The Colours of Summer

Last year around this time David Craig and his team at Clyde Valley Tomatoes were making a great splash as they entered the market (http://www.greenshootsphotography.com/#!clyde-valley-tomatoes/c21si). Since then the company has gone from strength to strength with the tomatoes not only being a regular and much appreciated feature of the farmers markets both here in Glasgow as well as those in Edinburgh but you will now find their tomatoes in a lot of shops and delis ranging from Waitrose and the Whole Food Supermarket through to Roots and Fruits and the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar at Cairndow as well as many other places I am sure.

I am a great fan of tomatoes and it is one of the hardships of winter that even with the year round availability of fruit and vegetables coming as they do from right around the world tomatoes always taste and smell their very best when they are at their freshest and local.

The following pictures give a little taste of all that summer goodness; each of these tomatoes is as packed with flavour as it is with colour!

 Market Fresh

Summer Jewels

A simple snack: slice fresh tomato, a slice of grilled ham or bacon, a slice of toasted Ciabatta ad  a sprinkle of sea salt together with a little basil and you are close to heaven!

Copyright: All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2014. All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.

Schwarzwälder Schinken & Eggs Benedict

Eggs Benedict is, by far, my favourite breakfast dish but I am so often disappointed when I order it in a restaurant. Restaurants seem to specialise in making this most tasty of meals as sterile and as unattractive as possible. Traditionally the dish consists of an English Muffin (despite its name an essentially American concoction!) cut in two and each half is then topped with a round of ham, followed by a poached egg and finally a spoon or two of Hollandaise sauce. The result, while potentially tasty, is often bland and visually sterile – don’t believe me, do a Google image search, there are notable exceptions of course but the majority of the pictures can hardly be called appetizing!

So how to improve on this sorry state of affairs? First, ditch the muffin! A couple of slices of toasted Ciabatta make a far superior foundation for the dish while ensuring that there is enough bread to mop up the egg yolk and sauce without totally dominating it.

Next comes the ham and please, not slices of bland, watery processed ham, Iberian ham is perfect but expensive, back bacon works well but increasingly I find myself using smoked Black Forest ham (Lidl, for more details see the earlier post  https://brunchatgoodies.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/schwarzwalder-schinken-and-shopping-at-lidl/). This ham is amazingly versatile and after baking on a good quality (i.e. heavy and non-stick) metal tray together with a drizzle of olive oil at 190 ^oC for 8 -10 minutes or so you will have wonderfully thin crisp slices of intensely flavoured ham, (any spare slices should be kept in the fridge in a sealed box for several days until required).

Slices of crisp oven baked ham make a perfect accompaniment for eggs benedict

 

 

Slices of crisp oven baked ham make a perfect accompaniment for eggs benedict.

Tomatoes drizzled with a little olive oil are roasted in the oven, again at 190 ^oC, for around about 20 minutes; its worth preparing the tomatoes some 10 or so minutes before the eggs are ready to allow them to cool down, it is impossible to appreciate the flavour of a tomato no matter how good it is if it is scalding hot!

As for the eggs I have for long been a fan of both Burford Brown and Cotswold Legbar eggs from Clarence Court® (frustratingly these eggs are becoming increasingly hard to find in and around Glasgow and are no longer stocked at my local Morrisons, instead I have to trek right across the city to go to Waitrose or in the opposite direction to the Whole Food supermarket (who, for some as yet unfathomed reason sell Cotswold Legbar eggs lose). Both of these eggs have incredibly rich golden yolks and while the colour probably doesn’t add directly to the taste the difference between these eggs and so many others which are in comparison only pale imitations make me feel that these eggs do indeed taste better!

For the Hollandaise sauce I always “cheat” and buy mine ready-made from Maille which has the advantage of both convenience, being able to use just the amount you need while keeping the rest in the fridge for as long as 4 weeks. The Hollandaise is carefully warmed in a bowl over a pan of freshly boiled water which is then kept on a very low heat; be careful not to let the sauce get too hot or it will split.

