New Passions

Summer has been busy and blogging has passed me by a tad but here I am catching up a bit now school has started back.  ;o)

New passions....well, over the summer I have developed a passion for aubergines!  ;o)  I found a receipe for an aubergine dip, Baba Ghanoush (don't you just love that name?), in a library book called Easy Vegan and gave it a whirl.  It is deeeeeeeeelicious!  ;o)

Here's the recipe as written in the book....

Baba Ghanoush (smoked aubergine dip)

This creamy dip can be served as part of a selection of little dishes or a simple appetizer/starter. Normally the dish is made from vegetables that have been roasted whole and the flesh scooped out. In this version, they are peeled, then sliced and roasted, so the result is much more mellow.

2lbs aubergine
about 2/3 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tbsp tahini
freshly squeezed juice of 1 – 2 lemons or to taste
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve:
1 tbsp sweet paprika
3 tbsp oilve oil
2 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
toasted pitta bread or other flatbread, to serve

Serves 4 - 6

Preheat over to 200C/Gas mark 6
Trim the aubergines, peel then slice thickly. Arrange the slices on a baking sheet and brush both sides with olive oil. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes, until browning and soft, turning them once.
Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes.Transfer to a food processor and add the garlic, tahini and the juice of 1 lemon. Process until creamy, then taste and adjust seasoning with salt, pepper and more lemon juice.
Pour or spoon into a shallow dish. Mix the paprika with the 3 tbsp olive oil and trickle it over the top of the baba ghanoush. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with strips of toasted pitta bread for dipping.
Note: For a softer garlic flavour, roast the garlic cloves whole and unpeeled with the aubergines then squeeze the soft flesh out of the skins and blend with aubergines.

I roast my garlic, love squeezing it out (must try it on bread, mmmmm!) and I used smoked paprika for the dressing.  It's almost superseded my hummous passion!  ;o)

My other new, not to mention astonishing, passion is COFFEE!  Seriously, I love coffee!  Anyone who knows me in the real world will know that I don't do tea or coffee, never have done, and in the case of coffee I can't bear the smell!  Well, all that changed last month when at the ripe old age of 44 I took my first tentative sips of the brew I now adore!  ;o)  I've spoken before about how my tastes have changed over the last few years and how I eat lots of things I disliked in the past and coffee is another on the list.  For a few months I had been thinking coffee smelt nice!  That in itself is something of a surprise after loathing it for so many years!  When I finally tried my first cup of coffee I was instantly surprised at liking it and since have been on a flavoursome trawl through the world of coffee!  I even have my very own cafetiere now!  ;o)  I love it when new flavours burst into my life and I'm revelling in this one.  By the way, for anyone I meet in real life....strong, splash of milk, one sugar please!  ;o) 

Redcurrant-o-rama!

Earlier this week I was given 10lbs of redcurrants.  ;o)  What's a girl to do?  Well, this girl gets her preserving pan out!  ;o)  First on the menu was chutney.  I've never made chutney with redcurrants so I hope it turns out to be tasty.  The recipe consisted of redcurrants, cooking apples, raisins, sugar, vinegar and spices:

Then it's just cooked.....

...until it thickens up.  Chutney isn't a fast moving thing, it bubbles away at it's leisure until it reaches it's destination.  ;o)  It probably wasn't my brightest idea ever to turn the kitchen into a steamy chutney den in this current spate of hot weather!  However, eventually I got there...

I now have ten pots of redcurrant chutney gracing my pantry shelves, looking forward to trying it in a few weeks time when it has brewed.  ;oD

On the evening of Chutney Day I started the process of making redcurrant jelly, which I love!  I ended up with nine pots of jelly the next day and very yummy it is too.  ;o)  No pics of the jelly making process as it totally escaped me!  I want to try making mint jelly this year as I adore that ~ my favourite sandwich is lettuce and mint jelly ~ but have never yet made it.

Next on the redcurrant hit list was muffins from this recipe.  These turned out nice if a little flat! 

They panned out at only about 165 calories too so quite a healthy muffin at that.  You can't really tell but the muffin papers are flower shaped ones that I received in a Swap-Bot baking swap recently.

