January tomatoes

The window boxes did become casualties of all of the activity surrounding the wedding and honeymoon in the latter half of 2011 and as such got rather left to their own devices for the last quarter of the year.

However, one of the upsides of this is that with the mild winter all of the green tomatoes that were left on the tomato plants have been gradually turning red throughout December and January and every week or so we get another 15-20 red tomatoes to put into our dinner. My new favourite cookbook is Plenty by Yottam Ottolenghi and I used this lot in his Lentil and Aubergine recipe.

Very tasty indeed!

Packed lunches

Here in the flat we always take a packed lunch into work with us. The problem comes with trying to find new tasty things to take in that transport well, fit easily in a lunchbox and so that you have different things each week. There seems to be a real lack of topics on this in cookbooks so I find myself constantly scanning our cookbooks for ideas of what we can have now. As I presume others might find themselves in the same situation I thought that I might start a relatively regular "What's in the lunchbox this week?" feature to share ideas for interesting packed lunches.



And this week...? An onion and camembert tart slightly adapted from Nigel Slater's Appetite. It's pretty easy to make too which makes it ideal for slinging together on a weekday evening whilst you've got other stuff going on.

6 onions
good chunk of butter
pack of puff pastry
1 camembert
bunch of thyme

Peel the onions and chop them into fat wedges. Melt your butter in a pan on a lowish heat and sling the onions in and leave them for quite a while to sweat down giving them a push around every now and then - I ended up leaving mine for about an hour whilst I was finishing up a bit of work and checking emails. When they're done they should be translucent and golden. Roll out your puff pastry into a large flat rectangle and place on a baking sheet. Run a knife to create score lines a few centimetres from the edge and scatter the onions over the area inside these score lines. Brush the edges of the pastry with some of the onion butter. Then break your camembert up into little pieces, place them inbetween the onions and scatter a generous sprinkling of thyme leaves over the top. Place in a preheated oven to 220 degrees for about 15 minutes until the pastry is golden and the onions slightly browned.

We've managed to get five portions out of that which we'll take into work and have alongside some chutney and mixed salad. Delicious!

The last of the red tomatoes...

I decided to use up the last of the red tomatoes yesterday in a Jamie Oliver sausage and tomato bake for a hearty late lunch. This is an old favourite of ours but to make it into a one-pot wonder we add Charlotte potatoes that have just been sliced in half into the mix. It's so easy - you just throw it all into the roasting tin, whack it in the oven and give it a stir a few times and out comes a delicious meal! Yesterday I also added in a few sprigs of our fresh windowsill oregano too. And the best thing is, we had quite a bit of the gorgeous tomatoey, balsamicy sauce left over which is going to go great with some penne for today's lunch, finished off with some gratings of parmesan and more fresh oregano leaves over the top.

Disillusioned

As a novice gardener in her first year of gardening I was becoming a bit disillusioned - the excitement of the spring and summer when new things seemed to be happening every day had passed and the plants just seemed to be on a slow decline to death. I'd been walking past them and rather than getting the joy of earlier months I was getting a sinking feeling as they just started to look more and more dead every day.




But the other day I decided to pick myself up and have a proper look at them all and look for the positives - we had lots of bright red chillies and tomatoes just waiting to be picked and the oregano still seems to be coming on great guns.









We also had no food in the house for dinner and had just got back from a trip away so the fact that we had these bright juicy fat red chillies and tomatoes just crying out to be picked was a great little present. So I heated up the hob and chucked four of the chillies in the pan to blacken them all over. Then in went the tomatoes along with some chopped spring onions, garlic and the finely chopped stalks of a bunch of parsley that I found lying around in the fridge. Meanwhile I got a big pot of boiling water on the go to cook some pasta in. Once all of the veggies had fried down a bit I bashed up the chillies, added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tin of drained chickpeas and left it all to simmer away while the pasta cooked. Once the pasta was done I added a ladelful of the pasta water to the sauce, chucked the pasta in and stirred it around along with the chopped parsley leaves and salt and pepper to taste. A perfect meal inspired by the windowsill and the store cupboard!

