Basil infused Bannocks with Broccoli and Pesto Soup

Hooray, I finally have something to blog! My beloved DSLR camera is safely back home this morning and I thought it deserved some long overdue usage! I have just realised how many B's there are in the post title, is a bit of a tongue twister!

A few weeks back I was flicking through my copy of Bread, part of the River Cottage Handbook series and whilst being tempted pretty much by every recipe, Bannocks in particular caught my eye...

I had previously never heard of a Bannock, and a quick googling tells me they seem a Northernly thing… a type of quick bread that’s made from grains.. more handily it was made using oatmeal, and as I’ve been on a mission to use up all the odds and ends gathering dust in the bottom of the draw it meant I could give it a good use, other than throwing into a casserole to thicken!

The book recommends serving with soup. I was intending to use up a (shh!) tin of mushroom soup that’s been lurking in the cupboard but being on a lazy day off from work, and told myself that if I’m gonna make the bread, I might as well do the soup too! I made a small batch of broccoli soup, by frying off a little diced onion, then adding the stalks for 5 minutes and some veggie stock, added the chopped up florets and simmered until soft. Then simply stirred through the last of a jar of pesto, roughly 2 scant teaspoons. Together with the bannocks it made a great combination, as I had also added basil oil to the bannock mixture which was subtle enough not to over power.

The bannocks are super quick to make – less than a minute to make and a couple in the pan to cook. These are fragile beasts and at several points found myself questioning the recipes success but I persisted – and they came up a treat! They are oaty, and wholesome tasting.

In the original recpipe it makes two, but I scaled down as was only me eating and don't think these would re-heat that well..

62g medium oatmeal, and a little extra
Teeny pinch salt
Teeny bit bigger pinch baking powder - say 1/8 tsp
1 tsp basil infused oil, plus oil to grease the pan. The book also recommends using fat or butter.
2 ish tbsp hot water

Method

Place a heavy-based frying pan on a medium heat.

Mix together the oatmeal, salt and baking powder In a bowl, add the basil oil, then enough water to make a stiff paste. This is the fun part!

Sprinkle a little more oatmeal on a suitable board, tip the mixture on to it. Sprinkle a bit more oatmeal over and flatten to a just under a centimetre, working quickly before it cools. Cut it into quarters.

Add a little fat/oil to the hot pan, and cook the bannock for a couple of minutes on each side, until browning lightly. Serve hot with a little butter on if desired.

Caramelized Apples with Wholemeal Drop Scones

I was getting ready to post this up last week, and then life typically got in the way and I ended up being rather poorly and stuck in hospital this past week, staring longingly through the window at the glorious sunshine, in between napping anyway! Am sure now I am home it will rain all week!

But enough of the bad stuff, and onto the good stuff! Before going into hospital I finally got around to cooking something from the River Cottage Everyday book, that I was gifted forever back, and loving drop scones so frequently, thought would try out their wholemeal version and pretend to myself its a little healthier! Obviously you can't be good all the time, and whilst they were cooking in the pan I quickly made some caramelised apple slices to go on top!

I'm really not into cereal for breakfast, and these made a welcome breakfast on a lazy morning! I obviously couldn't eat them all in one sitting, and quickly reheated them in toaster over the next two days, so are ideal even if you are just cooking for one, like me. I found them much more filling than the regular ones I make which can only be a good thing!

The apples were made by simply melting a knob of butter with some muscovado sugar, then gently pan frying the slices for around 10 minutes until cooked but not falling apart. Then sprinkled with cinnamon. I think it might have been a granny smith apple...I inherited it as my flatmate was going away at the time! The inspiration for these also came from the same book but pretty much made up as I went along! They were so good and I will definitely make them again!

Makes 20-30 (I halved the mix and got around 18)

250g self raising wholemeal flour
pinch baking powder
pinch sea salt
25g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
275ml milk approx
50g melted butter
a little sunflower oil

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl, stir in sugar. Make a well and add eggs and half the milk, Gently whisk to a thickish paste, slowly incorporating the melted butter and remaining milk until you have a smooth, thick batter.

