Portobello Mushroom Grilled Cheese and Pesto Sandwich

In an ideal world, I would have amazing sandwiches for lunch errrday. Delicious slices of bread with lots of scrumptious filling would definitely make my days. Beef steak with rocket, pesto chicken and tomatoes, smoked salmon with avocado, caramelised onion and sausage... Oh my!

In reality, I have pita bread. Plain. On a good day, when I have time to grab something from the kitchen counter and shove it into my bag. Otherwise it's a low calorie day for me!

That's because I don't get up early enough in the morning to make lunch, and I wouldn't make it the night before in the fear it wouldn't taste the same a whole day later. Self-inflicted, really.

So I suffer through the week, but that's what makes weekend lunches so much more to look forward to.

I've still got my massive bag of portobello mushrooms, so they're definitely going to be on the menu today. And tomorrow. And the day after. Hopefully not the day after that, but maybe. 

These meatilicious mushrooms are a great vegetarian sandwich filler because of their texture and flavour. I roasted these in the oven at 200˚C (fan-forced) for 15 minutes or so until all the juices had steamed off and they started getting dry and crispy on the edges. All I added was some olive oil and salt and pepper.

On two thick-cut slices of bread I smeared one side with pesto, and topped the other with cheese. I used Red Leicester. It's actually the first time I've tried it (I bought it because of the beautiful orange colour) and it's definitely something I would go for again. If you don't know what it is either, I'd describe it as similar to cheddar, but milder and more nutty.

Grill those in the oven on the top shelf until the cheese melts and bubbles.

Arrange your mushrooms on top of the slice with cheese. Then top with the other slice. 

The flavours and colours of this sandwich are wonderful. Green pesto + Orange (not red?) Red Leicester cheese + Black portobello mushrooms + Golden toasted white bread.

Depending on the size of your slices of bread, this sandwich can be quite a mouthful and not practically easy to eat. In that case, cut in half and go from there.

I bet you're salivating ;)

Portobello Mushroom Soup

My local market doesn't understand the use of labelling. I love shopping there, don't get me wrong, but I really think they should start labelling things properly.

So it probably doesn't matter much with things like banana, cherries, broccoli, etc. but it's very unhelpful to label various sizes, shapes and colours of potatoes all as potatoes. Oh sometimes, they put 'large potatoes', 'small potatoes', and 'washed potatoes' but that isn't very informative either. So when recipes tell you to buy some floury varieties like Desiree, Maris Piper or King Edward, I just have to guess and check.

Are all flat-capped mushrooms with black gills called portobello mushrooms? A Google search of portobello mushrooms does show up mushrooms like these. The only reason I wonder is because this entire bag (weighing 1.7kg!) only cost me £1.50! Whereas, in Hong Kong, the supermarkets could sell at up to HK$40 for 4. To put that into comparable terms, that's just under £3 for 4 mushrooms. 

How crazy is the price difference?

These mushrooms certainly look, feel, and taste like the same portobellos I buy in Hong Kong. I'd love to know if they really are the same thing.

I ended up with this whole bag because the man at the store convinced me that a small bag (for 50p) wouldn't be enough. "Eh pet, you sure you don't want a big bag, them mushrooms'll shrink and you'll be left with nothin', go on take a big bag"

So now I have close to 2kg of mushrooms to devour.

The quickest way to use up as many mushrooms as possible is to make soup, I thought. So I went a-chop-chop-chopping.

I used about half my bag - 800g ish. 

Now a lot of mushroom soup recipes call for a variety of other vegetables - potatoes, leeks, onions... but I wanted to let my shrooms shine (well also because I didn't have any of those other vegetables at hand...) so I kept the other ingredients to a minimum.

When cooking portobello mushrooms, I find they have much meatier texture and richer taste than normal white button mushrooms, so I may have been able to miss this next step. But I love mushrooms, and the more the merrier, so I soaked a small handful of dried wild mushrooms too.

With some butter sizzling on a very hot pan, I fried some minced garlic until fragrant, and then poured in my diced portobello mushrooms.

I cooked mine in two batches because I wanted to properly sauté the mushrooms, rather than boil / steam them as can happen when the pan gets overcrowded. It's like tanning on a hot beach, if it's empty and quiet then you can relax and get nicely evenly brown, but if it's crowded, you just feel like is hot and sweaty, and not in a good way!

