How about something unusual and tasty which requires the minimum amount of preparation and no cooking? You’d be a fool not to. Another recipe from the infallible Polpo Venetian cookbook.
Chocolate salami
Vegetarian
Puy lentils with Mozzarella and basil oil
Apologies (again) for the blogging hiatus. We can offer no excuses other than an extended trip outside the country, a redundancy, a three year old who has gone slightly bonkers and the usual plagues of locusts, frogs and boils. Here by way of compensation is a tasty morsel ideal for an extended al fresco (it rhymes with Tesco) weekend lunch.
Griddled courgette salad with tasty breadcrumbs
We started writing yumblog because (like most food bloggers) we wanted to give you dear reader, the opportunity to press your greasy nose against the window of our perfect world and enviously look in slack-jawed and drooling at our incomprehensibly magnificent lives. Yumblog Cottage is a haven of sunlit space, children’s laughter, crisp white linen, freshly cut flowers, beautiful friends …
Courgette & mint pizza
Spinach, egg & parmesan pizza is like so yesterday. This is now our Friday evening pizza of choice.
Haricot bean & carrot soup
This could possibly be the last comforting soup of the season as summer has finally reached these parts and the Pennines are roasting under 40 degrees of searing Yorkshire sunshine. Evenings are now spent sitting in the dappled shade of Hebden Bridge olive groves, drinking ice-cold Albariño, and listening to the song of the cicadas high up on the parched …
Cheesy sweet potato & kale brunch
As the snow fell on Yumblog Cottage thoughts turned to sledging and comfort food.
Calpis
As a rule I tend to avoid drinks with the suffix pis, but this sounded so intriguing I had to give it a try.
Paul Hollywood’s crusty bloomer
Pleasant surprise permeated through the Yumblog household when the first viewing of ‘Paul Hollywood’s Bread’ turned out to be a relatively straightforward cookery programme. There was of course the now obligatory 5 minute introduction guaranteed to elicit shouts of “Get the fuck on with it” plus the adoption of Jamie Oliver’s technique of looking just left of the camera. In …
Mozzarella Pizzaiola
Sometimes I wonder why we bother. We try our best to make this blog an edifying and sophisticated experience, but a glance at our site stats shows that the top three search queries which brought you here today were ‘Soft porn’, ‘Chicken pox’ and ‘Dairylea Lunchables’. You’re a weird and mucky bunch. Incidentally, anyone browsing for the 12th most popular …
Carta di musica (with rosemary oil)
This recipe does require the use of a pasta maker so you’ll need to have a rummage around in your cupboard of only-used-once things. There it is next to the Ken Hom wok set … to the left of the Jamie Oliver Flava Shaker … and behind everything you ever bought from the Lakeland catalogue.
Borlotti beans & savoy cabbage with rosemary breadcrumbs
Look, everyone I have an iPad Mini. In fact as I write this I’m on the morming commute steaming through the Calder Valley aboard the Northern Rail Executive Express. For those of you not in the know, the Northern Rail Executive Express is a sleek luxuriously upholstered silver bullet from the future which flashes silently and smoothly between Leeds and …
Rosemary infused oil
Now sit up straight, hands on desks and pay attention for what I am about to tell you is very important. This rosemary-infused oil is going to feature quite heavily in many up and coming and no doubt mouthwatering posts so it’s imperative you set aside the 10 minutes required to make it. Consider it homework.
Marmalade
Strolling through the orangery here at Yumblog Hall it became clear we were going to have a glut of oranges again this season. A bumper crop no doubt thanks to both the skill of old Mr Fothergill the head gardener, and the relentless sunshine and arid terroir of West Yorkshire. We decided to use some of this surplus to make …
Spicy roast parsnip soup
Stop right there ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Instead of going to the inconsiderable effort of making the dish below, why not pop on over to the Campbell’s website and follow one of their ‘sensational’ recipes for homemade soup. Or if you are feeling more adventurous and have a pound of chicken slurry, a tin of their soup and …
Baked spinach & eggs with parmesan, basil & tomato toasts
Depending on the time of day, this dish makes a great brunch, brinner, brea, brupper or supfast.