Assemble the dish on a warm plate building up from the Ciabatta, followed by the Black Forest ham and Hollandaise sauce and roast tomatoes. Finish of with fresh basil leaves and a drizzle of oil from the bowl the tomatoes were cooked in.

Rich runny yolks are a must!

Rich runny yolks are a must!

Enjoy!

A more detailed recipe can be found at: https://brunchatgoodies.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/eggs-benedict/

Copyright: All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2013 All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.

Black Pudding Burgers

Today is National burger Day or as “Burgerac so ably expressed it: “In order to celebrate the UK’s buzzing and burgeoning burger culture, Mr Hyde (the daily email newsletter from the same folks that create Shortlist magazine) has declared that the 27th August is National Burger Day here in the UK…”

So here is a burger with a difference or at least it is if you define a burger as a bread roll with some meat sandwiched in between two halves of a bread roll. In this case the meat is a slice of Nick Nairn’s superb black sausage (blood pudding; available from Morrison’s) lightly fried in olive oil and combined with a slice of tomato and a spoonful of scrambled egg in a miniature bread roll (Waitrose); a perfect breakfast!

Black Pudding Burgers

Perhaps I should have revised the order of the fillings and the this dish could have become the national dish of Germany or Belgium!

To learn more about Greenshoots Photography please follow the link

Good food – it’s all about sharing. ENJOY!

Copyright: All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2013 All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.

Seared scallops, sautéed mushrooms & salad

Scallops are one of my all time favourite things to eat, or at least they are when they are cooked well and until recently that has been a rather hit and miss affair when it came  to my own cooking; all too often they ended up being boiled and not seared, which is something that should never be done to these wonderful delicacies. However, I have always taken comfort in that even professional chefs can sometimes also fail in cooking them, I especially remember some rather mean sized scallops being served to us in Rye but it was not so much their small size that we took issue with but the fact that they had been seriously overcooked on both sides giving a whole new meaning to the word seared, perhaps burnt would have been a better description! On another occasion we went to one of the restaurants on the edge of London’s Borough Market and while the scallops were perfectly cooked they were stone cold. On the first occasion we crunched our way through the scallops rationalising that as it was only one of a number of starter dishes that we had ordered it simply wasn’t worth the fuss and the inevitable delay if we complained. On the latter occasion we did complain only to be told that the dish was cold because we were sitting at the entrance to the restaurant and it was cold there! However, we persisted with our complaint and eventually we were grudgingly presented with a fresh serving on red-hot plates – all of which shows that professional cooks are fallible too but it does seriously beg the question how can dishes which are so obviously wrong ever be let out of the kitchen? I would love to hear about your experiences when you complain about a dish in a restaurant. And of course for all the “bad” dishes there have been many good ones and occasionally some really excellent ones: such as the small plates of scallops that you can buy as a take away from one of the fish stalls in Borough Market or here in Glasgow where Crabshakk serves bowls of sizzling scallops which are so fabulous that I have problems in ever ordering anything else when I visit the restaurant!

So what is the secret to cooking scallops? Well it’s two-fold, the scallops need to be fresh and as dry as possible and the pan needs to be really hot before you add the oil immediately followed by the scallops and they only take a couple of minutes to cook on each side. There are many ways to cook and enjoy scallops but as is so often the case with seafood the simpler it is the better it tastes and this dish is simplicity itself.

Seared scallops, sautéed mushrooms with a green leaf salad and a side dish of french fries

Total time 20 minutes, serves 2.

Ingredients

• 6 to 8 large king scallops with coral (there is an increasing tendency to sell scallops without their coral which I think is a great shame given the contrast in colour, taste and texture that they give) On this occasion I used vacuum packed scallops from MacMillan’s at the Partick Farmer’s Market which have the advantage of having a longer shelf life, up to one week (though I always use them within 2 days), compared to lose fresh scallops.
• 6 to 8 chestnut mushrooms
• green leaf salad (in this case a ready-made Florette “Duo” Lambs Lettuce & Ruby Chard)
• oven french fries (McCain Crispy French Fries)
• olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
• olive oil
• dark soya sauce
• salt (Maldon)
• freshly ground pepper (try grinding some pepper corns in a pestle and mortar for a real pungent blast of pepper. Don’t over grind or you will end up with dust and a totally different taste experience!)

