went to Westminster for a parliamentary event to mark The U.N. International Year of Pulses. It just happened to be the hottest day of the year, sweltering in fact. The aim of this gathering of M.P’s, Peers, farmers, traders and campaigners was to raise British pulse awareness. You can take a look here if you don’t know why we’re all shouting about legumes this year; if you’ve been reading my blog over the last few months then you’ll have all this info’ down pat so feel free to move on. FAO-Infographic-IYP2016-FoodSecurity-en

The extraordinarily British element of this day was that, despite the excruciating heat of  Westminster’s Jubilee Room, two particularly dedicated members of The British Edible  Pulse Association still slipped into their lycra pea outfits (talk about boil in a bag).

 

And…………. on the subject of peas, if you feel like making a wonderfully simple and very, very good pea soup then try this Pea, Lime and Lemongrass Soup from the fabulous Diana Henry.

 

 

 

 

One-pot Spanish Chicken with Butter Beans; Child’s Play

The last couple of weeks have been bonkers,  so bonkers in fact that I’m going to break my post up into two instalments. Firstly my new children’s cook book was launched and then last week I was appointed the UN FAO Special Ambassador for Pulses (WHAAAT? – I’ll fill you in on that one in a couple of days time)

So, the kid’s book. It’s so nerve wracking when a book finally comes out, you just have to hold your breath and hope that it’s going to be well received. I’ve been very chuffed with all the feed back so far, especially Xanthe Clay’s piece in The Telegraph  (here’s the shorter online version).

Imi’ s been pretty excited about it all, other than the very badly-timed tonsillitis set back on the night of the launch party (“I’m feeling so depressed, this was going to be one of the best days of my life” – good on drama), but she did manage to rally. I’ve purposely not been pushing the cooking too much just recently, there’s always that chance that things might backfire, but last weekend she decided to celebrate our newspaper appearance by cooking a three course dinner. She spent a while planning her menu (from the book of course), made a shopping list and then had a ball being independent in the supermarket with her own shopping trolley (not a quick shop, it has to be said). I was then sent out of the house for a swim and husband Pete was told that he must NOT interfere, other than having to rush around like a kitchen porter every time he was summoned to open the recycling bin.

Imi’s done plenty of cooking before but this was her first “dinner party”. We kicked off with a corn chowder, had one-pot Spanish chicken to follow and finished up with elderflower jellies and chocolate dipped strawberries. She spent hours laying the table, organising music and lighting and then served up her feast with such great pride that it made this entire book writing journey feel worthwhile for her benefit alone (on the financial side of things it would be handy to sell a few books too).

Spanish One-pot Chicken

So here you have a simple dish, rather than a dish for children, and that’s the point of the book; uncomplicated food that we all want to eat. There are 3 variations on this recipe in the book: Spanish, Southern French and Indian. I love the idea of children learning to cook a dish until it becomes intuitive and they no longer need a recipe. The only real difference between the recipes is the spicing and the choice of pulse to soak up the juices.

Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil, rapeseed oil or other vegetable oil
15 g butter
2 medium onions
4- 8 chicken thighs, depending on size, on the bone and with skin (thighs are so much juicier than breasts in this dish)
1/2 tsp salt and plenty of black pepper
2 red or yellow peppers, seeded and sliced
3 medium tomatoes cut into quarters
12 pitted green or black olives
1 heaped tsp Spanish sweet smoked paprika
2 x 400 g can of butter beans, drained

Preheat the oven to 180 ºc/350º F/Gas 4

Take a large oven proof dish (mine measures 25 x 30cm)  and spoon in the oil and the butter.

Cut the onions in half leaving the root on, peel and then slice them. Put the onions into the dish.

Trim any flappy bits of skin from the chicken thighs and add these to the dish too. Now turn everything gently with your fingers in the oil and leave the thighs skin side up. Go and wash your hands and the chopping board now.

Sprinkle the chicken with the salt and a good grind of black pepper and put the dish in the oven for 10 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients and pop the dish back in the oven for 30 more minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Make sure that the chicken is always skin side up on the top so the skin gets crispy .

Taste the juices, you might need a bit more salt and pepper.

Always check that the chicken is properly cooked through, turn over a thigh and cut in next to the bone, there should be no sign of blood or raw-looking flesh. 

TIP: Adding cooked pulses such as beans, chickpeas and lentils to a dish is a very quick and affordable way of transforming it into a satisfying meal.

The recipe is accompanied by great step by step pictures and graphics in my book. Cool Kids Cook is available from all good bookshops including, one of my all-time favourites, the wonderful Topping and Company .

