What’s baking? Chard and Brie mini savoury muffins

I’ve spent the last hour cooking, which is a real treat.  I have attempted to make chard and Brie mini muffins from Alice Hart’s Vegetarian book – hers look a lot more attractive, I shall have to imagine she had a fantastic food stylist making hers look beautiful, but they taste really nice.

Always good to find a meat-free savoury snack, these are pretty good.  I’d like to try out some other different ingredient combinations within these tiny savoury muffins.  Any suggestions?

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Barley risotto with lettuce, pea tendrils, spring onions and peas

Making a ‘risotto’ with pearl barley is perhaps one of my favourite dishes.  It’s lovely in every season and has a more interesting texture than risotto.  Don’t get me wrong, I still adore risotto (Milanese or saffron risotto is my favourite) but a barley risotto is a more rustic version.

You make a barley risotto in the same way you would a normal risotto – softening some onions and maybe some garlic, stirring in the barley and adding stock.  But this is where it differs: using risotto rice you would add a ladleful of hot stock at a time, stirring all the while, but with barley you can just bung in all the stock at once and leave it to simmer away.

So this is what I did.  At this point, all you have is a pan of plain barley, softened onions and lots of stock.  It depends on what vegetables you are adding to the dish as to when you add them. 

For this one with its lettuce, pea tendrils, spring onions and peas, they are all quite delicate vegetables that don’t need a lot of cooking.  So I added most of them in towards the end – the spring onions a little before the other veg so that they soften and lose some of their pungency – soft and sweet is what I want from spring onions in a dish like this.

Once all the stock has been absorbed by the barley – try it, it should still have a chewy bite to it – it’s ready to be eaten.  I topped it with some chunks of ripe brie just for a bit of luxury.  The heat of the risotto should start to melt the cheese and it begins to ooze and slide over the peas and between the barley grains.

This is ‘my recipe’ for it, sorry that there aren’t measurements or amounts.  I use the same amount of pearl barley for two as I would for risotto – we use 3 oz per person.  So for a meal for two, using 6 oz of pearl barley, I would cover it in about 500ml of hot vegetable stock – if you find it’s all been absorbed and the barley needs a bit more cooking, simply add a little more hot water until it’s done.

Onion and Brie Tart

Brie and Onion Tart

Serves 2 as a main course or 4 as a starter

200g puff pastry
100-120g Brie
6 onions
50g butter
Thyme

In a large frying pan heat the butter.  Peel the onions and cut into segments.  Cook the onions in the butter on a gentle heat until they are meltingly tender and slightly caramelised.  Let them take their time.

Preheat the oven to 220°C.  Roll out your puff pastry until it is only a couple of millimetres thick.  Carefully place the pastry onto a baking tray and score a border around the pastry about 2cm for the edges.  Prick with a fork.

Once the onions are cooked, spread them out over the pastry leaving the border free.  Brush some of the remaining oniony butter from in the pan around the border – this will help it to go lovely and golden.

Cut the Brie into pieces and scatter over the onions.  Sprinkle over some thyme leaves and a little salt and pepper.

Cook in the oven for about 15 minutes or until the pastry is golden and the cheese has melted and oozed amongst the onions.

Eat with a big pile of crisp and crunchy salad tossed in a tangy homemade dressing – just a squeeze of lemon juice and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil is all it needs.  Scrumptious.

This delicious recipe is taken from the fabulous Nigel Slater’s Appetite.

Gooey brie and onion marmalade bagel

A quick interlude from Italy food adventures, and a bid to get back into blogging after a week away and a busy week last week preparing for the little sister’s 16th Mexican Fiesta Party.

I adore bagels, especially those from the Barbakan Deli in Manchester, and love their versatility.  They taste great with so many different toppings and fillings. 

Some of my favourites include a toasted bagel with a generous helping of salted butter, or a mashed avocado spread over bagel halves and topped with sea salt and black pepper.  Oh, and a bacon and egg bagel is a whole new level to bacon and egg in a bread bap.

This bagel was lightly toasted so that the edges just started to go golden, then smeared with gooey brie that just started to melt from the warmth of the bagel.  Finally, it was topped with onion marmalade, this one was shop bought by onion marmalade or caramelised onion is really simple to make.