Posts tagged parsnips

Spring Supper (Seabass, minted pea puree, roasted parsnips, chorizo)

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Spring Supper (Seabass, minted pea puree, roasted parsnips, chorizo)

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Finally the evenings are getting longer and the evening light is perfect for photography and dining in the sun (not warmth quite yet unfortunately). Home to the countryside for Easter weekend and the warm days continued. Good Friday called for good food. Naturally. This dish seemed to personify the start of spring and a spring cleaning of the diet and lifestyle. Except if you’d given up chocolate for lent that is. You folks will probably be in a cocoa comma still….this dish may help?

Serves 2

  • 2 seabass fillets
  • 250g peas
  • Handful mint leaves
  • ½ lemon, juice
  • Large knob butter
  • 100g chorizo, chopped
  • 2-3 parsnips, peeled and sliced
  • 4 tbsp grated parmesan
  1. Parsnips – season well and coat in olive oil. Roast at 200°C for 25-30 minutes until tender and crisp.
  2. Parmesan wafer – Line a baking tray with non stick parchment and spoon the parmesan into a cookie cutter to form a circle – don’t be tempted to press the cheese down as it will melt on cooking. Bake for 5 minutes at 200°C until melted and golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before peeling gently from the parchment.
  3. Minted pea puree – boil the peas with half the mint leaves for a few minutes until soft. Drain while reserving the minty cooking water and tip into a food processor. Add a large knob of butter, salt and pepper, the fresh mint leaves, lemon juice and blend to a puree. Add some of the reserved cooking water a bit at a time to thin it down until you reach the desired consistency.
  4. Chorizo – heat a frying pan until hot. Fry the chorizo in the dry pan until it starts to release its oily juice and crisp up. Keep warm.
  5. Seabass- season the seabass fillets well making a slit in the skin side to stop it curling up on cooking. Coat in a light drizzle of olive oil. Heat a frying pan to a medium-high setting and fry the seabass fillets, skin side down, for about 3 minutes until crispy skinned and mostly cooked. Turn for the final minute to finish the cooking and squeeze with a splash of lemon juice.
  6. Top serve – lay the roasted parsnips on the plate and spoon on some pea puree. Top with the seabass and spoon over the chorizo and drizzle with some of the oils. Complete with the parmesan wafer!

Delicious served with a chilled glass of Italian, Puglian Verdeca. I had the pleasure of working at a recent event with the producer – Masserai Li Veli. Delicious. humble and organically produced wines. See here for where to buy some!

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Parsnip Puree, Honeyed Parnips, Seasbass, Hazelnuts

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Parsnip Puree, Honeyed Parnips, Seasbass, Hazelnuts

 

A welcome and precious escape home to the wonderful freshness of my Wiltshire countryside home for the weekend. After a day embracing the beginning of December and with scarfs wrapped tightly around our chilly necks, my sister, mum and I headed home to a blushing fire and dinner as darkness landed.

However….not without entertainment. As realisation hit that we’d forgotten to pick the allotment parsnips for supper, a comical scene unfolded. My sister (with iphone torch) mum (dressed unsuitably in fur and boots) and myself with makeshift garden fork attempted to scavenge the stubborn homegrown parsnips from the depths of their cosy blankets in the tightly packed allotment soil like thieves. Covered suitably in mud and with freezing hands, the kitchen beckoned and dinner tasted even the more delicious as a consequence….