Method.

1. Switch on the oven and turn it up to 190 degrees Centigrade and place a shallow sided baking / roasting tray in the oven and leave to warm up
2. Meanwhile  rinse the scallops under cold running water, cut off the hard piece of muscle that you will find on one edge of the scallop and discard. If the scallops are especially large you may want to cut them in half but don’t try to cut the coral in half, leave it attached to one of the two discs that you have just created and pat the scallops dry with kitchen towel and leave to one side.
3. Place the salad in a colander and rinse under the cold tap (I know that the salad is supposed to be ready to eat straight from the pack but old habits die-hard!) shake off any remaining water and set to one side.
4. Prepare the mushrooms, cutting off the end of the stalk and brushing off any dirt from the cap, then slice using a sharp knife and drizzle with olive oil.
5. Once the oven has got to temperature remove the baking tray from oven and tip the fries into the tray ensuring that they are evenly distributed over the tray and place in the oven.
6. Place a frying pan on the hob over a medium heat, add a glug of olive oil and once the pan is a hot tip in the sliced mushrooms. Sauté the mushrooms moving them around the pan with a wooden spatula, ensuring that they are cooked on both sides. If required add more olive oil but don’t over do it we are not trying to deep fat fry them!
7. While the mushrooms ar cooking place another non stick frying pan on the hob over a high heat and take the opportunity to give the fries a shake.
8. Once the mushrooms are nearly cooked add a dash of dark soya sauce and work the mushrooms around the pan to make sure that they are all uniformly coated with soya sauce which will not only give them a lovely brown colour but will also give them an extra rich, meaty taste.
9. Once the pan for the scallops is hot add a glug of olive oil (not too much!) to the pan followed by the scallops and season with salt and pepper. Shiggle the pan occasionally to ensure that the scallops don’t stick (I have yet to find a pan which is truly non-stick!). Once the scallops have been cooking for a couple of minutes they will be nicely browned on the lower side and they should be turned over, seasoned and cooked for a further 2 minutes (you may need to turn the heat down during the course of the cooking to make sure that the scallops are browned and not burnt!
10. As the scallops finish cooking place the salad on the plates, drizzle with the oil and vinegar dressing and add the mushrooms and finally the scallops while placing the fries in a bowl as a side dish.

Serve and enjoy!

Copyright: All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2012. All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.

Eggs Benedict

Eggs Benedict is an all time breakfast classic packed full of flavours, contrasting textures and colours. The ingredients are very simple: toasted Ciabatta, Iberica ham (though German Smoked Ham (as shown above) or Bacon work well and are significantly less expensive) topped with poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce served with slow roasted tomatoes, basil and salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Waitrose Paleta Iberica de Bellota 65g £4.99 (£7.68 per 100g) transforms Eggs Benedict into a real luxury dish with its melt in the mouth texture and rich flavours, in addition it has the great advantage of not requiring cooking!However some cooking is required and for a very long time poached eggs were my nemesis, I tried everything: swirling the water as I added the eggs, buying the freshest possible eggs, adding white wine vinegar to the water, using metal and silicone poachers and yet none of these either singularly or in combination guaranteed “the perfect poached egg”. Then one day I caught a programme by Heston Blumenthal where he revealed the secret – break the egg into a cup and then carefully tip the egg onto a skimmer as shown below, leave the egg on the spoon for a few seconds before carefully tipping the egg back into the cup. By doing this the wateriest part of the egg white is removed and when the cup is carefully immersed into a large pan of water taken off the heat containing a tablespoon of white wine vinegar and the egg tipped into the water the egg will remain as a tight white ball (well usually – sometimes despite everything things still goes wrong and the pan is filled with frothing white streamers of egg white!)

