Butternut squash, spinach and blue cheese tart

This was inspired by the vast quantities of butternut squash in the veg box last week.

Makes enough for 4. You'll need:

a medium butternut squash, peeled and cubed
a good slug of olive oil
lots of spinach (about 1/3 of a bag, or whatever frozen stuff you can drag out)
a good hunk of blue cheese (ours was miscellaneous Sainsbury's value 'blue cheese', but stilton would be good, and roquefort or gorganzola pretty special)
one onion, finely sliced
a clove of garlic, minced
shortcrust pastry (enough for an A4-sized baking tray - 8oz flour should do the trick)

Stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C. Tip your cubed squash into an ovenproof dish, and slosh some olive oil over the top. Shake the cubes about until they're coated, then roast in the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the squash is soft.

In the meantime, fry the onion and garlic in a little olive oil until its turned translucent. Add the spinach, and heat in the pan for a couple of minutes until its wilted.

Grease your baking tray, and roll out the shortcrust pastry. Line the tray with the pastry, and then tip the onion/spinach mixture on top. Scatter over your roasted squash, and some cubes of blue cheese. It should now look a little like this:


Season with some salt and black pepper. Turn the oven down to about 180 degrees C, and bake the tart for about 20-25 minutes. It's ready when the pasty is crisp and golden brown, and the cheese has melted.

We ate ours with lashings of black pepper and a nice green salad:

Pasta with anchovies, broccoli and stilton

I know this isn't too dissimilar to the orecchiette with anchovies and broccoli that I posted last July (was it really that long ago?). You can blame Nigel Slater for that - I have a sneaking suspicion both recipes were inspired by his latest book, Tender.

Makes enough for three. You'll need:

1 medium-sized head of broccoli (this would be even nicer with purple sprouting)
a 150ml or so of creme fraiche
4 anchovy fillets
1 onion, sliced
enough pasta for three (that's about 6-7 handfuls in our house)
a slosh of olive oil
a chunk of stilton, crumbled

Sling the pasta in a pan of boiling water, and cook until al dente. In the meantime, chop the broccoli into small florets, and steam for 3-4 minutes.

In a frying pan, gently cook the onion in the olive oil, until it turns translucent. Add the anchovy fillets, and stir to break them up (they'll almost dissolve in the oil). Add the creme fraiche, and simmer for few minutes. Sling in the stilton (dolcelatte would be even better here, I suspect), and let it melt - if the sauce becomes a little thick, then dilute with a little hot water.

Tip in the broccoli and the drained pasta, and toss everything together. Season with lots of black pepper.

Leek, courgette and stilton tart

This used up the last of the leeks from the allotment. Sadly, it did nothing for the glut of swedes from the vegetable box.

You'll need:

4 or 5 medium leeks, washed and sliced
a couple of onions, sliced
a good wedge of stilton (doesn't matter if it's past its best somewhat), crumbled
a small courgette, sliced
a splosh of olive oil
lots of black pepper, and a little dried thyme
shortcrust pastry

Stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C.

Splash a little olive oil into a pan, and fry the leeks and onions on a low heat, until they soften. Add half a teaspoon of thyme, and season with black pepper.

Roll out your shortcrust pastry, and place on a baking tray (preferably one covered in greaseproof paper, or greased with a little oil or butter). You could bake the pastry blind at this point, if you have the time (cover with a sheet of greaseproof paper, and place some baking beans on top before sticking in the oven for 10 minutes or so).

If, like me, you're aiming to have tea ready for 6pm, spread the leek/onion mixture on top of the raw pastry, and dot with the slices of courgette, and the pieces of stilton.

Drizzle a little olive oil over the top, and bung in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until the pastry has turned golden brown, and the stilton has melted. (Obviously if you've already baked the pastry case blind, you'll not need as long).

We ate this with a green salad, and some new potatoes.

Bacon and blue cheese salad

This is your Dad's kind of salad - one with 'interesting things in'. We ate it today for tea, as the pair of you were still fairly full from IKEA's meatballs and chips at lunchtime...