Roasted peppers and chorizo

So on Friday night we attempted to use up our two sweet peppers that had turned red. There's a delicious chorizo, roasted pepper and rocket sandwich that I first tasted at Borough Market from the Brindisa stall about 10 years ago (they still sell them so if you find yourself in London on a Friday or Saturday head down to Borough and check them out for yourself!) which I thought would be perfect for using up our two little peppers.



So, I covered them in olive oil and placed them in the oven on 180 until they were blackened all over as usual. Unfortunately I hadn't banked on the fact that little peppers will have thinner skins and sadly by blackening them all over they were actually just burnt straight through and so there was no sweet, roasted flesh behind the blackened skin to peel away. Luckily though as they were so tiny I had supplemented them with a larger shop bought pepper that was perfectly cooked so stuck that in the plastic bag until the skin was ready to peel off.



Then I fried up my chorizo and placed them into a ciabatta loaf along with the roasted peppers and a good wedge of rocket. Served alongside a cold beer and some roasted anya potaotes it was the perfect way to unwind after a hectic week at work.

Autumnal cooking

Well as the days get colder and the nights close in, it feels more and more right to get some warming autumnal meals on the table. And so the other night we cooked up a cracking shepherd's pie. To give it a windowsill twist we used up some of the chives and parsley that's been growing all summer to make the mash all herby and delicious.



I tend to vary my recipe for shepherd's pie each time I make it depending on what ingredients I've got in the flat at the time so here's what went in to this one. Finely chop and fry up an onion and some garlic, add diced carrots and celery and let it all cook over a low heat until all of the vegetables are soft and collapsing. Meanwhile fry the mince in a separate pan and, when browned, drain off all of the excess fat. When the vegetables have softened add thickly sliced large, flat mushrooms and cook them down as well. Stir through the mince, add a good glug of Worcestershire sauce, a tin of chopped tomatoes, some tomato puree and dried mixed herbs. Stir all of the ingredients together and season with salt and pepper. Place into a pyrex dish with a lid and then into an oven preheated to 180 degrees and leave it all bubbling away and the flavours mixing together whilst you get on with the mash.

Add chopped potatoes and parsnips to salted boiling water and leave them until they are soft enough to fall off a knife. Drain, reserving a small amount of the cooking liquid and mash with lots of butter, salt and pepper. Add in chopped chives and parsley and stir through.

Remove the meat from the oven and scoop the mashed potato and parsnip mix on top. Smooth it out so that it evenly covers the surface and make a nice pattern with a fork. Cover with grated Gruyere cheese and place back in the oven without the lid this time. Leave for 45 minutes and then it is ready to serve. Serve with peas. Yum!

Homemade harissa

One of the chillies out on the windowsill is starting to change colour which reminds me that I never blogged about what we did with our first chilli harvest a few weeks back now.

We had four bright red, windowsill grown chillies just waiting to be cooked with something tasty and so we decided to make harissa paste with them. Unfortunately it is a tale much like the cherry tomatoes of the other night where to make the harissa you need 250g of chillies (great for those of you out there with heaving chilli plants!). This is slightly more than four so our trusty chillies were added in with some others.

The recipe that I used was out of the Moro cookbook and it says that it will last in the fridge for a couple of weeks. So to make the paste you have to cut the chillies in half and remove the seeds. Then you blend them in a food processor with ground caraway seeds and cumin seeds, 4 cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt. Then add a roasted, skinned and seeded red bell pepper and blitz again until smooth. Once it's smooth stir in a dessertspoon of tomato puree, a dessertspoon of red wine vinegar, two level teaspoons of sweet smoked paprika and six tablespoons of olive oil. And there you have it!

We then took our homemade harissa paste and used it to make harissa roast chicken (see p217 of the Moro cookbook) accompanied with fried potatoes (p232). Absolutely gorgeous!