Heat a large flat or griddle pan, oil a piece of kitchen paper and carefully grease the pan. Add a tablespoon of batter to form a small dics. When bubbles appear, gently flip over and cook for a further minute or until they lift away without resistance. Keep warm in a tea towel whilst cooking the remaining scones. Re-grease pan as needed.


Serve topped with a splodge of yoghurt and the apple!

Macarons book Giveaway

Firstly, no you are not seeing double, parts of a similar post appeared and disappeared due to technical issues a few weeks back, however I can confirm this post is now definitely real! 

A few months back whilst I was a bit under the weather, the lovely Helen from Fuss Free Flavours braved our local transport system and came to visit me, bringing with her some delicious treats, including some very good scotch eggs!

Amongst our little lunch feast, Helen also very kindly gave me a copy of an elegant little book simply called Macarons, by Annie Rigg, and after baking my first and successful batch of Macarons, I am now very happy to confirm I have an additional copy to give away to one lucky UK based reader!

The book is perfect and petite, a little like the macarons themselves! It contains a selection of mouthwatering recipes and combinations, including step by step instructions on how to make and fill them, I can highly recommend it!

These were our first macarons - of course we had to dye them pink but you could use any colouring you wish for! Prior to this I'd never made them, or tried before but am a definite convert! They are so light and delicious, a little time consuming but the results are worth it!

Its very easy to enter the competition - just leave me a comment below telling me your favourite sweet treat!

To gain additional entries, you can re-tweet this competition using the T button below this post, please leave an additional comment advising you have done so. Additionally you can gain extra entries by 'liking' my facebook page, and leaving a comment below.

The competition closes on the 10th June 2011, and the winner be chosen at random and will be announced shortly after here. Please leave a valid contact email address.

Don't forget to check out Helens blog too, its jam packed full of treats! 

Chicken Kiev's and new Cookery School book

I've always felt that there is something quite special about Chicken Kiev's, a kind of happy nostalgia and despite eating many a kiev over the years, good and bad I had never actually attempted to make them! The thought of all that lovely garlicky herby butter can't help but raise a smile and after seeing the recipe in the new Cookery School book, I finally made them!

I am not very good at following instructions admittedly, and struggled with cutting the chicken breast correctly, I felt maybe one more image in the book would have solved my ‘diagonal’ query, however overall it was very clear to follow, and the kiev’s were delicious.

Trying to be slightly healthier instead of deep frying them, I sprayed them with oil and baked for about 30 minutes instead, they were still beautifully crispy and very moist, though I need to make bigger pockets next time as could of done with a touch more of the lovely garlicky butter!

On the front of the Cookery School book it claims to be able to teach anyone to cook.. Whilst I did food technology for GCSE many moons ago, I don’t recall ever learning any specific techniques and I have got this far mainly through trial and error! I make good cakes, am fairly confident with pastry and give me a tin of tomatoes and I can knock up a pretty good sauce but beyond that its very hit and miss!

The Cookery School book has recipes from the Michelin starred chef Richard Corrigan, and lots of helpful advice from the glamorous chef and food writer Gizzi Erskine. After watching several programs, Richard seems to favour bad cop and Gizzi provides a more nurturing, friendly cop role, which strikes a good balance most of the time!

Each section in the book has clear, photographic and written instructions, and highlights what skills you will learn making the recipe, which is very useful. You can feel proud afterwards and also know the name of what you have learned, which is good!

For me personally, some of the recipes and general feel of the book leans towards what I would call restaurant style dishes; whereas I am more a home style cook and eater; several recipes didn’t appeal to me or my brother, who claimed there were ‘no man food recipes’! Additionally I felt a lot of the ingredients are quite expensive or a bit random (dandelion leaves?!) and not readily available if you live out outside of a major cities, though there are a number of mail order companies around now so they are not completely unachievable.

Whilst I went fairly simple with making the Chicken Kiev's; to give you an idea of the recipes contained within the book, here are a few examples of ones that I particularly liked the sound of:

Basic:

Halloumi, tomato and green bean salad
Moules Mariniére
Thai pork lettuce cups

Intermediate:

Razor clams with a tomato sauce
Baby chicken with puy lentil dhal
Lemon posset with butter shortbread

Advanced:

Onion, spinach and ricotta ravioli with a lemon cream sauce
Stuffed lemon sole with scampi and tenderstem broccoli
Raspberry millefeuille


The Cookery School book is published by Penguin and is available in the shops now.

