That Cookbook Thing II: Rapee Morvandelle

It's time for another round of the Cookbook Review II! It's an event dedicated to exploring recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The event by initiated by Mike of Mel's Diner, joined by Ruth of Once Upon A Feast, Sara of I Like to Cook, Breadchick Marye, Deborah of What's in My Kitchen?, Mary of Cooking for Five, Elle of New England Kitchen, Shaun of Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow - and, of course, me!

Last time we recreated Julia Child's Sauce au Cari - a light creamy curry sauce - this time our mission was to make a Rapee Morvandelle - a gratin of potato, onions and ham.

As my mum was on her way down to visit with a vegetarian friend, I decided to substitute mushrooms for the ham - throwing in a bit of porcini too to make sure it had the depth of flavour. I made up the mushroom mix the night before, then put it all together when I got home from work.

When the weary travellers finally got in after 10 hours of travelling (flooded rail tracks in Scotland...) it was just about ready to come out the oven. A crisp green salad and some corn on the cob made this a perfect summer dish.

Rapee Morvandelle
(avec Porcini et les Champignons sans Jambon!)

Ok, so I have quite a few little variations on Julia's recipe - not least the substitution of mushrooms for ham. However, most of these were to do with proportions... Maybe my potatoes were large... or my eggs small - but I had to add an extra egg to give it all a good binding. And a touch more cream. (Though it ended up being a touch more milk - I accidentally knocked the tub of cream all over my cooker... doh!)

The original recipe called for half a clove of garlic. Half. Hmmm... I'm sure it's because modern tastebuds are so desensitised... but this just wasn't going to be enough for me (Plus, what kind of garlic? My local shop sells 4 kinds - of varying strengths and sizes!!) So I used 2, and it was by no means overpowering!

I used two types of cheeses - half gruyere and half emmental... ummmm.... I think next time I might grate some over the top as well. It didn't need it, but I hardly ever treat myself to creamy cheesey dinners, so I want to make the most of it! (I like Ruth's idea of sprinkling some paprika over the top too!)

I used fresh tarragon when preparing the mushrooms, and fresh flat-leaf parsley in the egg mix.

To grate the potatoes quickyl and easily (and stop them going grey!) I peeled them all first, then grated them in my food processor. A quick rinse of water before squeezing them in a tea towel and straight into the egg mix!

• 100g grated cheese
• 5 eggs
• 5 tbsp single cream
• 3 potatoes
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 300g chestnut mushrooms, chopped
• small handful porcini, soaked in hot water for half an hour (reserve the water!)
• 1 tsp chopped tarragon
• 1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
• butter
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste (i.e. much more that the original recipe!)

Preheat oven to 375f

Prepare the Mushrooms...
In a heavy based skillet, heat a knob of butter with a tbsp of olive oil. Add the onions and fry over a low heat for a couple of minutes. Now finely chop the porcini and add to the onions, cooking out for another couple of minutes before adding the chestnut mushies.

Now, when the chestnut mushrooms are almost cooked, they will start to release their juices. At this point, add half the garlic, seasoning and a couple of tablespoons of the porcini soaking liqueur.

Cook until the liquid is absorbed and set to one side.

Prepare the Egg Mixture...
Beat the eggs with the cream until smooth. Add the rest of the garlic, salt and pepper and beat again.

Gently fold in the mushroom mix, along with the cheese and parsley.

This is when you should grate your tatties - any earlier any you'll end up with a greytin... boom boom? Ok, so I'm not funny...

Mix the potato into the egg mix - this is where I had to add the extra egg as the potato was still too dry.

Cook!
Heat a knob of butter in the skillet. Once it is foaming, add the potato mix - spread to the edges.

Dot the top of the gratin with some more butter and put into the over for 30-40 minutes.

Take out, slice and enjoy!

I really enjoyed this cheesy, creamy goodness! And it went down well with my guests too. I'd like to try it with ham - although the mushrooms were really good with it.

I have just under half of it left in the fridge... I haven't tried it yet - but I'm guessing it's going to be delicious cold when I get home after cocktails with my mum tonight!!

Watercress and Rocket Blue Cheese Pesto

'Pesto' basically means to pound or crush. And traditionally pesto is made by pounding herbs and garlic with a mortar and pestle. But pounding makes me tired, hot and grumpy, so I revert to my old faithful - Mr Kenwood! End result? Gorgeous pesto in 5 minutes!

