Lilypad in the hole

Getting back to work means that baking has been on the back burner, and quick teas have been the order of the day. The post Christmas austerity also means that I'm trying to cook lighter options too. For last night's tea I recreated a favourite in the Beard household - Lilypad in the hole. "What's that?" I hear you ask? It's toad in the hole with vegetarian sausages.When I tell anyone this, they say "but you're not vegetarian". But the great thing about vegetarian food is that meat eaters can eat it too, and it's lower fat and often cheaper, so great in January when 2 types of belt tightening are the order of the day.
The real reason I make this, however, is that we prefer it to toad in the hole. The problem with the carnivore friendly version is how greasy it is, the fat comes out of the sausages and makes the batter soggy and greasy. This doesn't happen with the veggie version, and it's quicker to make too, as you just preheat the oil in the dish while the oven heats up, then tip in the batter, pop the sausages in, put it back in the oven, and when the Yorkshire pudding is cooked the sausages are too. Yum! Delicious with a bit of microwaved swede and some sprouts!

Spur of the moment rhubarb

Well, here we are back from our 2 week holiday, and gearing up to go back to work tomorrow. So it must be the unpacking, tidying away, going to the supermarket day. I had to nip to a well known catalogue shop, to enable us to connect our new DVD player to the TV, so Mr Beard said he would get started on the shopping and I could catch him up. This ended with him doing a run down of most of the week's food in the yoghurt aisle.
As I was packing the stuff as it came down the conveyor belt, I noticed a packet of new season forced rhubarb from Yorkshire. "Rhubarb?" I said. "Yes", he replied "It looked nice and I thought you could make a crumble."
I had to agree that it did look nice, but I didn't really feel like a crumble. It all seemed like a very Nigel Slater thing to do. Buy something in season because it looked nice and then conjure some delicious sweet treat from it. So I was drawn to the Kitchen Diaries III book which made and appearance on my shelves over the festive season, but alas only rhubarb with pork chops was to be found therein. I checked all my Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall books too, as he also strikes me as someone with good rhubarb recipes. But nothing quite took my fancy, so I resorted to google. Hey presto! Nigel Slater in a Guardian article making things with rhubarb. So Rhubarb and Cinnamon Polenta Cake it was. I was determined to stick to the recipe verbatim, but then a panic where, realising that Nigel Slater must have a larger capacity food processor than me, and thinking it wasn't all going to fit (it did, I just panicked for no reason) made me forget to put the orange zest in. It didn't seem to matter though, as the crumbly buttery cake with bright pink rhubarby centre was better than I even hoped

Key Lime Pie

New Year's Eve was eagerly anticipated in the Beard household, as the in-laws had booked us seats to see the new Star Wars Film. Cooking wise, we had also been put in charge of the majority of the New Year's Eve dinner. As the film started at 4pm, this meant we had to come up with a menu which could be made in advance. Cue snacks from Waitrose as a starter. Nigella's Coq au Riesling is one of Mr Beard's make it ahead specialities, because it tastes much better the next day, so was the obvious choice for main. I was in charge of the dessert. I wanted something quick that would look impressive and settled on Key Lime Pie from the Leon Book 3: Baking and Puddings. Being away from home, I did not want to make a meringue topped pie, as there were too many things to go wrong, so this is a cream topped, digestive biscuit bottomed pie. The other best thing about this recipe is that hardly any measuring was involved. Half a standard packet of digestives, and a whole tin of condensed milk, meant the only guestimation was needed for the butter! Brilliant when you're away from your home kitchen and scales.
When the pie was served, I was served the ultimate accolade: second helpings requested by my father-in-law!