With thanks to Julie @ Traffic Partners

Nigella's Crustless Pizza

Oh my, its another Nigella recipe for you! I hadn't planned to post three Nigella recipes in a row but after making this last night, I couldn't wait to post it! So far out of my extensive cookery book collection, I’ve already cooked at least 6 recipes in the 2 months since getting this book, surely a record for me!

When I originally watched Nigella make this on TV I remember being curious as to what the finished result would be like, as I was thinking cheesy Yorkshire pudding hmm...  Fear not my friends, it really is delicious, and it does not taste like a Yorkshire pudding gone wrong! Its beautifully light, cheesy and delicious! Imagine a slightly more substantial omelette .. This is a definite keeper recipe, it takes minutes to assemble and I can see it featuring often on my weekly meal planner!

Once again, I think my dish was a wee bit smaller than Nigella’s recommendation for using a pie dish - I used my Le Creuset pie dish but other than being a bit more voluptuous during its cooking it came out perfectly.

The original recipe recommends topping with pepperoni or similar, and whilst I'm sure it would be delicious; I had forgotten to add it to my shopping list and so instead I added a handful of quartered cherry tomatoes to the batter mix, which worked perfectly. They add a little bit of moisture and you really cannot go wrong with cheese and tomato together!

Easy

Serves 2-4 (we had half each)

1 egg
100g plain flour
250ml milk
Pinch salt
5 quartered cherry tomatoes
Butter for greasing
100g grated cheese – I used farmhouse mature

Pre-heat your oven, 200/ gas 6/ fan 180

Lightly beat the egg with the flour, salt, slowly adding the milk to form a smooth batter

Grease the pie dish, add half of the cheese to the batter, pour onto the dish, dot with the tomatoes and bake for 30 minutes. I cooked mine on the middle shelf, which seemed about right.

Top with the remaining cheese and return to the oven until the cheese has melted and is all lovely and golden brown. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes in the dish, it will make it easier to remove from the dish

Cut into slices and enjoy! I imagine a salad would be good alongside but as we had salad for lunch yesterday, we just ate it on its own.

Salami and Mozzarella Frittata

With my health having been not being particularly great over the last couple of months the thought of having ready meals every night was not really something that I would normally choose to eat - this dish is simple to cook and doesn't require too much energy!

In this posting, I am also very happy to report that I got the all clear from my surgeon this week, which was a huge relief! Whilst a couple of you knew what has been happening, until I’d got my results back I didn’t really want to share too many details here... I had a (thankfully) non-invasive Thymoma, which I’ve had successfully removed and can now look forward to the future and get back to normality again. And more importantly back in the kitchen!

 

One favourite dinner was this frittata recipe, slightly adapted from Nigella Lawson’s recipe for ‘Mortadella and Mozzarella frittata’. Our adaptation was the fact we couldn’t get any Mortadella, and therefore substituted for the salami. The recipe is taken from her latest book ‘Kitchen’ which I treated myself to at Christmas. I really love this book. Every time I get close to putting it in the bookshelf, it mysteriously comes back out again! Both for inspiration and the recipes I’ve cooked so far, it’s a book I can honestly recommend, providing of course everyday cookery floats your boat. Definitely a keeper.

Anyway, enough of me rambling, it’s a very easy and simple dish to make, and whilst it was lovely served hot for our dinner, it was also equally good served cold the next day. Best served on a nice, warm evening though, not the rainy grey night it was made this on!

You will need a 25cm wide frying/ sauté pan, suitable for both hob and going under the grill.

Serves 4-8 (I’m guessing 8 if you are serving children, we easily ate half of it between the two of us..)

Super easy:

6 eggs
125g mortadella (or salami), roughly chopped/ sliced
125g mozzarella, also roughly chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped plus a little extra for sprinkling. (I left this out, not a huge parsley fan, unless it is adorning garlic bread)
1 tbsp freshly grated parmesan
S&P, to taste
1 tbsp butter
Drop of garlic oil (aka my new best friend!)

Pre-heat the grill, nice and hot

Beat the eggs in a bowl, add the meat, cheese, parsley and season.

