Broad Beans with a bechamel sauce

boil 1lb of broad beans for 3-5 minutes until cooked
wait until cooled and unshell the beans
make a bechamel sauce - melt around a tbs of butter in a small saucepan,
add 1/2 tbs of flour and mix in with a whisk
add a drop of milk at a timing whisking constantly to avoid lumps, add around 1/2 pint of milk in total and keep stiring.
When the sauce has thickened add a few chopped basil leaves, parmesan, salt and pepper.
Mix in broad beans, heat for a couple of minutes and serve.

Serve as a side or a light main.

delicious :-)

Easy Pear Tea Cake

• 3/4 cup plain wholemeal flour
• 3/4 cup self raising flour
• 3/4 cup caster or superfine sugar
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 125g/4ozs melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 400g/14ozs. pears or apples, diced (you can even use tinned and I don't bother peeling them)
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon or vanilla sugar
• Icing sugar to serve (optional)

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Grease and line an 20cm/8inch springform tin with parchment paper.

Step 2 - Mix the two flours, sugar, butter, egg and vanilla in a bowl. Press three quarters of the mix into the base of the tin-it will be like a sticky, buttery dough. Scatter the diced pears on top. Then place small pieces of the dough on it in a patchwork pattern so that the pear is not entirely covered up.

Step 3 - add 2/3 of the mixture to the bottom of the greased pan

Step 4 - then add the pears

Step 5 - then the rest of the dough scattered in pieces

Then the sugar

Step 6 - Sprinkle with cinnamon or vanilla sugar (I prefer vanilla sugar for pears and cinnamon sugar for apples). Bake for 40-50 minutes. Sieve some icing sugar on top. Allow to cool before slicing as it is very delicate when warm.

Chirmol

toast one lb of tomatoes and a small handful of chile coban (less if you want to be less spicy) brown on all sides, this will take around 15-20 minutes, the chile will take less time
Take the chile and put into a chirmolera or pestal and morta and grind until a fine powder.
Add the tomatoes one at time and crush with the chile.
Add 2 tb spoons of chopped cilantro and half an onion finely chopped
add salt to taste and 2-3 tb spoons of water depending on how thickness you want the salsa to be.

Perfect for a special breaskfast, churrasco or celebrating the independence celebrations!

salsa for veggie tacos

one red pepper
one red jalepeno
one red onion
2 chiles chiptoles (I used chiles from a can)
2 tomates
1/2 tp of cumin seeds

Put all the above in a blender to make a sauce, add a little water if needed.

Add to a pan and heat with chopped coriander, add some sweet corn and 1/2lb of cooked black beans. Heat through a serve on corn tortillas as tacos, cheese and avocado go well :-)