 

Chickpea Salad and Other Stories

Last week we celebrated The Bristol Food Connections Festival and I was in a whirlwind of cooking (plenty of pulses), teaching, writing, cooking and a bit of gallivanting too. Of course the very mention of the “wind” word will have probably unleashed a bit of school boy humour amongst some of you and I’ll address that at the bottom (oh dear!) of the post.

Food Connections

My demo’ at the festival focused on chickpeas (perhaps my favourite pulse of all, and certainly the variety I use the most) and I had decided, rather bonkersly, to cook 10 recipes in an hour. I often feel that people don’t realise how versatile and easy chickpeas are to use and so, with the help of nine year old Imi, we flew through loads of simple ideas. We did also have some help from the wonderful Clare Hargreaves and Steve Ashcroft – thanks so much to both of you.

Some of the recipes are on my blog already, just click on the links for recipes. We kicked off with farinata , the gram (chickpea) flour flatbread which is super cheap and incredibly moreish (even Gwyneth has included a recipe in her latest cook book, she uses the French name Socca,…. love the idea of putting sardines and tomatoes on the top). Our simple  soup has been a go-to-recipe of mine for years, a real store-cupboard standby, with chilli and lemon juice. The zingy  Southern Indian chickpea stir fry  is a winner if you’re up for some Indian flavours . I only cooked one dish with meat and that was a simple one pot supper dish using a little chorizo , it’s a recipe that really does demonstrate my belief that a small quantity of well-sourced meat can feed a crowd when you cook with pulses. So those are your bonus recipes, and I’ll do my best to post all of the dishes I cooked over time, but today I wanted to talk about salads.

I’d quite happily eat salad every day of my life as long as it was more than a pile of leaves. Nowadays many of the hipster cooks and chefs seem to refer to a large plate of cold goodies as a buddha bowl or wellness plate, I just call it salad. It’s a great option instead of the daily sandwich that so many of us snatch at lunchtime, as long as it tastes fab’, fills you up and keeps you going for the afternoon. As you may know pulses are packed with fibre, are digested slowly and will keep you feeling satisfied and energised for hours. Another upside of chickpeas, beans and lentils in a lunch box is that they actually benefit from a few hours sitting in the dressing, herbs and spices that you may have decided to add. I could bang on about the low fat, no cholesterol, the protein ( when accompanied by grains, nuts or dairy), manganese and folate that chickpeas bring onboard but sometimes singing the health benefits of an ingredient makes people imagine that it will be a trial to eat. THIS SALAD IS DELICIOUS; one of my all time favourites from my book Pulse. I’ve taken a cheeky shot – of the salad pic’ by the fabulous Clare Winfield in my book (I’m up against it, I have a book launch on Wednesday and everything to get ready, so I do hope you’ll forgive).

 

image

Chickpea, Beetroot and Feta Salad.
Serves 4

1/2 red onion, sliced
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and halved
500 g/ 1 lb home cooked or 2 x 400g/14 oz tinned chickpeas, (well rinsed and drained)
200 g/ 7 oz feta cheese, cut into large 2 1/2  cm/1 inch dice
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
100 g/4 oz baby spinach or other salad leaves
1/2 cucumber, diced
a large bunch continental parsley, chopped
About 20 mint leaves
2 small cooked beetroot (vacuum packed or home-cooked) , roughly diced
Seeds from 1 pomegranate
salt, pepper, wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil to taste.

Soak the sliced onion in the vinegar, it will turn a glorious fuschia pink and become softer and more digestible.

Gently warm the olive oil and the garlic in a saucepan for about 5 minutes. The idea is not to fry the garlic but to infuse the oil and soften the the garlic’s flavour. Remove the pan from the heat and take out the garlic, it will be soft by now, chop it finely and return it to the pan with the chickpeas. Stir them around in the warm oil, season with a little salt and pepper and then set aside to cool.

Toast the sesame and fennel seeds in a frying pan until the sesame seeds dance around and turn gold. Tip the seeds onto a plate and carefully toss the feta around, covering each dice in a speckled crust.

Place the onion, chickpeas with their garlic oil, salad leaves, cucumber, parsley and most of the mint in a bowl and mix carefully. Now add the feta and beetroot and toss carefully just a couple of times otherwise the entire salad will turn a milky pink. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds and a few mint leaves and serve with toasted pitta or some fabulous sourdough and a dash of olive oil.

How about?
Adding  a few pitted Kalamata olives
Some roasted pistachios along with the pomegranate
Grilled or char-grilled sliced aubergine
Chopped coriander instead of the mint

TIP: Warming the chickpeas in the garlicky oil makes them sing, if you’re not keen on garlic then try infusing with lemon zest or spices. This technique will make a difference to any beans or lentils, especially if they’ve come out of a tin

The Wind Factor

I’m always extolling the virtues of legumes and yet I’ve still to address the wind problem on my blog, it’s probably because it doesn’t really affect me (there are also plenty of things that help reduce the flatulence in any case ).

