This is the October version of Hecticium's year long Foovolution tribute to Charles Darwin. I had plenty of scope for ingredients but as usual couldn’t decide which ones to choose, so this evolutionary process explores several avenues from just a single ingredient to several. These are in ‘bold’ below.
To start with is a delicious (if you like mushrooms) recipe for Rosemary Mushrooms with pasta and a scattering of parsley and lemon crumbs. You will need:
4 tbsp butter
700g medium Portobello mushrooms, quartered
A couple of sprigs of rosemary – chopped leaves only
450g pasta – pappardelle is a good choice
A couple of slices day old bread
A couple of cloves of
garlic Grated zest of half a lemon
Chopped leaves of a bunch of flat leaf parsley
Put a large pan of water on to boil. (If you add boiling water from the kettle, this can save time.)
Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a large lidded frying pan, add the mushrooms, turning them to coat in butter and season with salt. Add the chopped rosemary leaves. Cover the pan and allow to cook over a medium to high heat for 3 or 4 minutes. Now remove the lid and continue cooking for another five minutes of so.
Salt the boiling water in the pan and add the pasta to cook according to instructions on packet until al dente. Drain, reserving about half a pint of the cooking liquid.
Meanwhile, make breadcrumbs from the crustless bread. In a small frying pan, melt a tbsp of butter and add the breadcrumbs along with a couple of crushed garlic cloves. Cook until the breadcrumbs are golden brown and remove from heat. Add the grated lemon zest and chopped parsley.
Add the pasta to the mushrooms along with a couple of tablespoons of the reserved cooking liquid to dissolve the caramelisation in the bottom of the pan before stirring in the last of the butter.
Serve four bowls of pasta sprinkled with the lemon and parsley crumbs.
Another single ingredient variation is a longtime family favourite, Prawn and Apple Quiche. You will need:
For cheesy pastry
50 g butter
110g plain flour
50g grated cheddar cheese
For filling
1 large egg, beaten
3 tbsp milk
142ml double cream
110g grated cheddar cheese
110g peeled and cooked
prawns (plus a few extra for decoration)
1 small eating apple, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
Salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper for a bit of bite
A grating of nutmeg
Pre-heat the oven to 190C, GM 5 or 375F.
Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the cheese and enough cold water to make a stiff dough. This can rest in the fridge for half a hour before you roll it out thinly and use to line a greased, metal 20cm flan ring or sandwich tin.
Beat egg, milk and cream together, stir in ¾ of the cheese, the prawns and the apple. Season with a pinch of salt, cayenne pepper and nutmeg and then turn into the flan case. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and bake for about 40 mins until golden brown and cooked through – test with a skewer if necessary.
Serve with a few whole prawns arranged on the top to 4 – 6 people.
Limy Lentils make a great accompaniment to seared tuna with a wasabi soy sauce. Two ingredients from October make an appearance here. You will need:
A thick yellowfin tuna steak, about 450g
Olive
oil2 microwave sachets of cooked
lentils or 2 x 400g tins
3 Limes
A small red onion, finely chopped
A whole cucumber, peeled, deseeded and fairly thinly sliced
100ml Japanese soy sauce
Wasabi paste
The tuna will cook in only a couple of minutes on a hot griddle or in a hot frying pan, so put whatever you are going to use on to get hot. Drain and rinse the tinned lentils if using. Gently heat the lentils in a pan. Meanwhile, grate the zest of two limes, mix with the onion, the juice of one lime and a couple of tbsps of olive oil. Stir into the lentils off the heat and taste, adding more lime juice as necessary. Season to taste.
Whisk a couple of small blobs of wasabi into the soy sauce, taking care as wasabi is VERY hot, and then pour into four tiny bowls.
At last, rub a little oil onto either side of the tuna and cook for only 1 - 2 minutes each side. Remove from heat and season with a little salt.
Arrange the warm lentils on four warm plates along with the cucumber and a couple of wedges of lime. Thinly slice the tuna, which will be red in the centre, and arrange alongside the lentils. Serve with the little bowls of soy sauce.
The last recipe evolved using several of October’s ingredients and copies the curry theme. It is a green Thai curry, quite mild and economical as the meat used is chicken thighs – easy on the purse but with lots of flavour. I serve it with plain boiled rice.
You will need:
6 chicken thighs, deboned and skinless and cut into mouth sized chunks
4 or 5 courgettes, depending on size – but lots are OK
About 10 salad onions, thinly sliced
A couple of green
chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
About 2cm
ginger, peeled and grated
2 or 3 cloves of
garlic, crushed
Vegetable
oil2 tsp turmeric
100ml
coconut cream
Stalks from a bunch of coriander, chopped
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
Halve one courgette, putting aside one half. Thickly slice the remaining courgettes and then quarter the slices.
In a large pan, heat a couple of tbsp oil and then add the chicken, stirring over a high heat until golden brown, just a couple of minutes. Add the salad onions, cooking for another minute before adding the chunks of courgettes, the finely chopped chilli, grated ginger, crushed garlic and turmeric. Add an equal quantity of boiling water to the coconut cream, stirring to dissolve the cream. Put this, the coriander stalks and reserved courgette, chopped into chunks, into a blender and blitz to a smooth liquid. Add this to the chicken pan and allow to simmer for a minute or two. Make sure the chicken is cooked through, then stir in the fish sauce and check the seasoning. Serve with boiled rice.
It all started at breakfast with card and pressie opening, which brought some lovely surprises. Then we planned to get the train into London, so we walked down to the station. Our first stop was Patisserie Valerie on Piccadilly where we were lucky to get a couple of seats at the 'bar'. Delicious coffee, a croissant and a frangipane tart were consumed while people watching through the window.Then it was time to cross the road and turn into Burlington House. There in the courtyard was the first part of our visit to the current exhibition - Anish Kapoor's Tall tree and the eye. The silver balls reflect the surroundings again and again in a fascinating manner, but also reminded us of Chihuly's glass baubles in the Temperate House at Kew. Having walked all around, we entered the Royal Academy and ascended up the stairs to the rest of the exhibition. It was just stunning with early works such as the pigment sculptures; some mirror-polished stainless-steel sculptures that everyone was interacting with; and the worm-like cement sculptures that make up Greyman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked, 2008-2009 on display for the first time. We also saw Shooting into the corner, an installation where a canister of red wax is fired through a doorway into the room beyond. It sometimes shoots through the door cleanly only to crash into the wall beyond; but it can catch the arch of the door and splat over the room. There is also the stunning yellow square called Yellow that is in fact a 3D sculpture that changes as you walk towards and across it. 
But running the entire width of the building is a track carrying a massive lump of red wax that has been moulded as it travels through four doorways, back and forth, slowly and relentlessly. It now looks like an enormous loaf of red bread, and bits that have been shaved off form splatters of red wax by the doorways and up their frames. The 'loaf' must be 3m high and 5m long, at least! We waited for it to enter the first/last room and start reversing back again, which it did so smoothly it was hardly noticeable.
