Smoked ham, leek and goats cheese impossible pie

Impossible pie, what a fascinating title.....

Impossible pies come in two forms, sweet and savoury. The former is essentially a baked custard style dish, the latter a form of a crust less quiche. The impossible bit being (I think) the fact that other than whisking the milk and eggs together you basically throw everything in to the dish and bake and it does look rather impossible at first.

The resultant pie was very tasty and great for a light meal when served with a green salad, its also a useful recipe for using up a few eggs when you have a glut from your hens like we have currently. The additions are infinitely variable I used leeks as we had some in the garden and the ham as it was in the fridge, but I am thinking of making a fully vegetarian version probably using pre cooked broccoli or asparagus and adding a little seasonal wild garlic or sorrel next time.

Serve warm or cold, its also the ideal pack up and go snack for a picnic or lunch box, a definite keeper in my opinion. I now need to try the sweet version.

I recently received a lovely hamper of goats milk goodies from St Helen's Farm so took the opportunity to use both goats milk and goats cheese in this recipe.

What you need

• Extra virgin rapeseed oil (1 tbsp or so)
• Couple of leeks - cleaned and sliced thinly
• Garlic - crushed or wild garlic if in season
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 eggs
• 70g Self raising flour (it works fine with gluten free)
• 300 ml semi skimmed milk (I used Goats as that what I had to hand)
• 1 pack of smoked ham - chopped into small pieces
• Approx 80g mature goats cheese -grated

I used a lightly oiled Pyrex flan dish to bake the "pie" in.

What you do

• Pre heat your oven to 200c 
• In a frying pan cook the leeks and garlic until softened and just every so slightly colouring
• Remove from heat and place in baking dish along with ham and the grated cheese, season with a little sea salt and pepper
• Whisk the eggs, flour and milk to make a thin batter
• Pour this over the leeks, cheese and ham
• Loosely cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes
• After 30 minutes, remove the foil and bake for a further 30 minutes until the pie is firm and golden.
• Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes or so, before serving in slices 
• Refrigerate if you wish to serve cold.

Rocket, roasted tomato, basil and feta salad

This salad is seriously amazing for two main reasons firstly its tastes great and secondly as it uses plenty of rocket (arugula for our American friends), the reason why I like this is because we have a forest of of rocket growing in the vegetable garden. I enjoy rocket salads as our homegrown wild rocket has a spicy Parmesan cheese edge to its flavour so its great in combination with other Mediterranean salad ingredients. This salad is a mish mash of Italian and Greek flavours and screams languid hot summer days to me.

I am sure I can almost here Spanish guitars and feel Balearic breezes through the trees.....

I am sure if you didn't fancy roasting the tomatoes that some good sun dried tomatoes would be nearly as good in this dish, plus you could swap out the feta for local goat cheese, serve with chilled white wine and good bread, simple grilled meats or fish and good friends.

What you need

• Rocket (Arugula) - a good handful for each person
• Basil- a few sprigs - leaves picked off
• Feta or goats cheese - 1 block serves about 4 - chopped or crumbled
• 6 - 10 baby plum or cherry tomatoes - halved
• Extra virgin olive oil ( extra virgin rapeseed would also be good)
• Sprig of fresh thyme - leaves picked off
• White wine vinegar / balsamic vinegar / red wine vinegar
• Pinch of sugar
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

What you do 

• Heat your oven to 220c
• Toss the tomatoes in a little of the olive oil and place in a small oven tray, sprinkle with the thyme and a little sugar and season with salt and pepper.
• Roast for about 30 minutes or so until the tomatoes are slightly charred and soft (like in the bottom image)
• Cool ( you can store in the fridge for a while if you like, no snaffling !)
• iMake a dressing of the pan juices, a good slug of olive oil and some vinegar (you are going for 6/1 oil to vinegar ratio), taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
• To assemble the salad, toss the rocket in the dressing , then top with the cheese and roasted tomatoes and drizzle with a little more of the dressing.
• Strew with basil leaves
• Serve immediately and devour greedily.