Last to roll off the redcurrant production line yesterday was redcurrant vinegar.  I haven't ever made a flavoured vinegar so I thought I'd have a go as I'm experimenting with salad dressings alot more these days.  It was very simple, 1 1/2 cups of redcurrants into a jar with a generous pinch each of sugar and salt, smooshed up with a masher and then 1 1/2 cups white wine vinegar poured over the top.  This is what it currently looks like :

  

                                                 

It has to spend a week in a cool dark place and then be strained ready to use.  Looking forward to giving it a whirl in a dressing next weekend.  ;o)

And just a random foodie thing before I go on my way....if you've ever heard me rant about crustless bread you'd have been surprised to find me in Tesco yesterday buying a loaf of the heinous product!  The reason?  My lovely daughter had braces fitted on Monday and has been wasting away on a diet of noodles, rice pudding and yogurts but has now progressed sufficiently to be able to gently chew crustless bread and butter, bless her!  My hone made bread isn't soft enough for her to tackle yet hence my crime against food yesterday!  

When life gives you lemons....

.... make lemonade!  When I was a little girl, every summer my mum would make home made lemonade and I've always loved it.  When I left home I went armed with the recipe and I've probably made it every year since.  Now, technically, I don't suppose it is a lemonade since it's not fizzy and you have to dilute it, so, more of a squash really!  Anyway, here's the recipe:

My Mum's Lemonade

3 lemons
2 pints water
2lb sugar
1/2 oz citric acid

Put sugar and water in a pan, bring to the boil and boil for 10 minutes with the lid on (unless you like cleaning sticky stove tops!).  Peel lemons thinly and place peel in a bowl.  Squeeze lemons and reserve juice.  Pour syrup over the peel and leave to stand overnight.  In the morning, add the lemon juice and citric acid and stir until citric acid has dissolved.  Strain and bottle.  Keep in the fridge.  Dilute to taste.

I usually bottle mine into empty plastic squash or water bottles but recently, whilst staying at a friend's holiday cottage, I bought a glass bottle of pink lemonade from the corner shop with this sort of groovy stopper (see pic), reusuable and it's perfect for my lemonade.  ;o)  Citric acid can be a bit tricky to lay your hands on but most larger chemists have it under the counter as it were!  ;o)  Oh, the times I've had to explain to the assistant just why I want citric acid!  I've tinkered with the recipe over the years and have successfully made versions with limes and oranges although lemons remain my favourite.  At this time of year it's lovely to add elderflower heads, I love the flavour of elderflower.  ;o)

Now, then....if I feel stressed or low or cross (or a myriad of other things to be honest!) I will head to the kitchen to bake and soothe my troubled soul.  ;o)  This evening I did just that and made cheese and bacon muffins....

My seventeen year old daughter has extreme (and I mean extreme!) trouble dragging herself out of bed in the mornings and as a consequence often misses out on breakfast before we head off for the school bus.  ;o(  Sometimes I make muffins to freeze so that she can grab one and go and that's what these are intended for.  Quite often when I bake it's the baking process I require and not the end product but this evening I did partake of a warm muffin and bloody lovely it was too!  It certainly hit the spot!  ;o) 

I also made some plain fairy cakes which I'll transform into butterfly cakes tomorrow with buttercream from the freezer.  I only recently discovered that buttercream is freezable ~ yes, I know, I have BIG gaps in my culinary knowledge!  ;oD  ~ and this is the first time I've used some so I will be interested to see how it's fared in the freezer.  On the subject of freezers....I also intended making some ginger thins this evening and I did indeed knock up the biscuit dough but being of an impatient nature I bunged it in the freezer (instead of the fridge) to firm it up before cutting into rounds for baking and then completely forgot about it!  ;oD  So, that'll keep for when I next have the oven on!

Feeling the pinch but not losing the flavour!

So, like many others, we find ourselves in a pretty unpleasant place financially speaking, boooooo!  Without going into a long winded ramble about the whys and wherefores of it all what I will say is that our grocery bill is at least one of the places where I can attempt to make a few savings.  I know there will have to be compromises and that's fair but they will have to be made working around my odd views!  ;o)  With a few exceptions, the meat I buy is always organic and I'm not prepared to make compromises on that one.  I'd rather eat smaller portions of organic meat and more vegetarian fare (which I love!) than buy cheaper non organic meat.  At the first day nursery I was cook for they used to make me use value mince and if that's not a crystal clear example of a false economy I don't know what is!  Other than meat I buy organic butter, milk and fruit & veg.  I usually try and buy organic flours and sugars, Fairtrade tea and coffee and other stuff as well but I may have to be alot more selective for a while. 

