Greek Summer Salad and a Photo Board backdrop for better blog photos

I want to tell you about a salad that I made and also a great product I found that will make taking photos for your blog or Instagram better straight away. But first the salad...

We went to a friend's barbecue yesterday which was lovely - my little girl enjoyed laying on a blanket in the shade and watching everything that was going on and meeting some of my friends for the first time. Here's a little photo of her for no reason other than she's cute!

My friend asked us to bring a salad and I decided to make a sort of Greek salad - it was very simple and doesn't really need a recipe! Simply half some cherry tomatoes, cut some feta cheese into cubes, slice some black olives and remove the stones (I actually used ready sliced ones from a jar) and tear some fresh basil leaves. Toss with a glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper for a simple but tasty salad.

I'm really pleased with this photo which I think is called a flat lay in style (i.e. a birds eye view). It was taken on my kitchen table which is made of glass - so it's a terrible surface for photograph and I usually put a mat or table cloth or something on it when I want to photograph food, but my table cloths always have creases and none of my mats are very big.

I came across a company called Photo Boards that makes backdrops for taking photos against. They use 'texture reproduction technology', whatever that is, so the boards look more three dimensional and not like a photo of a piece of wood - I think they actually look like you are using a piece of wood, rather than a large flat piece of PVC. They are lightweight and wipe clean which is great when you are photographing food, come in two sizes (I bought the 60x60cm one, the larger size) and a variety of designs and shades that look like you are photographing against wood, marble, linen etc. They are not cheap at £30 each so I only bought one, but I already want another!

Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora

My Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora

There's something about the idea of spending a week in a villa in Tuscany that really appeals to me. The landscape looks beautiful, from rolling Italian countryside to the sandy beaches, the small medieval towns to the cities of Pisa and Florence, where I'd love to go sightseeing some day.

Having a villa would mean getting away from it all - I imagine a rustic farmhouse overlooking vineyards, sitting at a big wooden table with my husband as we tear into fresh bread and let a bottle of Chianti breathe.

I love the flavours from this region, from zingy lemons (and limoncello) to the earthy taste of truffles when they are grated over dishes. The red wines from this region are smooth yet spicy and Italian olive oil is renowned world wide.

I also like the simplicity of food from Tuscany. Pasta might just be served with a little oil and butter - when freshly made pasta is that good, why disguise it with a sauce? The best Tuscan food is locally produced and enjoyed according to the season; chicken is free range (probably wandering around the rustic farmhouse of my imagination) and mushrooms are foraged for.

There re two other things that stand out to be about Tuscan cooking. Food is about family, and typical dishes are prepared in large quantities to serve a big family around the kitchen table. It is also traditionally peasant cooking - in other words, cheap and not wasteful. Some of the best known Italian dishes are things that use cheaper cuts of meat, are bulked out with cannellini beans, use up stale bread (panzanella), and using local herbs and vegetables to bring out the natural flavours of the dish. These days rather than being something that is done through necessity, due to lack of money, this is something that many cooks aspire to - natural flavours coming through, cooking more economically and feeding a whole family with a robust, filling meal.

I was genuinely thinking of looking into booking a Tuscan villa for our holiday next year when I was invited to enter a competition run by To Tuscany, a website that specialises in villa rentals in that very region. It must be fate!

They asked me to create my own Tuscan-inspired recipe using typical flavours and influences from Italy, so I started to brainstorm a list of ingredients. I also thought about all the things I described above - cheaper cuts of meat, bringing out natural flavours, and a meal that could be cooked in large quantities if needed, and came up with this recipe for chicken cacciatora.

Cacciatora means 'hunter' in Italian and this is a kind of hunter's stew - perhaps something that would be waiting when they returned home from a day's hunt. It traditionally uses chicken, game or rabbit, and is cooked in a tomato-based sauce, sometimes with wine added, featuring onion and garlic, sometimes carrot or red peppers - there are various versions.

I decided to make mine even more Tuscan, if such a thing is possible, by making Chianti wine an important feature of the dish (Chianti is in Tuscany, if you didn't know). Italian olives stood out to me as a good addition, both for the colour that they give the dish and the different flavour and texture. I love balsamic vinegar and how it can bring out the flavour in dishes so decided to add a splash; my sauce was going to based on tinned tomatoes and the wine, with bay leaves and rosemary for flavour (and again they look great in the dish, though remove the bay leaf before serving).