It's tempting to stir your mushrooms, but I find that if you leave them in the pan to do their own thing,  they'll cook much better. As long as you have enough butter to cover the pan, they shouldn't stick too much. 

The mushrooms will then give off all their water, and at this point I reduced the heat to medium, and let it boil off and then begin to caramelise. Then, I used the soaking water from the dried mushrooms to deglaze any brown sticky bits from the pan.

Add in your now soaked dried wild mushrooms, all diced up too, and give a quick stir.

Top with 1L of milk and chicken stock. I used 500mL of each, but you can vary it according to how creamy you want it. Add some sprigs of thyme, and boil for 5 minutes or so.

If you want it smooth and creamy, scoop batches into a jug blender and blitz all the chunks of mushroom into oblivion. Now season to taste. 

Then you can just gently reheat the soup to serve, with some extra thyme, and sautéed mushrooms. 

It's magical mushroom essence, with all the notes of the outdoors - the trees, forests, muddy woodlands, and tiny sparkly fairies. The velvet texture of the soup also resembles the feel of the tops of raw mushrooms. I can see why the fairies like to perch there.  

I got a good crusty loaf of bread from my local market as well for 50p to dunk with the soup ;)

Pork, caramelised onion, and halloumi sandwich

In my first year of uni, I would come back to my dingy little flat after a night out and stuff my face. Lots of students prefer to pop by 'maccy-Ds' or Munchies or that cheap greasy chippy round the corner, but after watching one too many intoxicated folks bring up the entire contents of their stomach, I tended to avoid those.

So instead I'd go home and consume toast. Not just one slice, or two slices, or even three. I would have six slices. SIX. 6. S-I-X. That's like half loaf.

Yea, and then I wondered how I gained 15 pounds...

I'm not proud of it, but thinking about it, I find it odd though that so much bread never managed to make me feel full. Whereas, if you have a sandwich for lunch, it's enough.

In fact, more than enough. These pork, onion and halloumi sandwiches don't look massive, but we barely managed to finish these. But we did, of course, because they're amazing.

Another reason I stopped buying food on the way home was because it was expensive. Now a whole pizza for £5 is actually a very good deal, but that half-loaf of bread would've cost me 50p. #studentlife

These pork, onion and halloumi sandwiches are the perfect student budget meal. 

• 4 slices of bread ~ 40p (loaf for £1)
• 1 onion ~ 33p (3 onions for £1)
• 1/4 cucumber ~ 15p (whole cucumber for 60p)
• 1 pork shoulder steak ~ 70p (4 steaks for £3)
• 4 slices of halloumi ~ £1.20 (pack for £2.35)
• TOTAL = 2.78 for two sandwiches = £1.39 per sandwich

£1.39 would probably get you half a ham and cheese sandwich at the student union. Not that there's anything wrong with a ham and cheese sandwich, but c'mon these are so much better!

I just grilled the pork shoulder steak in a very hot pan with a drop of oil (shoulder steaks have some fat in them already), 5 minutes or so on each side or whatever the packet says. Then I left it on a plate to rest while I fried my sliced onion in the pork juices left in the pan. I like my onions very soft and caramelised, so I used a lower heat and a longer time, but it's up to you. Then I dished up the onions too.

You have to wipe your pan clean now. Otherwise all the pork juices and leftover caramelised onions will burn your plan. Then with some more oil on a medium heat, I pan-fried the halloumi slices. They take a few minutes to brown, then you can flip them and do the other side as well.

While waiting for my halloumi, I slid my bread into the toaster, and sliced up by pork. Slice the steak on an angle to get bigger, thinner pieces. Then divide them between two pieces of toast (buttered if you want), top with two pieces of halloumi each, a pile of delicious caramelised onions, and then complete the sandwich with the other two pieces of toast. Slice up some cucumber on the side to make it look healthy. Not that it needs it, it's pretty healthy anyway. I think.

Pork, caramelised onion, and halloumi sandwich.

Go ahead and dig in.

Champagne poached pears

Do you ever have an unfinished bottle of a champagne lying round that you're not sure what to do with?

No, I didn't think so. I don't know how we managed NOT to finish a bottle of champagne. I really don't. It's very odd. But we did.

I had not idea what to do with it. I mean, it's good champagne, but even good champagne isn't so good the next day. But not bad enough to throw it away. Do you know what I mean? No, probably not, because no one doesn't finish champagne...