I've posted before about my self imposed pantry challenges where I try and use up stuff from my pantry and freezer rather than buy new and I'm embarking on another bout now!  I like a challenge and I especially like a foodie based challenge.  ;o)  So, you can expect tales of leftovers and inventive concoctions!  ;oD  Right now, I have a loaf of Courgette Country Grain Bread in my breadmaker, a recipe from Jennie Shapter's Ultimate Bread Machine book.  It's not one I've tried before but I had a courgette fading fast in the fridge that I didn't want to waste!  This morning I made a sugar free jelly from the pantry....yes, I know, I'm 44 but I love jelly!  ;oD  Lunch today will be home made smoked paprika veg soup and bought (well, it was 25p and I couldn't help myself!) cheese & tomato flatbread that have both been in the freezer for a wee while.  Haven't considered dinner yet but I have plenty of salad to use up along with bacon in the fridge so it may be home made potato salad (with onion and bacon) and salad.  ;o) 

Well, that was all rivetting stuff wasn't it?  LOL 

Tapas, Seasonal Eating and Lemon Loveliness!

I love a new food experience and last week I partook of Tapas for the first time.  ;o)  I'd never had Spanish food, mainly because the opportunity had never presented itself but also because I've always thought I probably wouldn't like it!  Now I know better.  ;o)  I went to a La Tasca in Edinburgh with my lovely friend, Elizabeth.  Not knowing much about the subject we elected for one of the set menus which consisted of eight dishes to share:

Tortilla Española

Spanish-style omelette with potato and onion.

Albóndigas a la Jardinera

La Tasca’s beef & pork meatballs, served in a tomato sauce

Pollo Marbella

Chicken breast cooked with paprika, chorizo, peppers, onion and a white wine & cream sauce

Croquetas de Pollo

Chicken croquettes, with roasted garlic mayonnaise

Chorizo Frito al Vino

Spicy Spanish sausage, flavoured with paprika, garlic and herbs, sautéed in red wine.

Gambas Pil Pil

Six king prawns, sizzling in a chilli-&-garlic-infused oil.

Paella Valenciana

Paella with chicken breast and mixed seafood.

Patatas Bravas

Fried potato, with a spicy tomato sauce.

Berenjenas Gratinadas

Fresh aubergine, baked in a tomato, garlic & wine sauce, topped with Cheddar cheese.

Ensalada Verde Mixta

Fresh baby spinach, lamb’s lettuce and baby gem, with avocado, cucumber and onion.

Preceding all that lovely yumminess was:

Pan de Barra Catalán

Fresh bread served with two dipping oils:
Catalán – a tomato & oil dip; picada – a garlic & herb oil
 
and
 
Aceitunas Mixtas

Mixed Spanish olives, marinated in extra-virgin olive oil, herbs, lemon and sweet pimento peppers.

And to wash it all merrily on it's way:

Fruity-Fizz Sangría

Extra-fruity sangría, with orange liqueur, peach schnapps, brandy and fresh orange slices, mixed with cava.

I have to say, I enjoyed every dish that we had!  ;o)  I think my favourites were probably the Pollo Marbella and the Croquetas de Pollo.  The sangria was a new experience too and, my word, that goes straight to your head doesn't it?  ;oD  Staggering along to the station to catch the last train back to Lockerbie I was questioning my decision to drink but it was good fun!  lol  I'm a recent convert to olives - having loathed them for many years I recently tried them again and mysteriously I like them now!  I don't know if I'm just more open to new flavours nowadays or it's hormonal or what but my tastes have definitely been changing over the last couple of years.  Suddenly I love lots of things I've always disliked and a whole new avenue of flavoursome adventures has opened up to me!  ;o)  

I am a big fan of seasonal eating and I loathe that everything is available all year round, it's just not right! Now, if ever there was a case to be made for seasonal eating then surely the first plumptious English strawberries of the season is it?  I had my first strawberries of this year a couple of days ago and they were just deliciously fabulous, why would anyone want to miss that taste bud tingling annual moment by eating the disappointing tasteless specimens wheeled in from sunnier climes all year round??  And if it needs seconding, what about the firsts of asparagus, new potatoes, rhubarb, parsnips?  Come on, guys, eat seasonally!  Check out Eat the Seasons!  Ok, hopping down off my soapbox now....

