One of my favorite recipes from MADE IN AMERICA to cook for the family is Tom Colicchio’s Chicken Soup recipe – I make it at least twice a month – and more like once a week, with the sniffles we have all had to varying degrees recently. It’s also super easy to prepare, extremely satisfying and I can adapt it to keep it light – it’s a natural LEAN FIX! The kids can’t get enough of this soup. I have made it so many times now that it’s changed a little from the original recipe that Colicchio gave me for MADE IN AMERICA but the essence of the original recipe remains the same.

Excerpt from MADE IN AMERICA:
“This is what I do on days like today,” says Tom Colicchio, “I make chicken soup.” It’s blizzard conditions outside and it’s taken five minutes for me to defrost as we sit together at Colicchio & Sons, the stylish restaurant he opened when his second son was a newborn. Colicchio’s chicken soup is his go-to recipe at home; he cooks it up about twice a month for his family. Colicchio hasn’t ever put this soup on the menu at his restaurant, braised chicken with truffles under the skin, similar to a dish he did when he worked at Gramercy Tavern, yes, but not a lowly chicken soup. Sam Sifton in his three star New York Times review wrote that the menu at Colicchio & Sons has “an aesthetic that is entirely American. It appropriates all that has come to it, without apology.”

When Colicchio is in town and not on set as the chief judge on Top Chef he’s at his restaurants, although the James Beard Outstanding Chef of 2010 is the first to admit he cooks a lot less these days. Colicchio hates the term celebrity chef, although finds it funny that movie stars, like Kate Winslet, who he considers real celebrities, ask to meet him. We talk about apps for the iPad—he’s not that impressed with the cooking ones to date. He enjoys reading the blog “Ideas in Food”—“There’s a lot of information and the photography is great.” However, the lack of ethics on a lot of the internet food sites angers him. “They make stuff up, they claim they are journalists but it’s tabloid and they don’t check facts or even care. Horrible.” We talk about the new ideas in cooking and molecular gastronomy,  “I want to start messing around with liquid nitrogen, but it’s all a little bit of a gimmick.”

People have turned to chicken soup as a cold remedy for centuries around the world.  Dubbed “Jewish Penicillin,” chicken soup was even given as a prescription in England, and the Chinese also believe it helps to restore health. Recently science is catching up to tradition, and studies show that the soup does indeed have anti-inflammatory properties and thins mucus, plus the steam helps to decongest, the vegetables contain lots of healthy nutrients and the light broth is easy to digest.

In medieval times in Europe the soup was eaten separately from the chicken – which is how Colicchio suggests serving his dish. Across the world starch has been added to the soup; rice noodles, pasta, potatoes or dumplings can all be served with it.

Colicchio’s chicken soup is bursting with flavor and restorative, perfect if you are in need of a boost reaching for tissues. “The hardest part of the recipe is the cutting of the chicken. I like to start the chicken in the water and cook for forty minutes before I add the vegetables and then I add the pasta shells at the end,” he says. Once you’ve tried this simple and straightforward recipe, I’m certain you’ll never go back to canned or boxed soup again.

I don’t bother quartering the chicken – I place the whole bird into the pot and then pick off/carve the meat when it’s cooked (it’s usually falling off the bone). This cuts out the hardest part of Tom’s recipe. I also add a couple of teaspoons of Better Than Bouillon Organic chicken stock. The family all have large helpings of pasta in their soup whilst I usually eat it without.

Chicken Soup

Adapted from Tom Colicchio’s recipe in MADE IN AMERICA

1 organic chicken
2 teaspoons Better than Bouillon organic chicken stock
12 baby carrots or 2 carrots peeled and halved
2 celery stalks, washed and halved
2 leeks, washed well and halved
2 parsnips, peeled and halved.
1 onion peeled and halved
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
10 fresh flat parsley leaves
3 small fresh sage leaves
fleur de sel
freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ cups small shell pasta or piccolo pasta bows (optional)
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (optional)
Extra virgin olive oil

Makes 4 servings with lots of leftovers

1. Rinse the chicken under cold running water and place in a large stockpot with enough water to cover it, about 1 gallon. Over low heat simmer gently, skimming regularly for 30 minutes.
2. Add the chicken stock, carrots, celery, leeks, parsnips, onion and fresh herbs. Season with salt and black pepper. Simmer for a further 20 – 30 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, over high heat bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, return to the pot, add ½ cup of the broth from the soup and cover until ready to serve.
4. Divide the pasta into 3 of the 4 bowls, no pasta for those keeping it carb-lite. Remove the chicken from the pot and either serve alongside the soup as Colicchio suggests or pull off pieces of chicken and add to the bowls. Remove some of the vegetables, slice and divide between the bowls. Finally, ladle the hot chicken soup into each bowl and serve immediately with the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

