Apple Turnover

One of my colleagues at work regularly buys enormous decadent pastries for "lunch dessert", from the local patisserie. He let me try a bite of his apple turnover, which was taller than it was wide! It consisted of a puff pastry base, then inch-thick layers of pie apple, custard, and whipped cream, topped at least with a puff pastry hat. It was amazing.

I knew that sitting at home was a bag of extremely cheap apples, which had not turned out very good for eating. I resolved to make apple turnovers to use them up and satisfy my craving for such an awesome dessert. While you could add custard and cream to these, they're more of a simple quick dessert that you can serve hot, with an added side of ice cream. I've written instructions for just two turnovers, but they're easy to make in large batches, as long as you have enough oven trays.

Ingredients

• two eating apples
• 1 tbsp of lemon juice
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• a sheet of ready-made puff pastry

Core, peel and dice the apples, dropping into the lemon juice as you go, to prevent browning. Stir in the sugar and cornflour, then microwave for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apple has softened and the cornflour has thickened the juices.

Preheat the oven to 200C and lay out a greased or silicone-lined baking tray. Cut the sheet of pastry into two rectangular halves. Lay out one half and spoon half of the apple mixture onto one side of it. Fold the other side over the top and press the edges together all around, so the pastry sticks together. Prick the top a couple of times with a fork. Do the same for the other piece of pastry, with the rest of the mixture.

Bake for 15 minutes or so, until risen, golden and crispy. Serve immediately, with vanilla ice cream.

Yasai Itameru (Stir-fried tofu in coconut noodles)

I went back to the Wagamama cookbook for this one, and it wasn't half bad. I think the recipes still lack focus, having too many different kinds of vegetables, and the quantities are all over the place. However the sauce was very tasty, if a little rich. I also think it's silly to try to stir fry tofu at the same time as your vegetables: you can get a nice crispy skin if you do them separately, as shown in the photo. I'm posting my amended recipe rather than their original.

Ingredients
For the sauce

• 1 garlic clove
• a thumb of ginger
• two lemongrass sticks
• 100ml hot water
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tsp sugar
• 100g in of coconut milk or cream (depending on how fat you feel)

For the stir-fry

• 75g rice noodles
• 1 red chilli
• 1 red onion
• a bunch of Chinese vegetables, like pak choi
• 50g sweet potato (about an inch from the middle)
• 200g firm tofu, cut into cubes
• a bunch of fresh coriander
• juice of half a lime (or lemon)
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce

Crush the garlic, peel and grate the ginger, and finely shred the lemongrass. Cook in a small saucepan in the hot water until the garlic has softened. Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook gently for a few minutes, but don't let it boil or the coconut milk can separate.

Cook the noodles according to their packet instructions. Peel and (if you like) deseed the chilli, then finely chop. Finely slice the red onion. Julienne the sweet potato. Clean and separate the pak choi. Stir fry the sweet potato and red onion until becoming tender, then add the rest of the vegetables and stir fry until just barely cooked, then remove from the pan to free it up for the tofu. Stir fry the tofu until golden and crispy, then return the vegetables to the pan and squeeze over the lime juice and soy sauce. Combine the noodles with the coconut sauce, and serve the vegetables over the top of them, topped with the coriander and a lemon or lime segment.

Pot-Roast Pork with Pears and Apples

Another winter, another conference season of failing to post! And before that, kitchen renovations; and before that, moving house! So, I'll try to get back into posting. Maybe a less ambitious target would be one new recipe a week? At least now that I have so many of my fallbacks posted.

During the move I took the time to reorganise my recipe file, which meant I found some recipes I had set aside meaning to try, but had forgotten about. Most come from the Observer, but British recipes often work poorly here because of the warm climate. Fortunately it's moderately cool at the moment, so I broke out a really gorgeous pot roast originally from Nigel in November 2009. I didn't expect much because the few times I have roasted pork, it's been dry and boring, but this pot roast was a revelation! I also simplified the recipe because in my experience, all that turning and browning at the start is totally pointless. I chucked in some fennel tops (the stalky bits that stay tough no matter what you do) to give the liquor a bit more flavour, and it seemed like a good way to use them up. This serves six with leftovers.

Ingredients

• a couple of medium onions
• 4-6 pears or apples
• 2kg piece of pork on the bone
• 400ml perry or cider
• a couple of bay leaves
• a few sticks of celery or leftover fennel tops (optional)

Set the oven to 200C. Peel, halve, and slice the onions. Core the pears/apples and cut into thick wedges. Pop the pork into a large oven-proof casserole dish (I use a Le Creuset) along with the pears/apples, onion, cider, bay leaves, and fennel tops if using. Cover and roast in the oven for about 90 minutes, or until the pork is cooked. (If it's leg, the meat will still be dark, but will have lost that 'squeaky' uncooked quality.)

You can rest the roast and serve it up, or (my favourite), put the whole thing in the fridge and serve a day later, with the pork cold and shredded, and the cooked apples and onions briefly reheated in the microwave, then seasoned. The pork works excellently with mashed potatoes and braised red cabbage.