Finally for a more modern, more indulgent twist, I sprinkled a little grated mozzarella on top of each chicken thigh just before serving, allowing it to melt - the cheese has a subtle taste but adds a little creaminess that is otherwise missing from the dish and to me just seemed to be the finishing touch. Serve the cacciatora with a hunk of fresh bread and a green salad - and the rest of the Chianti of course!

 

Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To serve four, you need:
4 large chicken thighs
pinch of salt salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1/2 bottle of Chianti
1 tbsp. olive oil
100g diced pancetta
2 bay leaves
sprig of rosemary
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
a large handful of green Italian olives
400g tinned tomatoes
generous dash of balsamic vinegar
pinch of smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
50g grated mozzarella

Season the chicken and marinade in the wine for at least one hour or overnight if possible.

 

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken, in batches if necessary, until browned. Add the pancetta to the pan and fry until starting to brown.

Preheat oven to 180C. Transfer the chicken and pancetta to an ovenproof dish with the wine marinade. Mix in the tomatoes, garlic, olives, bay leaf and rosemary. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of smoked paprika and the oregano and cover the pot with a lid.

 

 

Bake in the oven for 1.5 hours; for the last 10 minutes of cooking time add the grated mozzarella on top of the chicken.

 

Serve with green salad, fresh crusty bread and the chianti and enjoy.

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I want to win a week in one of your Tuscany villas!

Olive and Rosemary Focaccia

 

 

Having a gas barbecue is brilliant - we've used it three times in the space of a week! We had four friends over on Saturday for a barbecue and as I didn't have much time, and we weren't a big group, I didn't want to go all out with the salads and side dishes. But at the same time I wanted to provide a couple of home-made things and wondered if there was anything I could make beginning with O that would fit this month's Alphabakes theme.

 

I decided that bread would be good to serve at a barbecue and that there must be something I could make using olives; a quick Google search found this recipe on Taste.com for olive and rosemary focaccia.

 

It was very easy to make, though I don't know how they got the perfectly round shape; I had trouble stretching mine evenly but I think that just makes it look more rustic! I had an open jar of green olives in the fridge I wanted to use up so I used those instead of the black olives recommended in the recipe and it still worked really well.

 

In the pictures below you can see how the yeast bubbles when the water is added, and how much the dough swells up. I used my Kitchenaid to knead it rather than doing it by hand.

 

 

I used rosemary from my garden - about the only useful thing the previous owners of our house left us, in the shape of my herb patch!

 

Here it is after baking

 

 It was easy to slice and had a very good crumb, and tasted delicious dipped in a little oil and balsamic vinegar. It went very well alongside the salad at the barbecue.

I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter I have chosen this month is O.

I'm also sending this to Bready Steady Go, hosted by Jen at Jen's Food and  Michelle at Utterly Scrummy.

And with Cooking with Herbs hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

 

Blue Cheese, Parmesan and Green Olive Bread Sticks

My mum asked me to make a starter for Christmas dinner and I was faced with a problem. Between the six people who would be there, dislikes included: salmon, prawns, pate, salad.... I decided I would be safe with cheese. I also knew it had to be something I could prepare the day before and transport down to my parents, and that my mum wouldn't have a lot of space in her kitchen for preparation or oven for cooking. So the easiest thing, and something I thought we would all enjoy, was baked camembert. You simply buy a whole round camembert (or two, in this case), and put them in the oven for about ten minutes for them to melt. Then you dip bread or veggies into the cheese and enjoy. You could do these if you are having people over on new year's eve, though they are good at any time!

I did want to make something though so I decided to do homemade bread sticks. I'd never made them before, and hardly ever make bread, so I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy these were, and how well they turned out.

I used this recipe from BBC Food but adapted it slightly.

To serve about 8, you need:

one 7g packet dried yeast

1 tsp sugar

500g strong white bread flour,. plus extra for the worktop

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

5 tbsp grated parmesan

2 tbsp blue cheese

3 tsp herbes de Provence

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tbsp green olives from a jar, chopped

For the rub:

1 egg

2 tsp piri piri seasoning

2 tsp herbes de provence

50g grated parmesan

Add the yeast and sugar to 280ml warm water in a large bowl. Add 75g of the flour, whisk and leave for ten minutes for the yeast to activate.

Add the oil, remaining flour, parmesan and blue cheese, herbes de Provence and garlic and mix well to form a dough.

Chop the olives then add to the mixture and combine

Knead for about 5 minutes then cover the bowl with cling film and leave for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 190C. Mix the parmesan, herbes de Provence and piri piri seasoning for the rub in a small bowl.

Roll out the dough to a long rectangle and brush with beaten egg yolk, then sprinkle over the rub. You only need to do this on one side.

Use a pizza cutter or a sharp knife to cut strips of the dough. Gently twist each one, and stretch a little as you do so, and place on a lined baking sheet.

Bake for about 12 minutes until golden brown.

I did these in three batches and by the end had a pile of 16 bread sticks. They were quite large - both longer and thicker than the ones you buy in the shops - so I think you would only need 2 per person.

Here are the breadsticks ready to dip into the baked camembert:

I'm sending this to Four Seasons Food, the blogging challenge hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg as their theme this month is festive party food.

I am also sending this to Cheese Please, hosted by Fromage Homage, as the challenge this month is to make festive nibbles using cheese. These bread sticks contain two types of cheese and are designed to be dunked into cheese, so you can't get more cheesy than that!

Pasta Puttanesca

Before I got rid of this frankly baffling cookery book I decided to make one more thing of it and realised I had never eaten pasta puttanesca. The name translate as slut's or whore's spaghetti though there is some debate as to why the dish has that name - some say it's a reference to the sauce being hot and spicy, others say it was a quick cheap meal that prostitutes could prepare between customers. The ingredients are fairly basic and would have been cheap and readily available: tomatoes, olive oil, olives, capers and garlic, and the recipe I used also had anchovies.

I got rid of the book before I wrote the recipe down but it is fairly simple. Heat a tin of tomatoes and add chopped olives, anchovies, capers, garlic and season.

Serve with pasta. Simples!

This is a very easy and fast recipe to make, so I am sharing it with Tinned Tomatoes' Pasta Please. The challenge is hosted this month by Elizabeth of Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary and her challenge is to make something with pasta that is less than half an hour from packet to plate.

Pissaladiere - Food 'n' Flix: A Good Year

This month's Food 'n' Flix challenge is hosted by Tina at Squirrel Head Manor and she has chosen the Russell Crowe film "A Good Year".  It's based on a book by Peter Mayle, who also wrote "A Year in Provence" and this story is also set in the same region. It's the story of Max, an investment banker and fairly unpleasant character, who inherits his uncle's house and vineyard in Provence. Going back there to sort out the details, and intending to sell the property, Max remembers the childhood summers he spent there, and meets a charming French woman, Fanny, played by Marion Cotillard. Their first meeting - where Max's careless driving knocks Fanny off her bike - makes her behave very coldly to him for some time (there is a very funny scene where Max falls into an empty swimming pool and Fanny helps him get out by filling it with water). But she eventually warms to him and unsurprisingly they fall in love. At the same time Max decides to keep the house and make a go of the vineyard, but a spanner is thrown into the works when his uncle's illegitimate daughter arrives, with her own claim on the estate. Of course, it all ends happily - you will just have to watch the film!

I decided to cook something from Provence in honour of this film. Pissaladière is a Provencal tart made using puff pastry and topped with slow cooked onions, olives, anchovies and herbs. I'm not really keen on anchovies so I decided to use anchovy paste in the recipe. I also don't really like olives either, but I did include them for authenticity!

It's pretty easy to make - first chop an onion and sweat it in a knob of butter and add 2 tbsp. brown sugar.

I used anchovy puree instead of anchovies; I rolled out a piece of puff pastry and thinly spread the puree on top. When the onions are softened, add 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar or 1/2 tbsp. balsamic glaze.

Spread the onion mixture on the puff pastry and top with some sliced olives.

Bake in the oven until the puff pastry is risen and golden. I love the sweetness that comes from the sugar and balsamic glaze.

I'm sending this to Food 'n' Flix as my recreation of a Provencale meal.