Matar Paneer - Barny’s Classic Pea & Feta Cheese Curry Recipe

Serves 4 as a main meal or up to 15 as a side dish (with 2 other main dishes).

Our family have been making this for years, it is a real classic, and a good veggie option (Vegan option suggested below).  It is really good for cooking in advance and chilling or freezing.  It travels well as solidifies when it is cold.

Ignore this if you are going for tinned tomatoes (recommended).  If you are using fresh tomatoes, before you start, boil the kettle and soak the 3 large tomatoes in the boiled water so that the skins come off easily when you need them to.

Ginger, fresh, 1½inch, grated

Garlic, 2 cloves, grated

Oil, for frying

Fry the ginger, garlic in the oil gently for 2 minutes - don't burn the garlic!  Add:

Chilli powder or flakes, ½tsp

Cardamon, 1 level tsp of the inside black seeds, crushed

Tumeric, 1½tsp

Coriander, ground, 1½tsp

Fry gently for a few minutes.  Then add 

Peas, fresh or frozen, 700g

Cover with boiling water so that the peas are just covered (ie not too much!).  Boil for 5 minutes until they are cooked.  Then, “Lob in”:

Tomatoes, 1 400g tin of cherry tomatoes (or 3 large, fresh, peeled, diced)

Feta cheese, 3x 200g packs (600g), diced into 1-1½cm cubes.  

For a Vegan option you could leave out the cheese and add a can of coconut milk, some butter beans and 1 tsp of salt.

DO NOT STIR.  Turn off the heat until you are ready to eat.  You want to retain the fragile pretty red tomatoes and classic lumps of white cheese.  A few minutes before serving gently heat through until a little of the cheese melts stir in SLOW motion to retain the distinct colours and shapes.  Check the seasoning, you shouldn't need to add salt as the feta adds enough.

It is so nice, even cold on toast the next day, but usually there isn’t any the next day…..

Updated 25/11/23

Flapjacks

With thanks to Katie Stewart and AA Milne who made some good recipes in very small quantities – this multiplies their ingredients by 6.  It is Pooh’s recipe, from the Pooh Cook Book, given to me by the Elliots for Christmas in 1973.  I was 6, they were nice people, and this was a very good present.  The page is much marked – a bit like ancient parchment - and Cai has signed his name on it in 2008, an old family favourite you might say.  It is a good one to make with small children, as it is so simple (but you do have to breath deeply when the oats start scattering – and call in the dog – and sometimes when the golden syrup ends up in the pigtails, there is nothing for it, but bath time).  This was one of the few dairy free, egg free things I could make for my allergic babies - now of course they can enjoy it as Pooh intended (full of butter).  However, as there is so much of it, you could dilute the butter with sunflower oil – that is, if you have a guilty conscience.  I don’t actually think Pooh had a conscience ……….

Butter, 12oz (1½ pks, or dairy free margarine or 6oz butter & 6oz sunflower oil)

Golden Syrup, 6 rounded tbsps

Sugar, soft brown, 6oz

Melt the sugar and butter into the syrup.  It doesn’t have to boil, but make sure there are no granules and it is a smooth caramel.  Mix in;

Oats, rolled porridge ones, 24oz

Salt, big pinch

Eat some mixture ‘raw’ (essential tradition – but beware, as you can get carried away and it might not even make it into the oven - these things have happened – oh yes).  Press the remainder firmly into a small roasting tin (20x30cms), lined with non-stick baking parchment, and bake for 20 minutes on 150C.

It should have a pale golden crust.  Let it cool a little in the tin, and mark out - about 24 squares - with a sharp knife pressing down any wrinkles.  Leave it to cool completely before attempting to remove from the tin.

25 February 2013

I had to make this today as Cai ‘needed’ it after a frosty football practice under arctic floodlights and it distracted his torrent of moaning about his woeful new position and craving for ‘proper’ chocolate bars, which aren’t organic…. This, a small snapshot of our life as it is now, and a glimpse of the consequence of a little too much maternal brainwashing and the emergence of a nearly 12 yr old backlash as the realisation dawns that there is ‘another world’ out there.  That of Cadbury’s and Nestle and Coke, ah well 12 blinkered years, not bad really. 

Amanda at Nantgwynfaen Organic Farm

Nantgwynfaen Porridge with Whisky and Cream

For Lucia and Marie and anyone else who likes their porridge creamy with Welsh whisky and 2 kinds of sugar...

Porridge oats (one handful per person), I use Essential Trading organic oats
Milk, semi skim or full cream - approximately 6 times the amount of oats... approx...
Salt, a small pinch, I use Halen Mon Welsh sea salt

If you remember, soak the porridge in some milk over night.  I never do this as I am too forgetful, but it will make it quicker.  Slowly heat the mixture, stirring occasionally to stop it sticking, allow a good half an hour to make this properly, don't let it boil.  You keep adding the milk until the oats are plump and saturated and when you drizzle a spoonful over the top of the mixture, it immediately sinks in and disappears.  You want it quite runny, if it isn't quite done it has this amazing habit of thickening when you put it into the bowl and instead of being creamy, smooth, and molten, it is rubbery and chewy, not good....