When I first met my husband he didn’t like Indian food and quite literally turned his nose up at the mere thought of a good chicken jalfrezi. He’d been brought up to consider it lowly and not worth bothering with. Well I soon changed that! Forget fish and chips, many in England believe that Chicken Tikka Masala is Britain’s national dish. We were lucky enough to live around the corner from Dawat, actress and cookbook author, Madhur Jaffrey’s restaurant in New York and after just one visit he was converted. We now eat a lot of curry based dishes that I tend to cook at home.  It’s a great way of getting more vegetables into our diet in the form of soups (Baby Kale Soup) and I like the way meat cooks in the sauce and stays very juicy and tender. Flavor from all the spice blends overcomes the need for heavy calorific sauces – unless you go for a more traditional Chicken Tikka Masala recipe that includes butter, heavy cream and yogurt. I assure you, you can still make an amazing curry that’s light on the calories and HUGELY satisfying – and this is how:

I have been experimenting with a coconut chicken curry  in my slow cooker having picked up a can of light coconut milk at Trader Joe’s. Apparently it’s made from the second pressing so it’s lower in fat that regular coconut milk. I came across a recipe by Salt and Paprika that looked very promising. Not only did it use the slow cooker but it gave me a chance to use my new KitchenAid food processor – a two for one deal in the limited gadgets I have in the kitchen. Super easy to prepare but just a little long in the slow cooking department – if we weren’t going to sit down until 10.30pm – I had to adapt.

I would highly recommend making up a large pot of this for a movie night in – A Passage to India would be a good choice – not that I’m biased or anything. Yes, you could track down a copy of a Satyajit Ray film and be entranced by the magical cinematography and direction, and if you’ve never seen any of these masterpieces you really should. But I wanted something that represents the Anglo-Indian cuisine brought back to England, that is the basis for cooking curry at home using ready made spice mixes such as Garam Masala. Scenes of the British Raj having tea on the lawn in white dresses juxtaposed with the real India of busy market places and exotic spice stands.

Slow Cooked Coconut Chicken Curry
Adapted from Salt and Paprika

1 whole organic chicken
1 large organic onion, peeled and quartered
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and cut into large pieces
2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh ginger
1 can (6oz) Trader Joe’s organic tomato paste
1 can Trader Joe’s light coconut milk
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
1 tablespoon Garam Masala
1 tablespoon Sambar (Curry powder)
1 whole red chili pepper (if you don’t want it spicy leave this out – if you like more heat use 2)

1. Break down the chicken into wings, thighs and breasts. I removed the skin from the thighs and breasts, cutting the breast meat into large pieces. Place all the chicken meat into the slow cooker.
2. Place the onion, garlic,  yellow pepper, ginger, tomato paste, coconut milk, salt, Garam Masala and Sambar in the food processor and process on high until you have a thick sauce.
3. Pour the sauce over the chicken in the slow cooker, add the red chili pepper. Cover with the lid and cook on high for 3 hours, stirring every 1/2 an hour. [Alternatively, you can cook this on low for 6 hours]
4. Transfer the curry to a large saucepan and cook on high heat for about 20 minutes. This not only reduces the sauce and brings out all the flavors it also means there’s no need to add any thickening agents such as corn flour. As the sauce is reducing you can cook the rice.
5. Serve the curry over basmati or organic brown rice or if you are like me and trying to cut down on grains/carbs eat as is – super satisfying in and of itself.

Holy Moley it’s been a busy week and so international – with Chinese New Year, Burn’s Night and now today January 26th it’s Australia Day, we have lots to celebrate from around the world every day of the week.

Happy Australia Day!

Last year we made Anzac cookies using Australian chef Curtis Stone’s recipe. This year I thought today was a good day to get to know Curtis a little better in his own words over an Outdoor Grilled Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Nectarine Chutney that he contributed to MADE IN AMERICA. [Perfect sandwich to share whilst watching a football match too! Which I believe is what a lot of you are up to most Sundays between now and the 5th February]

Grilled cheese cooked outside on the grill seems so obvious and I thank my friend, Curtis, for introducing me to it. He invites me over to show me how it’s done. When I arrive he’s in the kitchen laughing at viral videos on his iPad and we share our favorites. He takes me on a tour of his new home in Los Angeles which is undergoing some construction before he moves in, and then we head into the backyard to make an outdoor grilled cheese sandwich together.