Gently melt the butter with the oil, in the frying pan, add the beaten mixture – do not stir – cook for about 5 minutes or until set, and golden (ours was more nearer 10 minutes). Transfer under the grill, and cook until all golden brown and puffed up. Allow to cool for a few minutes in the pan, then gently ease out onto your serving plate, I found a silicon spatula very useful for this part!

Serve hot with some nice green vegetable, such as broccoli or cold with a picnic and salad.

I am very tempted to add more cheese next time but then it becomes not so light and pretending it’s a healthy dinner..

Marmalade Pudding cake

Delightful greed explains the awful picture – it was the last piece, immediately prior to being wolfed down by me with lashings of cream! The cake did not hang around long, even my fiancée D who doesn't like marmalade, really liked it. This annoyed me slightly though as I really wanted to just hide it away and eat it all. It’s a glorious cake, bursting with delicious orangeyness and I urge you to try it soon!

The only minor niggle I had with the recipe is that I needed a square baking dish, rather than the rectangular pyrex one I used, as my cake was rather volcanic looking when baked! Oh to have a kitchen like Nigella and every pan in every size.... Why do I seem to have a cupboard full of random dishes, pans and tins, and not one remotely the size or shape ever needed? Please tell me I am not the only one who has this trouble?

Anyway, this cake is a good way of using up a lot of marmalade; I had seemingly acquired several various jars and in the end opted for a jar of Fairtrade organic orange marmalade, from Traidcraft which was perfect for the job, fruity, not too sharp but still with a lovely tang to it, I can highly recommend it.

The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's recent ‘Kitchen’ book.

Makes 1 lovely cake
Requires 1 x 24cm square pyrex or similar ovenproof dish

Easy. Even easier if you have a food processor!

250g soft unsalted butter, plus a little extra to grease the pan with
75g caster sugar
75g light brown muscavado (from memory I was running low and mixed this with some soft brown sugar..)
150g + 75g marmalade
225g plain flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda (aka realise you have run out mid mixing and kind neighbour loans you again!)
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
Zest and juice of 1 orange - reserve ½ juice for the glaze

Oven 180/ gas 4/ fan about 160
Grease the dish with a little butter

Place the 75g of marmalade and ½ the orange juice in a small saucepan, reserve for later to make the glaze with.

Place all the remaining ingredients into a food processor, blend to a nice thick, creamy batter and decant into your baking dish, smoothing the surface.

If you are not using a food processor, cream the butter and sugars together, beat in the marmalade, then the dry ingredients, then the eggs and finally the juice and zest.

Bake for approximately 40 minutes, though do check after 30 minutes. The cake should be risen, and golden, check with a cake tester, as per Nigella, or a cocktail stick, as per me as I don't own one. It should come away relatively clean looking, though the marmalade does make for a sticky batter so bear this in mind.

Heat the reserved glaze mixture until melted and spoon evenly over the still hot cake, allow to cool slightly before eating.

Serve with lashings of custard or cream. Both are good. Hard to choose a winner on testing!

Cranberry and Orange Brownies

Mmm brownies! Don't they smell so good when cooking? Believe me they smell even more heavenly if you throw some chocolate scented with orange oil into the equation! I was stalking the cooling rack rather impatiently, waiting in anticipation for them to be cool enough to eat and handle!

I nearly always bake the brownies from BBC Good Food but decided to try a different recipe for a change, which called for just the chocolate and no cocoa powder or other enhancers, as I wanted to see how the chocolate performed on its own. Also, a 50g quantity of chocolate helped as I had already started nibbling on this lovely chocolate before deciding to test it in a recipe! There was one square left as this goes to print..

Brownie recipe adapated from Just Like Mother Used To Make, by Tom Norrington-Davies

125g unsalted butter, plus a little extra to grease your pan (or cheat and use silicon 'tin' and baking parchment sheets!)

50g bitter chocolate, I used Orange Mantra

50g self-raising flour

pinch salt

125g caster sugar

25g dried cranberries (original recipe calls for 125g broken walnut pieces but have a guest with nut allergy so steered clear!)