So the internet came to the rescue, and I realised that people have (for unknown reasons, still) found half bottles of champagne lying round and they seem to like to put it to good use in the form of champagne poached pears.

I didn't really have a recipe to follow, but I just took inspiration from this, this, this and this.

I don't even know what variety of pears these are. I just found them for cheap (£1 a bag of like 6 or more) at the local market. They weren't too soft and held their shape quite well, which is the type of pears which are ideal.

I peeled them but left them whole, stems intact, just slicing their bottoms so they could stand upright. Unless you've already prepared your poaching liquid, and are going to poach them right away, it's better to leave them in some water so they don't brown.

 

My poaching liquid was the rest of the bottle of champagne (about 350mL), and then I topped this small but deep pot with water. I used 1/4 cup sugar, like the recipe from The Year In Food here, but all the others used about 1 cup (for the same amount of liquid) which I would imagine to be very sweet. 

I chose to infuse my syrup with cinnamon sticks, vanilla bean paste, and some clementines, just cut in half and gently squeezed to release some juice and flavour.

Once the sugar has dissolved, bring the liquid just to boiling point, and then you can submerge the pears. Keep the liquid barely simmering. 

You'll need enough liquid to cover the pears completely, so add some more water if you need. To make sure my pears remained submerged, I snipped a circle of parchment paper to fit the top of the pot and gently stuck it down. I cut a hole to let the steam through too.

These took 20 minutes or so, but it really depends on your pears. So just keep an eye on them. When done, it'll be easy to stick a toothpick through them, but they'll still be firm enough to hold their shape.

I made these before dinner and then just left them to cool in the pot, off the heat. When serving them, they were room temperature, and I just heated up the poaching liquid and poured it over to warm them a little.

They were really amazing and so easy to make! It's such an elegant dessert (champagne will do that to everything!) and so versatile too. I loved the spice of the cinnamon and vanilla, and the tartness of the clementines. 

If you like your desserts sweet (which I usually do) you can add more sugar to the poaching liquid, but I found 1/4 cup to be just right, as the pears themselves have a natural sweetness. You can infuse anything you like really, and I'm excited to try some other spices and flavours next time!

Salmon en croûte

So much of the time my dinner ideas are just inspired by what I have around. Trying to think of something to make from scratch, then having to go out and grab all the ingredients is a lot harder than it sounds!

We didn't manage to finish the side of salmon yesterday as sashimi (barely had any, really) and it was sitting in the fridge taking up a lot of room, so I decided we'd better finish it. There was no way we could eat up all of it raw (as good as it had been), so it was a matter of how to cook it.

My usual salmon dish is to flake it up with some pasta, or just to bake it in the oven. But with a whole slab, I could try something else! Also sitting in my fridge was a ready-rolled piece of puff pastry and a bag of spinach. A quick google search of these three items told me to make salmon en croûte - a beef wellington without the beef and with salmon instead!

I think I've only tried salmon en croûte once, and it was deliciously moist and succulent salmon wrapped with a light airy and crispy pastry. I was salivating already!

 Fresh baby spinach leaves (the whole 200g pack - washed and ready to go) went into the pan.

While I waited for the spinach to wilt, I tended to the bulk of salmon (minus the chunk we ate for sashimi the night before!) Now the salmon I bought still had skin and bones, so you'll need to take it off if that's the same as yours, then you can clean it off and wipe it dry.

After browsing various recipes,  I decided I liked the look of this one from Gordon Ramsay (when do I not like the look of GR recipes?) and this other one from Woman and Home. They both sandwich a layer of green things between two pieces of salmon, so I cut up my salmon so that I would have a bottom bit and a some top bits. It doesn't matter do you like to do it, as long as its fits together neatly like a puzzle.

Back to the spinach! When it was all wilting, I zested in the zest of a lemon, and seasoned it lightly with some salt and pepper. Then you can remove it from the heat, and set aside to drain.

Or better, put all the spinach into a sieve and squeeze all the life water out of it with the back of a spoon. This is why you need the zest, because if you used the juice, it would all be squeezed out. The more effort you spend on wringing dry your spinach, the better the pastry will turn out, because there won't be all that excess water creating problems.

There is supposed to be 200g of spinach there. What happened to all of it???

Once your happy with your spinach, you can roughly chop it up, although it's probably not necessary (it's just so that it's not one massive clump) and stir in a small knob of butter, enough to make it form a pastey consistency. Crème fraîche could also be used but I find it a little too rich.