Preparing the sandwich takes Curtis no time and he makes it all look super easy, partly because everything has been beautifully prepared but mostly because he is in his element—cooking outside. The hardest part is slicing the ciabatta to get two long, thin, even, pieces of bread. “I feel that a sandwich shouldn’t be about the bread but what goes in it,” says Curtis, “so cut the bread thin.” He then rubs the bread liberally with garlic before piling on the cheese, chutney and arugula and sliding it into his outdoor pizza oven.

When I ask Curtis for the yield of his recipe he admits to already having eaten one before I arrived.  “Serves four regular people or one as a mid-afternoon snack if you are Curtis!” I joke. If you don’t have access to an outdoor oven, gas grill or a charcoal grill and you are indoors, use a panini press or bake in an indoor oven or under the broiler.  “You can even use a griddle pan on the stove and put a brick on top!” says Curtis.

The sandwich comes out of the oven sizzling and oozing melted cheese. Stone picks up a slice and bites into it—long strings of cheese stretching from his mouth to the sandwich.

LL: How long have you lived in Los Angeles?

Curtis: I’ve lived here for 5 years, moving about from Pasadena, West Hollywood, Santa Monica and now the Hollywood Hills. The eucalyptus trees remind me of home [Melbourne, Australia]. It’s a special part of the world, ’cause there are not many big cities where you can live right on the coast or live in a spot where you feel like the country and still be 10 minutes away from the center of the action.

LL: Where do you like to surf?

Curtis: I surf at Malibu more than anywhere else; it’s easy for me to get to and it’s a nice slow wave. The older I get the worse my surfing becomes. So I’m down there with all the old fat blokes! Now I’m going to be beaten up in the water for that comment!

LL: I’m surprised to learn you’ve never been fishing locally. Want to come fishing with chefs for Go Fish LA next time?

Curtis: Take me! I love fishing and that would be an awesome day out! I’d bloody love to!

LL: How does getting in touch with where your food comes from change the way you cook it?

Curtis: It changes it massively. If you can get your hands on good local natural produce—whether it’s fish, meat, seafood, vegetables, fruit—you have a respect for it and you can make that connection. It might be that you go to a farmers’ market or that you visit the farm or catch a fish or meet the fishmonger. You develop that respect and this translates to showing off the ingredient for what it is—not complicating it. One thing that we do is we take a life every time we cook an animal and it should be a complete celebration of that animal’s life, a real show of respect for how you prepare it and eat it.

LL: What’s your favorite farmers’ market here in LA?

Curtis: Probably Santa Monica and I think half the reason of that is that all the chefs hang out down there. So we all go down and get a coffee and shoot the shit with each other. I love the atmosphere in fresh markets. We don’t get to film at farmers’ markets as much as I want because we have to stick to certain days and it doesn’t coincide with those days.

LL: So today I want to talk about grilling and then your take on grilled cheese.

Curtis: I love grilling. We are lucky enough to live down here in the sunshine so I’m outside a lot when I cook. Grilling’s such a great way to cook because there’s less cleaning up, it’s really healthy, I think it’s a really social way to cook as well ’cause you can sort of do your preparation ahead of time and then when people arrive you can be standing around and cooking at the barbie but still having a beer or a glass of wine and chatting to your friends. It’s a very casual way of eating too and I think that being casual and relaxed is a really nice way to entertain. I’ve written a cookbook actually called Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone: Recipes to Put You in My Favorite Mood. It’s all about the entire cooking process. There’s a salad in there that cooks some shrimp and you could easily do that on the barbie.

LL: Any unexpected items other than a grilled cheese sandwich you like to throw on the barbie?

Curtis: You can do everything; I’ve even grilled nectarines on the BBQ and then drizzled a little bit of local honey on the top and served it with some fresh yogurt. It’s a beautiful start to the day [grilling breakfast—who knew?!]. There’s grilled pineapple with a coconut caramel sauce in my book, so you can do desserts like that. You know, if you are gonna serve an appetizer, especially if you’re grilling, you could caramelize some peaches and then serve it with some prosciutto or some figs with prosciutto and some nice balsamic vinegar and some wild arugula.

Anything that you can cook in a pan you can pretty much cook on a grill and if you can’t—say you’re cooking a delicate piece of fish—then you can basically take a pan out, turn the grill up on full and sit the pan on top of the grill. So you can still cook it all outside.