2 large eggs beaten

drop vanilla essence (I use extract)

Pre-heat your oven 180o/ 160o fan/ 350f. Grease/ line a 8inch baking tin/ tray

Melt the butter, remove from the heat and add broken up chocolate, stirring gently until all melted

Sift the flour, sugar, salt and cranberries. Fold in the butter mixture, then the eggs and vanilla, it will look quite runny at this stage!

Pour into your tin and bake for up to 30 minutes or until soft in the middle and appear cooked through. Allow to cool in the tin until mixture slightly comes away from the sides, transfer to a cooling rack, cut into desired shape and go wait in another room until cooled down or you will have burnt fingers and tongue.

The brownie texture reminded me a little of the kits I remember my mum buying when I was young, which came complete with a little cardboard tray for baking them in! Fortunately they are good memories but rather improved, as these ones were quite moist and unburnt in comparison! The beautiful Orange Mantra chocolate, which can be found at Chocolate and Love's website really did shine but with divided guest opinions, if you are a die-hard milk chocolate fan these brownies are probably not going to be your cup of tea, however if you like the dark side, I thoroughly recommend!

I had attempted to use my new Ipod touch to take the pictures of these but not a great success, will go back to old phone I think!

Just look at the pretty packaging:

What's more its Organic, fair trade, dairy, gluten, GMO free and suitable for vegans! (the chocolate, not the brownies sorry!) How can you resist?

Many thanks to Eliza and Chocolate and Love for sending me the gorgeous bars :)

Honey and Almond Cake

This recipe comes once again from one of my favourite cookbooks - Baking, by Star fire and is a new favourite. The cake is a little different from a standard sponge type affair, with a slightly more denser crumb and therefore ideal for dunking into your cuppa! It keeps well too which is a bonus. Another bonus is that with the pretty flaked almonds on top, it doesn't require any icing and also travels very well!

I used a standard runny honey this time but am tempted to try different varieties, I did spot some orange blossom honey the other day out shopping so think will have to pick some up next time and report back accordingly!

The cake was made as I was heading down to my lovely family in Devon over the weekend, and I always try to bake something before hand, unfortunately the previous Lemon Drizzle cake has been so much of a hit its been hard to match up, though I will keep trying! Though this did seem quite popular at least and despite myself not having honey cake before, my dad said it was a good example, I guess thats a compliment?!

Along side baking the honey cake, on that particular night I had my baking-partner-in-crime over, who can't have almonds, so I made her a seperate one with the base recipe but with 2 tsp of Polish extra-dark cocoa powder and a handful of dark choc chips added to replace the almonds, its a little ugly but tasted good! As above, it has a denser crumb but this is no bad thing, is quite nice to have something a little different from the million other victoria sponges I bake!

Ingredients for one sponge:

50g butter
25g caster sugar
125g clear honey
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1 medium egg
2 tbsp milk
25g flaked almonds
1 tbsp clear honey, to drizzle over

Pre-hear oven 180/350/ mark 4 or about 160 max in a fan

Oil and line a 7inch deep round cake tin ( I only have sandwich tins, just used a parchment liner!)

Gently melt together the honey, sugar and butter

Sift together flour, bicarb and mixed spice. Seperately beat the egg and milk

Make a well in the flour, beat in the melted mixture, drawing in from the sides. Add the egg mix, pour into the tin and smooth over, sprinkle over the flaked almonds and bake for 30-35 minutes or until risen and golden. (Mine cooked in less than 25 mins but is a very hot oven)

Allow to cool in the tin for a couple of minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Drizzle with remaining honey and serve.

Suggests serving with greek yoghurt but we didn't bother!

A Taste of Italy with Bertolli and Gennaro Contaldo

Firstly, I must admit that I was a little dubious, and yet at the same time curious about attending an event with a well known brand, about ready made Italian Pasta sauces – mainly as I normally make my own from scratch, and I am pretty happy with them! However, as both friends and my brother seem pretty keen on the Bertolli sauces (I had not actually tried them before this event!), there also being the opportunity to meet the delightful Gennaro Contaldo and have a cookery lesson with him, and the fact that I love to eat and cook a lot of Italian food, I really had nothing to lose :)

And so after a very hot train ride into town and my badly written directions (I got confused with different station exits!) I finally found L'atelier des Chefs, which was the venue for the evening.