Now we're ready to build our parcel. Start by seasoning the salmon. We're going to bone side to the face the middle of the parcel, so leave that side up and season it with some salt and pepper.

Now decide which bit(s) you want for the top and which you want to be on the bottom. I recommend that the thicker piece be for the bottom and the thinner pieces for the top (if there's a difference). Smear the top with some wholegrain mustard and the bottom with the spinach paste.

Then put the top salmon on the bottom salmon, so that the sides smeared with mustard and spinach meet! Time to wrap it up!

Place the salmon onto the rolled out pastry sheet. If yours isn't pre-rolled, aim for the thickness of a £1 coin.

I made a mistake here - I directly transferred mine parcel on, so the bottom piece is still on the bottom here, but this meant that once it was wrapped up, the bottom became the top (because you'll want the seam to be on the bottom!) if you get what I mean. SO in order for you not to make this mistake, please flip your salmon sandwich upside down (i.e. salmon with mustard on the bottom and salmon with spinach on the top) so its the right way up. Although it's only really important if you've got a thick and thin bit of salmon like me, because as you'll see later, the thin side doesn't support the filling as well.

Brush the pastry around the salmon with some egg wash (beaten egg) and season with salt and peppers lightly. Then wrap it like a pressie. A very yummy pressie. The egg wash will help stick the pastry down.

When you've wrapped it, place it in a baking tray (lined if you want) with the seams tucked underneath. Score the top with the back of a knife in a criss cross pattern, taking care not the cut through it (just drag it along lightly - you don't need to use any strength at all!) and score portions if you wish as well. Brush some more egg wash over the top so it bakes with a beautiful golden colour.

Cover and chill for 15-30 minutes or so while you preheat your oven. Yep you gotta wait! I know you're looking forward to tucking in, but chilling it helps it hold its shape that bit better, so it's worth it in the end.

Then when you've baked it for 20-25 minutes at 180˚C in a fan oven (200˚C normal oven), it should look like this.

Beautifully golden!

Leave it to rest 5 minutes (more waiting I know, sorry!) before you cut into it, so set your table, tidy up your kitchen, pour some drinks, stare and drool, and then you can dig in!

The salmon was just perfect (it probably finished cooking while I rested it), so flavoursome and succulent. It was just flaking away and complemented so well by the crispy pastry, and lemony spinach.

The only thing about this was that it had a soggy bottom. This could've been due to various things, which I'll have to change for next time to see if it makes a difference:

• not dehydrating the spinach well enough
• too much spinach? or butter?
• the salmon on the bottom not thick enough (see above about flipping the salmon over)
• not patting dry the salmon well enough

But it was delicious all the same. Try it for yourself! This side of salmon had a chunk missing and still easily fed 4 grown starving students, so it's a great for families and friends!

Dinner Date Night In

Sometimes its just nice to stay in and cook for a date. Together, so you don't have to slave away in the kitchen alone can enjoy the fun of cooking (and washing up later!) with your other half. There are just days when you're not up for fighting the crowds for a table somewhere.

I like cooking dates because that usually means I can try something new that I haven't done before. Two minds (and four hands) are better than one when making recipes that you're not familiar with.

Of course, too (or two?) many cooks can spoil the broth, but Ant and I are very compatible. We have designated roles: He tells me what he wants to eat, I find recipes. I choose ingredients, he pays for them ;) He chops, slices and dices, I wash.  I preheat the ovens and pans, he handles the sizzling oil and hot steam. He seasons, I taste test. I stir, he dishes up. It works very well.

Ant took care of the meat for this Beef Carpaccio Salad, although there wasn't much really to do! We used a thick cut steak of beef fillet for this, because it is such a beautifully tender texture (though the flavour may not be as good as cuts like sirloin), and kept the handling to a minimum.

We just brought it to room temperature about 30 minutes before seasoning it lightly with salt and pepper and searing the outside surfaces on a very high heat to a charred brown (1-2 minutes). In order to be a safe as possible with the raw meat, we didn't cut it until we were ready to eat.

Ant managed to cut it really very thin (considering the soft raw texture), and then we flattened the slices out some more on a chopping board with a rolling pin covered in glad wrap. Then I did the important job of tossing it with some baby spinach leaves, roasted peppers (from a jar!) and balsamic vinaigrette. Ta da! Easy-peasy Beef Carpaccio Salad.

