Savoury Carrot, Goat Cheese and Caramelised Onion Loaf

Last weekend I co-hosted a pre-Christmas dinner with friends in Segur le Chateau. I was requested to make my savoury pumpkin and blue-cheese muffins. I wondered however what course my savoury muffins would fit within. My lovely friends Vicky and Charlie, and owners of the venue for pre-Christmas dinner, La Durantie, assured me that the muffins would be work well with aperitifs. 

I was even more perplexed – muffins and gluhwein, could they really work together?

Perhaps I should explain the background of the request. I recently sent, Vicky, Charlie and Vicky’s husband Ralph, off on their holiday with a bag of savoury muffins. The muffins were deemed as a delicious road-trip snack, and the girls were keen to try them again – hence the request to make them for our dinner guests.

I felt uncertain about the muffin and gluhwein pairing, worried I’d frighten the French guests, and perhaps confuse everyone else. Eventually we agreed I’d make the muffin recipe, but as a savoury loaf.   

As it happened however, I was unable to source a decent pumpkin. The piles of pumpkins seen all around Segur two months ago seem to be no longer. Carrots however, were plentiful. So I substituted carrots for pumpkin, goats cheese for blue cheese, and added caramelised onions.

The end product was a success. We served the loaf cut in bit-sized morsels – with the gluvine. The loaf was both sweet and savoury, with the sweetness of the onion working well against the creaminess of the goats cheese.    

      

Recipe

2 cups grated carrot

½ cup caramelised onion (around four small brown onions)

1/3 cup grated parmesan

1/2 cup chopped rosemary

1/2 cup crumbled goats cheese

2 eggs

1 cup milk

Ground black pepper

Sea salt

2 cups plain flour

2 table spoons mustard

Baking powder

Step 1: pre-heat the oven to 180C. Great the pumpkin and set aside. Caramelise the onion.

Step 2: Combine the chopped rosemary, mustard, goats cheese, caramelised onions and parmesan. Add most of the carrot, save a little (to top the loaf later). 

Step 3: Sift the flour and the baking powder, then stir into the mixture.

 

Step 4: In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs and milk together. Then add to the mixture. Add salt and pepper. Then stir in slowly, folding the ingredients together gently.

Step 5: Add the mixture to your (greased) loaf tin. Cook for 40 minutes.  

Sunday Lunch at la Durantie – Part 1

Kristoph and I enjoyed Sunday lunch this weekend with the Comtesse de la Tour and the visiting Good Doctor. They’re taking care of Chateau la Durantie this week, the home of some close friends of ours, and their three dogs.

There are plenty of vegetables and herbs growing in the grounds of Durantie, and literally thousands of apples, pears and quinces falling from the trees in the orchard.

The Good Doctor and Kirstoph agreed some time ago to a competitive “chicken stuff-off,” however Kristoph’s recent thumb injury, means his thumb is encased in plastic and not at its best for chicken stuffing. Consequently, the Good Doctor took the lead in chicken stuffing, with Kristoph offering comments, commentary and general moral support.

I prepared a fig and chevre starter, with figs foraged from a neighbour’s tree, and an apple and raspberry crumble using fruits from Durantie, for dessert. I’ve blogged about crumbles quite extensively, and so in this post have focused on the fig and goats cheese starter. Part 2 of this post focuses on the Good Doctor’s stuffed chicken and roasted autumn vegetables.  

It’s hard to beat the silky sweet taste of figs picked directly from the tree. Figs are extremely perishable, because the best tasting figs are plump and mushy. So if you have a fig tree near you, I suggest keeping a close eye on it. When the fruit are ripe, spend a few minutes enjoying figs directly from the tree. Perhaps ponder the words of "each man under his own vine and fig tree" (1 Kings 4:25), which have been used to denote peace and prosperity.   

Baked figs are simple to prepare. Here’s my version of baked fig and goats cheese.

Recipe

10 figs

1 small disc of full flavoured medium-hard goats cheese

Honey

Ground black pepper

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 180C. Slice the figs in half and arrange on a baking tray.

Step 2: Chop the goats cheese in small cubes. Place one cube in the small hole inside the small depression in each fig.

Step 3: Drizzle the honey over each fig, and then grind pepper over the figs.

Step 4: Bake for 15 minutes until the figs begin to caramelize and the goats cheese is melted.

If you are lucky enough to have an open fire, I recommend eating these as finger food in front of the fire with a glass of Cote du Rhone.Enjoy!!

Super simple blackberry and goats cheese salad

We’ve still got loads of blackberries ripe and ready for picking in our area, and also plenty of berries yet to ripen. Over the last few weeks I’ve been picking, cooking, serving blackberries in drinks and desserts.

For last night’s dinner party, I decided to promote the blackberries from to dessert to part of the main course. This was also driven in part, by the fact we’ve got a huge bowl of Bramley apples to use up, so a French apple pie was the preferred dessert option. 

I experimented with a blackberry and goats cheese salad, dressed with a pomegranate molasses, olive oil and black pepper. The salad was super quick, taking less than five minutes to put together. It was very well received by our guests, who expressed initial surprise at blackberries in the salad, but concluded that soft goats cheese and blackberries actually form a very good partnership.  Here’s the recipe.

Recipe

Four cups mixed baby salad leaves

Half a cup blackberries

50grams soft goats cheese

Slug of pomegranate molasses

Two slugs of olive oil

Ground black pepper

Mix together in a salad bowl the salad leaves and blackberries. Crumble the soft goats cheese over the top. For the dressing, mix the olive oil, pomegranate molasses and ground black pepper in a small jar. Shake it up, taste, and when you’re happy with the sweet, rich, peppery flavour, pour it over the salad to serve. Et voila!