When you are satisfied that you can't fit any more milk into the oats and you have let it have come to the boil for a second, stirring all the time, serve into hot bowls and sprinkle with the following, in this order:

Muscovado Sugar, 1 - 2 tsp per person, sprinkle between your fingers.  This is the very very dark brown sugar and it will melt into a dark sweet syrup.
Demerera Sugar, 1 tsp per person, this will add a definite crunch to an otherwise smooth experience (I personally don't like the crunch and don't put it on, but Ken goes wild for it and insists that it is essential!)
Whisky, 1 tsp per person, I use Welsh Penderyn whisky, but Ken likes rum, or you could add your favourite tipple (but actually gin would be wrong, so stick to the dark stuff).
Cream, thick & double, 1 dsp

Serve immediately!

Some hardy sorts like to have this before their full fry up, but they are the exception, a bowl of porridge is normally quite satisfying enough on it's own!

Tuscan Bean Soup

Serves 8


Hearty soup and fresh bread, it's a quick, nutritious and very satisfying meal.  We're into the Bacheldre rustic crunch bread mix at the moment shaped into a round country floured cob.  The soup takes the same amount of time as the bread takes to rise and cook.  A good school holiday lunch with easy washing up.


2 sticks celery
2 carrots
2 rashers smoked streaky bacon (optional)
2 onions/leeks
olive oil


Finely chop and fry for 10 minutes.


Add:


1L stock (ham hock was good, but cubes would do)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can berlotti beans/calenninni
1 long squirt tomato puree
2 tbsp redcurrant jelly
2 slices stale bread, finely crumbed
5 new potatoes chopped (optional)
2 cloves chopped garlic
pepper to taste
salt if the stock isn't salty enough


Boil gently for 15 minutes until the veg is tender, stir occasionally to stop it sticking.  


Serve with:
Grated parmesan
Chopped parsley
Pesto (mix some olive oil into it to thin it, then you can make a pretty swirl).

Welsh Cakes - Cacenau Cymraeg

Welsh Cakes - Cacenau Cymraeg

For St David’s Day, 1^st March, or for tea time treats any day, best cooked on the griddle when the Rayburn is alight, but also fine on a heavy based pan with the gas down low… eat them fresh.

Heat up the griddle pan on a LOW gas.

Flour, self raising, 1lb

Butter, salted, 1 pack 250g

Sugar, 6oz

Mixed spice, ½ level tsp

In the food processor mix all the dry ingredients with the butter to make crumbs. Add:

Eggs, 2

Currants, a handful

Pulse to a dough, kneed together if necessary (you don’t want to chop up the currants). Roll out onto a floured board, to just under a centimetre. Griddle slowly until brown, turning once. Cool on wire rack, sprinkle with some:

Sugar, caster.

Serve warm with tea and Welsh conversation.

Maen nhw’n arbennig!

Chowder for Chow

Chowder for Chow

A good quick healthy one pot weekday meal

Serves 6

340g smoked haddock (undyed)

1 pk raw prawns (x27)

1pt semi skim milk

Poach for 10 mins until JUST cooked. Take out the fish and prawns and leave on a plate. Remove skin and any bones. Break into flakes. To the remaining milk, add:

1pt boiling water

1 chicken stock cube (or fish stock)

1 onion chopped finely

5 carrots chopped finely

5 potatoes peeled and chopped finely

1 sprig thyme

Peas, 250g

celery would be nice (optional)

Boil 15-20 mins until the potato is cooked, add:

Sweet corn, half tin

Berlotti beans, 1 tin

Cream, double, 4 tbsp – a good slosh (optional)

Pepper, freshly ground, lots

Cook for 5 mins,

Flour, plain 1 dsp, with 3dsp water to a paste, stir into cowder to thicken, taste it, add more pepper if necessary.

Parsley, a large handful chopped for garnish

Gary Rhodes who inspired this serves his with soda bread, sounds good doesn’t it?

Ham

The Christmas Ham

Preheat the oven to 160C

I always used to boil our ham, which is really tricky when it is the size of a small child, and it is hard to get the timing right as it takes so long to come back to the boil. This year, Michelle said to look in Delia, and of course, Delia knows best – bake it. So this is thanks to her and thanks to the organic farmer who grew it and thanks to Dorset Farms for curing and smoking it to perfection.

Soak the ham about an hour if you trust your butcher not to have made it really salty (I did), if in doubt, soak over night.

Wrap well in 2 sheets of foil, one one way, one the other way, loose enough to make a pocket above the meat – “an oven within an oven”.

Make sure the oven is well heated, bake for 20 mins/454g/1lb - which for our 6.7kg “baby” was 5 hours. Half an hour before the end of the cooking time, take the ham out of the oven. Turn it up to 200C. Remove the foil, cut off the net, carefully peel off the skin by cutting across the skin and using a tea towel to hold the corner, peel it off but keep as much fat on as possible. Cut diagonal diamonds across the fat and plant a clove into each diamond. Then mix: 3 heaped tablespoons of Colman’s hot English mustard and smear over the ham. Add 3 or 4 handfuls of Demerara sugar over the mustard and press it onto the wonderful mustardy “glue”.

Bake for up to half an hour, watch it carefully, don’t burn it! It should be pale golden with a few caramelised spots.

The juice from the pan (pints of it) makes amazing soup. Put it in the fridge to settle the fat for skimming. The stock can also be added to the parsley sauce to give it extra dimensions, and the glazing pan can be de-glazed with white wine (flat cava), and added to the parsley sauce too.

Our ham weighed 6.7kgs, it fed 15 of us (13 adult portions), and there was 1.5kg left, which was enough for sandwiches all round, so I would say about 30 portions in all – and we have been quite greedy with it. The mustard did not in any way make it ‘hot’, just added to the most bootiful flavour ever. Mmm. Amazing, and too good to just have at Christmas.

Amanda

Nantgwynfaen Organic Farm