HOLLY'S STILTON, POTATO & CARAMELISED ONION PIE

It's not always easy to come up with a good meat free dinner that all the family will enjoy, especially when you have three children with varying views on vegetables.

I remember on pie week of GBBO Holly made a vegetarian pie which she said always went down well with her meat loving husband.  So I decided on her version of a cheese and potato pie.

It uses 3 different cheeses and is topped with puff pastry - which I have to admit I bought from the supermarket.  I still maintain life is too short to make puff pastry when you can get perfectly good stuff ready made. (It's important to know when to cheat!)

It was a dream to put together, just adding layers of the various ingredients it was assembled in a jiffy then in the oven for 30 minutes.  It went very well with baked beans and no-one missed the meat.  Cheers Holly.

The recipe calls for weights of ingredients that would leave me with oddments of stuff left over so I just made a little extra to use everything up and made a small one for another day.  I didn't have any of the onion left for this one though so used Branston Pickle as a substitute making it a sort of Ploughmans Pie.

You can find the full recipe in the pie section of The Great British Bake Off  How to Bake Book.

Double Cheese Muffins

It's the holidays which means lots of packed lunches and picnic food.  These cheese muffins are so quick and easy to put together and the kids can help too.  They're great warm from the oven while the cheese is still melty or cold the next day if they last that long.  This recipe uses one of my favourite store cupboard ingredients - Crispy Onions! I love em. You know the ones in a tub, usually in the salad dressing section of the supermarket next to the soya bacon bits.  Both are good to have in as an emergency ingredient when you want to supe up your savoury scones or bread.  

250g Self Raising Flour

1/2 tsp Bicarb

1/2 tsp Mustard Powder

100g Strong Cheese (1/2 cubed 1/2 grated)

6 tbsp Vegetable Oil

150g Onion & Chives Cottage Cheese

125ml Milk

1 Egg

1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce

Crispy Fried onions

Heat the oven to 180C

Combine all the dry ingredients, apart from the onions in a large bowl.  In another bowl or jug, mix all the wet ingredients.  Stir the wet into the dry but don't mix too thoroughly, you should have lumps.  It's important with muffins that the mixture isn't over worked.

Divide the mixture between your muffin cases and sprinkle on the crispy onions.  Bake for 20-25 minutes. I makes 12-15 depending on the size of your cases and how generously you fill them.

Real Men Do Eat Quiche

We love quiche in this house.  You can have it hot or cold, it's easily transportable for picnics and packed lunches and you can stick anything in it, great for using up left over bits from the bottom of the fridge.

These two were exactly that, I had some bacon, halloumi and sweet potato's in the fridge and came up with these two: Bacon & Samphire and Sweet Potato & Halloumi. 

SAMPHIRE & BACON

200g Plain Flour

100g Margarine

Iced Water to mix

250g Bacon
90g Samphire

Knob of Butter

1 Clove Garlic

3 Eggs

3/4 pt Milk

Black Pepper

Samphire is a vegetable that grows wild in marshy areas or close to the sea.  It's a bit like very fine asparagus and very salty.  I love the flavour and vibrant colour which it doesn't lose when you cook it.  If you're not lucky enough the be able to pick it fresh yourself, Asda sell it as one of their 'Extra Special' ingredients.

Make the pastry.  Rub the margarine into the flour, you can use a food processor or a free standing mixer for this.  When it looks like fine bread crumbs add enough water to form a dough.  Line your quiche tin and pop it into the freezer for 15 minutes while you pre-heat the oven to 160 C.

You need to bake the pastry shell blind so line it with some parchment and fill it with baking beans.  You can use rice or dried pulses instead if you don't have ceramic beans, they work just as well.

Bake it for 15 minutes then remove the beans and parchment and bake for a further 5-10 minutes till it's cooked and lightly browned.

While this is finishing snip your bacon into bite size pieces and cook till browned.  Remove the bacon from the pan and tip in the samphire with the butter and garlic.  Cook this for 2-3 minutes to soften it.

When your shell is baked put the bacon into the base and top with the samphire.  Add some freshly ground black pepper, I like lots especially with this, both the bacon and samphire are very salty so don't add any more salt.

Mix your eggs and milk together and pour over your filling.  Bake for 30-40 minutes till it's set and browned.

SWEET POTATO & HALLOUMI

200g Plain Flour

100g Margarine

Iced Water to mix

300g Sweet Potato

1 tblsp Oil

250g Block of Halloumi

3 Sprigs of Fresh Thyme

3 Eggs

3/4 pt Milk

Black Pepper

Make your pastry shell as before.  While it's baking cook your sweet potato.  Peel and cut it into small cubes about 1cm square.  Put them in a pan, coat with the oil and add the thyme leaves.  Cover with a lid and cook over a medium heat till soft and lightly browned.  It should take about 20-25 minutes and you'll need to stir it from time to time to stop it sticking.

When the potato is cooked, remove it from the pan.  Cut the halloumi the same size as the potato and cook in the same pan.  It will only take about 5 minutes for the cheese to brown so keep your eye on it.

Add the potato and halloumi to the shell and pour over your egg and milk mixture.  Bake for 25-30 minutes.

There was even a little pastry left over to make  a couple of mini quiches with some salami and manchego I found, see what I mean about leftovers!

Saturday Lunch

My Dad is visiting this weekend so I want to make a bit of effort with the food but he's also having to fit in around all the comings and goings and general busyness of the household.  The morning was taken up taxi-ing children to various classes or parties followed in the afternoon with a trip to Port Sunlight for a spot of culture at the LadyLever Gallery

Something quick for lunch was needed and these cheese scones are perfect.  10 minutes to make and 20 minutes to cook they are delicious straight from the oven and topped with some butter.




I've adapted this recipe from my McDougalls Better Baking book which was given to me when I was about 10 from a friend of my mothers who saved tokens from flour bags.  It's very dog eared and has a lot of cellotape keeping it together but I refer to it all the time.

This recipes makes about 6 depending on the size of your cutter but they're not going to go very far so I tend to multiply it by 4 and if there are any left they go in the freezer for another day or a lunch box.  I've also added some crispy onions, you know the sort you get in a tub to sprinkle on salads, soya bacon bits are good too.

200g Self Raising Flour
1/2 tsp Wholegrain Mustard
Pinch of White Pepper & Salt
35g Butter
75g Grated Cheese
30g Crispy Onions
100ml Milk

Start off with the flour, mustard, S&P and butter in your processor or mixer and mix till butter is all rubbed in.  Add the remaining ingredients apart from the milk and combine everything.  Slowly add the milk while mixing until it forms a dough.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead till smooth.  Roll it out to about an inch thick and cut them out using a 3" cutter.  Lay the scones onto a baking tray and brush with milk.  Grate a little pecorino on top and bake at 220C for 15-20 minutes.