I'm linking up to Simple and in Season, created by Ren Behan and hosted this month by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary.

                                            

I am also linking to Extra Veg created by Fuss Free Flavours and Utterly Scrummy and hosted this month over at Maison Cupcake.

Goats cheese & couscous stuffed peppers

Another post for Ethel and the #capricornchallenge , this one takes a little more prep but its the oven thats doing the hardwork really. The goats cheese provides a lovely cheesy calcium hit to this impressive little dish which would make a great starter for a meal with friends or as a lunch dish.

Ingredients

• 2 red peppers - halved and seeds removed
• 1 packet of roasted vegetable couscous or plain couscous
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 round of Capricorn goats cheese - diced
• 1 tbsp of caramelised onion chutney
• Pumpkin seeds or walnuts (optional if you want to add more crunch)

Method 

• Rub the peppers with olive oil
• Roast in the oven at 180c until softened
• Meanwhile prepare the couscous, following the instruction on the packet
• Once the couscous is ready stir in the caramelised onion chutney and the nuts or seeds if using
• Spoon into the cooked pepper shells and top with the chopped goats cheese
• Bake for another 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and lightly golden
• Delicious served with a dressed rocket salad.

Courgette and goats cheese spaghetti

I have been really lucky this month to be invited to take part in Somerset Goats #Capricorn challenge. Ethel (she's a goat by the way and she can tweet wonderfully even with cloven hooves) sent a fabulous hamper full of goodies to inspire me to develop some lovely recipes that use this delicious mildly goaty rinded cheese. Ethel was worried that as a Lancashire focused blogger I wouldn't want to take part, but I assured her that despite being passionate about local food I was also passionate when it comes to United Kingdom produce too.

It was great fun experimenting with the lovely cheese which is a nice mix between crumbly and creamy and has just the right amount of ooze factor, it combines well with a lot of different ingredients. Thanks Ethel !

Ingredients

• Spaghetti approx 75g per person 
• 1 round of Somerset goats cheese, chopped into small pieces
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 2 large courgettes - coarsely grated
• Lemon juice and lemon rind - approx 1 small lemon
• 1/2 a dried red chilli chopped finely, seeds removed
• Fresh thyme stripped and finely chopped - good pinch
• Fresh mint, finely shredded - 1 tbsp
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 clove of garlic - crushed

Method

• Put your spaghetti, in boiling salted water and cook for the length of time stated on the pack.
• Whilst the spaghetti cooks, heat your olive oil in a frying pan and gently fry the garlic and chilli for about 1 minute.
• Add the grated courgette to the pan and cook for 2 minutes.
• Remove from heat until the spaghetti is cooked.
• Once the spaghetti is cooked, drain quickly, toss in the pan with the lemon juice, rind, herbs and goats cheese, if a little dry add some of the pasta cooking water.
• Once thoroughly mixed serve with freshly ground black pepper.

Sweetfire beetroot, goat cheese and rocket salad

As one of the lucky bloggers taking part in the #thinkyouknowbeetroot campaign from lovebeetroot  here is the first recipe using one of the samples I have been sent to play with. Any regular readers of my blog will know that I enjoy finding novel ways of using ingredients. I was lucky to already to have a supply of fabulous local goats cheese from Capra Products, the last of homegrown wild rocket and a few tomatoes from the garden. Sweetfire beetroot is baby beetroots marinated in a chilli olive oil dressing, so the beetroot has a slight chilli piquancy, I mixed up a quick olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing ( I use Gift of Oil black label) to pull the dish together.

Ingredients

• Salad Rocket
• Sweetfire Beetroot
• Goats cheese
• Tomatoes (optional)
• Balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil

Method

Place the beetroot on your serving plate, sprinkle with rocket, crumble the goats cheese and drizzle with your dressing. Delicious, simple lunch ideal served with crusty bread to mop up the lovely dressing.