After a quick get together with the other food bloggers and a perfectly chilled glass of Prosecco, which was very welcome at this point, Gennaro appeared amongst us and we filed into the kitchen area and adorned ourselves with special Bertolli aprons and glamorous hats, please check out Katie’s blog if you want to see what I look like…… no laughing please!

The evening started with Gennaro demonstrating for us the Soffritto technique (onion, carrot, celery all finely chopped, plus a bashed clove of garlic, gently sautéed in olive oil). Bertolli's sauces are now based on this method, resulting in tasty, rustic sauces inspired by 150 years of the brands history.

Me and three other bloggers then went up to the stoves and made our own, by god it was hot with 4 gas burners on, plus the smell of chopped onions which resulted in my eyes streaming and looking like an idiot!  After making the soffritto, we added tinned tomatoes, Gennaro added lots of diced chillies and after a short simmer, we decanted into these cute jars which had our names on:

After the decanting, Gennaro then demonstrated with gusto our dinner meals. I will be honest in that when he was making the starter, it was filling me with dread, I saw capers go in = 1st pet hate, then a jar of the Arrabbiata sauce, lovely, then fillets of mackerel went in = 2nd pet hate! I was not looking forward to this and thought would try a spoon out of politeness… However maybe my taste buds have been deceiving me, as I proceeded to eat nearly all of it! Mackerel is still not on my favourites list, nor capers, however it was still a very tasty dish!

Our main course consisted of penne with a slow cooked chunky beef ragu and the Basilico sauce, something I think my fiancée would love for the meat content alone!

There was also a delicious veggie option made with mushrooms and courgettes, which was pretty tasty for something cooked so quickly, and from a jar!

One main thing I can say about the Bertolli sauces, if the lovely Helly doesn’t mind me stealing her words upon tasting one of the Bertolli sauces – ‘I can’t believe this came out of a jar’. Rather grudgingly I will admit openly the Basilco sauce did not taste like it was from a jar as it tasted far too fresh and tomatoey! Out of all the sauces I will most likely buy this one again. In fact I have since made a delicious dish using the Basilico sauce and it will appear on the blog in a couple of days…in the meantime here is a picture of the linguine bolognese I made recently using the Bertolli bolognese sauce:

The bookshelf has truly finally collapsed in on itself as now proudly sits a copy of Gennaros book, Passione. Definitely in need of a new, bigger bookshelf!

Many thanks to Bertolli for inviting me, the ever lovely ladies at Wildcard and of course the wonderful Gennaro Contaldo who was a real pleasure to meet, so full of life and character, and last but not least the team at L'atelier des Chefs.

Also additional thanks for the fab little ‘Supplement to the Italian dictionary’ book, I’ve had good fun testing out the hand signals on the family this week!

Recent cooking

I'm back at last! Whilst there hasn't been a huge amount of cooking going on, I have made a couple of nice things lately - most recently was cappuchino bars, from BBC Good Food 'The Collection' book, which I received for my birthday. Picture came out a little fuzzy but will make again:

Next up is a new breakfast favourite of mine - Egg and Mushroom wraps. A little different but delicious, I work shifts and this tends to be my breakfast when I am on the 'late shift', keeps me going until my late lunch break! Basically fry 2-3 thinly sliced chestnut mushrooms in a small amount of butter in a hot pan, add 3 chopped cherry tomatoes, whisk in a bowl 2 eggs, a splash of milk and some of your favourite chilli sauce, stir into the browned mushroom mixture and scramble together until cooked through, tip into a tortilla wrap and fold as desired, enjoy!

Next up, I bought on special a couple of weeks ago some new 'Jamie Oliver' Lasagne sheets, I must admit I normally just pick up the value lasagne sheets but I am switching to these in future as we both noticed a big difference in the finished lasagne, silky, tasty pasta without any pre-soaking required. Delicious!

(I finally found a use for my silicon 'tin' - the sheets fit perfectly!!)

More pasta - this time some pretty 'Trecce dell' Orto' which my dad picked up for me recently, which had different flavoured twirls; beetroot, spinach, curcuma and sepia (cuttlefish ink - sounds vile but actually was very tasty!) I made up a simple carbonara sauce with some very tasty bacon bits from Aldi's and it coated the pasta beautifully:

Jamie Does...