SO, why the wind? (Here’s a quote from my book – Pulse) “Legumes contain certain indigestible carbohydrates, the most troublesome being the oligosaccharides, that can’t be dealt with by the digestive enzymes in the stomach. So these carbohydrates pass through the upper intestine largely unchanged and are finally fermented and broken down by harmless bacteria in the lower intestine. This rise in bacterial activity results in gas. There’s also the high fibre factor; if your normal diet is low in fibre then a sudden rise will cause gas too.”

And what to do about it? Firstly, your body will gradually adapt to eating more pulses and fibre and then any wind will become less of an issue.
Secondly, the great pulse eaters of the world offer up plenty of calming options.
-You can add a small piece of Kombu seaweed to the beans as they cook as the Japanese do (available dried next to the Miso etc in health food shops)
-The Mexicans add a few leaves of epazote to the pot (available dried on line at Sous Chef  along with almost any other ingredient that you need to track down)
-Indians use asafoetida, cumin, turmeric or fennel in their dals and curries
-Italians swear by fennel and sage.

 

AND THE NEWS …….. COOL KIDS COOK is out this week

and of course there are a few pulse recipes thrown in, including 4 variations on a quick bean salad, ideal for the lunchbox. You can read more about it on my blog here

 

Wild Garlic and Tomato Cannellini

Two blog posts in one week is a record for me but I must get this out to you whilst the wild garlic is still in its prime……

School holidays, and just the time for a National Trust expedition, our membership (thanks sis’) is such a boon, if we’re away on holiday or visiting friends there’s always somewhere nearby to explore. This week it was a day trip from Bristol with old friends to Newark Park, near Wooton-under-Edge (close-ish to Stroud). Monday’s weather forecast was pretty grim but you can always bet on a quiz for the kids in the house and a good café to hole up in if things get really wet.

After a good look round the extraordinary house (austere Tudor hunting lodge with centuries’ worth of additions, brought back from rack and ruins in the 1970’s by a Texan tenant) we set off into the estate. I have NEVER seen so much garlic, all absolutely in its prime (now’s the time to pick, when the leaves are young and tender, before those lacy white flowers appear)

image

And, before anyone suggests that we shouldn’t have been picking, it was all legit; we were given brown paper bags by the guy at the ticket office and invited to help ourselves, as long as we gathered carefully and didn’t uproot any bulbs. The smell was intoxicating as we foraged and even more so in the car on the way home.

Back in the kitchen I thought I’d give Imi the challenge of single-handedly putting lunch together (with just a little bit of instruction). This dish is so super-simple and keeps well for a couple of days in the fridge.

Wild Garlic and Tomato Cannellini

Jenny Chandler Cannellini200 g (ish) cherry tomatoes on the vine
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Large handful of wild garlic leaves
2 x 400g cans of cannellini beans (drained)
Splash of white wine
salt and pepper

Switch the oven to about 180ºC

Put the tomatoes in the oven with the olive oil in a heatproof serving dish and leave for about 20 minutes until they have split and softened.

Meanwhile wash the garlic leaves (there were plenty of dogs being walked along our path!) and then chop up roughly.

Use a fork to knock/scrape the tomatoes off the vine (a vine does look good on the top so you might keep one back). Stir in the garlic, beans, wine and season with a bit of salt and pepper.

Warm the beans through in the oven for about 10 minutes, long enough for the garlic to wilt.

Serve warm from the oven – you can eat the beans just as they are or you could

Try
-Doing the delicious double carb thing and serving with pasta (pile on some parmesan or pecorino too).
– Serving on sourdough toast, maybe with a bit of goat’s cheese.
– Eat alongside some fab’ sausages, lamb or fish.

 

 

So get your kids cooking, or throw something together yourself – it’s child’s play (sorry, had to be done) And for lots more inspiration there is , of course, a very handy book coming out in just a few weeks time. You could even click here to pre-order Cool Kids Cook !

 

Fava Falafel and my Ambassadorial Post

Well, Thursday was a rather extraordinary day. I was busy tinkering with some recipe development when the phone went. Had it been April Fool’s Day I may have thought that “Riccardo” was actually Peter, up the road on his mobile, pulling off a convincing Italian accent. The long and short of it all is that Riccardo was calling from The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation to tell me that I have been chosen as the European Ambassador for the International Year of Pulses! I have to say that I’m really honoured, chuffed and excited; I will happily and whole heartedly shout about all the reasons why we should be eating more legumes (not least because they are delicious) and really look forward to going out to Rome for the “Appointment Ceremony”.