To finish off my post a little baking... remember I made some luscious lemon curd the night before I went away?  Well, this week when the baking urge was upon me I made some little plain cakes, sliced the tops and treated them to a goodly dollop of the aforementioned lemon curd each then topped with lemon icing and little lemon slices.  ;o) 

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

My chickens are really getting into their stride now and so I've had a glut of eggs to use up of late!  This evening I hard boiled eight eggs (they're still quite small) for picnic sandwiches tomorrow and I also made lemon curd for the first time in ages to use a few extra eggs.  I used to dislike lemon curd hugely but my tastes are definitely changing as I get older and I love it now!   There's a recipe for honey curd in the book I used the lemon curd recipe from which I found interesting, never seen that before, worth a try me thinks.  I also want to try passionfruit curd too, yummy!  ;o)

Using it up...

Yes, it's my dinner!  ;o)  I just thought I'd share (although quite who I'm sharing it with I'm sure I don't know!  Just myself I feel!  lol) a picture of my dinner as an excuse to have a ramble about my current mission to use things up and cook more from scratch.  So, my dinner comprises bulghur wheat, butter bean & veg stew, grilled Halloumi, broccoli and a Portobello mushroom.  ;o)  I found the bulghur lurking at the back of a shelf in the pantry so that was whipped out for using up purposes.  The stew I found, unlabelled, at the back of the freezer and hoiked it out in the hope it was savoury!  ;oD  I'm so bad at chucking stuff in the freezer and thinking to myself that I'll remember what it is but, of course, I never do!  I just put it down to my taste for living an adventurous life!  lol  The broccoli and mushroom didn't come under the using up banner as they arrived in my organic veg box this morning.  The Halloumi, well, I just adore it and never need an excuse to break it out of the fridge!  ;o)  I have a goodly heap of leftover bulghur which I plan to use for lunch tomorrow, I'm selling my work at Mildenhall air base for the rest of this week and all the food places there (Burger King, a pizza place, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins and Cinnabon) aren't very compatible with my healthy eating campaign!  If I don't take lunch and snacks I can wander off the path of healthy eating with alarming ease!  Tomorrow I will be packing some carrot soup (made for lunch today and using up some sad, floppy carrots from the bottom of the fridge!), some bulghur with veg and possibly some beans thrown in, Marmite rice cakes and some fruit.  That lot should see me through til 6pm.  ;o)

Baking and Basics

 

Yesterday I was in need of some seriously therapeutic baking time so I set to in the kitchen and made some iced fairy cakes for starters.  Nothing special about them except that I used these pansy icing decorations.  I'd like to say I knocked them up in a spare few moments but alas I didn't!  They were sent to me recently in a baking swap I participated in on Swap-Bot.  I rarely buy this sort of thing but it was fun to use them for a change.  My buttercream was meant to be a nice coordinating bluey purple but it went a bit awry!  They've gone down well though despite my lackadaisical icing attempt!  ;o)  

 

 
 
Then I made some Builder's Tea Bread from Mary Berry's book, One Step Ahead.  This is a nice simple recipe (albeit involving overnight soaking of dried fruit so not one for spontaneous baking urges!) and I had some Earl Grey leaf tea to use up from the pantry so my fruit was all plumptious from it's overnight sojourn in the brew.  This makes a huge loaf and always takes longer to bake than the hour mentioned in the recipe.  I think it would probably fare better in two smaller loaf tins or a larger rectangular tin.  It freezes like a dream and I always bung half in the freezer to prevent us gobbling it down in a flash!  It's fatless too so is quite kindly in the calorie stakes as well.

