Month: January 2024

Fridge-raid salad

This not so much a recipe as an idea. Tomorrow we head back to Turkey (can’t wait to be in my lovely big kitchen – the one here is a little on the ‘bijou’ side, and a lot of my cooking kit still resides in Turkey), so last night’s dinner was a final fridge-raid. (Tonight is fish and chips from the pub, as I’ve now cleaned the oven and the kitchen floor).

I really couldn’t face another version of fridge-raid soup and we had a couple of bags of fresh salad still to eat, plus a little container of chicken strips and a few slices of smoked bacon in the freezer. I cobbled the whole lot together and made a mustardy dressing, which I mixed in the pan in which I had fried the bacon and chicken – which made it warm and super delicious. We ate the salad with the last of a bag of new potatoes (local earlies) and some garlic bread. You can use whatever leftovers you like, and feel free to add some toasted walnuts, pine nuts or seeds (I forgot to do so). Here’s how I rolled:

  • Halve some small tomatoes and put them on a baking tray that you have lined with baking paper and roast in a 180 degree oven until slightly scorched and starting to fall apart (about half an hour). If you are adding garlic bread, put this into the oven towards the end of baking (saves on electricity and means your tomatoes will be warm).
  • Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and fry a few rashers of bacon until really crisp. Set the bacon aside to cool, the break into shards. Add some strips of chicken (breast or thigh is fine) to the pan – or other protein of your choice (thin strips of beef, a little chorizo or some prawns immediately spring to mind), along with a finely chopped clove of garlic and a generous sprinkling of chilli flakes and oregano. Cook until the chicken is a deep golden brown and starting to crisp. Set the chicken aside with the bacon, leaving any cooking juices in the pan.
  • Meanwhile, arrange some salad leaves in a serving bowl and top with whatever you have going – I used spring onions (red onion would be fine), avocado and thinly-sliced fennel. Scatter the bacon, chicken and roasted tomatoes over the salad and top with any bits of cheese that you happen to have to hand – I used some feta, but any blue cheese, goat’s cheese or other soft cheese would be fine.
  • To make the dressing, deglaze the pan with a little white wine/apple vinegar or balsamic vinegar, then whisk in a heaped teaspoon of Dijon mustard. If using white wine or apple vinegar, add a teaspoon of brown sugar or a little drizzle of honey. Season generously and whisk in a little olive oil (about two tablespoons) until you have a cohesive glossy dressing. Drizzle all over the salad and sprinkle over some chopped parsley. Serve with the garlic bread, or other crusty bread for dunking into the dressing, and some new potatoes on the side.

Marmalade and ginger muffins

A few people have said to me recently that they miss receiving recipes and musings from ‘aviewfrommykitchen’, so I thought perhaps it was time to dust off the laptop and post something delicious. I have been posting stuff on Instagram and there are quite a few recipes and ideas on my page if you haven’t already spotted them – the handle is the same: @aviewfrommykitchen

As we are travelling back to Turkey next week and I know that our Seville orange trees will be groaning with fruit, just begging to be made into marmalade, I thought a marmalade-related recipe might be timely.

This is such an easy recipe, as you just melt a few things in a saucepan, then add a few dried things, with the eggs going in last, so that they can’t scramble in the heat. I invented this recipe to use up some marmalade which had crystallised in the fridge – once melted, it was perfectly good. The semolina gives the muffins a really satisfying crunch, but if you want to make these and you don’t happen to have any in the cupboard, just replace with more flour. As self-raising flour is as rare as hen’s teeth in Kaş these days, you can just use plain flour – for each 150g flour (obviously include the semolina in the weight too, if you are using that), add two flat teaspoons baking powder (look for kızartma tozu – the stuff in the little paper packets, sold next to the yeast and vanilla – baking soda or karbonat is an entirely different thing, which you’ll find with the herbs and spices. Obviously.)

Once the muffins are baked, they are glazed with more marmalade to give them a deliciously sticky topping. You can use any sort of marmalade – I used a homemade mixed fruit version, containing pink grapefruit, which gave the muffins a pleasing bitter note. Feel free to swap the pistachios and almonds for other nuts or seeds – whatever you have in your cupboard.

Marmalade and ginger muffins
Makes 12
You will need a 12-cup muffin tin, lined

250g self-raising flour
50g semolina
½ teaspoon baking powder
150g Demerara or other light brown sugar
170g marmalade, plus 2 tablespoons extra for glaze
120g butter
100ml milk
2 tablespoons yoghurt
2 eggs
40g each chopped almonds and pistachios, plus a few for topping
2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallised ginger*, plus a little extra for topping

1. Heat the oven to 190°C fan.

2. Put the marmalade, sugar and butter in a saucepan large enough to hold all of the ingredients, and melt over a medium heat until the sugar and marmalade have completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and whisk in the milk and yoghurt.

3. Stir in the flour and semolina until just combined, then whisk in the eggs, along with the nuts and ginger.

4. Divide between the lined muffin cups and sprinkle a little extra ginger and a few chopped nuts onto the top of each muffin.

5. Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes, until the muffins are a deep golden brown and feel just firm to the touch – they will firm up a little more as they cool. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Melt the extra marmalade, either in the microwave or in a small saucepan (a Turkish coffee pan is your friend here), then brush each muffin with a little glaze.

*For anyone baking this recipe in Kaş, the easiest (and by far the cheapest) place to source the crystallised ginger is Muhtar supermarket, but you will also find it on the spice stall in the Friday market and in the spice shop on the corner behind the PTT.