Lemon Cheesecake

I had a sudden, inexplicable craving for lemon cheesecake. Not just the kind where the cheese has some lemon in it, but the kind with a delicious layer of lemon curd on top. I haven't made a cheesecake in over a decade, and had a minor panic when I found out there are actually two kinds: a "no-bake" version that you simply chill, and a baked version, which when I considered I decided was the kind I had bade before, and roughly knew how to do. I googled around until I found a good recipe, and ended up following this one, from a supermarket website, no less! I used block Philadelphia though; I've found the supermarket versions here have a weird plasticky texture, which is probably so they remain unmelted even when it's 40 C outside.

Ingredients:
Cake

• 200g plain biscuits
• 125g butter, melted
• 500g Philadelphia cream cheese
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• Zest of a lemon
• 2 eggs

Curd

• Zest of a lemon
• 1/4 cup Lemon Juice
• 1/2 cup Caster Sugar
• 40g butter, cubed
• 2 eggs

Preheat oven to 180°C or 160°C fan. Grease a 20cm springform cake tin. Pulse biscuits in a food processor, or bash with a rolling pin until finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl and add the melted butter: stir until combined. Spoon biscuit mixture into prepared cake tin and press evenly on base and sides. Cool in the fridge for at least 30 min.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar and lemon zest with an electric mixer until smooth. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, until combined. Pour mixture into tin and place on a baking tray. Bake for 25-30 mins, or until just set in the centre. Turn off oven and leave cheesecake in the oven with the door ajar for a couple of hours or until oven is completely cool. Chill in the fridge for two hours.

For the lemon curd, combine lemon zest, juice, sugar, butter and eggs in a saucepan or double boiler over low heat. Cook, stirring, for 5-10 mins, or until mixture thickens. If you like, strain through a fine sieve onto a dinner plate or flat tray -- I usually don't bother. Pour the curd over the cheesecake and chill until ready to serve. Scatter with a little more lemon zest if you like.

Osso Buco

Still winter, and I'm still craving those yummy sticky warming dishes. Here's one I've never made before: osso buco, a Milanese speciality of cross-cut veal shanks. I was inspired by seeing a cheap pack of ox-tail at the butcher's, and figured a cow's tail is probably pretty similar to a calf's leg. I followed this recipe from taste.com and it was pretty yummy and very rich. So much so that we only had fairly small servings -- one large piece of ox-tail per meal was more than enough. So this recipe would serve six people, or maybe four if they've been hill-walking or ice climbing!

Ingredients:
Osso buco

• 1kg veal shanks or ox-tail
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 2 medium red onions, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 medium carrots, thickly sliced
• 2 sticks celery, thickly sliced
• 410g can crushed tomatoes
• a glass of dry white wine
• 250ml beef stock (cube/powder is fine)
• 2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary, mint)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste

Gremolata

• 1 garlic clove, crushed (optional)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 tablespoon finely grated lemon rind

In a deep casserole dish with a lid, toss the veal shanks in flour and fry briefly to caramelise. (Or skip, if you're strapped for time). Chuck everything else in, stir well, and cook, just simmering, for about six hours, or until the meat is falling off the bone and the vegetables have disintegrated into a thick sauce. Check every so often to make sure it's not burning.

Combine the gremolata ingredients and serve on top of the osso buco, on a big pile of fluffy mash or gooey polenta.

Pot-Roast Turkey Legs

Aside from cheese, chocolate, Marmite, Shreddies, Grape Nuts, wild mushrooms, cold-weather vegetables and chestnuts, the food I miss most from the UK is wild game birds like duck, pheasant, quail and partridge. Cooking them was simple: pot-roast with lentils and root vegetables until tender and delicious. Especially as the weather turns cooler, I start to crave those autumn treats... but there is no shooting season here, and the only remnant of introduced hunting are the feral foxes.

I was walking through the poultry aisle at the supermarket when I saw a pack of turkey drumsticks. Aside from the occasional replacement for schnitzel or the ubiquitous Christmas roast, I've never really cooked with turkey. It suddenly occurred to me that the dark, gamy legs might substitute perfectly for the game birds I'd been missing. I whacked them in a casserole with a few of the usual accompaniments: carrots, potatoes, brown lentils, bay leaves and a bit of stock, and pot-roasted them for a couple of hours.

What a success! They came out deliciously tender, falling off the bone, and had something of that umami rich flavour that chicken never quite manages. A leg each was more than sufficient so from a pack of six we got three meals between us. Very tasty and easy: just substitute a leg per quail or a couple of legs per pheasant in any usual game bird recipe.

Kale and Apple Salad

One thing I'll say about no frost here is that it makes kale a premium, exotic ingredient. Instead of being a huge prickly vegetable so tough you either need to boil it or feed it to a pig, it's packed up like salad and is so tender you can eat it raw. A rather tasty way of doing so is to combine it with some mandolined apple and a handful of chopped dried fruits and nuts (e.g. raisins and almonds, as we did) and dressed simply with lemon juice and olive oil.

You still have to shred it finely, and it takes more of a chew than lettuce, but it's pretty filling, especially with a couple of boiled potatoes to give the sharp salad a contrast. If you want a bit more protein, feel free to shave over some feta, goats' cheese, or even parmesan.