Butter bean and kale winter soup with cheese toasties
My how times have changed. When we first started this blog we had to write a post longhand on a sheet of A4 and send it in a stamped-addressed envelope to our ISP. He would in turn fax a carbon copy up to internet where a conveyor belt would take it to the code processing plant to be forged into …
Chocolatey syrupy cornflake cakes
The plan was to make these with yumblog junior as part of a constructive and educational day of middle class parent/toddler fun. Despite initial enthusiasm and impatient requests of ‘cam i make cakes now?’, once the ingredients were assembled and all sharp objects removed from easy reach, the sprog decided she had more important things to do and her time …
Kale tagliatelle (with pine nuts & capers)
So tasty is this pasta dish it has taken over from the mighty ‘La pasta col tocca d’arrosto’ as THE quick and reliable midweek regular here at yumblog cottage. Originally an Angela Hartnett recipe which came to our attention as the result of a surplus of kale and google search, it has, over the months, transmuted, transformed and transmogrified into …
Chestnut stuffing
I know, it’s the middle of January so it’s unlikely any of you lot (dear readers) are going to want to digest anything referring back to Christmas, Christmas dinner or any of its associated trimmings. But trust me, in 344 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes and 55 seconds (at time of writing) you’ll be desperately thumbing through books, magazines and …
Baked beans #4
In lieu of having anything (interesting) to write about baked beans, here are a few words/phrases and accompanying definitions from Yumblog Junior’s ever increasing personal lexicon: Circle ham – German sausage Rainbrella – Umbrella Yellow people – The Simpsons Oop sake – For fuck’s sake! Ah, the things they say!
Vegetarian gravy
If you don’t have access to the rendered fatty juices which have oozed from the roasting flesh of a recently slaughtered animal, making a decent gravy can be quite a challenge. A vegetarian gravy requires time and attention to build up a sufficient depth of flavour, so I suggest you make this in advance and/or multiply the quantities and freeze …
Kohlrabi & potato gratin
Kohlrabo, Kohlrabmas, Kohlrabat, Kohlrabamus, Kohlrabatis, Kohlrabant. Or for those of you who were’t fortunate enough to go to Sir Joseph Williamson Mathematical Grammar School for Boys* and can’t speak Latin**, I Kohlrabi, You (singular) Kohlrabi, He, She or It Kohlrabi, We Kohlrabi, You (plural) Kohlrabi, They Kohlrabi.
Savoy, potato, red onion (and egg) pie
This is a recipe based on one found on the BBC GoodFood website and is a great way to use up that half cabbage which has been sitting at the bottom of the veg box all week. Regrettably the bendy parsnip and sprouting carrot remain untouched.
Mulled cider
Obviously you don’t really need to be told how to mull cider as like us you’ll just explore the deeper regions of your spice cupboard and gather together whatever seems to conjure up memories of Christmas. Then you’ll discard anything that is more than a year out of date, guess how much of the remaining you’ll need to conjure up …
Hawthorn Liqueur
Here is a recipe for toothsome* yuletide tipple which if you start now will be ready to sip on 28th December. Technically still Christmas. WARNING: This posting has not been edited by my educated co-blogger and so may contain all sorts of grammaticle erors.
Sloe gin
As most foraged food is either unpalatable, bitter, or tastes ‘a bit like spinach’, our advice to you is to smother it with refined sugar and alcohol and transform it into a cheeky little apéritif and/or digestif. First up, Sloe gin.