Typically, the pesto most people know and love is Pesto alla genovese - basil, garlic, olive oil, pinenuts and a hard cheese. My version uses rocket, watercress and creamy blue cheese... really quite different - and I loved it! One of the reasons I don't make pesto too often is because it costs a fortune to buy that much basil here (yes, I have tried to grow it - plants always commits suicide within weeks in my keeping... ;) But I will definitely use this as a way to use up excess herbacious leaves - they usually end up in the bin!

Now I know some people like their pesto chunky - but my personal preference is a full blitzing. If you'd prefer more texture to your pesto, put all the ingredients in at once and blend to desired bittiness!

I'm sending this over to Gay at a Scientist in the Kitchen, who is hosting Presto Pasta Night this week for Ruth at Once Upon a Feast!

Watercress and Rocket Blue Cheese Pesto

Excuse the dark piccy - I took this to a friend's house for dinner, and forgot my camera, so this is a phone camera shot!!

• 150g watercress/ rocket, washed
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 small handful pinenuts
• 3 tbsp blue cheese
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Prepare the Pinenuts...
Roast your pinenuts in a hot dry pan for a minute or two - for an extra bit of depth!

Make the Pesto...
Put the garlic and pinenuts into your processors and blend until fairly smooth. Add the watercress and rocket and continue to whizz until the leaves are finely chopped. Incorporate the cheese - as it blends drizzle in olive oil until you reach your desired consistency.

Taste and adjust seasoning.

Serve!
I used mine to make blue cheese spaghetti with asparagus - cook the pasta according to instructions, chucking in the aspargus for the last minute or two of cooking. (Yes, steaming it would be better - but this way is so much easier... less pans to clean too ;) Strain out the aspargus and chop into bite size lengths. Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking liquor. Add the pesto to the pasta (I used half of the above portion to feed 4), top with the asparagus and crumble over more of the blue cheese. A sprinkle of roasted pine nuts on the top - and you're ready to slurp!

NCR: Hot (Sauce!) Potato, Pear & Blue Stilton salad

This is the salad that I had worked out as my entry for No Croutons Required this month. Unfortunately life conspired against me, and between parental visits, a trip to Liverpool, and trying to prepare my apartment for sale I've had hardly any time to do the shopping/ preparation required to do many of my dishes! Anyone fancy coming to help me paint and garden the place into submission??

Anyway, I'm a day late for the submission, but here's my entry anyway - it's still worth a post! I had meant to make crispy pear croutons by drying out syruped pear cubes in the oven... but forgot to put them in the oven... So instead I fried them in a teeny dot of butter with a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of black pepper.

The 'Hot' in the title comes from the drizzle of the home made hot hot HOT scotch bonnet sauce I made yesterday - I was thinking along the lines of buffalo wings being served with blue cheese dressing! The salad should be served just warm or room temperature - not hot or the greens will wilt!

Hot (Sauce!) Potato, Pear & Blue Stilton salad

Serves 2!

• 1 pear, halved and sliced
• 100g blue stilton - I used Organic Stilton from Ley Cross Farm - a gorgeously smooth and creamy stilton... I still have a bit left - looking forward to it already!
• 1 chicory
• watercress
• Jersey royal potatoes - boiled and thickly sliced
• A few drops hot sauce to drizzle
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1/2 tsp english mustard
• salt

Prepare the potatoes...
Heat a glug of olive oil in a frying pan, add the potatoes and fry until crispy round the edges.

Prepare the dressing...
Whisk together the vinegar, olive oil mustard and salt to create an emulsion. Crumble in the Stilton and mix well.

Once the potatoes are crisped, transfer them to a bowl and pour over half of the dressing. Mix well - the heat from the potatoes should start to melt the cheese. Leave to cool for a bit - you don't want to add the potatoes when they are too hot.

Prepare the pears...
I would still have preferred the crispy pear croutons... bah... Oh well, will try to be less rubbish next time ;) Heat a tiny dab of butter in the frying pan and arrange the pear slices in the pan. Sprinkle with a little bit of sugar and a grind of black pepper. Cook for a minute or two on each side.

Assemble the salad!
Break up the chicory and half each of the larger leaves. Combine with the watercress and dress with the remaining dressing.