I don't know why we thought it was a good idea to have so much raw food in one night. We just couldn't resist when we saw an entire side of salmon on sale at Tesco for £13! It looked so fresh, we had to try some of it for salmon sashimi!

While the sushi master (educated at the YouTube academy of sushi knife skills) carefully deskinned and deboned the slab of omega-3 goodness, I halved, cored and sliced the creamy butteriness that is an avocado. With similar textures, and rich, creamy, oily-but-in-a-good-way tastes, I think it's weird that salmon and avocado go well together (it seems like it would result in overload!) but they do. It's the ultimate match. I also sliced some cucumber to freshen it all up.

Somehow we survived all the raw meat and raw fish, and made it onto our main course.

This is inspired by some Spanish paella-type recipes that are made with pasta rather than rice. I believe it is something called fideuà. Having never actually tried this dish, we didn't really know what we to expect and what would be a good recipe. So we improvised.

There are various fideuà and pasta/noodle-paella recipes online, and I used a combination of a few, including this one from America's Test Kitchen, and this one. The key concepts to point out are:

• toast the spaghetti in some olive oil to start (break the spaghetti in half or smaller to fit easily into your pan
• cook up a tomato based sauce (I used canned tomatoes, tomato paste, shallots, garlic and fish stock - I don't know where to get hold of bottle clam juice?) and then cook the toasted spaghetti in it
• when the pasta is just done, nestle in your seafood (clams, mussels, prawns, cockles, fish, calamari, whatever you can get your hands on!) and bake in the oven until the seafood is done and the pasta begins to crisp up
• serve with lemon wedges

It definitely tasted delicious, but whether it was authentic or even close to what the dish is supposed to be, I would not know. I think this calls for a trip to Spain (or a Spanish restaurant, but preferably in Spain) to do some research !

The beauty of seafood (if it's fresh) is that it's actually incredibly easy to make. There's very little you need to do with it, because its the seafood itself that you want to appreciate. I love this dish also because it's quick, quite hassle free, and if you're fortunate enough to have a ovenable pan, a one-pan dish that means even washing up is easy.

So it was supposed to be a date night in, but my sister was in as well, so it became a dinner for three instead. That 's how we managed all that food! ;)

She contributed a beautiful red velvet cake, decorated with marshmallows and buttercream. It was the perfect size, and the perfect way to end our meal.

All accompanied with some champagne of course!

Date nights in like these make me less inclined to go out for a fancy (and probably expensive) meal as often. It can be just as perfect at home, don't you think?

Although, I can't give you many tips on improving the next part - washing up. It's probably easiest to pile it all to the side and thinking about it the next day ;)

Roasted butternut pumpkin spread

I wanted something healthy to snack on and boost my brain power, so I decided to spread some avocado on slices of Ryvita, because, y'know, avocado has good brain boosting fats or something. Only to cut into a very raw avocado. 

Absolutely devastated.

So I had to hunt around my kitchen for something else to snack on. I found a butternut pumpkin lying around (from October probably?!) and thought about making soup. So I peeled it up and cut it into chunks and roasted it in the oven with some olive oil and salt and pepper.

30 minutes at 200˚C in my fan oven, and it's perfect. It's lovely and soft, still moist and just starting to caramelise around the edges. It was just too good to make into soup.

I was just going to eat it on the Ryvita, but it was not an easy feat. The pumpkin chunks don't stay on and you have to manoeuvre the crispbread carefully so that it doesn't wobble, crack and fall apart when you bite into it. So I decided to squash the pumpkin into the crisp bread a little, so it had a bit more staying power.

Then I thought, why not mash it all? 

Then you get a bowl of golden mush. Sweet, buttery, nutty, mush. I didn't add anything to it, but you could plop in a blob of butter to make it extra buttery.

It's quite a chunky spread, you could pulse it through a food processor if you like. I like mine chunky and 'rustic', ha. I love how they call things that look a bit rough and ready, not neat and pristine, 'rustic'. Makes it all okay. =) 

It spreads easily enough anyway onto the Ryvita crispbread, and allows me to get a nice and thick layer on.

Super quick and easy, this will last me days! It's not a recipe as such, just another way to eat butternut pumpkin if you're looking for a delicious, surprisingly filling, healthy and brain boosting snack!