Garlic and Galettes

After the sunshine comes the rain... Durham is showery. Amy and Josie went to pick the wild garlic which is all over the banks of the river and the forests - you can smell it in the air on a lap of the Bailey. They blended it with pine nuts, basil, lemon juice and oil to make the most beautiful wild garlic pesto to go with fresh pasta. Follow me on Instagram @lashart93 to see photos!

For dinner - can you tell we have more free time after exams? - we made a galette. It's one of the best ways to use up bits and bobs of veg and cheese from the fridge in a kind of elegant way. I make my pastry with 1 part butter to 2 parts flour, with a bit of water thrown in to bind it together. I roasted a load of veg (courgette, carrot, sweet potato, red onion and baby plum tomatoes), added some 'salad cheese' and whacked it on top of the pastry. When the edges are folded over, it goes in the oven to cook. All that was left was to ask our guest to bring us hummus and crisps; always a winner but we plan to make our own next time!

The idea for this comes from the winter vegetable and gorgonzola galette at Happy Yolks, but Donal Skehan has a recipe for a tomato, ricotta and thyme one and Apt. 2B has one for rhubarb and apple.

Mud Pies

Our kitchen has been a flurry of baking activity this afternoon. Not only did we get to work on these little beauties, but also a batch of flapjacks for Amy’s lucky brother and his family. So, with a little help from my friends, I present to you the mud pie brownie/biscuit combo, stuffed with chocolate chunks, peanut butter and chocolate spread.

Originally, the recipe was for Salted Caramel + Nutella Stuffed Double Chocolate Chip Cookies from the lovely Izy Hossack at Top with Cinnamon.  Izy’s one of those girls who, at 19, has achieved more than I hope to in my lifelong career, with a cookery book published at just 18 and a whole lot of press coverage besides. I’m cool with it. 

In case anyone’s desperate to wish me luck, my next exam is on Saturday. Then I’ll be heading down south and, since Mumma and Pappa Hart have abandoned me for a mini gap-yah in Australasia*, imposing myself on my siblings – I figure they probably miss me since I haven’t been home for a couple of weeks. I’m hoping for sunshine, baby shower planning (don’t panic, not for me) and maybe a cheeky first BBQ of the year...? A girl can dream.

*Also known as taking time to visit their two much-loved eldest children and their families.

Everything's Rosy

Sundays call for walks in the late afternoon sunshine, birthday waffles and a round of lemon and poppy seed cakes, especially as exam season kicks in. Thanks to two dodgy legs on two different girls, today our run was replaced by a walk and we enjoyed the river views, despite the midges. 

My housemate Amy was overwhelmed by a care package from her lovely parents – Waitrose goods to be shared (read: devoured) by us over the following weeks (read: days). I've used the lemon curd in between the cake layers, swirled in with buttercream; it cuts through the sweetness. I was all for making my own lemon curd and even had a couple of egg yolks ready in the fridge from a post-run egg white and spinach omelette. But since making curd is tricky, and we already had some, I took the easy route. 

This recipe uses ground almonds which makes the sponge a little lighter. I made the cake in thinner layers, cut out circles with a plastic cup (classic under-stocked student kitchen), and stacked them with lemon buttercream, lemon curd, and some beautiful little rose petals. My wonderful mother, perhaps atypically for a university parent, sent me off this term with a pot of petals to wish me on my way. Not practical, perhaps, but bloody well suited to me. 

To my fellow students entering exams, good luck and be well. To everyone else, probably the same.

Easter Feast(er)

The last couple of days of my life have been spent on trains (see Facebook for my live updates). This meant lots of reading, a surprising amount of work getting done, and a heck of a lot of patience. This weekend is my just reward: time with family, roast dinner and a chocolate cake.

This is the mother of Easter cakes. It's taken from Sarah Tuck's From The Kitchen, and she quite rightly describes it as "a big rich ole beast of a cake". I swapped in the hazelnut liqueur for Baileys (a great choice of party gift at a friend's 21st) but the rest is pretty similar. I squidged the leftover chocolate mousse filling into ramekins for pud with raspberries and cream. 

I must admit, this cake was a faff. It involves melting and freezing and whipping and chilling and quite a lot of waiting. But for a winner of a birthday cake on a day when you'd be home anyway, it's the best.

Chorizo and Sun-Dried Tomato Bread

April showers seemed to have arrived a little early: the drizzle at home is continual and gloomy. I'm fairly sure it's pathetic fallacy to complement my dissertation-writing experience. To bring a little sunshine into our life, I baked a Mediterranean combo bread. This is based on a recipe by the lovely Molly, whose optimism is fairly apparent across her blog. The bread doesn't need kneading (nice little homonym there for my language buddies) and is made in a big ol' casserole dish (known as a bizarrely-named 'Dutch oven' in the USA, which sounds like a euphemism). The dough rises overnight (so remember to get started on Saturday for a lazy Sunday morning).

This bread did not solve all my problems, but it alleviated them for a while. Try it toasted with eggs, dipped in soup, or just with some oozy butter. This week is to be filled with writing, nursing Pappa H and looking forward to Porto in just over a week! Let me know of any sites to see!

English Breakfast and Nutmeg Chocolate Chip Cookies

Faced with a wealth of recipes to make today, back at home, I passed aside the fancy ones that needed yeast and pistachios and edgy flours (which will probably turn up later this week) for a simple, very good cookie recipe from Design Love Fest. Don't judge mine for looking less fancy than Eva's; it's not how big your chocolate chips are, it's how you use them.

This week is for sunshine, dissertation-writing, and catching up with my home team. Em's sweater (from Topshop but sold out!) puts summer in the mind but I must admit that it did hail today. Her siblings struggled with the punctuation of 'Beach, Please!'... have to admit I would've commented on it too if she hadn't got there first. Family friends conveniently turned up at the door just at these came out of the oven (well, AGA, now that I'm home!) so they have been disappearing like hotcakes.

Blackberry and Coconut Scones

Our final week in Durham has been blessed by the company of some wonderful ladies and gents, and I've been treated to dinner parties left, right and centre. This has meant not so much cooking for myself (although we're gradually clearing the fridge in preparation for the holidays) and, combined with dissertation work, has meant a bit of a dearth in baking adventures. Or, as Mumma Hart puts it, "Clearly you are working hard as no blogging for 9 days now???" Working hard indeed. 

The recipe comes from Pastry Affair. I followed it almost to the letter except that we didn't have quite enough coconut oil so I swapped in some dairy-free marge, keeping the whole thing vegan-friendly for my still-on-Lent housemate. It was all going swimmingly until I mixed in the blackberries, which led to an unfortunate purple Play Dough situation on my hands reminiscent of last term's attempt at a red wine glaze... The concoction of red wine and flour became turgid and very much inedible, and, despite my desperate pleas to my housemates, was left untouched. Thank goodness this recipe turned out a little better and the scones have gone down rather well. It's been a pretty treat-filled few days thanks to chocolate gifts from friends and the wonderful Mumma Hart sending up 'The Baton Library' from Hotel Chocolat, an alternative very much preferable to the good old Billy Bry!

For those of you with me here in Durham, take note that fruit is a helluva lot cheaper at the old Academy greengrocer's than in Tesco. The blackberries for today's vegan treat were three punnets for a pound!