Honeyed Wheaten Bread with Jumbled Nuts, Seeds and Fruit

Part of my January #givingupstockingup challenge is not to buy food if I've got the ingredients to make it myself. That applies to bread so I was keen to try Sue Quinn's Honeyed Wheaten Bread from her excellent new book on using up leftovers, Second Helpings. It also, as she points out, uses up half-used packets of nuts, seeds and dried fruit, which you may have in stock after Christmas.

"This loaf doesn’t care if nuts are soft and past their prime, or whether you add particular seeds or dried fruit" Sue writes. "Tumble in what’s lurking in your store cupboard and you’ll be rewarded with a highly moreish loaf that’s heavenly spread thickly with good salty butter and/or golden syrup or served with cheese."

Leftovers: nuts, seeds, dried fruit

Serves 8–10

Preparation: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 45–50 minutes

60g (1⁄4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes, plus extra for greasing

180g (scant 11⁄2 cups) wholemeal (whole wheat) flour

180g (scant 11⁄2 cups) plain (all-purpose) flour

30g (scant 1⁄4 cup) porridge oats (rolled oats), plus extra for scattering on top

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1⁄4 tsp fine sea salt

40g (11⁄2oz) mixed nuts, lightly toasted and roughly chopped

40g (11⁄2oz) mixed seeds

80g (23⁄4oz) mixed dried fruit, roughly chopped

60g (about 1⁄4 cup) runny honey

250g (11⁄4 cups) Greek yoghurt, crème fraîche or soured cream (or a mixture)

5 Tbsp milk, or as much as needed

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/Gas mark 4. Grease a loaf tin (loaf pan) roughly 23 x 13 x 7cm (8 cups) and line the long sides and base with one large sheet of baking paper that overhangs the sides.

In a large bowl, combine the flours, oats, bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and salt by stirring with a fork. Rub the cubed butter into the flour mixture with your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the nuts, seeds and dried fruit and mix to evenly distribute – hands work best for this.

Mix the honey into the yoghurt, then stir into the dry mixture. Gradually add the milk, mixing with your hands between each addition, to make a sticky dough. Scrape the dough into the prepared tin and smooth the top with the back of a wet spoon, pushing it into the corners.

Scatter over a small handful of oats. Bake for 45–50 minutes, or until risen and golden, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then lift out onto a wire rack to cool, using the baking paper as handles.

Try ...

Using leftover porridge (oatmeal) instead of uncooked oats. Omit the 30g (scant 1⁄4 cup) oats, reduce the yoghurt to 200g (1 cup) and stir in 60g (about 1⁄2 cup) cold porridge.

Extracted from Second Helpings by Sue Quinn published by Quadrille at £18.99. Photo by Facundo Bustamante

Honey pastries with baked figs

I love this Spanish twist on baklava from José Pizarro's gorgeous book Andalucia - it would make the perfect end to a summer meal.

José writes: "This is my kind of dessert – packed with interesting flavours, and a stunning centrepiece for the table. It’s hard to beat roasted figs, bursting with sweetness straight from the oven, with just a touch of soft goat’s cheese and honeyfor balance.

NOTE: CONTAINS NUTS

Serves 10–12

125 g (4 ½ oz/2⁄3 cup) caster (superfine) sugar

50 ml (2 fl oz/ ¼ cup) honey

½ teaspoon orange blossom water

225 ml (7 ½ fl oz/scant 1 cup) water

150 g (5 oz) mixed nuts such as walnuts, almonds, pistachios, finely chopped

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

100 g (3 ½ oz) unsalted butter, melted

6–8 sheets of filo pastry

For the figs

8 ripe figs, halved

good drizzle of honey

4 tablespoons Pedro Ximenez sherry

handful of flaked almonds, toasted

To serve

creme fraiche (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4).

In a small saucepan, melt the sugar, honey and orange blossom water with the water, then simmer gently for 10–15 minutes, until slightly reduced and syrupy.

Mix the chopped nuts with the cinnamon. Lightly grease an 18–20 cm (7–8 in) square shallow tin with a little of the melted butter. Lay a sheet of filo in the bottom (trim if necessary) and brush with the butter, scatter with the nuts then add another layer of filo and melted butter.

Repeat 4 times, ending with a final layer of filo. Butter the top generously and use a sharp knife to cut into diamond shapes. Bake for 25–30 minutes, until golden and crisp.

Spoon half of the cooled syrup over the pastries as they come out of the oven. Let stand for 5 minutes, then spoon over the rest of the syrup. Allow to cool completely in the tin.

As the pastries are cooling, place the figs in a small baking dish and drizzle with honey and sherry. Bake in the oven for 15–20 minutes until tender. Serve the pastries with the baked figs and a dollop of creme fraiche, if you like.

What to drink: Although you could drink sherry with this I personally think it would be too much of a good think and would go instead for a Spanish moscatel or other muscat-based dessert wine.

From ANDALUSIA: Recipes from Seville and beyond by José Pizarro (Hardie Grant, £26.00) Photographer: Emma Lee

Penne in walnut sauce

If you've run through your pasta sauce repertoire several times during lockdown try this delicious penne in salsa di noci (penne in walnut sauce) from Christine Smallwood's lovely new book Italy: The World Vegetarian. It's really simple - as she says basically a walnut pesto.

Christine writes: Walnuts are found throughout Italy, as are beautiful bowls and other wooden objects made from their tree’s wood. The nuts are found in various dishes and the first pasta I came across with a walnut sauce was a ricotta-filled ravioli, but linguine, spaghetti and penne (as here) are all good choices, too.

A walnut sauce is often made with cream, but I like it as more of a pesto, albeit with walnuts and parsley instead of pine nuts and basil. Some people blanch their walnuts to remove the papery skin, but it is not essential.

Penne in Salsa di Noci

SERVES 4

NOTE: THIS RECIPE CONTAINS NUTS

300g shelled walnuts, roughly chopped

30g vegetarian Italian hard cheese, finely grated

20g parsley

½ garlic clove

1 teaspoon salt, plus extra to season

a pinch of black pepper, plus extra to season

about 8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve

350g penne pasta

Reserve a small quantity of the chopped walnuts for garnish. Put the remainder, along with the cheese, parsley, garlic and salt and pepper in a blender or food processor. Blitz to combine. Add enough oil to make quite a loose sauce. Transfer the sauce to a pan large enough to hold the cooked pasta and set aside.

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and add the penne. Cook according to the packet instructions until just al dente. Reserve a few spoonfuls of the cooking water, then drain. (I found I needed quite a bit to loosen the sauce so keep back at least half a cup (about 125ml)

Loosen the walnut sauce with a little of the reserved pasta cooking water and adjust the seasoning, if necessary. Add the pasta to the pan with the sauce and stir to coat. Serve immediately sprinkled with an extra drizzle of olive oil and a few sprinkled chopped walnuts.

What to drink: You don't want anything too obviously fruity for this dish - a dry Italian white like a Soave, Orvieto or Vernaccia di San Gimignano would be ideal and, having tasted it, it would also go with an orange or skin contact wine) I also like the idea of drinking a savagnin or Jura chardonnay with it but haven't tried it

Extracted from Italy: The World Vegetarian by Christine Smallwood (Bloomsbury Absolute, £20). Photography by Mike Cooper.

Bulgur, herb, walnut and pomegranate salad

Bulgur is a useful grain that you can apparently eat if you're diabetic as I discovered when I was staying with friends in France a while ago. It makes a great base for a simple salad that you can basically adapt to whatever you have in the storecupboard and fridge.

We ate it with barbecued lamb - it’s ideal as a BBQ side - but you could equally well serve it as a veggie or vegan main. Feel free to substitute whatever you’ve got handy. Some snipped dried apricots would be good if you don’t have a pomegranate, for instance.

Serves 4-6

3 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil

3-4 shallots or 2 larger banana shallots, peeled and sliced

125g bulgur wheat (I used a pack from the Waitrose Love Life range)

2-3 tomatoes, skinned, seeded and diced

1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced

2 sticks of celery, stringed and diced

2 tbsp salad dressing (I used a ready-made Maille vinaigrette with nut oil and red peppers that happened to be handy)

4-5 heaped tbsp chopped or torn herbs - I didn’t have any parsley so I used celery leaves, basil, mint and a bit of coriander,

75g walnut halves or pieces broken up into smaller pieces. Or substitute pine nuts

The seeds from half a pomegranate

1 tsp pomegranate molasses diluted with 1 tsp warm water

Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the sliced shallots for 4-5 minutes until they’re beginning to brown at the edges. Tip in the bulgar and twice the volume of boiling water. Stir and simmer over a moderate heat until all the liquid is absorbed. Turn the heat down a bit towards the end to stop it burnng. Tip the grain into a shallow dish and spread it out.

While the bulgur is cooling prepare your veg. Once the grains are cool, tip the tomatoes, cucumber and celery into the salad and toss with the salad dressing. Mix in most of the herbs, nuts and pomegranate seeds leaving a few to top the salad. Sprinkle over the remainder and drizzle over the diluted pomegranate molasses

What to drink

Because we ate this with lamb we drank a cinsault - the Mas des Chimères oeillade but you could equally well drink a rosé