Cherry tomatoes on the table

Well last night we used up all of our cherry tomatoes that were currently red. Unfortunately one of the problems with the windowsill is that whilst everything is very tasty and it is hugely satisfying to have grown this veg ourselves, quantity-wise we are always a little lacking in having enough of anything for a whole meal. So last night we had around ten of our homegrown tomatoes but they had to be supplemented from some shop bought ones (you can see the difference between our smaller, more misshapen but brighter red tomatoes versus the uniform shop bought ones).

We cooked them in a nice simple pasta dish that is easy to whack on and cook when you get home from work. While the pasta is cooking you put the cherry tomatoes in a pan and heat them up with a glass of white wine. When it starts to simmer nicely put in a good dollop of creme fraiche and leave it all simmering away. Then once the pasta is cooked drain it and then pour your sauce over it and at the last minute stir through a good handful of rocket (such a shame our windowsill grown rocket never took off as otherwise it could have been a windowsill grown produce bonanza). Serve with shaved parmesan and lots of black pepper on top.

New cookbooks!

I had some money left at the end of last month so I decided to order a couple more cookbooks and they've just arrived!

Bit of a restaurant themed cookbook shop with the first of the River Cafe and Moro books. Great to have some new inspiration and can't wait to get started cooking some of the recipes out of them.

We're actually off for dinner at Moro in a few weeks time too, been once before and really looking forward to heading back again!

A lamb steak with peas and mint

Some of our windowsill mint was put to excellent use for dinner last night. A quick, very tasty and summery dinner (if a little light on the carbs!) can be found in Nigel Slater's recipe for a lamb steak with peas and mint in Tender Volume 1.

You just blitz the mint together with melted butter and peas to make a pea puree, top that with a lovely grilled lamb steak and then finish off with a little pile of pea shoots and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. A divine and easy supper for a summery weekend evening.

However, due to the lack of carbs it's not going to fill any big holes if you are feeling hungry. Luckily I had a blueberry and peach cake on hand for dessert to do the honours. Another Nigel in fact, the recipe appeared in the newspaper a few weeks ago.

Windfall chilli enchiladas!

Well the chillies that managed to survive the winds are going strong still out in the occasional patches of sunshine that we've had this week but the windfall chilli met a good end too. As the chilli seeds originally came from Wahaca it seemed right that our first chilli produce should be used in a recipe from Thomasina Miers' new book Mexican Food Made Simple and so chicken and tomato enchiladas it was!


The chillies go into the smoky tomato sauce and to make that you quarter an onion, peel four garlic cloves and blacken them in a dry frying pan along with two chillies and twelve tomatoes.


You want everything to get really blackened and the skins of the chillies and tomatoes to be bubbling and blistering. Once things are going nice and black remove them from the frying pan. They won't all cook at the same speed so some will need removing earlier than others. Once they're all out of the frying pan, peel the skins off the chillies and tomatoes and remove the chilli stalks and then blitz the lot in a food processor to get a lovely sauce. Add to this a good glug of red wine vinegar and then place in a saucepan and allow to reduce for half an hour or so. When it has reduced nicely, add a handful of chopped tarragon and chervil along with a teaspoonful of demerera sugar and some salt and pepper. Separate your sauce into two halves. Shred the meat off half a pre-cooked chicken and stir that into one half of the sauce.

Now it's time to make up the enchiladas. Pour enough of the sauce into the bottom of an oven-proof dish to cover it. Get your corn tortillas one by one, fill them with the chicken mixture, roll them up and place them in a line in the dish as you would with canneloni. Once you've got them all snugly fitting in the dish and have used up all your filling pour the remaining tomato sauce over the top. Then cover this with a good layer of sour cream and finally top off with grated cheese. Place in a pre-heated oven on 180 degrees for 40 minutes. Sit back and relax with a glass of wine while it cooks.

Windowsill grown produce on the table!

