Stichelton & Potato Blinis with Purple Sprouting Broccoli (ITB)

It seems to have been a bit of a weekend for recipe inventions chez The Ginger Gourmand... I spotted Scott & Julia's monthly In The Bag challenge a few weeks ago and with two of my favourite foods - blue cheese and broccoli (I had in mind the purple sprouting kind...) - I decided to give it a go.

It's late (for me!) on Sunday night - tonight is the deadline and I have to be bright and bushy tailed ready for work in the morning so I'll make this brief.

I've been contemplating what I might make for a couple of weeks, but because I've been away for the last 2 weekends I've not had any real 'playing in the kitchen' time. So it wasn't until around 7pm this evening that I began rooting around the fridge for the ingredients to make my Stichelton & Potato Blinis with Purple Sprouting Broccoli...

The first blini was more the size of a small pancake and the flipping stage was a little hairy but the next few were much easier (with hindsight I could make them a touch smaller) and worked a treat. Rich blue cheese goodness in a super light blini topped with lightly steamed purple sprouting broccoli and slow roasted tomatoes. I'm not sure blini is the right word though... They're like a cross between a potato cake and a savoury ricotta cake - extremely light and fluffy but with the depth and substance of the starchy potato and the blue cheese kick every other mouthful.

The Stichelton was a good choice. I'd ummed and ahhed in the cheese shop on Saturday over my choice of blue cheese, but decided on this one because it had the sort of buttery texture I was after. I wanted the cheese to be firm enough to stay in little pockets in the blinis when cooked, but soft enough to melt a little into the blini mixture. I also think it's a lovely alternative to Stilton on a cheeseboard - our local deli stocks it and offered me some to try a few months ago when, as usual, I couldn't make my mind up which of the lovely cheeses I wanted to buy and I've been hooked ever since. I think a Stilton or maybe even a Blacksticks Blue would work quite well in this recipe too, although anything too soft, like a Gorgonzola would probably just melt into the blini mixture too much.

I like them. I'll be making them again!

Ingredients

250g (ish) potatoes
100ml milk
4 eggs separated
100g blue cheese (the stichelton worked brilliantly) cubed or crumbled
75g plain flour
salt & pepper

small vine tomatoes
olive oil
purple sprouting broccoli

Method

Start by putting the tomatoes in an ovenproof dish with some salt, pepper and a glug of olive oil. Roast for at least 30 minutes in a low oven (I did mine at around 130C fan assisted).

Boil the potatoes in their skins until cooked. Drain well and leave to cool. Peel the potatoes and mash. Mix in the milk and then the egg yolks and seasoning. Then beat in the flour. Whisk the egg whites until firm and then fold into the potato mixture. Stir in the blue cheese.

Heat a little butter and olive oil in a frying pan and then put a couple of large serving spoonfuls of the potato blini mixture into the pan. Fry gently until set enough to flip. You'll need to be fairly confident when flipping the blinis otherwise they'll end up in a bit of a mess. Cook until golden brown on both sides and set in the middle.

In the meantime, lightly steam the broccoli and then pop into a frying pan with some olive oil and seasoning and cook over a low heat for a minute or so.

Serve the blinis topped with the broccoli and some roasted tomatoes. I also drizzled over some of the tomato cooking liqueur I had left over from my tomato tarte tatin last night.

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Another triumph with Purple Sprouting Broccoli

I LOVE purple sprouting broccoli. It's a permanent feature in my fridge at this time of year and, arriving as it does at the end of the Winter season, it gives a little glimpse of the change in cooking styles from the hearty root vegetable dishes to the lighter, fresher meals of the coming Spring and Summer months. As with English asparagus during its short season, I like to make the most of it, so much so that I think that secretly Andrew is glad when it disappears again from the greengrocers...

It has a unique flavour which really needs showing off... One of the nicest and simplest ways is to serve it lightly steamed and then tossed with red chilli, garlic, olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice either as part of an antipasti type plate or as a side dish. I was about to include this in my meal plans for last weekend when I remembered a recipe in the Early Spring section of Paradiso Seasons by Denis Cotter - Purple Sprouting Broccoli with dried tomatoes and garlic on a corn pancake of leeks and puy lentils, with a rosemary cream. The title says it all...in fact I think it wins the prize for the longest recipe title of all time!

I bought Paradiso Seasons a few years ago knowing nothing of Denis Cotter or his famed vegetarian restaurant in Cork, Ireland - Cafe Paradiso. The recipes in Paradiso Seasons, which won ‘Best Vegetarian Cookbook in the World’ at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Barcelona in 2004, are (as the name suggests...) split into seasons, with Spring divided into Early Spring and Late Spring. If you try to eat local produce, when these seasons fall will undoubtedly depend on where you live and I find that here in London we can sometimes be a week or two ahead of my home county of Derbyshire for example.

The recipes in Paradiso Seasons are the sort that I tend to choose on a Saturday morning whilst flicking through a few cook books with my morning cup of tea and then spend time leisurely preparing for a special weekend dinner. It's not that they're complicated or difficult recipes to cook, just that many of them have several different component parts and, above all, I take great pleasure in spending a few luxurious hours in my kitchen pottering away and creating something special for dinner! My dream, which almost goes without saying, is of course to eat at Cafe Paradiso at some point in the future. I've never been to Cork but I hear its a lovely city to visit, so I have my eye on a weekend away and, what I expect would be, an amazing meal at Cafe Paradiso!

So, the recipe... The purple sprouting broccoli is the star of the show and, as Denis Cotter says himself, the rest of the dish is there to enhance and support this star ingredient. The result is actually quite a light dish (despite the cream sauce) which is perfectly balanced, both in tastes and textures and also as a vegetarian meal. The rich cheesy leek and lentil mixture wrapped in a thin lightly spiced corn pancake works well as a base for the mountain of lightly cooked purple sprouting broccoli. Don't be tempted to leave the rosemary cream off the plate...it complements both the pancake and the broccoli which for some reason amazed me as, whilst I would put rosemary and cream with the pancake ingredients of leeks and puy lentils, I would not have expected them to be such good partners for broccoli and tomatoes. Instead of dried tomatoes, I used semi-dried tomatoes in oil which I already had in the fridge, but I think they were a little too soft and broke down too much, so I'll seek out some dried tomatoes for next time (and there will definitely be a next time!).

(Denis Cotter has kindly said that I can reproduce his recipe here so watch this space for an update...!).

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