Earlier this week I came across a blog called A Year of Inconvenience.  Blogger, Pam Mehnert, is giving up convenience food for a year and cooking everything from scratch.  How inspiring is that?  I think it's a fantastic project and I will be following Pam's progress with interest.  I decided several years ago to reduce the amount of processed food we eat and have had a goodly amount of success I would say, although it is very easy to slide back into the convenience food trap sometimes!  Reading some of the posts on Pam's blog has made me question what I term basics foods when cooking from scratch.  She mentioned making pizza sauce using fresh tomatoes and I realised that I think of tinned tomatoes as a basic ingredient when in fact they are, of course, processed!  And, frozen peas!  I love frozen peas and never considered them a processed food!  I'm sounding a bit odd methinks!  lol   Anyway, rambling aside, the blog (along with something of a fincancial doldrums episode) has prompted me into one of my periodical "use it up" missions!  This entails using the ingredients I already have in my fridge, pantry and freezer as much as possible and only buying essentials when I need to.  I've had a Quorn Roast in the freezer for a while (I have to admit that I quite like Quorn even though it's processed!) so I hauled it out for dinner this evening.  I wanted to have sage & onion stuffing with it but had none of the packet variety in the pantry so I found a recipe for it in one of my favourite vintage cookbooks.  As you would suspect it involved onion, breadcrumbs, sage, salt and butter.  With my usual disregard for recipes, I didn't follow the method entirely as written but it was jolly tasty!  Even my daughter, who loves the packet variety of stuffing, ate it all up and enjoyed it!  ;o)  While I was waiting for dinner to cook I had a rummage about in the pantry seeing what I had available and decided to make some muesli as we're quite low on breakfast cereal (husband's daily breakfast is always cereal).  I used millet flakes, oats, plain puffed rice, pumpkin & sunflower seeds, mixed nuts, raisins, currants and dates.  I was busking it with no recipe so I will await husband's verdict in the morning!  I have to say that cooking from scratch and improvising with available ingredients is a real blast for me, I love the challenge and culinary creativity.  Let's do it!  ;o)  

Back to baking

Oops, time has passed in blog land again!  I have Easter egg misadventures to share although the moment may have passed!  ;o)  I haven't been doing anything too exciting in the kitchen of late but time is a bit more on my side now the show is over and I couldn't ignore the urge to bake anymore!  So, I made some chocolate cakes and had a play about icing and decorating them.  ;o)  I used my newest silicone baking cases, groovy red ones.  I keep meaning to do a tad of research to see if reusable silicone really is a better option ethically than paper baking cases.  I tend to compost paper cases after use anyway.  I saw a post on a blog somewhere recently where the blogger had made her own cases from scrapbook paper although I think they were added after baking!   Last month I was in swap on Swap-Bot for spring themed foodie goodies and the lovely generous lady who sent to me included a pack of lilac coloured paper cases with the words "think spring" on them accompanied by some little picks to stick in the cakes with rabbits and chicks on!  A little cutesy for me but they'll be great to use on cakes for an occasion or as a gift.  ;o)  Presentation is all with home made gifts, something I want to explore much more this year and especially at Christmas.

Baking Day

On Tuesday I spent the day with my friend, Becky, having a bake fest at her place.  ;o)  It's such a long time since we've done this and it was great fun.  Cooking can be a solitary occupation and generally I don't have any problem with that at all, in fact I probably prefer it alot of the time to be honest, but it was good to bake and catch up with all the news at the same time.

So, first up was my previously mentioned mission to make oatcakes!  I found a Rose Eliott recipe using just oatmeal and we tried that.  It didn't work splendidly well as I had to add extra melted butter and water to make a dough but they did pan out ok and do taste delicious.  So, I will look for more recipes to try, I'd quite like to find one that uses oil as opposed to butter.  They look a trifle rustic but then I'm a rustic loving girl so that's fine by me!

Next up and still on the savoury biscuit line was digestives.  They're not at all like bought digestives but are yummy.  They're not crisp like a biscuit, more bready in a way, but they are delicious with a dollop of cashew butter.  ;o)  Our local Julian Graves became a Holland & Barratt recently and I popped in for a peep yesterday and found cashew butter which I adore but which hasn't been readily available until now.  This offset my disappointment at the fact that they don't sell carob bars as their larger shops do.  Boo!  Interestingly they also had pumpkin seed butter which I've never seen before and will be trying soon me thinks!

Then I moved on to a mini muffin making session!  Two dozen banana cinnamon and two dozen bacon rolled off the production line quite swiftly!  The banana ones are lovely with their sprinkle of demerara, cinnamon and oatmeal.