EGGS BENEDICT

Total time 20 minutes, serves 2.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs (use the freshest eggs possible, Clarence Court Burford Browns with their rich yellow yolks are my favourites)
• 2 or 4 slices of Ciabatta depending on the size of the loaf and appetites! (Both Sainsburys and Waitrose sell wonderful Ciabatta loaves)
• Iberica ham, enough to cover the slices of bread (Waitrose – see picture below)
• Hollandaise sauce (Maille have a great ready-made sauce and any remaining sauce can be kept for up to 4 weeks in the fridge after opening)
• Cherry tomatoes or a small tomatoes such a Perino (Tesco) are ideal.
• Fresh basil leaves
• Salt (Maldon)
• Freshly ground pepper (try grinding some pepper corns in a pestle and mortar for a real pungent blast of pepper. Don’t over grind or you will end up with dust and a totally different taste experience!)

Method

I have not given any timings for the steps below as they naturally flow one to another.

1. Switch on the oven and turn it up to 190 degrees Centigrade.
2. Without waiting for the oven to warm up place the tomatoes in an oven proof dish and drizzle lightly with olive oil before placing in the oven and leaving to roast. (If you are using bacon instead of ham place four rashers in a lightly oiled baking tray and put into the oven to cook at the same time as the tomatoes).
3. Meanwhile fill a large sauce pan two-thirds full with water and add a tablespoon full of white wine vinegar, cover and bring to the boil.
4. While waiting for the water in the large saucepan to boil gather all the remaining ingredients, cut the Ciabatta, crack each egg into a cup before gently pouring the egg onto a skimmer spoon as shown below. The egg should only be left on the spoon for a few seconds to allow the watery part of the egg white to drain away before the egg is carefully tipped back in to its cup.
5. Put a second smaller saucepan about one-quarter full of water on to the stove over a low heat (too high a heat and the sauce will split) and place a small bowl containing  6 to 8 teaspoons full of hollandaise on top of the saucepan and stir occasionally as the sauce heats through.
6. Once the water in the large pan is boiling turn off the heat, remove the lid and carefully tip the eggs out of their cups into the near boiling water. Rather than simply tipping the eggs in from on high slowly submerge each cup in turn so the water floods into the cup and over the egg and then tip the egg out into the water.
7. Put the Ciabatta onto toast and at the same time place two plates in the oven to warm through.
8. Make some coffee!
9. As soon as the toast is ready remove the plates from the oven and start to build the dish in the following order: toast, ham, eggs, hollandaise sauce, with a side dish of roast tomatoes (don’t forget them its all too easy!)  and a sprig of basil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

The only difficult step is in getting the poached eggs out of the pan.  Use a skimmer spoon to slowly lift one egg at a time from the pan, tipping the edge of the spoon against the walls of the saucepan in order to drain off any water trapped on the surface of the egg and then remove any final traces of water by dabbing the underside of the spoon with a wad of paper towel before placing the egg on top of the ham and toast.

Share and enjoy!

Copyright: All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2012. All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.

Croissant with scrambled eggs and bacon

6^th May 2012

This is one of my all time favourite breakfast dishes combining as it does a mixture of sweet lingon sylt (jam) and the savoury salty taste of the smoked back bacon set against the warm flaky croissant and the rich soft scrambled egg.