So at the start of July we have had our first windowsill grown produce on the table! The oregano that is out on the windowsill has been growing like crazy and so it was with great excitement that I scoured the cookbooks on our shelf for a tasty looking recipe that I could throw a whole load of home grown oregano into and Sarah Raven came up trumps! It is quite fitting that it is a recipe from this book that is the first one the windowsill produce is used in as it was Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook that first inspired me to attempt to grow something edible on the windowsills. To any edible growers out there who do not already own a copy I would highly recommend getting yourself down to a bookshop and picking one up.

So we cooked a wonderful oregano, olive and lemon chicken which is apparently a classic Greek dish. It was a lovely easy recipe too - just stick it in the oven and let it get on with it. I altered from the book slightly by using chicken legs and thighs rather than quartering my own chicken but here's what I did for the two of us:

Chicken legs and thighs (3-4 pieces per person)
Juice of 2 lemons
1 heaped tablespoon coarsely chopped oregano plus two whole sprigs
Salt and black pepper
500g Charlotte potatoes
15 kalamata olives
Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Lay the chicken in a roasting tin and pour half the lemon juice over it, then sprinkle with some of the oregano, salt and pepper. Cut the potatoes into wedges and place in around the chicken. Add the olives, pour over the rest of the lemon juice and sprinkle over the remaining oregano. Using your hands make sure the potatoes are well coated in lemon juice and herbs. Pour over the olive oil, add the sprigs of oregano plus a cup of water and cook in the pre-heated oven for one and a half hours. When the chicken is cooked, remove it and allow it to rest while you turn up the heat to crisp up the potatoes in a very hot (220 degree C) oven for 15 minutes.

We accompanied this with the lemon bean salad which can be found on page 210 of the garden cookbook and a nice cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Perfect!

I have entered this post on a website featuring "grow your own food". You can check it out and enter yourself here.

...and busy times in the kitchen

As well as a flurry of garden activity there's also been a flurry of kitchen activity over the past few days with baking and cooking galore. Over the weekend I opened my Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache book for the first time and had a cupcake baking session. All the cakes in the book have vegetables included within them and I made some orange and lemon cupcakes with butternut squash and some raspberry and elderflower cupcakes with courgette. Not sure the presentation's quite there to open up a cupcake business to rival Lola's or Treacle yet but both were delicious and vanished suprisingly fast! Also going on in the kitchen we've been baking foccacia and making roasted pepper soup for lunches at work.

The seeds are in!

So today the majority of the seeds have gone in. Not wanting the windowboxes to be completely devoid of flowers we have planted seeds of a mixture of veggies but kept a few flowers in there too...



From the "pizza and pasta pot" collection we've got some tumbling tomatoes (Lycopersicon lycopersicum), some sweet peppers (Capsicum annum), some serrano chillis and some Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare). To add some colour to windowboxes (and because I love sunflowers!) we've got some Irish Eyes sunflowers (Helianthus annus) and some nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) whose leaves we should be able to add to some tasty salads as well as the flowers looking pretty. All are dwarf varieties so hopefully they should be able to cope in our windowboxes.



The seed tray is now nestled on the table in between the herb pots and some bread dough that is rising in the late afternoon sunlight and the stock is bubbling away on the stove so that it's ready in time to stir in to tonights risotto.

Two weekends ago

We were lucky enough to be given for Christmas by my boyfriend's brother a starter kit for getting going with our edible window boxes. Goodies included some window troughs, seed trays, a trowel and seeds to get us going on a "pizza and pasta pot". Two weekends ago we planted up some of the herb seed mats in little pots.


We left them covered in clingfilm on the table by the window and 11 days later the basil, coriander and chives have popped their heads up! As of yet there's still no sign of the parsley or mint... Fingers crossed they're just taking their time.

How it all began...

A keen cook, inspired by Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook and Nigel Slater's Tender, I have decided in 2010 to see how much I can grow on three sunny windowsills in my first floor London flat. Fully armed with seeds, pots and plenty of enthusiasm I intend to chart my successes and no doubt failures on these pages and hope to get a tasty meal or two at the end of it!