I am a Jamie Oliver fan, already owning most of his books and was planning to pick up his latest - however fate intervened and I was very lucky to get sent a copy Jamie’s new book ‘Jamie does…’ containing recipes, pictures and notes from his travels around Spain, Italy, Swede, Morocco, Greece and France, which hits the shelves on 15th April. You can pre-order here from Amazon

The main thing I really like about this book is how each country has a page dedicated to its culinary highlights, is a good showcase of the core ingredients that gives food for thought.

A section that really caught my eye was Spain, as during Jamie’s trip I noted he visited the bull fighting ring in Ronda, which I had also visited a couple of years ago on holiday, following a terrifying drive up the mountains involving me hiding under my hands and refusing to look out of the window – yes the views may be beautiful but I swear I was screeching most of the journey up, saying my prayers!! Luckily my boyfriend is a good driver and we are still here to tell the tale!

On to better things, I really like his selection of Tapas, a good choice of simple, tasty dishes from Chorizo with garlic, Blackened pardon peppers and to drool over the page Ham and cheese Croquetas! I ate similar croquetas at a Spanish restaurant a few years back in London and whilst they were good, Jamie’s sound divine! This will definitely be one of the first recipes I make!

All the other countries too have a great selection of must make recipes, I’ve spotted a lush sounding Crispy cured Meat and Cherry salad in Italy, stunning pink Beetroot Gravadlax in Sweden and a mouthwatering Sweet & lovely Honey and Pistachio cake from Greece. Mmm!

And yes, the bookshelf is about to collapse from overload but it will just have to live on top of it…and the boyfriend can’t complain as-I-didn’t-actually-technically-buy-it……;-)

Big thanks to Jamie's PR team for sending me this :)

Happy Easter Baking

As regulars to my blog will know, I am rather fond of sprinkles and Silverspoon recently sent me a set of gorgeous sprinkles, pink icing and other cake decorations, just in time for Easter! Silverspoon have a fantastic range of decorations to make your cakes and desserts look extra special!

You can also find on their website lots of lovely recipes, these gorgeous looking Coconut clusters have caught my eye and am rather intrigued by this lush looking Sticky chocolate yoghurt cake

As its Easter, I just had to make these little fairy cakes to take into work using the lovely Silverspoon decorations and a little glace icing:

I used the Fairy cakes recipe from Silverspoon’s website and also added a bag of their chocolate chips, which made lovely light little buns that rapidly vanished!

Continuing with the Easter baking theme, I also made this gorgeous Mocha cake, my entry for the great Easter Cake Bake held every year over at the lovely Julia's blog A Slice of Cherry Pie

Mocha cake

Taken from Baking, published by Star fire books and aka my baking bible! The original recipe is for Coffee and Pecan cake but had to adapt slightly as I made it for an Easter family lunch and two of the guests have nut allergies.

Ingredients:
175g self-raising flour, sifted
125g butter or margarine
175g golden caster sugar
1 tbsp coffee, instant or granules
2 large eggs
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Icing:

1tsp coffee, instant or granules
1 tsp cocoa powder
75g unsalted butter, softened
175g icing sugar

Oven 190o/ fan 170o, gas 5 – pre-heat 10 minutes

You will need 2x 7” sandwich tins, lined (I always use baking parchment liners!)

Dissolve the coffee in 2 tbsp hot water and allow to cool.

Beat the butter and sugar together (I *heart* my Kenwood Chef!) until light and creamy, mix the eggs with the cooled coffee mixture and beat into the butter sugar mix, adding a little flour every few beats, until all mixed in, pour into the tins and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes away clean, allow to cool thoroughly before icing.

To ice, beat the butter and sugar. Dissolve the coffee and cocoa with a little boiling water, add to the mix and beat until smooth, use half for the filling and remaining half for the topping. Store in an airtight container.

Decoration as desired!

Maple, Pecan and Lemon Loaf

As much as I adore cake, over the last few months I've been growing increasingly fond of tea loaf's, partially as they are just perfect for dipping into your favourite hot drink without falling to pieces and also that I tend to normally have most of the ingredients already in the kitchen!