Serves 3

  • 3-4 large parsnips, peeled
  • 1 tbsp runny honey
  • 1-2 tbsp olive oil
  •  Milk
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2-3 black peppercorns
  • 1 sprig of rosemary
  • 2 large knobs of butter
  • Squeeze of lemon juice
  • Grating of nutmeg
  • Handful skinned hazelnuts
  • 3 seabass fillets
  • Green vegetable of choice- green beans, curly kale, wilted spinach..
  1. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Cut at least one of your parsnips into long chunks for roasting. Drizzle with oil, season and roast in the oven for 30 minutes tossing half way through. After this time, drizzle with honey and return to the oven for 10 minutes or so until crisp.
  2. Meanwhile, for the puree, chop the remaining parsnips into chunks. Place them into a saucepan and cover with ¾ milk and ¼ water- just enough to cover. Add 2-3 black peppercorns, bay leaf and the whole sprig of rosemary. Bring to the simmer (being careful the milk doesn’t bubble over) and simmer gently for about 20 minutes or until really tender when pierced with a knife.
  3. Once tender, drain reserving the cooking liquor and puree in a processor with plenty of seasoning, a knob of butter and add a splash of cooking milk to loosen until your liking. Add a grating of nutmeg and keep warm while you fry the seabass.
  4. Heat a frying pan until hot and toast the hazelnuts for a few minutes. Add a splash of oil and fry for a further few minutes until fragrant. Remove from the heat and lightly crush or chop the hazelnuts. Set aside with the hazelnut oil.
  5. Add a splash more oil to the pan. Score the skin side of your seabass fillets to prevent them curling up and season well. Fry in the hot pan for about 3 minutes on the skin side until crisp and then turn for the final minute.
  6. Add a knob of butter to the pan and a squeeze of lemon and baste the fish. Let the butter brown a little as it turns nutty and delicious- beurre noisette.
  7. To serve, divide each plate with a spoonful of puree and top with some green beans, kale or spinach. Place the fish on top with a spoonful of the beurre noisette and add a handful of the roasted parsnips. Finally, scatter over the hazelnuts and a drizzle of their oil and enjoy!

Pulled Barbeque Pork with Spicy Slaw and Flatbread

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Pulled Barbeque Pork with Spicy Slaw and Flatbread

I never thought clearing out my university fridge and freezer before the end of term could be so delicious. With the ever amazing help of Jamie Oliver’s barbeque sauce (see here), this slow cooked pulled pork shoulder was a greasily delicious end to a tiring term and brought a stomachful of summer hope to a cold March that has well and truly outstayed its welcome. A crunchy homemade coleslaw is a great and simple side without the sickly addition of buckets of mayo you often find your ‘healthy’ cabbage swimming in in the supermarket. Wrapped protectively in a snug wholemeal flatbread…….if only my dissertation had been on food….

  • 500g pork shoulder
  • 1 quantity of marinade (recipe here)
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 parsnip
  • 3 small raw beetroot
  • 500g yoghurt
  • 1 lime
  • 5 spring onions, finely chopped
  • 1 heaped tsp of the following mix of ground spices (toast 1tsp of each fennel, cumin, coriander and fenugreek seed with 1 cinnamon stick, 3 cardamon pods and 1 star anise in a dry frying pan until hot, fragrant and beginning to pop, remove and grind in a pestle and mortar until fine).
  • Bunch mint, chopped
  • Bunch coriander, chopped
  • Punnet of cress
  • 250g wholemeal flour
  • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  1. Begin with the pork. Cover the pork in the marinade in a large heavy based casserole dish and leave in the fridge overnight to infuse the flavours. The next day, preheat the oven to 170.
  2. Place a lid on the dish and slowly cook for 3 hours, basting in the sauce about 3 times.
  3. Meanwhile, make the coleslaw. This is easiest shredded in a food processor with the appropriate blade attachment or you can grate by hand.Grate the carrot, parsnip and beetroot into a large dish
  4. Add the chopped herbs.
  5. Combine the zest of the lime and the juice to the yoghurt with some seasoning and a tbsp of mayonnaise and the spice mix to make the dressing.
  6. Only before serving, dress the coleslaw in the dressing and scatter over the cress.
  7. For the flatbreads, mix the flour, cumin seeds, oil and 150ml warm water in a bowl and mix to form a ball of dough. Divide into about 6 pieces and roll thinly into discs. Before serving, fry each for a few minutes each side in a really hot  dry frying pan until beginning to char and puff up. Keep warm wrapped in a teatowel while you fry them all and finish the pork.
  8. After 3 hours, the pork should be nicely cooked and tender. Remove from the oven, spoon off the liquid fat that has melted from the pork and discard, leaving the remaining marinade.
  9. Leave to rest for about 20 minutes. Then, cut off any of the skin and fat and discard. Next shred using a couple of forks and mix int he remaining marinade left in the dish.
  10. Serve with the coleslaw and flatbreads and come extra yoghurt if you like!

