Soda farls (with tomatoes, eggs and bacon, or whatever you like)

Let this be some Monday inspiration for you to carry you through the week to the weekend where you can settle in, have a cup of coffee and weekend papers, with some delicious brunch. 
This is a lovely recipe for soda farls, put up by Niamh, who runs the blog Eat Like a Girl. As soon as I saw this post, I knew I had to make these, not least of all because bread is definitely one of those things which people tend to be extremely wary of, and for a good reason, really. If nothing else, you get all psyched up having decided it's time to do bread, then reading the recipe realise there's about four hours of letting it sit around, while you're standing there in your apron, all ready to go! Plus activating the yeast can be a pain. 

I love Saturday morning breakfast 

My only proper experience of trying to make bread was an overly-spongy, oily foccacia which my boyfriend loved, because anything coated in oil, garlic and rosemary is guaranteed to hit SOME taste buds, but it was hardly a triumph and it took much too long. Boo to that! 
Whereas this recipe doesn't even need yeast! Make the dough, put it into a hot floured frying pan for about eight minutes, and you're done. Hot, fresh bread with your breakfast that 10 minutes prior was a heap of flour. Now that's a sense of smug achievement for you! 
I've included this one here with some roasted tomatoes, which I stuck in the oven as soon as I arrived back from Tesco, even before I started weighing out the flour, plus some scrambled eggs and some bacon. Yum yum.  For two people. 


Soda farls (with tomatoes, eggs and bacon, or whatever you like) 

• 115g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 75mls buttermilk, or 75ml normal milk with a 1/2 tsp of lemon juice
• Pinch of salt

Before you do anything else, get on your tomatoes. Pre-heat the oven, and cut them in half and sprinkle over a pinch of dark sugar, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, a pinch of oregano and maybe some harissa dry spice rub (that's what the rose-petal looking flakes are in the photograph), if you have it to hand! Put it in the oven on 180C, and keep an eye on it. If it starts to get too dried-out looking, just turn off the oven but leave them inside. They'll stay warm. 

Now onto the farls! Sieve the flour and bicarb into a mixing bowl, and add the salt. Make sure it's combined, then make a well in the centre and gradually add the milk, a little at a time, mixing all the while. You miiiiiight need a little extra splash of milk if it really won't come together at all, but you want it to just about stick into a ball. Knead it very briefly, for 20 seconds or so, then roll into a ball in your hands and put on a floured work-top. Push the round of dough out into a circle shape about 1cm thick (it will rise when you cook it) and cut into quarters.

Put a frying pan on a medium heat with a sprinkling of flour, and put the farls in, turning occasionally until they're goldeny-brown on each side. Once the farls are in the pan, get your scrambled eggs on (scrambled eggs must be cooked slowly, on a low heat, with butter!) and after a bit, your bacon. At the end, serve all together, with a big mug of black coffee (alright, tea if you must) and the weekend magazines. Then mooch around all day. Perfect!

Lovely smell at this point, as you can imagine! 

Credit where credit is due: Niamh of Eat Like a Girl

Sweet potato ratatouille

And I'm back after the Christmas break, having received two wonderful cookbooks which made me desperate to get home and start creating meals again.  And it has been great!

But with Christmas break comes that post-binging guilt, and I find ratatouille is a perfect mix of comfort food while still being healthy. I read something once, complaining about ratatouille - that its very essence is aubergine, so how can you have one without? But sadly for me, I hate aubergine - no amount of pressing or salting or anything can seem to make this vegetarian-staple taste any less revolting and bitter to me. It's a shame as it's also a gorgeous vegetable, and is a lovely shade of purple (I used to dye my hair 'aubergine' when I was 14) but it's just not for me.
No, the main ingredient in this ratatouille is sweet potato. I don't know quite why I avoided the sweet potato for so long, but I did. It is a fabulous vegetable, and especially for these post-Christmas times when you're so hungry after nibbling all day long, but don't want to binge on carbohydrate. It does the job of regular potato, but fills you up nicely while still being a healthy vegetable. The original recipe also calls for butternut squash, but we had sweet potatoes and wanted to use that up. In any case, you can substitute 1/2 a butternut squash for sweet potatoes.

This has a nice amount of veg in it. Just look at that picture. Don't you feel healthier just looking at it? And the best thing about this ratatouille is that it is genuinely delicious. There is no sense of 'eat it up, it's good for you' and that stifled grimace of swallowing down healthy stuff. Right before typing this, me and my boyfriend were picking bits of veg out of the roasting tin to eat cold. It's that tasty. And a little bit of ground rock salt once served pushes it from that over into 'can't stop eating' territory. This recipe is taken largely from Yotam Ottolenghi's marvellous vegetarian cookbook, 'Plenty'.

Sweet potato ratatouille (makes enough for 3)

• 50ml sunflower oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1/2 green chilli 
• 1 small red pepper, diced
• 100g french beans/fine beans
• 1/2 a courgette, diced
• 1/2 a small potato, peeled and chopped
• 2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1 parsnip, peeled and chopped
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1/2 tbsp tomato puree
• Chopped coriander to garnish (if you have it lying around, or can use it up. It makes a lovely addition to the flavour as well.)
• Rice to serve

The original recipe insists you have all your veg prepared before you start, but with each chucking of veg into the pan, you have to wait five minutes for it to cook. If you feel confident at chopping, just chop as you go. Otherwise you can be prepared. It's up to you. This takes about 45m on the hob, followed by about 30m in the oven, so do bear in mind.

After adding the water and before leaving to simmer for 30m

Chop your onion and add to a pan on a medium hot heat with 40ml or so of the oil, and fry for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, chop your chilli and pepper, and slice the garlic, then add to the pan. Give it a good stir, then leave to fry for another 5 minutes. After the time has elapsed, add the parsnip (and if you are using butternut squash here instead of sweet potato, add at the same time.)

In order to make sure everything is cooked properly, five minutes after the parsnip (and squash) go into the pot, you want to carefully lift the veg out with a spatula or slotted spoon and put in a bowl, leaving behind as much oil as possible. Throw in your reserved 20ml of sunflower oil, then put the courgette, sweet potato, and beans into the pot. Let cook for 5 minutes, stirring on a high heat - the sweet potato is lovely if it gets a tiny bit brown round the edges -  then chuck the contents of the bowl on the side into the pot and mix all together. Lovely.

Put the tomato puree and sugar in, mix as throughly as you can, then add about 100ml of water, or however much it takes to come half-way up the side of the veg in the pot. Don't cover it by any means. Put the lid on, turn down the heat and leave it for 30 minutes. 

Bearing in mind you want to put your rice on at some point (I have a rice cooker - well worth getting - so I just stick mine on now and it keeps warm), carefully spoon out the veg from the pot into a roasting tin and then pour any remaining liquid over, although I seldom have any. Season damn well with salt and pepper, then into the oven for another 25-30m.

When you're done, the vegetables will be soft and smell delicious, and there'll be no liquid, and it will taste absolutely amazing. Put coriander on top. Yum yum. Happy January everyone.

Credit where credit is due: Yotam Ottolenghi's 'Plenty'