You'll need:

salad leaves (we had a combination of romaine lettuce, homegrown parsley and celery leaves today)
a couple of cold leftover potatoes, sliced
spring onions, sliced
a large carrot, peeled and sliced thinly
2 or 3 rashers of bacon, chopped into small pieces
a handful of cubes of stilton (or any blue cheese - Roquefort is brilliant, but a little wasted here)
lots of black pepper

Fry the bacon in a small frying pan, until it's crispy. You could even make some croutons by frying cubes of stale bread in the bacon fat, if you're really being fancy.

Chuck the leaves/spring onions/carrot slices in a large bowl. Scatter the bacon pieces and stilton cubes over the top, and toss. Add lots of black pepper, and serve with some crusty bread.

It works very well with a French-ish salad dressing of mustard/olive oil/vinegar/lemon drizzled over the top.

Stilton, red Russian kale and courgette pie

Bear with me here. It sounds a bit of an odd combination, and it was born out of the need to use up the last of the stilton from Christmas. We also had some weird stuff in the veg box this week which turned out to be red Russian kale, and I'd run out of things to do with it.

To be honest, though, there's very little that can't be improved by sticking a piece of pastry on top.

You'll need:

a small block of puff pastry (life's too short to faff about making this from scratch on a Monday night)
a small block of stilton (I guess I had about 150g of the stuff left), cubed
a couple of onions, finely chopped
a large courgette, cut into small pieces
a couple of handfuls of red Russian kale (spinach would also be good, but you'd need a lot more of it)
a small carton of cream (I didn't have this, so I used a small pot of cheese sauce which was lurking in the back of the freezer)
black pepper (I didn't add any salt because the stilton is salty enough), a teaspoon of dried thyme

Stick the oven on at 180 degrees C. Hopefully miss out the bit where it trips the electricity, and you have to go out in the freezing cold to turn the switch back on.

First of all, sort out your filling. Gently fry the onions in a little olive oil until they've softened, then add the courgette and the thyme, and cook for 5 minutes on a gentle heat.

Chop your kale into small pieces, and blanch - put into boiling water for 5 minutes, until the purple has turned to green (spooky). Drain (the water will be beautifully purple), and chuck into the bottom of your pie dish. Add the courgette/thyme/onion mixture, and gently turn until it's all combined.

Scatter the cubes of stilton over the top of the mixture, and season generously with black pepper. Pour your cream (or creme fraiche or whatever) over the top.

Roll out the puff pastry to the size of your pie dish, and lay it over the top of everything (remember to make a couple of small holes in the top to let the steam out). Bung in the oven for 20-30 minutes (or until the top is golden brown and puffed up).

Mini spinach and stilton quiches

You were quite nifty at trimming the pastry to the right size for these. Shame you then refused to eat any of your cheese and onion one. Oh well.

This made enough for six mini quiches (five spinach and stilton, and one plain cheddar and onion). I had enough of the base mix left over to make a decent size pizza - so this recipe would make a fairly large single quiche (you'd maybe have had to add another egg and a lot more milk or cream to fill it).

8oz flour
2oz butter
5 fl oz milk
a little salt

We cheated on the base this time - we chucked the flour, butter and salt in the food processor as time was tight, and let that do all the work. We added the milk (somehow doing it in the food processor means you need a little more than usual), pressed the button, and hey presto there was dough. Magic.

Roll out reasonably thinly, and fit into greased mini-quiche tins (the ones with the removable bases are the easiest). Trim off any excess with a knife.

For the filling you'll need:

3 eggs
a little milk (maybe a couple of hundred ml)
2 handfuls of spinach leaves
an onion, sliced
about 3 inches of the end of the stilton cheese, cubed
salt and pepper

To make the filling, fry the onion in a little olive oil until it's softened. Tip into the six little quiches. Add the spinach leaves to the frying pan, and cook for a couple of minutes on low until they've wilted. Divide up, and add a little to each quiche. Chuck in three or four cubes of stilton to each tin. Season each quiche with a little salt and pepper.

Crack the eggs into a measuring jug, whizz round with a fork, and add the milk. Pour the mixture (very carefully) into each quiche. I find it's easiest to stand all the little tins on a large baking tray, then (a) you can lift them into the oven easily and (b) if any of the filling does escape you avoid cleaning the floor of the oven...

Bake at 180 degrees C for about 20 minutes, or until they've turned golden brown.

We ate ours with some salad, lots of chutneys and some chips.