As a cook I tend to write recipes and rave about the tastiness of pulses on my blog rather than talk extensively about the sustainability and health benefits of eating them. I assume that people probably surf elsewhere for up-to-date nutritional and environmental info’ however this infographic off The United Nations FAO site  gives a good glimpse of what makes pulses so incredibly valuable and why the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation are so keen for us all to eat more of them.

 

This blog will continue to be a place where I share dishes that I love to cook, with or without pulses, but I do hope that you’ll enjoy coming on any new ambassadorial adventures with me.

Today’s recipe is for falafel; they’re one of my absolutely favourite things to eat and they just happen to be a cinch to make, plus being incredibly economical too. It’s great to get children involved with the seasoning and shaping of these little balls of goodness although deep frying is definitely an adult activity.

It’s up to you whether you use chickpeas or fava beans for the recipe, personally I love fava beans (they’re British too, so less food miles involved). In fact until recently I never had any idea just how many thousands of tons of favas we produce in England each year and export – did you?  Well, that’s another story.

Traditional Egyptian falafel tend to be made with split favas so this recipe is a classic.

Split-Fava Falafel

Makes about 30

300 g/11 0z of dried split, skinned fava beans (or chickpeas) – soaked in plenty of cold water for 24 hours
1 small chilli, finely chopped or a good pinch of cayenne
1/2 a red onion, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsps cumin seed, roasted and ground
1 tsp coriander seed, roasted and ground
a large handful of parsley, chopped
a large handful of fresh coriander, chopped
2 tbsp chickpea flour (also known as gram flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Sunflower or olive oil for frying

Drain the beans (or chickpeas) well and place them in a food processor with all the remaining ingredients bar the oil. Now whizz everything up to a green paste, stopping when you have a sticky but still slightly granular texture. Pounding and mincing by hand is an option but you’d have to be very keen.

Taste and balance the seasoning and then leave the mixture to rest for about half an hour.

Now for the production line: Scoop spoonfuls of the paste, roll it into walnut-sized balls, flatten them slightly and place on a tray. Continue until you have finished the mixture but don’t be tempted to upsize otherwise the centre will never cook through.

Heat enough oil to deep fry your falafel a few at a time. The oil should be 180 C (or hot enough for a little cube of bread to brown up in about 30 seconds). Test with one first, the oil should sizzle around it. Add the falafel in batches and cook for about 4-5 minutes until deep gold.

If deep frying is just not your thing I have had reasonable success shallow frying too, you will obviously have to turn the falafel and also extend the cooking time a little to ensure that the centre cooks through.

Serve whilst hot (you can keep the first batches  warm on a baking tray in a warm oven whilst you finish cooking).

How about?

Doing things traditionally- opening up a pitta bread and dropping in the falafel with a salad of crisp lettuce, cucumber and tomato, some tarator sauce and a dash of chilli.

Serving with drinks with a little tatziki or harissa to dip into.

Making a double quantity and freezing some of the mixture to shape at a later date (ready shaped frozen falafel tend to break up in the pan)

And despite the fact that my family are obviously very proud about my appointment there has been some Micky taking too, we’re British after all. So, if  you’d like a giggle do click here to watch our film .

The Ambassador's Party

Do please join me

If you’d like some pulsating inspiration here are a few dates for the diary. Places are limited for both Bristol and Bath so please click on the links and book away.

Bristol, Food Connections Festival

Sunday May 1st –  No 1 Harbourside, 4.30-7pm
Get your pulses racing!
I’ll be hosting a fun cook-off with a selection of local chefs. Ideas on how to make beans, lentils and chickpeas the centrepiece of so many really tastey dishes. Click here for info

Monday May 2nd – College Green, 2.00-3pm
Finger on the pulse
Ten chickpea dishes in under an hour. Family-friendly, super-tasty, cheap, healthy,  quick to prepare. Come along and let me inspire you; from simple hummus to Tuscan soup and Punjabi curry. Book here.

Bath, The Bertinet Kitchen

Saturday 7th May – 10.00am, Full day Workshop
Pulse: at the heart of the kitchen
A hands-on class where learn all about soaking, sprouting, seasoning and preparing. Get pulses into you repetoire with fabulously healthy, modern dishes.
Just a small class so book soon! More info here

London, Borough Market

Thursday 19th May – 12.30 – 2pm,
Celebrating British pulses
A demo with tasters, where I will be cooking with fava beans, dried peas and my favourite Black Badgers!
No booking required just turn up, I’d love to see you 

And I think I might have told you….. I have a kid’s cook book coming out SOON – May 12th Click here for more info’ about Cool Kids Cook