Thursday 29 July 2010

Bake It! Lemon Squares

I love baking. Baking requires a kind of concentration that you don't need for regular cooking and I love to totally immerse myself in a recipe - my own personal method of relaxation and meditation. I also love the end product, although apart from my post baking cake and cuppa I try and avoid my creations, unless the recipes are suitably virtuous and healthy.  As it is just myself and Mr M in the house I never have the opportunity to get baking as much as I want. This means that I will jump at whatever chance I may have to get baking - birthdays, exam passes, visitors - as I write this I have blondies cooling in the kitchen and a tray of brownies in the oven, for my friends hen weekend. So imagine the joy I felt when I read about Amy Lane's Bake It! club in her blog Cooking, Cakes and Children. Not only did signing up for this club give me a monthly excuse for getting baking but July's recipe for Lemon Squares were a perfect antidote to the dismal Scottish weather.

I have copied the instruction straight from the Cooking, Cakes and Children blog but as I don't have a food processor or pastry blender I made it the old fashioned way, I always find that there is something extremely therapeutic about rubbing the fat into the flour by hand. The recipe itself was easy to follow and the Lemon Squares were absolutely delicious. I am looking forward to trying the recipe again soon and am even contemplating substituting limes for the lemons to give it a bit of a twist. As for the Bake It! club I had a fantastic time with this months recipe and I can't wait for next months challenge!

Lemon Squares


Base:
50g plain flour


75g icing sugar
175g butter, chilled and diced
pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Topping:
2 unwaxed lemons


4 eggs
50g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
 icing sugar for dusting

  • Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a baking tin, approx 24cm x 24cm x 4cm.
  • Put the shortbread ingredients (flour, icing sugar, salt, butter and vanilla extract) into a food processor and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. If you don’t have a food processor you can rub the fat into the flour and sugar by hand or using a pastry blender.
  • Tip the mixture into the baking tin and press down with a spoon and/or your hands.
  •  Bake for around 15 minutes until a light golden colour, remove from the oven but leave the oven on.
  •  Grate the lemon zest and squeeze out the juice. Put this in the food processor with the rest of the topping ingredients and blitz briefly to combine into a thin batter. Again, if you don’t have a food processor you could use a whisk.
  •  Pour the mix over the base and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes, until the topping is just set.
  •  Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Then cut into squares and dust with icing sugar. This recipe will make about 20 squares.

These are not suitable for freezing but can be kept in an airtight container for 4 days.


Thursday 15 July 2010

Lentil and Carrot Pâté

During my times as an undergraduate I flirted with vegetarianism. Unlike my flatmate at the time, who had a range of 'I am a cute little pig/lamb/chick please do not eat me' t-shirts, I became a vegetarian first as a reaction to the failure of the caterers at my university halls of residence to cook anything appetising, by my own inability to cook meat and the ease of sharing cooking with my vegi flatmate when I moved into a shared flat.
For the most part I enjoyed my life as a vegetarian, the meals that we concocted in the overcrowded kitchen of our student flat were often experimental and less than successful, but we had fun creating them. I did, however discover an allergy to Quorn which is something of a disaster for any self respecting student, never mind a vegi one. 
My biggest test as a vegetarian came when I went to my parents for the Christmas holidays. In our family Christmas is the biggest production of the year (I am hosting the annual feast for my parents, Mr M'  parents and my baby sister this year so be prepared for plenty of festive blogs as the year progresses) and  the main includes no fewer than 5 different types of meat and as a general rule more side dishes than people sitting round the table! It was the latter point that saved me during my flirtation with vegetarianism as I was more than happy to eat the vegetables and potatoes. My main problem came with the second course (or was it the third?) -  pork liver Pâté. I was determined not to give in to temptation and to prove that I could come up with a tasty meat free alternative, so to my mothers horror I made myself a Lentil and Carrot Pâté as an alternative. Unfortunately I don't think this vegetarian delight survived my mothers scrutiny to make it onto the Christmas dinner table, although my memories were of a rather tasty if unlike any Pâté I had ever had before. More recently attempts to loose weight led to me investigating vegetarian Pâté once more (I had a particularly bad experience with a well known Supermarkets low fat Brussels Pâté) and I developed this slightly more grown up and more tasty version of the Lentil and Carrot Pâté of my youth. 

Lentil and Carrot Pâté
 (Serves 4-6 as a snack or light lunch) 



200g red split lentils
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
200 g carrots, grated
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion finely chopped
2 lg garlic cloves, crushed
50g Light olive oil spread
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
Salt and pepper


  • Boil the lentils with the ground cumin and coriander for 10 minutes, add the carrots and boil for a further 10 minutes, until the lentils and carrots are soft. 
  • Meanwhile heat the olive oil in a large frying pan and cook the onion and garlic gently until soft but not coloured. 
  • When cooked drain the lentils well and transfer to a large bowl, add the cooked onion and garlic, light Olive oil spread and mix well.
  • Fry the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan until fragrant and add to the lentil mixture. 
  • Season the lentil mixture to taste and chill for at least two hours. 
This is delicious with toasted bread and salad as a light lunch.