LL: What’s the biggest mistake people make with grilling?

Curtis: I think they don’t get prepared well enough before they start. It’s one of those things, once you start you can’t stop. I sound like a snack commercial! Once you’ve put something onto the grill you’ve started that process and then if you look around and think “Shit, I forgot the salt,” you’ve got to run inside and by the time you get back out it’s like “Oh, a cloth or a platter to put the food on.” So I think the best way to do it is to get yourself a little bit of a system and say “OK, what do I need when I’m out there? I need the meat I’m going to cook. I need the olive oil. I need some salt and pepper. I need the dry rub that I’m going to put on it. I need the plate that’s going to take my meat out and then I need a plate when I take it off to put it on and I need the condiments.” So you need to make yourself up like a tray to take outside, take everything out and make sure you’ve got everything in place.

The other thing that people don’t do is they don’t pre-heat their grill well enough. Really super important that your grill’s red hot before you put anything on it.

My dad burns everything that he grills. EVERYTHING! It doesn’t matter how much you say it, it doesn’t matter how much he’s got a chef as a son, he burns everything he does.

And lastly, let the meat rest—for about half the time that it’s taken to cook it

____________________________________________________

Outdoor Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Nectarine Chutney
Curtis Stone [Los Angeles, California] for MADE IN AMERICA

The perfect mix of outdoor cooking and America’s favorite—the grilled cheese sandwich – supersized for sharing in celebration of Australia Day.

1 ciabatta loaf (about 12 inches long by 4 1/2 inches wide)
extra virgin olive oil, for brushing
1 large garlic clove, cut in half
4 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 cup nectarine chutney (recipe follows)
8 ounces Buckaroo cheese (Cowgirl Creamery), rind trimmed, sliced 1/8 inch thin
4 ounces Red Hawk cheese (Cowgirl Creamery), rind trimmed, sliced 1/8 inch thin
2 cups baby arugula
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Nectarine Chutney

2 teaspoons canola oil
1 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds
1 small white onion, finely diced
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
4 firm but ripe nectarines (about 1 1/2 pounds total), pitted, cut into about 1-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Heat the outdoor oven or grill to medium to high heat.
2. Using a large serrated knife, trim 1/8 of an inch off the top and bottom of the ciabatta. Then cut the ciabatta horizontally in half. So you have two long slices of bread about ½ inch thick.
3. Brush the top and bottom of the ciabatta with olive oil, season lightly with salt and pepper and rub with the garlic clove. Place the ciabatta slices, oiled sides down, on the grill and cook until just barely golden brown, rotating but not turning over to toast evenly, about 3 minutes.
4. Remove the ciabatta from the grill and reduce the heat to low. Spread one toasted side of the ciabatta with mustard and spoon chutney over the other.
5. Over the mustard  place the Buckaroo and Red Hawk cheeses. Scatter the arugula on top of the cheese and cover with the top half of the ciabatta, chutney side down, and press firmly to hold the sandwich together. Lightly brush the top of the sandwich with oil.
6. Place the sandwich, oiled side down, in the oven or on the grill over the burner on low heat and close the hood.
7. Cook until the cheese melts and the bread is golden brown, rotating the sandwich as needed to brown evenly, about 8 minutes per side.
8. Transfer the sandwich to a cutting board. Using a serrated knife cut the sandwich into 8 pieces and serve immediately.

Serves 4

To make the chutney

1. Heat the oil in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add the mustard seeds and sauté until they begin to pop, about 30 seconds.
2. Add the onion and sauté until tender and translucent, about 4 minutes.
3. Stir in the sugar, vinegar, ginger, and pepper flakes. Simmer until the sugar dissolves.
4. Add the nectarines and cook until the nectarines are tender but still hold their shape and the syrup thickens slightly, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Stir in the salt.

Makes 3 cups

Chef Curtis Stone’s Tips

“Rubbing the bread with garlic is important. What you don’t want are pieces of garlic on the bread because they will burn, you just want the flavor.”

“The chutney should stay good in the refrigerator for up to week”

Let’s be frank – I’m not a lover of that Great Chieftain o’ the puddin’ race. You can read my ideas for a last minute Burn’s night supper in Squid Ink. We are invited to a Burn’s Night Supper this coming Saturday and as much as I’m looking forward to the revelry, the poetry with the fake Scot’s brogue (it truly helps when reciting Wee sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie) and the toasts to the lassies – oh and then to an after dinner highland fling, I’m filled with dread when it comes to the menu – or more specifically the haggis.

