Recipe Time - Leek, Tomato and Taleggio Risotto

This week on The Hungry Seagull I bring you another delicious recipe created by my own fair hand  - leek, tomato and taleggio risotto.

Taleggio is a soft, intensely flavoured cheese, a bit like stilton crossed with camembert. Frequently, it is made from pasteurised milk, which is good news for us germ-freaks.

It is extremely versatile and I love it fresh from the packet, smeared on fluffy white bread, as much as I do melting it in hot dishes such as this risotto.

This recipe uses cherry tomatoes because their delightful sweetness contrasts really well with the tangy cheese and buttery leeks.

Ingredients (Serves 4):

4 Leeks

4 tablespoons Olive Oil

200g Risotto Rice

1 litre Vegetable Stock

400g Cherry Tomatoes

200g Taleggio Cheese

4 teaspoons Oregano

Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Method:

Trim and wash the leeks. I also like to remove the outer leaf but that is a matter of personal preference, you may prefer to throw it all in!

Pour the olive oil into a large pan and heat. Slice the leeks into disks and, when the oil is good and hot, throw them in to the pot.

Cook the leeks over a medium heat, keeping them moving so they do not stick to the pan and burn. When they are soft, add the rice and, stirring all the time, continue to cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the first 250ml of the stock. Still stirring, cook until the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. It is important not to cook at too high a temperature or the stock will evaporate rather than soak into the rice. Aim for a rolling simmer rather than a raging boil.

Add another 250ml of stock. Throw in the tomatoes and return to stirring to prevent the rice sticking to the bottom of the pan. After a while, the tomatoes should be soft enough to crush. Press them against the side of the pan until they burst and release their sweet juices into the risotto.

When the stock has been absorbed by the rice, add another 250ml and keep doing this until the rice is cooked. If you run out of stock, add water until the rice is cooked. It should be soft but with just a little bite.

Once cooked, add the taleggio, roughly torn up, and the oregano. Add a few good twists of black pepper - however much you like, really - and stir until the cheese is melted and evenly mixed through the risotto.

Serve immediately, preferably with a glass of white wine.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and, if you do, please let me know in the comments below!

Cafe Review - Vanilla Pod

This week, I decided it was time I did another eatery review so I visited Brighton and Hove’s Vanilla Pod.

Located on the western end of Western Road, it is surprisingly easy to miss. No glass-fronted modern café, it is a white-painted building with speaks of an older, gentler age.

The inside is bright and airy. Decorated with duck-egg blue walls and spotlessly clean varnished wood flooring and furniture, the morning light streams into a space which feels cosily old-fashioned and stylishly modern.

Vanilla Pod describes itself as a café and tea room but this rather undersells the range of food it offers.

Alongside tea, coffee and cakes, it offers a wide variety of savoury options. Of course, there are the normal sandwiches but there is also a selection of sausage rolls and puff pastry turnovers.

Breakfast, as far as Vanilla Pod is concerned, is a style of food not a time of day. A mighty range of dishes, from porridge to full English (via pancakes and eggs benedict) is available all day.

The sweet selection is modern British. Sponge cakes, brownies and flapjacks adorn the counter in a variety of original and classic flavours.

To start, I ordered the chocolate and orange cake and a cappuccino.

The cake was full of flavour and exquisitely presented. A large portion came to me, elegantly standing on end with a side serving of berries and a spring of mint.

The proportion of icing to sponge was well managed and both parts contained chocolate and orange.

In a playful gesture, a piece of Terry’s Chocolate Orange crowned the cake but somehow the classic sweet was more than decoration and contributed to the overall experience.

The same can be said for the side serving of berries and mint. More than plate-dressing, they allowed for fun flavour experimentation with the sponge.

My only complaint was that the texture at the very bottom of the sponge was a little clumpy, like the edible version of a bean bag. I must stress only the very bottom was clumpy and the rest was beautifully soft and smooth.

The cappuccino was good but no more. The milk had been competently stretched but the beans were not the finest. They lacked complexity and depth of flavour but were very pleasant for all that.

Once more, the presentation was superb. My coffee arrived in a beautiful cup and was served with a little round of shortbread.

Later, I ordered a leek, potato and Stilton cheese turnover.

This was perfect. The pastry was crisp and golden and contained plenty of filling. And what filling!

Sweet, buttery leeks were expertly balanced with salty, earthy Stilton and fluffy potato prevented the mix from being overpoweringly strong. Pumpkin seeds pressed to the top added a twist of something special to lift the turnover from delicious to sensational.

The prices at Vanilla Pod veer towards expensive. My cake cost £3.95 and the coffee and turnover where £2.45 and £2.95 respectively. These prices are not outrageous but neither are they bargain of the month.

The extra cost is probably because everything is home-made and Vanilla Pod is a family-run business. Prices inevitably go up.

