There were only 2 options on the menu – vegetarian or meat. After we’d washed our hands with water poured over us by a waiter from an elaborate silver jug, they would bring out a huge injera (a slightly sour, lemony pancake) with neat piles of different stews spaced out on top. You’d just get one injera to share between you – the more people the bigger the pancake! I love sharing food, especially when there’s lots to go round, and it was a perfect way to eat with friends.

I’ve yet to find an Ethiopian restaurant in the UK, so if you see a good one please let me know. However I have got a couple of recipes for wat (stew) and injera.  They don’t come out nearly as well as the restaurant but still taste pretty good.

I’m currently experimenting with going vegetarian again but Matt can’t survive without meat occasionally so my latest attempt included a Doro Wat (chicken) and a Vegetable Wat. I combined two different recipes to make these – one for Doro Wat from a beautiful book called the African Kitchen by Josie Stow and Jan Baldwin, and the World Food Cafe book by Chris and Carolyn Caldicott.

The most important ingredient in any wat is berbere paste, recipe below.  You are also supposed to use Niter Kibbeh, a sort of spiced, clarified butter.  I’ve never actually bothered to make this and just replace it with butter and extra spices.  There are some niter kibbeh recipes online if you are keen.

Part 1: Make the Berbere Paste

Ingredients:

• 4 cardamon pods
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 0.5 tsp fenugreek seeds
• 2 cloves
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 cm/0.5 inch root ginger
• 3 tbsp red wine
• 7 dried red chillis
• 4 tsp ground paprika
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• Ground black pepper
• Sunflower oil
• Salt
• Sterilized jar + label

This looks complicated, but it makes quite a lot of paste, which will keep for about 6 months.  You can also do this well in advance of making the Wat.

1. Toast the cardamon, coriander, fenugreek and cloves on a dry frying pan over a low-medium heat for a few minutes until fragrant.  Then transfer to a pestle and mortar and grind to a powder.
2. Put the onion, garlic and ginger into a food processor with the toasted spices, 0.5 tbsp of salt, and blend.  Slowly add the wine as you blend.
3. Toast the paprika, cayenne, some black pepper, the nutmeg and cinnamon with 1 tsp salt in a dry saucepan, stirring constantly until fragrant.
4. Remove from the pan from the heat, add the onion-spice mixture, and gradually stir in 310ml/11floz of water.
5. Place over a low heat and cook, stirring constantly, for 10-15 minutes.
6. Transfer the mixture to a sterilized jar, pressing down to remove any air pockets.  Allow to cool.
7. Cover the spice paste with oil, put the lid on and most importantly put a label on the front saying Berbere Paste and when you made it. (I always miss this step and end up with lots of jars of nondescript pastes in the back of the fridge that I’m too scared to use).  Store in the fridge for up to 6 months.

It really is worth preparing the spices properly like this, rather than just adding them direct to the stew.

Part 2: Making the Wat

Serves 2

• 2 tbsp Niter Kibbeh (or butter)
• 1 onion, very finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 inch of fresh ginger, grated
• 4 cardomom pods
• 1.5 inch cinnamon stick
• 1 clove
• 0.5 tsp fenugreek seeds
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 2 tbsp berbere paste
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 4 tbsp red wine

And for doro wat (chicken):

• 2 chicken drumsticks or thighs (with the bone and skin).  Pat the chicken dry with kitchen towel and rub all over with lemon juice and salt.  Cover and leave to marinate at room temperature for 30 minutes.
• 2 boiled eggs

Or for the vegetable wat:

• Range of cubed or chopped vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, courgettes, green beans, spring greens etc
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 100ml vegetable stock

Both Wats start with the same process:

1. Put the onions in a large casserole dish over a low heat without any oil. Stir constantly until they are soft.  If they start to stick remove the dish from the heat for a short while.
2. Add the niter kebbeh or butter.  When it starts to splutter add the garlic, ginger, cardamon, cinnamon, fenugreek and nutmeg, stirring constantly.
3. Add the berbere and paprika, stir and cook for 2 minutes.



4. Pour in the wine and 185ml/6.5floz water, then bring to the boil, stirring regularly.
5. Boil until the liquid reaches the consistency of double cream.

At this point the two recipes diverge.

2a. Doro Wat (chicken)

1. Remove the chicken from the lemon juice marinade and pat dry.  Add the pieces to the simmering sauce. Make sure each piece is coated on all sides and then cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
2. Prick the boiled eggs all over with a fork and add to the chicken – making sure they are coated all over in sauce.
3. Cover and cook for a further 10-15 minutes until chicken is tender.

2b. Vegetable Wat

1. Add all the vegetables to the simmering sauce and mix well.
2. Simmer for 10 minutes with the lid off.
3. Add the chopped tomatoes and stock and simmer until all the vegetables are cooked. Add more water if needed.

3. Making the injera

While the Wats are simmering, you can get the injera ready.  These are large savoury pancakes that you use to scoop up the stew.

Ingredients (for 2 hungry people):

• 300g/10.5 oz self-raising flour
• 75g/2.5oz wholemeal flour
• 0.5 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 250 ml/ 18floz soda water – it is really important to use soda water not tap water

Method:

1. Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Gradually beat in the soda water and 0.5 litres plain water until you have a thin, smooth batter.
3. Heat a crepe pan/large frying pan until really hot.
4. Add a little vegetable oil and coat pan.
5. Pour in a ladleful of batter and swirl it round to form a thin layer like a pancake.
6. Cook until bubbles appear all over the surface, then turn over and cook for 2-3 minutes on the other side.



7. Place the cooked injera on a plate and keep warm.  Putting the plate over a saucepan half full of water over a low heat is a good way to do this.

4. Eat!

Wat tastes best eaten with your hands. Rip off a piece of injera and use it wrap up some stew and sauce.

Naturally, being a Routemaster, the restaurant is entered through the traditional open entrance at the back of the bus.  The downstairs deck has been transformed into the kitchen; you feel the heat and smell the food as you pass by.  The bus gently sways as customers and staff go up and down the stairs, reminding you every now and then that you’re in an unusual venue.

Looking into the kitchen, it doesn’t really feel like your looking inside a bus.  However when you climb upstairs, and see the tables, you remember immediately that you are!  The upstairs has only a few tables.  At night, the limited number of tables together with candle light creates a very intimate atmosphere.  Being above the kitchen, it is a little warm but you can wind down the original bus windows to let in some air.

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If you’re a regular at vegan restaurants, you may not be surprised by the selection on offer.  If you’re not, then it may be of interest try some dishes which you may just assume would normally be non-vegetarian or non-vegan, but which in fact are not.  The menu comprises a mixture of dishes, mainly comprising European and Asian influence dishes.  Starters include a delicious mezze platters, and the very tasty Gyoza (wontons filled with peppers, mushrooms & seasonal veg).   It was interesting to learn that all the Rootmaster’s vegetables are sourced from a LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming) Marque assured supplier.  This means the veg is produced in an environmentally responsible way.

The menu seems to change frequently, but often includes the Tofu Tower (Flame grilled and marinated local tofu with crispy fried wontons & coconut vegetable curry sauce).  If (like many veggies and non-veggies alike) you’ve been put off by bad tofu experiences, this stuff is worth giving a second chance.  The fresh organic tofu is made by a local company (Clean Bean) based near the Rootmaster, on Brick Lane and is delivered by bicycle to the bus.

The idea of Vegan desserts may seem difficult to produce at first though – starved of chocolate, cream and butter.  However, the Rootmaster’s choice includes some pretty good fondant, cheesecake and ice creams.  The dark chocolate option is always good and the vegan ice cream is very good.

Drinks wise, there is a choice of soft drinks drinks, beers and wines.  Many of the drinks are widely available elsewhere and are inherently vegan friendly.  The choice is not limited by the vegan requirement.  The wine prices are range from £4.50/glass or £13.50/bottle upwards.  Soft drinks, beer and cider are reasonably priced too.

Ely’s Yard is suprising busy at night, with several bars.  This gives the square a vibrant atmosphere, even on a rainy evening.   The bus itself has no toilets, but there is an arrangement with the Big Chill bar opposite for Rootmaster diners to use their facilities.

With starters ranging from £4-£6 per person, mains from £9-£15 and desserts £5-£6, the Rootmaster is comparable in price to many London restaurants.  If you’re vegan or veggie then is a great place to go as you’ll have not only a fun venue but the choice of the whole menu.  If you’re a meat eater, you may enjoy the setting but find yourself wishing for a meat option.  If you’re willing to sacrifice the meat and go vegan once in a while, you’ll almost certainly have a great time at the Rootmaster.

The vegan menu may not be foor everyone, but in truth, is no where near as restrictive as non-vegans may fear.  Many diners were returning customers, and a mixture of vegans, veggies and meat eaters.   It’s a fun place to eat, with a great novel setting, enthusiastic staff and an intersting menu.

In the end, tired of missing out on the aspargus love-in going on various food blogs I follow, I caved in and opted for an Asparagus, Broccoli, Mushroom and Blue Cheese Pie. Unfortunately, our veg box still hasn’t supplied any asparagus so we had to opt for the supermarket stuff which was passable – nowhere near as tasty as the farm shop stuff we tend to get this time of year.

As when making any form of pie, I tend to turn to Pie Minister for inspiration. This one was loosely based on their great Wildshroom and Asparagus. I read somewhere in an interview with one of the PM guys that his top tip would be to experiment with the pastry, in this I decided to try it with a twist of Nutmeg.

Ingredients

When I made this, I did it all by eye so I’m not entirely sure of the amounts I used. If I’m honest this probably could have fed 3-4 adults. I won’t tell you how many it did – ‘We only had salad with it’ was Jenny’s defence though.

• 8 oz Purple sprouting broccoli
• 6 Asparagus Spears, 1″ long chunks
• 8 Button mushrooms, sliced
• 4 Shallots, sliced
• 2 Garlic Cloves, sliced
• 2 oz Butter
• 2 tbsp Plain flour
• Soya Milk (Unsweetened)
• 2 oz Blue Cheese
• Ready made pastry
• 1 tsp Ground Nutmeg
• 1 Egg, beaten

I tend to use soya milk because I prefer the slightly nutty taste in cooking, cow’s milk would be fine too. We ended up using Danish Blue cheese since we didn’t have a huge selection and it’s not quite as strong as some of the other choices.

Method

1. Heat just less than an oz of Butter in a pan, add the Shallots and Garlic for a couple of minutes.
2. Add the Broccoli, Asparagus and Mushrooms, cook for ~8 minutes or just before the Mushrooms get juicy.
3. Meanwhile, make a roux with the remaining Butter and Flour. If you’ve not made roux before, heat the Butter until fully melted then add the Flour gradually until fully blended (stir thoroughly!).
4. Make sure the mixture isn’t too hot before adding the Milk, mix in.
5. Crumble the Cheese slowly into it. You may need to play with the portions of milk/flour to get the right texture and amount.
6. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C.
7. Get Jenny to roll out the Pastry for you, telling her to mix in the Ground Nutmeg (you can see some in the photo above). Separate into two pieces – one for the base and one for the lid.
8. Lay the slightly bigger one on the bottom of your dish, add the filling, brush some beaten Egg around the edge to help it seal, cover with lid. Make pretty patterns around the edge with your fingers.
9. Get child/Jenny to make decorations out of remaining pastry for the lid. Glaze with Egg.
10. Cook for ~25 mins or until golden.

Although, the recipe wasn’t particularly revolutionary, Jenny’s unique mushroom and ‘asparagus’ pie decoration certainly was.

The filling was just right – the veg still had some sort of texture to them rather than turning into mushy pulp, there was plenty of the cheese sauce to keep it moist without being overly blue-cheesey. The pastry was pretty good, the nutmeg worked well but was still some way off from a PM pie.

Sundried Tomato, Spinach & Feta Filo Pastry Pie

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Vegetable Mousakka with Greek Salad, accompanied with Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread.

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Orange Passover Cake with Orange Cheesecake Topping

The night went really well and when the guests arrived, we were able to sit and drink the vino while the oven did all the work!

Sundried Tomato, Spinach & Feta Filo Pastry Pie

I picked up this recipe from BBC Good Food online.  It was very easy – just mixing feta, sundried tomatoes and spinach with whisked egg.  You then line a tin with pastry, add the filling and fold over the top.  Those of you who have read my previous blogs about pies will realise that my version (see photo) does not qualify as a pie as it does not have a complete lid.  I made the mistake of overlapping the filo pastry too much so it would not close completely.  However the guests commented about how pretty it looked, so all was not lost.  This pie is served cold, so can be baked in advance and chilled.

Vegetable Mousakka with Greek Salad, accompanied with Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread.

The vegetable Moussaka recipe came from a Greek cook book – the Olive and the Caper which to be honest, is not a very good book.  I find the recipes a little bland and the text a little wordy.  The book is by an American not a Greek and all the ingredients are listed in cups and farenheit.  A translation is below.

• 2 medium aubergines
• Olive Oil
• 1kg white potato, peeled and cut into 1/2cm thick slices
• 150g fresh breadcrumbs
• 2 large tomatoes
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 600g grated kefalotyri cheese (we used Pecorino as we couldn’t get this cheese)
• 100g butter
• 100g plain flour
• Generous pinch of freshly ground nutmeg

If you’re cooking this straight away, preheat the oven to 180°C.  Cut the aubergine lengthways into 1/2cm slices.  Fry the aubergine in a pan until golden – take care not to overload the pan; do this in several batches.  Continue adding oil with each batch, as the aubergine soaks up so much of it!  Repeat the frying process with potato slices.   To free up that all important vino time, you could prepare the white sauce (see below) whilst frying the aubergine and potato.

Prepare the “besamel sauce” by melting the butter until foaming.  Add the flour, whisking briskly as you do so, until you get a smooth paste, or as the French would say, a rue.  Continue whisking for 2 mins until the mix turns golden.  Whisk in the milk and season with salt (if you add pepper, the black flecks can spoil the look of the sauce).  Cook over a medium heat for 12-15 mins.  Whisk in the nutmeg.

Grease an oven dish and sprinkle the breadcrumbs into the bottom.  Arrange half the potato in a layer and place a few tomato slices ontop.  Add a layer of aubergines.  Repeat the sequence. Nearly there.  Whisk the egg yolks and cumin into the sauce and pour over the vegetables.  Sprinkle grated cheese over the top.  Bake in the oven for 1 hour.  Allow 15 to 20mins to rest before serving.

We prepared this early on, to allow us to bake just before we needed it.  To be honest, I was a little disappointed.  I felt that although it looked quite authentic, it was a little plain and could have benefitted from some other flavours.  It would perhaps been  better with one really thick layer of aubergine s and tomato, and one of potato.  I might try mashing the potatoes next time.

We served this up with a greek salad (Kos lettuce, white salad onion, feta, olives, cucumber, red pepper, dressed with olive oil and oregano).  Yum.

 Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread

This was a flatbread by nature, but with no yeast was a little dense.  The idea was that the bicarbonate of soda and “acidic” olives would react to lighten the bread.  I don’t really feel this worked.  However, it was golden, fragrant and delicious -everyone enjoyed it.  The smell of fresh baked bread was great.

I wanted something a good deal lighter than this bread turned out.  I would welcome any suggestions/alternative recipes to achieve this. 

Orange Passover Cake with Orange Cheesecake Topping

The astute amongst you will have spotted that my Greek Feast includes a rather Jewish sounding dessert.  Apparently Orthodox Greeks always celebrate Easter after passover has occurred, because Jesus is supposed to have celebrated Passover before the events of Easter.  Given that we cooked and ate this cake before Easter, I suppose we can get away with it!

We opted to bake this cake, which we had made before, as it is straight forward and it would seem, reliable.   It is one of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes Recipes and uses ground almonds not flour.

• 2 oranges
• 6 eggs (medium)
• 225g caster sugar
• 225g ground almonds
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Icing Sugar for dusting

For the Citrus Cheesecake Cream topping

• 200g cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia)
• 50g caster sugar
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1 small orange
• juice of 1 lemon
• 300ml double cream

To make the cake is quite straight forward.  Boil the oranges for 3 hours. Make sure they are covered with water and use a lid.  After 3 hours drain the oranges and allow to cool.  Remove the flesh and blitz in a food processor to make a smooth puree.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until thick and moussey beore folding in the ground almonds, the orange puree and baking powder.  Pour into a lined and greased tin and bake at 180°C for 55 to 60 minutes until cooked. Leave to cool.

To make the topping, beat the cream cheese with the sugar, lemon zest, orange zest and lemon juice.  Whisk the cream into soft peaks and gently fold in.

This recipe makes a lovely light and moist cake.  It’s straightforward and quick.  although I didn’t get a pic of the finished cake, you can see one here.

The meal was a great success – the plan of preparing in advance so we could have time with the guests worked brilliantly.  A good time was had by all.

This is a ‘quick’ recipe I made up which turned out to be so good that I made it twice in a week, so I had to share it on here. I’m going to split it up into two stages because the first stage you can do well in advance. First we’ll make the falafels. A few months ago I made a huge batch of ~ 30 falafels. They’re great, they store fine in the freezer and only take ~ 10 minutes to cook. Very handy if you’ve run out of food like the day I made this up.

Falafels

Ingredients

I’ve tried a few recipes before, this one from The World Food Cafe is the best I’ve found though, it serves 4-6.

• 1 tin chickpeas (225 g dry)
• 2 pitta breads or 2 slices of dry bread
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 dsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground chilli
• 2 dsp plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• handful of chopped parsley
• sesame seeds

Method

1. Using a food processor, make breadcrumbs from the bread.
2. Add everything apart from the chickpeas and sesame seeds, blend to a paste.
3. Add chickpeas, with water/more breadcrumbs if needed.
4. Roll into 1″ balls, coat in sesame seeds.

These will happily freezer for several months. To cook, just take them out a fry in sunflower oil until golden.

Constructing the Wraps

I found some massive multi-seed wraps on sale which I gave a try, I thought the size of them worked really well. I also bought some Moroccan-style Houmous (which Alice recommended).

Ingredients

Jenny and I ate two each, you could probably get away with one if you eat ‘normal’ portions. This is what I used for two wraps:

• 2 Wraps
• 3 Falafels
• 2 tbsp Tahini
• 3 tbsp Moroccan Houmous (or you could add something like Harissa paste to normal Houmous)
• 1 x Boiled Egg
• Cheddar Cheese
• Salad Leaves (Spinach?)

Method

1. If you haven’t already, fry your falafels until golden.
2. Spread a tbsp of tahini just south of the equator of the wrap, taking up 2/3 rds of the width.
3. Layer 1.5 crushed falafels on top
4. Top with Houmous, Egg, Cheese then Salad
5. Fold in the sides, Cover with the bottom, roll.
6. (Optionally) slice in half if you don’t want to look greedy

Easter isn’t Easter without Hot Cross Buns.  The smell of the fragrant spices and fruit as you bake/toast them is brilliant.  I wasn’t quite sure how Hot Cross Buns fitted in with the fasting during Lent, but Wikipedia came to my aid. 

Apparently Hot Cross Buns originated with the Saxons, with the cross dividing the bun into four, with each quarter representing one of the four phases of the moon.  Christians, who traditionally eat them on Good Friday, believe the cross is representative of the Crucifixion.  Due to their religious connotations, protestant England attempted to ban bakers from selling the buns.  However, due to their popularity, the ban was not successful and Queen Elizabeth  I passed a law which only permitted the sale of Hot Cross Buns at Easter and Christmas.

Hot cross buns belong on the list of things that you can easily buy, but taste so much better home made, along with mince pies, fresh bread and marmalade.  We used Nigella’s recipe, although with some minor tweaks (lots more spices for one thing, and half as many, but twice buns for another).  It would have been useful to have a piping bag for the crosses, but all things considered they were a triumph.   They had more fruit than the average shop bought bun and a delicious glaze on the top. Next time we will increase the fruit and spice content even more!

First I thought about  the boundaries of the ingredients themselves – Leeks don’t vary that much that I know of. Cheese provides a lot of room to manoeuvre with. Eggs encompass many different types and a variety of cooked forms, I’m not that familiar with their tastes so I was slightly reluctant to experiment. On a side note, that reminds me of Andrew Zimmern’s show with Balut (don’t look if you’re squeamish about food!).

I eventually settled upon trying to recreate an egg curry we had for breakfast in on the backwaters in Kerala, with some stuffed leek and paneer kulchas. I might need to explain myself: Curry for breakfast? Yep, it’s not like British-style curry though – far easier on the taste buds. Egg in curry? You might not get it in that many Indian restaurants in Britain, it’s fairly common though (I think it’s more of a south Indian thing) – they’re usually hard boiled. What’s paneer? It’s an Indian cheese, although I see it as having a taste and texture closer to tofu. It doesn’t melt either. Kulcha? These are new to me too, they originate from the Punjab and are like small Naan (an Indian bread).

Shopping for ingredients was a little fun, I popped over to the nearest asian area to track down some paneer and curry leaves. I tend to make paneer myself (it’s dead easy), but I wanted to minimise my cooking time. In the shop I visited, I ended up finding some Welsh Paneer! I couldn’t find any curry leaves though so I asked the guy at the till, after which he pulled out a bag from under the till. Maybe it’s the asian equivalent of tofu in Chinese shops? When I got home I was a little bermused by the episode, and unsure if ‘curry leaves’ had another meaning. Looks like curry leaves though, I also noticed he didn’t charge for them!

Ingredients

Kulcha dough

• 5 oz wholemeal flour
• 5 oz plain flour
• 2 oz cottage cheese
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 2 oz butter
• water

Kulcha filling

• 2 small leeks (or 1 large), finely sliced
• 1 green chilli
• 3 oz paneer, grated
• salt

Egg curry

• 4 eggs, hard boiled, shelled
• 1 large onion, sliced into long strips
• 2 1/2 tsp corriander powder
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp tumeric
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• handful of curry leaves
• 2 tsp tomato puree
• 400 ml coconut milk

Method

1. Start with the dough. Mix all ingredients together until you’ve got a dough. Leave covered at room temperature for 1 hour.
2. Lightly fry the leeks, this will bring out their flavour. Once translucent, take off the heat and mix with other ingredients.
3. The dough will provide 4 kulchas. Divide the mixture into 8ths and mould into circles ~4″ diameter (beer mat size). Top with kulcha stuffing and cover with another piece, pressing edges together and removing any air inside.
4. Slowly cook the kulcha at a low heat in a lightly buttered pan until golden.
5. Mix the corriander powder, tumeric and chilli powder with water into a smooth paste.
6. Dry fry mustard seeds and curry leaves for a minute. Drop a dash of oil and add the onions. When transparent add the tomato puree. Cook for a minute and add the paste from before.
7. Add the eggs for a minute and mix to absorb the colours/flavours. Finally, add the coconut milk, allow to simmer for 10 minutes. 2 minutes before the end add the garam masala.

Verdict

I served it up with half a portion of rice each with the kulchas on the side. The curry was pretty nice but I’ve still got a bit of tweaking before it’s as good as the stuff in Kerala. I might slice the eggs in half to absorb more flavour. The kulchas turned out fairly well too but I think it would have worked better if I’d stuck to my initial idea of stuffed parathas which would have been a bit lighter. A lot of recipes for Indian bread mention using a Tava.

You need 500g Seville Oranges (about four), 30 ml lemon juice (half a lemon), and 1 kg granulated sugar.  Scrub the oranges, put them in a large pan with 1.25 litres of water.  Bring to the boil, and then cover and simmer for two hours.  When they are soft, take the oranges out and measure how much water you have left, you need about 0.85 litres, so either add some more water, or keep boiling until you have the right amount.

Cut up the oranges into marmalade size strips (discarding pips, but reserving the juice).  Put the cut up orange back into the water, and add the lemon juice and sugar.  Bring to the boil and stir until the sugar is dissolved, and then boil rapidly until setting point is reached (more about this later).  The book says this should take 10-15 minutes, but it took mine about an hour to get going!  I think it’s because my casserole dish isn’t really big enough for making this volume of jam.

Leave to cool for ten minutes, stir and skim off the scum, and then poor into sterilised jars.  I added a little whisky to two of the jars right at the end, which really brought out the orangy flavour.

The resulting marmalade is really lovely, far nicer than any shop bought one I’ve ever had.  The orange flavour really comes through strongly.  It was really simple in the end, although maybe slightly more time consuming than it should have been.  I think all jam making requires a degree of confidence when you aren’t used to it, and we were unsure when the setting point had been reached (we don’t have a thermometer so used the test where you drop some jam on to a saucer and see if it crinkles), and it was hard to get the boiling started as the pan was so full.  I think a proper preserving pan might have to go on my next birthday wish list.

You need:
* 160g of basic savoury bread sponge – there’s plenty of recipes for this on the web.
* 120g plain white flour
* 40g stoneground flour
* 75g water
* pinch of salt
* about 10 ml olive oil

Mix all the above together, knead until smooth and leave to rise for an hour.

For the filling I used (apologies for the lack of quantities, I can’t remember exactly how much)
* castello blue cheese (Andrew uses gorgonzola which Sainsbury’s didn’t have, but I think would work better)
* green peppers
* mild sweet peppadew piquante peppers, which we’re really addicted to at the moment
* red onions

I fried the onions, then added the green peppers, and finally mixed in the piquante peppers and the cheese.

To construct the calzoni you need to divide the dough into four and roll gently into rounds. Leave to relax for 2 minutes and then roll out into a circle about 15cm diameter. This bit was the really fun bit. The dough is so nice and soft and stretchy and quite forgiving. You can throw it around and pretend you work at dominos.

Brush the edges with egg, put a dollop of filling in the middle and fold over. Finally brush the tops with beaten egg and leave to prove for an hour. Bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes.

To be honest the filling wasn’t a huge success. The creamy blue cheese, bitter green pepper and sweet and spicy red peppers clashed a bit. However the dough was so nice and soft and light that they were gone within 5 minutes flat. Even the two I’d made for lunch the next day.

I’ll definitely try this again but experiment with some different fillings. They taste fantastic fresh, but they could also be good things to make a batch of at the weekend for lunch during the week.

Any suggestions for fillings? Andrew says it’s better to go for things that don’t change in size dramatically when cooked otherwise you end up with an empty calzoni.

A while ago now, whilst visiting some of the local asian shops I found a jar of Date Syrup. Being quite into Dates I decided to buy some without anything particular in mind to use it for. It’s sat at the back of our cupboards for a few months now, partly because I keep forgetting its there but also because I can’t find many recipes that use it.

I’d been promising Jenny for a while now that I’d make some peanut butter biscuits, again that’s not happened either. Today I decided to experiment and mix the two together – rather than biscuits I made flapjacks, making use of the many packets of seeds and oats we had.

Ingredients (10 bars)

• 4 oz Butter
• 1.5 oz Muscovado Sugar
• 2 tbsp Date Syrup
• 2 tbsp Peanut Butter (unsweetened is good, flapjacks are sweet enough)
• 2 tbsp Sultanas
• 5 oz Porridge Oats
• 1 tbsp Sesame Seeds
• 1 tbsp Sunflower Seeds

Method

There really was nothing to this:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Cover baking tray with grease-proof paper.
• Melt the butter in a big pan.Once melted, add the sugar, syrup and peanut butter. Let it all dissolve into a smooth paste.
• Add the sultanas, oats and seeds, mix it all together.
• Layer the mixture onto the baking tray, 1/2 inch thick. Cook for 18mins.
• Let the flapjack cool for 15mins, cut into bars.

Rather than the overly rich and sticky flapjacks you’d get these turned out to have quite a wholesome, almost malty taste. They’re also slightly crumbly – perfect for having with some (ice) cream.

Some notes on Date Syrup

The Date Syrup was pretty much as you’d expect – dark, rich, sweet, syrupy. Although it’s sweet, it’s not sickly – something I could tolerate – less sweet than golden syrup. I definitely intend to use some more of the stuff, I think it works really well with nuts, I might try some sort of cake with Walnuts. It might even work with some sort of Moroccan Lamb dish.