The bacon ones are a little bland and in my opinion could do with pepping up, maybe with some cheese.  That could of course be due to the fact that they were supposed to have cornmeal in but Becky didn't have any cornmeal so we improvised and used oatmeal!  They're still disappearing from the tin quite rapidly though!  ;oD

Reverting to biscuits, but this time sweet instead of savoury, we made Raspberry Almond Jumbles.  I think that's what they were called anyway but I seem to have temporarily misplaced my scribbled version of the recipe so I stand corrected if I've got that wrong!  I love almondy things and these biscuits hit the spot, a good whack of almond and a nice sweet dimple of jam although we used strawberry instead of raspberry!

All in all it was a great session, lots of laughs and baked goodies to boot!  ;o)

Spring has Sprung!

Well, as far as I'm concerned it has!  ;o)  Yesterday morning I sat outside eating my breakfast!  Ok, it wasn't tropical, 11 degrees I believe, but it was very pleasant in the sunshine in the sheltered corner I chose to park myself with my oatcakes and peanut butter.   I took the above pic of miniature Narcissi after breakfast, they looked so cheerful bobbing about on the gentle breeze.  ;o) 

I have oatcakes on my mind today, I'm off to a friend's later for a baking day (yay!) and I'd like to make some oatcakes.  I rummaged about and found several recipes I've never tried, some given to me and one torn from a magazine, and without fail they all include flour in their ingredients!   Now, call me pedantic, but I was under the impression that oatcakes were wheat free!  I trotted off to my pantry to check the packet I have in there and was relieved to find that they do indeed only contain oatmeal (with sunflower oil and salt), not a speck of flour in sight!  Now, I love baking and don't have an aversion to flour, nor am I intolerant of it but I do feel an awful lot healthier when I restrict my bread intake.  I will never be able to forgo bread totally, I do love it so but I do try and keep a lid on it so, I eat alot of oatcakes, which fortunately I also love, and thought if I could find a good home made version I can make them in bulk and stop buying them.  Always happy to reduce how much I line the supermarket's pockets!  ;o)  I need to have a better root through my cookery books and see if I can find any oats only versions.  

Last week I made another recipe from the Anyone Can Bake book I made Butterscotch Pie from recently.  This time it was Peanut Butter Bread and jolly nice it was too.  ;o)  I don't have a picture as it disappeared a bit too quickly!  lol  The picture shows something green in the sandwich, not sure what that is but I think it's definitely better with sweet things as a filling, it's lovely with jam.  ;o)

 

One day last week I made macaroni cheese for dinner, yummmmmmm, I love cheesy things!  ;o)  I don't make proper macaroni cheese very often so we all fell on this and romped our way through it happily!  I'm currently teaching my daughter lots of new things in the kitchen in preparation for when she goes to university this year and cheese sauce is one she wants to learn.  I don't know why some folk make such a fuss about making white sauces, I learn from Delia and have never had trouble, I just wield my whisk and away I go!  ;o)  With a basic white sauce under your belt you can make loads of variations of it and never be short of a dish to make.  My daughter loves pasta and I can see her living on macaroni cheese once she has the sauce down pat!  ;o)

Lastly, a little wander through a recent spell of guiltiness on the ethics front!  I hate waste, I love using leftovers creatively and try not to let anything usable get past me and into the bin!  However, last week I had a few busy days and at the weekend on deciding to sort through stuff in the fridge I discovered various things that even I couldn't save.  ;o(  Some went into the compost bin but there was other stuff I just to bin and it really pains me to confess to it.  Mind you, since I'm just chuntering to myself here it's just me I'm actually confessing to!  I try to be ethical, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a green kind of girl but I know have BIG holes in my ethics sometimes, boo.  ;o(  They need rectifying and I'm always on the case.  I've let my meal planning slip a tad of late and I need to get that sorted.  I feel a more in depth blog post on this coming on but for now I'm off to bake! 

Happy Springtime!  ;o)

Butterscotch Pie

A while ago I came across an old American cookery book in a charity shop and just had to liberate it!  ;o)  It's quite a slim volume called Anyone can Bake, published in 1929, it's a Royal Baking Powder book and is full of cool recipes.  The illustrations are really cute and it has some pages of photographic "how to" series. 

This evening I decided to make Butterscotch Pie for dessert after dinner.

I realised after I'd started that I didn't have any cornflour so used plain flour instead.  It was taking an age using the double boiler method so my Arian impatience gene kicked in and I bunged it in a saucepan and did it that way, much speedier!  I wasn't sure how much to beat the egg whites so went for the meringue on top option instead.  I have to say it was really yummy although pretty sweet!  My husband, who is a real pudding fan, had two slices, nothing is too sickly for him!