Combined Prep and Cooking time 15 minutes. Serves 2

Ingredients

• 6 small tomatoes (Perino tomatoes from Tesco are ideal)
• 4 rashers of smoked back bacon
• 4 eggs (Clarence Court, Burford Brown eggs with their rich yellow yolks are my favourite)
• 30 g Orkney coloured cheddar (this yellow cheese helps ensure that the scrambled eggs maintain their rich yellow colour)
• 2 large croissants (Morrisons)
• Lingon sylt (IKEA or from Lidl under its German name of Preiselbeeren)
• Fresh Basil
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Pepper corns
• Sea salt (Maldon)

Utensils

• Roasting dish large enough for the tomatoes and bacon
• Chop sticks
• Bowl or large mug for whisking the eggs and cheese in
• Grater
• Frying pan, approx. 25cm diameter
• Bread knife
• Oven gloves
• Pestle and Mortar

Method

1. Set the oven to 180 degrees C and leave to warm up while gathering together the utensils and ingredients.
2. Wash the tomatoes under the cold tap, shake dry and place in the roasting dish before lightly drizzling some olive oil over them and place in the oven.
3. Crack the eggs into a bowl or large mug and grate in the cheese, then whisk using the chop sticks and set to one side.
4. Take the roasting dish from the oven and with the tomatoes kept to one side of the dish lightly drizzle some olive oil over the rest of the dish and place the bacon in the dish before returning to the oven.
5. Leave to cook for 5 to10 minutes, (this is a good time to make coffee and to grind the pepper corns in the pestle and mortar) before taking the tray out of the oven once more and turning the bacon over and continuing to cook.
6. At the same time cut the croissants almost in half so that they are like clam shells and place them in the oven too (if the croissant are frozen arrange them so that the “clam shells” are open and facing downwards.
7. Put the frying pan on the stove at a medium heat and drizzle a little olive oil into the pan and wipe round the pan with a piece of kitchen towel so that the whole pan is coated with a thin film of oil.
8. Pour the egg and cheese mix in to the frying pan and use the chop sticks to ensure that the cheese is evenly distributed. As the mix cooks keep working it with the chop sticks bring cooked egg from the edges of the pan back into the centre.
9. After a couple of minutes the eggs will be almost cooked, take them off the heat and set to one side, the eggs will continue to cook.
10. Working quickly it is now time to assemble the dish: take the hot croissants from the oven and spread a thin layer of lingon sylt to the top of the bottom half of each croissant and then place two slices of bacon on top of this followed by the scrambled eggs. Finally add the roast tomatoes to the plate together with the basil and add salt and pepper to taste.

 Share and enjoy!

 

Key Words

Scrambled egg IKEA, lingon, bacon croissant, breakfast, brunch, Clarence Court, Burford Brown, tomatoes,

Copyright

All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2012. All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.

Welcome to Brunch at Goodies

Welcome to Brunch at Goodies, an eclectic collection of recipes, ingredients, suppliers and even the occasional restaurant review thrown in just for good measure.

So why yet another food blog? In part, purely for my own satisfaction, as a place to collect and store my cooking and food experiences but also as a way of spreading the word! Breakfast is far too often a neglected meal, especially during the working week. Even those that do indulge restrict themselves to a rushed slice of toast and a swift slurp of coffee, or if they are really pushing the boat out a boiled egg! (What did you have to eat this morning?). And then there are those supposedly health conscious muesli and yoghurt eaters and yes they have their place (muesli and yoghurt that is) but seriously is this what is going to keep you going all morning until you go to the snack van or supermarket for one of their stodgy and vastly expensive sandwiches and the inevitable torpor afterwards as the long haul of the afternoon sets in. The recipes given in this blog are all simple and quick to make and will cost you far less than a trip to the snack wagon or sandwich counter at your local Tesbury’s or Asroses.

The views expressed in this blog will frequently be opinionated, not, because for example I believe that there is only one marmalade in the world worth buying and that of course is Frank Cooper’s Fine Cut Oxford Marmalade. I am sure that there are many other fine marmalades but this is the one that I like and for me it wins hands down. Food is all about sharing and it should always be done with passion. So please come join me on this journey, let’s share the experience; feedback welcome!

Keith

Brunch @ Goodies

Copyright

All photographs and text in the blog “Brunch at Goodies” are subject to copyright. © Keith Gooderham 2011-2020. All rights reserved. Do NOT copy material without requesting permission to do so. If you would like permission simply contact me.