As a side note my host’s father apparently appears in the David Lean film Madeline in the Scottish dancing seduction scene:

Haggis, unlike the Gay Gordons, for those of you without a drop of Scottish blood, will not be something you are rushing out to try. Trust me on this one. Take one sheep’s stomach and stuff it with sheep’s pluck – heart, lungs and liver – all minced up with oats, suet, onion and spices. The nutty texture and particular savory flavor of Scotland’s national dish is an acquired taste, so I’m told.

I’m taking the fifth on this one – or rather the GF! Sticking to my grain free diet, yes I can actually use this to my advantage to get out of eating haggis because it contains oats, I’m bringing a shepherd’s pie to the table for those tim’rous beasties who would rather not eat offal, however dramatically presented. Brendan Collins of Waterloo and City, Los Angeles, gave me his recipe for shepherd’s pie for MADE IN AMERICA and it was recently featured in THE WEEK as the Recipe of the Week. I’ll probably serve the traditional tatties and neeps of the Burn’s Night supper like Brendan does – as buttered baby vegetables carefully arranged on the top of the pie.

A fellow Brit, Collins worked as Marco Pierre White’s sous chef at Quo Vardis in London before coming to Los Angeles to work for Josiah Citrin at Mélisse. Shepherd’s Pie is one of the most traditional dishes on the menu at Waterloo and City—“This is a true gastropub,” says Collins. “We serve high level gastronomic food in a relaxed pub setting.” You can imagine Collins popping down to the pub for a quick pint and a round of darts back in his hometown of Nottingham, England. There’s a dartboard in the private room—all that’s missing are skittles (a type of indoor bowling alley found in pubs back home).

I just love this video Collins made, some of the best behind the scenes in a restaurant footage – complete with The Clash, bowler hats in the kitchen and lots of steaming pots:

Meat pies and in particular mutton pies topped with pastry can be traced back to medieval England and probably earlier. However, it wasn’t until the 18th century that potatoes were used; potatoes being a relatively new food in Europe, introduced by the Spanish from the New World. Late 19th-century American cooks were making shepherd’s pie and even calling it such. Mrs. Rorer in her Philadelphia Cook Book (1886) has a recipe for a rather bland version. Interestingly, she adds flour to her mashed potatoes and makes a type of potato pastry to use as the crust. Since the flour isn’t listed in the ingredients I wonder if she added this at the last minute thinking that it wouldn’t be a proper pie without a pastry crust?

Collins understands that a true shepherd’s pie uses lamb or mutton; if you use beef it’s a cottage pie. He tops his meat with mashed potatoes and parsnips, mixed with horseradish, giving a nice unexpected bite to the dish. He then carefully balances a selection of glistening buttered baby vegetables on top of his piping hot pie. Shepherd’s pie has never looked so pretty or tasted so good.

I have recently cut way back on grains and really focused on eating highly nutritious food. I feel so much better for it – much less sluggish and bloated. I have been eating much more protein and really trying to find ways to incorporate more fresh vegetables into my diet.

It’s easier to find satisfying food that is gluten/grain free for lunch and dinner but I have really been missing a slice of toast or a big bowl of crunchy granola for breakfast. That’s when I came up with this high protein meal of smoked salmon and poached eggs on top of micro greens. I usually think of making scrambled eggs with smoked salmon but I like the way the yolk of the egg acts almost like a dressing on the micro greens as you break into it.

My father-in-law, chef Jean Jacques Rachou, showed me how to poach eggs this way when we were making eggs Benedict for MADE IN AMERICA. He doesn’t use vinegar in the water or a whirlpool swirl – rather he just gently slides the egg into soft boiling water in a shallow pan from a tea cup. The egg takes about 3 minutes to cook so that the yolk is soft but the white is set. After lifting the egg out of the water and blotting it on the paper you can trim any excess white for the perfect round egg – no special equipment needed.

This past weekend for a girl’s brunch get together hosted by Gaby Dalkin of WhatsGabyCooking I decided to make this, not daunted by having to make poached eggs for one and all – it really is super easy and such a satisfying addition to any brunch – you really won’t be missing the hot buttered toast or sugary muffins. Carrie Vitt of Deliciously Organic called me on her drive back home in the evening to ask if I’d used olive oil on the greens – she then posted this instagram of her lunch today. @JenJerk (Jenny Kayano, who was also at our brunch) then replied on Twitter: Darn it, i was *totally* craving that this morning! i just couldn’t get my act together to make it for brekkie! To quote Oscar Wilde – the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it – I say forget brekkie have this for supper.