Catching Up (Again!)

Here we are in March already and it was early January when I last blogged here!  Boo!  Life rolled along in expected and unexpected ways and kept me from sharing any of my kitchen antics but hopefully I will now be able to post more regularly here.  ;o)

Yesterday I had a bit of a bake fest, my daughter has been baking alot of late (can't think where she gets that from!  LOL) so I've not done much and I reached the culinary equivalent of meltdown yesterday and just HAD to chuck some flour about!  ;oD  Nothing too exciting, I was just happy to have wooden spoon in hand, but here are some pictures of my makes....

My husband was complaining that there were no biscuits to go with his cup of tea so the first thing I made was Cornish Fairings, perfect dunking biscuits!  I had a little trip down memory lane whilst making these as they are a biscuit that my maternal grandmother used to make.  I can picture Nan's biscuit tin now, filled with deep brown, sometimes leaning towards black on the edges, very hard fairings!  ;oD  Don't get me wrong, my Nan was a good cook and an excellent baker (her scones were a legend in the local WI group!) but her Cornish Fairings never seemed to fare (ha ha!) very well!  

 

Next up was spiced cherry and sultana scones.  I have a scone recipe in a Pampered Chef recipe book (one day I'll fill you in on my Pampered Chef obsession!) called Create-A-Scone which I use quite often.  I like it because you roll the dough straight onto the stone it's cooked on so no fiddling about rolling out and cutting shapes, it's great when you're in a hurry.  I loosely followed the lemon sultana recipe in the book but omitted the lemon and added cheeries and mixed spice.  They smell delightful!

Last out of the oven were some chocolate fairy cakes which I topped with chocolate and sugar sprinkles.

So, baking craving appeased I moved on to make something savoury in the form of Curried Lentil Spread.  I've made this spread for quite a few years but it wasn't until I actually read the recipe yesterday, with a view to posting it here, that I realised that I don't follow the method at all!  LOL  I was browsing about foodie blogs the other day and found one (which I now can't find again so apologies for not being able to credit it) with the subtitle "because recipes are just a list of suggestions".  That really made me smile and have a little chuckle as so often my cooking is just like that!  I look at a recipe, or even start cooking it, and realise I haven't got all the ingredients or don't fancy some of them so I just improvise!  That's what cooking is all about!  ;o)  However, I digress....back to the spread.  It's from my beaten up copy of Rose Elliot's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook.  Here's the recipe as it stands:

Curried Lentil Spread

This is a good mixture for sandwiches or little savoury biscuits.

Serves 4

4oz split red lentils

7floz water

1 small onion, finely chopped

1oz butter

2 tsp curry powder

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Wash the lentils and cook them in the water until they're tender and have absorbed all the liquid (20 to 30 minutes), then mash them roughly with a fork.  Fry the onion in the butter until it's tender then add curry powder and fry for another 1 - 2 minutes.  Blend this mixture into the cooked lentils to make a fairly smooth paste, then season to taste and leave the spread to get cold before using it.

I suspect it's not the most attractive dollop you've ever seen but it is tasty!  Trust me, I'm an artist!  ;oD 

When I make it I fry the onion and curry powder first, add the lentils and water (sometimes stock) and cook until the lentils are tender, season and then whizz it all smooth. I don't suppose it makes much difference but does illustrate my random slackness in the reading recipes department! In the book, the recipe isn't marked as being suitable for freezing but I've whacked half the recipe in the freezer to see how it fares. As she says, it's nice in sandwiches and on crackers but I also love it on toast, with salad, as a topping on a jacket potato or just as a dip with cucumber sticks.

What???

Just need to have a little rant about the Devil's Supermarket!  Who, pray, just who rushed down to Tesco and purchased Easter eggs on Boxing Day??  Eh?  Just who would do that?  It's absolutely ridiculous to put Easter confectionery and hot cross buns into the shops at Christmas!  Can we not hang on to the tiniest bit of tradition?  Are we not allowed to have seasons?  Here's a thought, save yourself a bit of trouble, Mr Tesco, why don't we just have EVERYTHING in the shops 24/7, 365 days a year?  Let's not worry about how you (and the rest of your kind) are destroying towns all over the UK with your invasive, devisive methods, no, instead let's just make sure your pockets are exceptionally well lined at the cost of British tradition and ethical consumer practice, shall we?