Still, the experience left me not minding paying a little extra as the décor, service and atmosphere were perfect.

The staff are friendly, everything is spotlessly clean and the ambiance is extremely relaxing. Because the windows, though large, do not take up the whole shop front, it is a cosy space in both summer and winter, victim to neither the searing sun nor howling gale.

Compared to the hustle and bustle of many cafés and tearooms, complete with barely comfortable furniture at a variety of stages on the way to shabby, Vanilla Pod is a paradise.

Vanilla Pod is a wonderful place to eat, drink and relax. A hidden gem with homely, yet skilfully flavoursome, sweet and savoury dishes, it is marginally let down by high prices and unremarkable coffee beans.

Overall * * * * - Great food served in a relaxing atmosphere.

Food and Drink * * * * - The food is divine, bursting with flavour and wonderfully presented, though the coffee is average.

Atmosphere * * * * * - Clean and relaxing, homely and welcoming, the atmosphere is fantastic.

Service * * * * * - Prompt and very friendly. Faultless.

Price * * * - Not cheap but not extortionate.

Would I Go Here Again? - Yes.

Book Review - Real Mexican Food by Felipe Fuentes Cruz and Ben Fordham

This week I'm kicking off the book review section of my blog. I'm starting with my latest acquisition, Real Mexican Food by Felipe Fuentes Cruz and Ben Fordham.

Unsurprisingly, it's a book about Mexican food. Cruz and Fordham run Benito's Hat, a chain of Mexican restaurants in London which aims to serve up authentic, modern Mexican food.

This approach translates to the book. It feels AMAZINGLY authentic. This due to more than the use of the occasional vegetable I've never heard of (chayote, since you ask). The book is littered with little boxes explaining various ingredients' relevance to Mexican cuisine and each recipe has a little story attached to it, shedding light either on the history of the dish or the life of Cruz, the head chef.

The recipes themselves feel authentic. They feel timeless and unfussy, enduring classics, while there's a certain rugged, rustic quality to them too. The soups are chunky and the refried beans are mashed, as opposed to blitzed with some modern gadget which would looked laughably anachronistic in a Zorro movie.

My attempt at scrambled eggs with chorizo

The book is beautifully presented. Achingly so. The cover is a riot of green, magenta and gold and every pages is a different colour. The photography is fabulous, setting the food off with a careful selection of side dishes and Mexican-style tableware.

It's a perfect size, a little smaller and squarer than most recipe books, meaning it sits beautifully in the hand.

My attempt at a chicken quesadilla

I would have to criticise the book on the number and complexity of its recipes. At under 150 pages and with plenty of photographs, it is hardly extensive. There is only one burrito and one quesadilla recipe and no recipes for red or green rice.

The recipes tend to be on the simple side. To call it bish-bash-bosh cooking would be unfair, particularly as Mexican food veers that way anyhow, but some of the dishes really did not require vast imagination to construct.

That said, they are still lovely and some of the spice mixes required skill to conceive.

My attempt at an oatmeal and cinnamon drink

To road test the book, I tried three recipes. I made scrambled eggs with chorizo, a chicken quesadilla and an oatmeal and cinnamon "drink" (this served very nicely as an evening meal!).

First, some caveats. I had to adapt all the recipes slightly to suit my specific purposes. I used taleggio for the eggs, because I was out of cheddar, used quorn instead of chicken for the quesadilla because I couldn't afford well-looked after chicken and used honey instead of agave syrup for the drink because I didn't want to shell out for a bottle of sweet stuff I was unlikely ever to use again. Oh, and I forgot to put garlic in my quesadilla's marinade.

However, if there is one thing the friendly style of the book's prose encourages it's a flexible attitude to ingredients so I don't feel too bad. Besides, quorn is awesome.

The recipes worked out great. Each one was full of flavour and deeply comforting. Nothing required a fire extinguisher to the mouth yet compromised nothing in terms of taste, especially the wonderful marinade for the chicken quorn.

Real Mexican Food is a lovely book. Authentic, attractive and friendly, it is a great guide to a fabulous world cuisine. However, the book could have done with more recipes to make it truly great.

Overall * * * * - A good introduction into Mexican cooking but not without a couple of flaws.

Presentation * * * * * - Absolutely fantastic photography, design and prose style.

Quality of Recipes * * * * - Delicious and comforting, the recipes work well in the kitchen and feel extremely authentic.

Range of Recipes * * * - The book covers most of the basics but is hardly a thorough and rigorous examination of Mexican food. Could have been longer and some of the recipes were really quite simple.

Price * * * * - At £18.99 RRP I don't feel cheated but neither to I feel like I found a bargain. A fair price.

Will I Take This Off The Shelf To Cook From? - Yes.

I have been reviewing Real Mexican Food by Felipe Fuentes Cruz and Ben Fordham, published by Ryland Peters & Small (2012), ISBN-13: 978-1849752589