Smoked Salmon and Poached Egg on Micro Greens

Micro greens
Organic Meyer lemon
2 0z Trader Joe’s wild coho smoked salmon
Freshly milled black pepper
1 egg, poached

1. Make a little mound of micro greens in the center of the plate and give this squirt of lemon juice. Place small pieces of the smoked salmon on top and give these a squirt of lemon juice and a little black pepper.
2. In a pan bring about 2 – 3 inches of water to a soft boil. Crack the egg in to an egg cup and then gentle slide this into the water. Poach for about 3 minutes, until the top of the yolk is turning white. Remove with a slated spoon and blot very gently on kitchen towel to remove any excess water.
3. Place the egg on top of the salmon and micro greens. Grind a little extra black pepper and serve immediately.

I was going to call this new series ‘Quick Fixes’ – being simple, quick and easy to do, but ‘quick’ sounds so short term and not really part of the long term changes I hope these posts will inspire to help make you feel great. I don’t want to get bogged down with the whys and wherefores of these recipes and meal plans – but rather jump right in and share the little things I now do to help maintain a healthy body.

Rather like tea, marmalade is a favorite of the British and yet unlike many other of the Old World culinary traditions this one was never really fully adopted in the New World. Too bitter, too bitty or just too much of an acquired taste compared to the jars of sweet grape jelly American’s palates are used to?

As well as a favorite for poets like T.S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats, marmalade is the favorite of that English taste-maker James Bond for breakfast, more specifically 007 insists on Frank Cooper’s Vintage Oxford marmalade on his toast. Scott carried Frank Cooper’s with him to the Antarctic and Hillary took it with him up Everest. This is what I remember my father eating for breakfast when I was a child, on thick slabs of Aga toast with generous quantities of freshly churned butter made with thick Devon cream on the farm. My Stepmother, sister and I tended to favor Robertson’s Golden Shredless – not just because it was sweeter but because you could collect the all important golly tokens and send off for prized enamel golly badges (this un PC collection was apparently the longest running collector scheme in history 1928 – 2002).

Alice encounters an empty jar of marmalade as she falls down the rabbit hole, Mr. Badger has jars of the stuff in his winter stores in Wind in the Willows and the Beatles sing about “marmalade skies” in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. All English children know that Paddington Bear’s paws, not to mention his head, must have always been sticky from the marmalade sandwich he keeps under his hat and in the poem The King’s Breakfast by A.A. Milne, instead of his usual butter on his bread the King is told “That many people nowadays like marmalade instead.”

When my neighbor rang on Saturday to ask if I liked oranges and then within minutes showed up with a giant bag that had been picked that morning and I was invited to go to a marmalade making class, all within 24 hours, I knew it was a sign for me to get out my preserving pan and start simmering away. No time to make it to the class sadly, which was all about using citrus fruits such as yuzu, blood oranges and mandaquats, I had to find a traditional recipe elsewhere. As luck would have it my friend Yotam Ottolenghi was visiting and he kindly gave me his recipe for Seville Orange Marmalade – and let me say it was for vast quantities – no doubt enough to supply the walls of the many Ottolenghi cafés with glass jars of the amber sticky stuff, but way too much to fit in my pan or pantry. As is the way when chefs give you recipes there’s a lack of detail in the preparation, they expect you to know the subtle all important techniques, so I also checked out my other two favorite Brits in the kitchen – Delia Smith and Nigel Slater – and here’s what I came up with – a mish mash of all of them.

The whole process isn’t difficult but it does take two days - and it’s worth it for the aromas that fill the house and the slowing down to capture the essence of fresh fruit into a sticky delicacy for breakfast in the weeks and months to come. The oranges I used were not Seville but rather the sweeter variety more common here in Los Angeles  - I hear a sharp gasp and Churchill tut tutting (he insisted on importing Seville oranges from Spain during the World War II for morale). I reduced the amount of sugar and the addition of the lemons kept it sharp and gave it additional pectin – for that all important set.

The finished marmalade is thick, sticky and bittersweet, with a rich caramel depth of flavor. I find it hard not to eat it straight from the pot with a teaspoon. Now I have to find a great gluten free substitute for the hot buttered toast or English muffin that it’s crying out for – any ideas? Polly put that kettle on – we need a cup of PG… The 10 pots it makes means there’s enough to share – the perfect hostess gift or the next time someone rich does something nice for you, “You give ‘em a pot of jam.” (Six Degrees of Separation).

]]> http://www.ladlesandjellyspoons.com/2012/01/my-best-traditional-marmalade-recipe/feed/ 5 http://www.ladlesandjellyspoons.com/2012/01/baby-kale-soup-recipe-with-indian-stuff/ http://www.ladlesandjellyspoons.com/2012/01/baby-kale-soup-recipe-with-indian-stuff/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:28:54 +0000 Lucy http://www.ladlesandjellyspoons.com/?p=3455

I decided at the beginning of January, 2012 was going to be all about me. I was going to spend more time looking after myself; mind, body and soul. After the fast pace and crazy schedule of 2011 some serious changes had to be made because I was really tired, not to mention unhealthy and it was taking its toll. It was time to take a step back and reset. 20 days in and I am only now able to start sharing some of the improvements I have made with you. These are not New Year’s Resolutions to be broken and forgotten before we get to February – these are healthy choices that I am making because my life depends on it.

I bought the daffodils above on January 3rd – a little taste of Spring in the middle of Winter – kinda strange and not very seasonal – but they made me smile. A small gift for myself, this host of golden daffodils. As well as the bright sunny yellow and the optimistic promise of Spring, I especially love their scent – very subtle – the smell of my childhood and picking wild daffodils by the river in Devon.

Wordsworth sums it up at the end of his verse, The Daffodils:

A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The first part of the equation was looking at what I was feeding myself and my family. Compared to most American households we eat well, but I knew there was room for improvement. We needed to eat a lot more vegetables and a lot less bread, pizza and pasta. We needed to clean up our diet and get back to eating food that wasn’t processed. I pledged I would always buy organic at the supermarket, rather than opting for organic when I could. There’s a big difference here – when I go to Trader Joes looking for organic turkey breast and they don’t have it I now substitute for the organic chicken breast rather than taking the turkey.

Like all life changes, they have to made with baby steps – almost one small change a day – rather than all at once, otherwise I was setting myself up to fail. This new way of being had to be sustainable –  after all it’s for life rather than a quick fix fad that would easily pass. That said I did want to reset and a great way to do this is to break the bad habits with a 14 day kick start. I turned to James Duigan’s Clean and Lean Diet: 14 Days to Your Best-Ever Body for help and motivation. I love this book and I love how easy it is to follow, I love how clear the message is and most of all I love how good it has made me feel. In the coming days and weeks I will be posting more about this eating plan and the recipes I came up with.

No alcohol for 14 days? I didn’t know how I could get by without my daily glass of wine with supper. I did. I haven’t had alcohol in 20 days and I’m much better for it – my skin is clear, the dark circles under my eyes have diminished and best of all I’m not fuzzy in the morning. I wake up after a full nights sleep feeling energized and good.  Cutting out grains and white carbs wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be – and this is coming from someone who loves loves LOVES her pizza! By far the biggest battle for this sweet tooth has been cutting out sugar… how can I live without chocolate?! Cookies? Pies? No cake? And there in lies the problem – I am a sugar addict and like any addiction I am working on breaking it – and it’s really hard. I’m working out the kinks and getting better day by day.

The other big change that I am doing is taking time for myself everyday to exercise. No smelly gym for me but I have signed up for Pilate’s and spin classes at Circuit Pilates and I’m loving it. I have driven past this studio on the way to and from school, sometimes four times a day, and never stopped to check it out. I’m so glad I did and I kick myself for not joining sooner. My first week was brutal – muscles that I hadn’t used in years were woken up with a jolt and boy oh boy did I ache. I’m working through the pain! No pain, no gain right? Or as Rémy said, “That’s good mummy, means you are working out hard!” The best part is my posture is already improved – I’m walking taller. My friend Marla Meredith at Family Fresh Cooking posted about finding an exercise you love and how it’s a true gift – I couldn’t agree more.

Today I came home after my spin class, legs like jelly having pushed myself o’er vales and hills and giving myself the gift of a great sweaty workout, craving comfort food for lunch – which is hard when you are not eating grains, sugar and cheese! My goal was to turn baby kale and broccoli into something that would give me a hug within the limits of my healthy regime. So I made soup. And not just any old vegetable soup. I made warm rich velvety soup with layer upon layer of flavor using Indian spices. “This is as good as anything I would expect to eat in a restaurant,” said my hubby as he tucked in. I asked him to guess the ingredients. “Broccoli, coriander – oh and some Indian stuff?”  So there you have it – a soup full of comfort and goodness wrapped in the delicate flavors of Indian stuff. Now I’m off to dance with the daffodils.

Baby Kale Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil,
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic
1 shallot, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon gram masala
1 tablespoon turmeric
2 cups organic broccoli florets
5 0z organic mixed baby kale
1 quart filtered water, boiling
1 tablespoon Better than Bouillion organic reduced sodium chicken stock

Makes 4 servings

1. In a large saucepan heat the olive oil and gentle sauté the onions, garlic and shallot for 2 minutes.
2. Add the coriander, cumin, ginger, gram masala and turmeric and cook for 2 minutes.
3.  Add the broccoli, kale, water and stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Using an immersion blender liquidize the soup until it’s thick and creamy.
5. Serve in large bowls.

Christmas would not be Christmas in England without a mince pie or two – or three or four. These little sweet pies have no meat in them – the word mincemeat comes for medieval England when spices brought back from the Crusades were mixed with fruit and shredded meat and put into pies – traditionally eaten at Christmas time, sometimes called manger pies. Over hundreds of years these pies have shifted from savory to sweet – and have become classic Christmas treats. As you bite in to your first mince pie remember to make a wish! Minty and Rémy can’t get enough of these little pies – they are quite labor intensive and it’s worth making up double if you can – believe me they go very quickly.

On Sunday I made up the first batch of many for our annual Nativity Play. Over the years I have adapted recipes for the pastry and the filling and I think these are the perfect mince pies – two bites of sweet filling with just enough pastry to make a neat little pie but not too much so as to be cloying. I’ve moved away from a flaky shortcrust pastry to use pate sucre – but either works really well. I now use the sweet pastry recipe from Chef Ludo Lefebvre’s book Crave, doubling the quantities – it’s such a great recipe and super easy to whip up in my new KitchenAid food processor – bonus!

For the filling I took a handful of golden raisins, a handful of Zante currants, 1/4 cup of apple sauce, a generous 1/2 cup of Rémy Martin Cognac and lots of mincemeat (about 1 1/2 cups) – mixed it all up, kept it in a Weck jar in the fridge and then fed it with cognac  - you can make it from scratch months in advance (as per Yotam Ottolenghi’s instructions to me this summer) or you can cheat and use it from a jar (Crosse and Blackwell makes a good Mincemeat using heirloom apples that’s pretty decent once you’ve added the other ingredients).  Mix it all together to get a thick consistency. As the alcohol macerates the raisins they will plump up.

As I mentioned these mince pies were for our Nativity Play – Manger Pies seemed most appropriate until I recieved the script for this years production. An unexpected Star Wars component had been inserted – in a galaxy far far away… Here’s Minty dressed as Padmé (Natalie Portman’s character in the new Star Wars) – so I guess we should have called them Star Wars Mince Pies… may the force be with you this holiday season.

Before we do anything it’s important to set the mood – I cranked up Diana Krall Christmas Songs on the iPod and sang along, with the occasional dance around the kitchen with the kids! It’s feeling very festive over here. This is day 1 of the Christmas holidays!

Having baked up the christmas cakes in a jar and then fed them with Rémy Martin cognac for a couple of weeks it was time to decorate them.

You will need:

Christmas cakes in jars
Apricot jam
Rémy Martin cognac
Marzipan
White fondant
White tiny snow sprinkles (I used India Tree – ‘String of pearls’)
Mini 1 inch sisal Christmas trees (wooden bases removed)

Boil up a couple of tablespoons of apricot jam with a tablespoon of cognac to make a glaze. Set aside to cool.

Dust the work surface and rolling pin with confectioners sugar and roll out the marzipan to just under 1/4  of an inch. Using the lid of the Weck jar as a template cut a circle of marzipan a little larger in diameter than the lid.

Brush a thin layer of the apricot glaze on the top of the cake in the jar and then ease the marzipan circle into the jar and gently push into place so it touches the sides.

Roll out the white fondant to 1/4 inch and cut out a circle using the lid of the jar and making it a little larger.

Brush another thin layer of the apricot glaze on to the marzipan and then ease the fondant into place, smoothing it out and pushing it to the sides.

Clean the sides, inside and out of the jar using a damp piece of kitchen paper.

Make a little snowman out of two small balls of fondant. Dip the christmas tree into water and then into the white sprinkles and let dry.

Arrange the snowman and the tree in middle of the snowscape and add lots of white sprinkles for the snow.

Then it was time to package them all up and post them to England for the family – hope they get there in time… as for tips on how to eat these? Remove the tree (NOT EDIBLE) and then dig in with a spoon!

Happy Merry to you all!

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