And breathe......

Christmas Catch Up

It's been oh so long since I posted here and now I'm going to treat you to a long rambling catch up of my culinary exploits over Christmas!  ;oD

Soooo, let's kick off with mincemeat...whoopee, I hear you cry!  I haven't made my own mincemeat for a good few years but I decided I would this year, by which, seeing as it's now 2010, I mean last year!  I use Delia Smith's mincemeat recipe from her original Christmas cook book (although I now have her new version but sadly didn't make anything from it this year).  I like the fact that you cook it before potting it up, I just dislike the look of suet in jars of mincement!  Here it is before cooking:

I left it in the pantry overnight before cooking and was assailed by a wonderful aroma in the morning when I opened the pantry door.  Once cooked it transformed into this:

The paler bits are chopped apple.  Once it's cooled it's then laced with a good splash of alcofrolic goodness and away you go!  ;o)  The recipe can be found on Delia's website here.  It's a bit late but you can always bookmark for next year!!

A recipe I've made for the last couple of years is Nigella Lawson's fabulous Gingerbread Stuffing and I made it again this year even though I didn't get to cook Christmas dinner!  I love doing the whole Christmas cooking bit but it was my mum's turn this year, boooooo!  ;oD  If you haven't tried the gingery goodness that is this stuffing then I highly recommend you give it a whirl.  I have a little stash of slices in the freezer now.  ;o)  The recipe is from Nigella's book, Feast, which has a whole host of other delicious yumminess I plan to try out!  The recipe isn't on Nigella's site but it is on the BBC site here.  And just to whet your appetite...

Last year I made another Nigella recipe on Christmas Eve, her Triple Cheese Strata dish which is lovely.  I made it on Christmas Eve again this year so that makes it a tradition to be upheld in future years me thinks!  ;oD  Here it is in all it's cheesy glory:

It's a kind of cheese bread and butter pudding really, sliced baguette with a mixture of cheese and cream poured over, left to soak overnight and baked the next day, easy peasy and delicious!  Here's the recipe.

Moving on to another of my favourite chefs... I saw most of Jamie Oliver's Christmas TV programmes and was rather taken with his Winter Pudding Bombe.  I made it for dessert on New Year's Eve and I had a smashing time doing it!  I'd just got to the stage where you add ice cream to your raspberry jam spread Panettone slices.  I'd forgotten to get my Green & Black's out earlier so it was a tad hard, my scoop shot across the top and my elbow knocked the bowl of expectant Panettone off the counter top and smashed into a trillion pieces on the kitchen floor!  I didn't think shards of glass were a welcome addition to my pud so I was back to square one!  I had just about enough Panettone to make two much smaller bombes so all was well.  I did, in my unique way, tweak the recipe somewhat though!  The only glace fruit I had was cherries (not clementines as the recipe states) and I couldn't get any sour cherries so I swapped them for tinned peaches.  My little bowls were so small I didn't have room for a layer of fresh clementine slices either.  Oh, and I didn't have Vin Santo, and even if I had I wouldn't have used it as DH is tee total so I substituted grape juice instead.  So not really like Jamie's recipe at all!  LOL  It ws delicious though and I have one and a bit left in the freezer too!  ;o) 

And lastly I wanted to tell you about my Christmas present.  ;o)  In May last year I went over to France on a Twinning Association trip and on our first evening there our lovely host introduced us to the joys of a Raclette.  I hadn't heard of it before but, for the uninitiated, it is a stone plate that sits over an electric element and you can cook meat and fish on it.  A bit like barbecue without the mess!  There are also little pans that slide in under the element for melting cheese in or keeping sauce warm.  DD and I loved our Raclette experience, I've been hankering after one ever since and Santa obliged.  ;o)  It's a lovely sociable meal, sitting round the table everyone cooking and concocting, great stuff!  Traditional Raclette involves cooked potatoes in your little pan topped with ham and Raclet cheese (I couldn't find Raclet but Emmenthal did the job well) and, once heated under the element, served with pickled onions and gherkins.  I'm planning lots of Raclette time in this coming year and will no doubt bore you all with the details on here!  I was a bit slack with my camera during our New Year Raclette meal but I can share the aftermath with you: