Tag Archives: creme fraiche

Steak fajitas with avocado salsa and creme fraiche.

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This is a favourite in our house, but there has never yet been a good photo taken of it. This is because we tend to descend on it when it’s made and also it just doesn’t photograph well. So I hope Waitrose will forgive me for nicking one from its site.

This recipe originally came from a Waitrose in-store recipe card and I’ve adapted it slightly as I don’t agree with the way it originally said to cook the peppers (with the steak, which is madness as they need vastly different times) and I’ve omitted the  chilli it originally called for and when I made this last night I omitted the chives as ours were covered in small black bugs – blurgh – and it didn’t do the meal any harm at all.

For four people you need:

for the marinade

About 300-340g of steak – the recipe calls for frying steak, I find this tough and I use bavette steak cut into strips. It’s an underused cut, not too expensive, and delicious but don’t cook for long. It’s also amazing made with venison.

2 cloves of finely chopped garlic

1 teaspoon of dried oregano

The juice of one lime (two needed in total, see later)

1 tablespoon of olive oil

the salsa

1 tablespoons of good olive oil

2 ripe avocados

1 small tomato, chopped

2 tablespoons of chopped chives if you have them, don’t stress if you don’t

Juice of one lime

also:

1 tablespoon of olive oil

3 red, yellow or orange peppers but not green. I’ve totally taken against green peppers

Some flour tortillas – we use two small ones each. It’s never enough

Creme fraiche and grated mozzarella to serve

What you do

I prep this in the morning – cut the steak into strips. Mix the olive oil, lime juice and olive oil in a bowl with the oregano. Put steak into marinade, cover and put in fridge until the evening (or at least ten mins).

When ready to eat:

Cut the peppers into strips and cook in the olive oil on medium heat until soft and slightly charred (about ten minutes).

Whilst that is doing:

Skin and stone avocado and put into bowl and mash with lime juice, olive oil, tomato and chives if using. Set aside.

Call someone to lay the table.

Warm the tortillas in a dry frying pan.

Tip the steak in with the peppers and cook on high for about five mins.

When ready to eat, bring to the table and get everyone to make their own: pile creme fraiche, avocado salsa and steak/peppers onto a tortilla and top with grated cheese.

I don’t bother to do any other veg with this…

 

Pancetta, thyme and chestnut pappardelle

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This is a delicious, easy, stand-by meal. The ingredients all have at least a week’s life-span (the majority a lot longer) so you can get them in, and when you want to eat something delicious but fast, you can.

I use fresh pasta for this. Dried pasta has a lower glycaemic index, but there is no greater lie in all the world, than the cooking times advertised on the front of dried pasta packets.

Although chestnuts make it festive, you could cook this at any time of year and if you were to do some prep before hand (not that you really need to) you’d have this on your plate in minutes. It’s a great thing to throw together for friends who you weren’t expecting to stay to lunch/dinner, or when you fancy something really flavoursome and delicate. It’s so much better than you think it’s going to be.

Adapted from Delicious magazine.

Serves 4 for moderate appetites, two if you’re greedy pigs.

Ingredients

300g fresh pappardelle pasta – fret not you can also use tagliatelle or spaghetti or really, let’s face it, any pasta. But pappardelle is a great shape for this recipe. And using fresh just makes the whole thing faster and easier.

1 tablespoon of olive oil (not virgin)

1 onion, finely chopped

200g ready cooked chestnuts, roughly chopped

A few sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves taken off the woody stems

100g thinly sliced bacon, not too much fat on

a garlic clove, finely chopped

200g frozen petit pois. Make sure they are petit pois and not normal peas and you cook from frozen

a jar of 20cl Isigny Creme Fraiche  any other creme fraiche would do but I really love this one and the glass jars make great little storage pots, not least, they perfectly hold one cupcake.

Method

If you are using dried pasta, put it on to cook now because we know those cooking times are all damned lies. If using fresh pasta, don’t put it on yet but have a pan of water boiling away in the background.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan (at the end everything will end up in it) and fry the onion for a few minutes until soft. Add the bacon strips and fry for 5 mins, then add the garlic, chestnuts, petits pois and thyme.

(Put the fresh pasta on to boil for the 3-4 minutes it needs.)

Fry for a further 3-4 minutes. Drain the pasta then stir the creme fraiche through the stuff in the frying pan and finally add the pasta. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

 

Baked blackberry and lemon curd cheesecake

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I was going to write about iced coffee today, but the weather is so grey and miserable this appealed more.

This came from those recipe cards Waitrose has hanging up, usually near the exit. I don’t know who writes the recipes for Waitrose, but they are an unsung hero – some of my very best bakes have come from unauthored recipes from Waitrose. This is a lovely, lovely recipe that makes a great cake: not too fancy, but fancy enough to make it no ordinary cheesecake. It’s also pretty easy to make because a lot of it is assembly, not technique. Try it this weekend after Sunday lunch and let me know how you get on with it.

The recipe is here, but I adapt it slightly and this is how I cook it:

200g pack essential Waitrose All Butter Biscuits, crushed (OBVIOUSLY you can use different ones but I have found these work well)
60g butter, melted
300g soft cheese
300ml Isigny Creme Fraiche
150g caster sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract
2 eggs
225g -ish of blackberries
Lemon curd (I really, really recommend Duchy Originals) – as much as you need to coat the biscuit base with a thin layer, I’d say about six tablespoons.
Icing sugar for dusting (I always forget to do this).

First you crush the biscuits anyway you see fit. I do them with a rolling pin, rolled over a sealed plastic bag. Melt the butter, introduce the two and spread this across a parchment base-lined 23cm spring form tin. Chill in the fridge for an hour or two, less is fine.

To make the filling, heat up the oven to 190C. Mix together the soft cheese, creme fraiche, caster sugar and vanilla extract – either by hand or in a food mixer with a whisk attachment. Add the eggs and beat well until everything is incorporated. Set aside for a momentino.

Get out the tin with the biscuit base, dollop lemon curd across the base, you want it pretty much covered by a thin layer. Now put the blackberries over the top. I used frozen ones that had been picked from our garden last year, and it was nice to see them again.

Now drop the cheese mixture over the top, level out, and cook for  40–45 minutes. It’ll be brown around the edges and set in the middle. (The photo above makes it look like it’s REALLY brown, that’s cos of the effects of the film I use, it’s not that brown.) Take it out, leave it to cool and then leave it in the fridge for a few hours. Overnight if possible because this is even better the next day.Because of this it makes a great dessert to serve when you have people coming round as it’s one less thing to worry about on the day. It will easily keep for a few days in the fridge.

Egg and bacon pies

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This little recipe was from one of Donna Hay’s books – Fast, Fresh, Simple. It makes for a great Saturday lunch but involves no pastry (sorry) – perfect for when when you want something hot, tasty and quick but would prefer to avoid falling into the predictability of sandwiches.

Obviously my children hated this and just ate the buttered sourdough I provided as a prop, and the bacon. But hey-ho. We loved it.

The recipe is here. But for convenience this is what you need for four people:

6 rashers of thin cut bacon

6 eggs

240g creme fraiche (I used a jar of it that was slightly less than that)

2 tablespoons of flat leaf parsley (I use frozen Waitrose herbs they are great for this sort of thing).

Oven preheated to 180C. You need four small oven proof dishes/tins of about 10cm across. We used these little ceramic ones we got some free pate or desserts in years ago. We seem to have accumulated hundreds of these dishes, hardly any of which are the same size. Butter said dishes and place on a baking tray.

Put the rashers around the dishes, one and a half in each, so they make a rim. Whisk together the eggs, creme fraiche and parsley and decant equally into each dish. Bake for 20-25 minutes until cooked but firm to the touch. They puff up like little souffles.