For some light amusement, here is a picture of the first cut of pork from our first attempt at keeping pigs last year. Yes they were accidently overfed….yes that is 50% fat to 50% meat….and yes the butcher could not make sausages with those pigs because they were so obese. We have since refined our animal handling and will be dining on a model piece of pork this Easter, thankfully for our arteries (and theirs…RIP).

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Pea and Smoked Ham Tart with Parmesan parsnips

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This is a pleasingly alternative and delicious use of Christmas leftovers after exhausting the usual recipes with the turkey. My brief from the family for dinner was a light, fresh but tasty meal after a heavy week of Christmas delights, rich meats and glasses of guilt. So, with a fridge full or assorted cheeses, a cooked smoked ham and a few of our giant allotment parsnips that were looking very sorry for themselves, I enthusiastically took up the mission.

Cheesey Shortcrust pastry

  • 100g wholemeal flour
  • 150g plain flour
  • 125g unsalted butter, cubed
  • 70g cheddar cheese, grated plus and reserved handful
  • Salt and pepper
  • Cold water

Filling

  • 250g frozen peas
  • 3 eggs
  • 75g creme fraiche
  • Juice of half lemon
  • 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard (optional)
  • A few large handfuls of smoked ham, cubed or flaked into pieces
  • Salt and pepper
  • Splash of milk
  1. Begin with the pastry. Preheat the oven to 200°C. In a food processor, combine all the pastry ingredients, except the water, and blitz to form a breadcrumb-like texture. Or rub the butter into the flour by hand.
  2. Tip out into a bowl and add cold water, spoonful by spoonful, and mix in with a knife until you have a mixture that forms a dough when your gently press together with your hands. Form a ball of dough.
  3. Roll into a disc shape, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
  4. Meanwhile, line a tart tin (I used one about 23cm wide but use whatever is to hand) with parchment and butter the sides. This recipe in my case lined two tart tins so I made two and froze one for another time.
  5. After 30 minutes, thinly roll out your pastry on a floured surface and use it to line the tin, pressing the pastry up the sides. Prick all over with a fork to prevent it rising up while baking.
  6. Line the tine with parchment and fill snugly with baking beans or rice if your don’t have any beans.
  7. Blind bake for about 20 minutes until the edges are golden.
  8. Remove the beans and parchment and bake for another 5-10minutes until the base is cooked and crisp. Brush with a bit of beaten egg to seal the fork pricks and return for 1 minutes. Remove and leave to cool.
  9. Make the filling. Boil the peas for a few minutes until cooked. Drain and cool thoroughly with cold water.
  10. Reserve a handful of the peas and puree the rest in a processor or mash with a fork until you form a coarse paste. Add the lemon juice, seasoning, mustard, eggs and creme fraiche. Blitz again in the processor to mix thoroughly.
  11. Add a splash or so of milk to form a texture that is loose but not too watery, a bit like custard.
  12. Sprinkle the base of the pre-baked tart case with the flaked ham and the reserved whole peas.
  13. Fill this with the egg custard until distributed evenly and full but making sure it dose not overflow the edges of the pastry case. You may not need it all.
  14. Scatter over the remaining grated cheddar and bake in the oven at 190°C for about 25-30 minutes until the middle is cooked and set.
  15. Grate over a bit of lemon zest and serve with a green salad and some crispy baked Parmesan coated parsnips in my case….!

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Parmesan Parsnips

  • 2-3 parsnips, peeled and cut into batons shaped
  • 200g brown bread crumbs
  • 100g finely grated Parmesan cheese
  • Handful of flour
  • 2 beaten eggs
  • Sunflower oil or light olive oil
  1. Preheat the oven to 190°C
  2. Boil the parsnips in water for about 4-5 minutes until tender and soft when pierced with a knife but still with a bit of resistance.
  3. Drain and allow to steam for a few minutes.
  4. Set up 3 bowls. Fill one with seasoned flour, another with beaten egg and the third with the breadcrumbs combined with the grated cheese.
  5. When the parsnips have cooled slightly, dip into the flour, then the beaten egg and finally coat in the breadcrumb mix.
  6. Repeat this with the remaining parsnips and place them on a lined baking tray.
  7. Drizzle generously with sunflower oil and bake in the oven, turning halfway through, for 30 minutes until crisp and golden

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