Granola
A few miles up the road from Yumblog Mansion in the beautiful unspoilt Lancashire town of Bacup there is the last fully operational commercial Granola quarry left in the country. We are lucky to have a source of such quality Granola right on our doorstep as these days most people have to make do with the imported low grade variety …
Carrot & harissa dip
We had some lovely irregular muddy carrots in our latest Abel & Cole box, so we thought we’d break with tradition and instead of ignoring them for a week until they were as limp as a Young Conservative’s handshake, we’d use them right away …
Pan Con Patatas
Forget the mapping of the human genome, the discovery of the Higgs Boson God particle, or the invention of L’Oreal’s age defying Boswelox™, I think we here at Laboratoires Yumblog can humbly announce we have made the single greatest scientific breakthrough since our prehistoric ancestors rubbed two dinosaurs together and conjured up fire. Like many of humanity’s greatest achievements it …
Elizabeth Shaw luxury chocolates
Perhaps it’s the imminent collapse of free-market capitalism, the melting of the polar ice caps, the influence of our reptilian Illuminati shapeshifting overlords, the demise of the bumble bee, or just our shameful lack of regular posts, but of late freebies have been few and far between here at Yumblog. So when our new best friends at Elizabeth Shaw got …
Chilled beetroot consommé
Middle-class dilemma #23: Lovely things beetroot, but what to do with them when they turn up for a fourth time in your Abel & Cole veg box? In the past we have roasted them, pickled them, rosti’d them, risotto‘d them, borsch‘d them, and even brownied them – all delicious in their individual ways you understand, but we here at Yumblog …
Garlic bread
Ok, here’s a plan…the next time you make pizza dough (what do you mean you don’t make your own pizza dough?) make double/quadruple/sextuple quantities, portion them out and freeze the surplus for future generations. That way, whenever you fancy something a tad tastier than can be supplied by your local Dominoes, you’ll have a pizza instantly on hand (assuming of …
The perfect sourdough
For some time it has been our mission here at the Castle Yumblog to create the perfect sourdough loaf – a subtle alchemy of simple and ancient ingredients – flour – water – salt – animated into being by wild airborne yeasts, and sculpted into final form by that most primitive of the elemental forces, fire (gas mark 9). A …
Basic tomato sauce
Disaster struck us here at Yumblog Mansions when heavy rain caused the moat to burst its banks and overflow into some of the outer buildings. Fortunately the water damage to the Orangery, Keeper’s Lodge and gift shop was only superficial, however the wine cellars were completely deluged and much of our renowned collection was lost to the world, including tragically, …
Raisin water starter
A sourdough starter is similar in many ways* to the tortoise – with love, care and regular meals it can last a lifetime and give many hours of contemplative pleasure. On the other hand, with indifference, neglect and irregular feeding, like Freda from Blue Peter, it’s prone to die a slow, silent and lonely death. Regrettably, shamefully, but not entirely …
Cheese & potato pie
The arrival of Granny and an aunty to celebrate Yumblog Junior’s second birthday had the added advantage of the potential for babysitting and therefore a rare evening out for the parents. Searching for tasty and cheesy ballast with which to fortify ourselves before what was inevitably going to be a multi-pint boozy night out, we sensibly turned to the ever-dependable …
Cheese & spinach brunch
The original source of this recipe was the excellent ‘Abel & Cole Cookbook’ – currently given away free with a month’s trial of their veg boxes. They called it something along the lines of ‘Baked spinach with cheesy weezy wosty eggy wegs’ – a little twee and Belle and Sebastian for comfort – hence the renaming. Preparation time: 5 minutes …
White bread rolls
What could be more patriotic and celebratory of sixty years on the throne than baking a batch of white rolls? Actually lots of things – but none of them took place here at the Socialist Republic of Yumblog.
Lemon barley water
You have probably read in the financial pages that Yumblog Inc. has once again upped sticks and relocated its corporate HQ a few miles up (or is it down … or along?) the road to Hebden Bridge (pop 4,500 + 3). This was no reflection on our old location of Todmorden (pop 15,000 – 3), which is a charming and …
Cheesy Rolls
Perhaps with the exception of the odd East End boozer and the ready availability of Waitrose, there are not many things to miss about no longer being in that there London. However, living as we do in the heartland of Greggs, we have yet to find any bakers which sell a decent loaf – some have made wild and reckless …