Arrange the potatoes and pears on top of the leaves. Drizzle with hot sauce to taste.

Ravioli with Walnut, Spinach and Porcini

So on my first proper cooking day of my Store Cupboard Challenge (I didn't think that Kraft mac n' cheese last night counted ;) I decided it was time to use up the block of white stilton that I had picked up at the weekend. I had never cooked with it before - but as it was only 30p from the deli counter, so figured I would work out a use for it!

I was going to make cheesecake with it, but my biscuits for the base had gone stale. So I set my mind to a savoury plan... What I really fancied was gnocchi, but I didn't have any potatoes. Eventually I hit on ravioli - but other than white Stilton, I couldn't think what to put in it! I wanted to keep it quite soft and rich - most of my available ingredients were too demanding for this!

The combination of porcini, spinach and walnut wasn't one I'd tried before - but the flavours worked well together. Though I think it was a little rich for a main - I think in future I would serve two or three as an appetiser.

Also, I had never made stuffed pasta before - but I'm happy to report it was fairly event-free!

On a completely separate aside, I went to bed fairly soon after eating this, and it did cross my mind to be concerned about cheese-induced nightmares... But that was not to be - I had very bizarre dreams, which were exceptionally vivid - but not bad at all! Today I found this article comparing the effects of eating British cheese on dreams - and according to the study 85% of females who eat Stilton before bed have very vivid and crazy dreams... So go on gals - knock yourselves out!

Ravioli with Walnut, Spinach and Porcini

I'm sending this over to Ruth at Once Upon A Feast for Presto Pasta Night - though I think she has put me to shame with her proper ravioli making equipment!

• 250g white stilton
• 50g dried porcini
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 large bunch spinach
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 banana shallot
• 1 small handful shelled walnuts, roughly chopped
• 1 handful shelled walnuts, blitzed to crumbs!
• 1 tsp corn flour, dissolved in a couple of tbsps water
• 200g tipo 00 flour
• 2 eggs
• semolina flour for dusting

Pour a cup of boiling water over the porcini and leave to soak for 30 minutes, or until rehydrated. Strain, reserving soaking liquor.

Making the pasta!

In a blender, blitz half of the mushrooms to a puree. Heat some olive oil and fry the puree for a couple of minutes.

In the blender, mix the flour, mushroom puree and 2 eggs to make a dough - adding a little of the mushroom liquor if required. Remove from the blender, knead for 2/3 minutes until elastic, wrap in film and refridgerate for at least 30 minutes.

Take a look at my post on roasted garlic pasta for more details on making and rolling pasta - I won't write out the details again here!

The filling!

While the pasta is resting, use your blender (yes again! I can't imagine life without my kenwood! ;) to mix 200g of the white stilton and two egg yolks until fluffy.

Chop the shallot, crush one of the garlic cloves and finely chop the remaining porcini. Over a medium heat, fry these for a few minutes until soft. Add to the stilton mix.

Wilt the spinach for a couple of minutes until soft. Strain and squeeze to remove excess water. Add 3/4 of the spinach to the stilton mix reserving the other quarter for the sauce.

Blitz the mix a few times to combine the ingredients, then add the handful of roughly chopped walnuts.

Season well with salt and black pepper!

Make the Ravioli!
Roll out the pasta to the 3rd thinnest setting (See how to roll here!). Cut sheets into manageable sizes! Lay one sheet of pasta out, and place teaspoons of mixture onto it, leaving enough space round the edges to seal it.


Brush the edges with water, and lay another sheet of pasta on top. Starting from one end of the sheet, use a cupped hand to seal the stuffing inside the pasta - making sure there is no air pockets. Cut the raviolis out, trimming the edges as required.

The Sauce!
Dead easy - do this just before serving! Heat a glug of olive oil, crush the remaining garlic clove and fry gently for a minute. Add the remaining spinach, the strained mushroom soaking liquor and the cornflour mix. Stir in the rest of the walnuts, and bring to the boil, then crumble in the remaining stilton. Remove from the heat and stir to melt the cheese into the sauce.

Finishing the Dish!
Cook the ravioli in plenty of boiling salted water for about 3 minutes. Place into a warm dish and drizzle with some olive oil and some of the walnut sauce. Note that the walnut sauce is pretty rich - you don't need much!

Store Cupboard Cooking Day 3