This little beauty is just perfect with a cuppa, and is fit to bursting with delicious pecan nuts, its a little on the pricier side as involves lovely maple syrup (mine carefully bought back from Canada by my boyfriend last month!) and lots of pecans but I think its worth it! Its more loaf than cake in texture but still has a soft crumb. The lemony icing gives a lovely tang to the loaf and is ideal for afternoon tea :)

The recipe is once again taken from Step by Step baking, published by Starfire books.

Makes 12 slices..

350g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
175g butter, cubed
75g caster sugar
125g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
3 medium eggs
1 tbsp milk
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
5 tbsp maple syrup

Icing:

75g icing sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
25g pecan nuts roughly chopped

Line a 2lb/ 900g loaf tin (I love the baking parchment liners from Lakeland)

Pre-heat oven 170o/ 325o/ gas 3/ fan 150o

Rub the butter and flour together until breadcrumb like (I cheated and used the food processor!) Stir in sugar and pecans

Beat seperately the eggs, milk and lemon, stir in maple syrup, gently stir into the dry ingredients until mixed together

Spoon into prepared tin and bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer comes away clean, allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and transfer to a cooling rack

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, stir in the lemon juice to form a smooth icing, drizzle over the cake and top with the remaining pecan nuts, allow to set before slicing.


With the icing - I had actually made two loaves, one to take to my family in Devon and one for my boyfriends mum. One cake I drizzled the icing with a teaspoon, the other by filling a small food bag, snipping the corner and drizzling that way - there isn't a huge difference but marginally neater using the bag:

Where have you been all my life Ribs

A revelation happened this week in our house. I am not a big carnivore and perfectly content with a plate of aubergines or mushrooms. However this week the boyfriend asked for ribs, and after enquiring in Waitrose who advised they don’t do racks till BBQ season, I stopped off at a favourite butchers nearby, who I have previously sworn by for the best tasting lamb. After a conversation with the friendly butcher he bought out from the back a giant sized rack, which came in at an eye-watering £18! Even at first glance I could see they were a meat-fest and settled for about 2/3rds which came in at £10.96, as it was only 3 of us for dinner a whole rack was a little extravagant on a week night! It also weighed in at just under 1.6kg!

My oh my these ribs were amazing, and so they should be for nigh on eleven pounds! Totally worth it! The ribs had about 2 inches of beautifully tender meat on them and tasted fantastic, a carnivores meat dream! Whilst admittedly we did eat them all between the three of us, I reckon it would serve 4, when I make them again. Maybe next payday if we can wait that long ;-) ?

For their marinade, I used Jamie Oliver’s recipe for 5* pork ribs from the Jamie’s America cookery book, it had no less than 21 ingredients in, not including the separate spice rub and several processes but overall I found it manageable, a recipe for when you fancy an afternoon pottering in the kitchen! Also justification I believe at long last for having way too much in my store cupboard! The final result had lots of flavours going on with sweetness, spicyness and orangeyness all working in harmony together. I have not posted the recipe as its a bit long winded but will if anyone fancies a go!

The ribs only required half of the marinade, most of the remainder I used to cook some turkey breast in and the two went very well together.

To go with the ravishing ribs, I also made Jamie's Southern Pecan and Apple salad, which is a new favourite of mine, the orange mustard dressing sounded a little off putting as I am not a mustardy person (though I am slowly converting to the stuff..) but it went perfectly with the ribs and was not overpowering at all.

I do warn you now to make extra pecans as you will find they mysteriously disappear when you have caramelized them…..Not that we overly needed any more food I did put together a simple bulghar wheat and pepper mixture which tagged along nicely.

Salad Ingredients:

Olive oil
25g (1oz) butter
50g (2oz) soft light brown sugar
100g (4oz) pecans
2 red or green apples
2 chicory, leaves removed, washed and spun dry – didn’t manage to find any!

A couple of handfuls of mixed leaves, such as rocket and radicchio, washed and spun dry. Mine came from Tesco, a mixed rocket salad was best found!

Dressing:
Zest and juice of 1 orange
1tsp Dijon mustard
1tbsp white wine vinegar
3tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Jamie advises to oil a baking tray, I used baking parchment which worked perfectly. Gently heat a pan and add the butter and sugar. Leave on a gentle simmer for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally to stop it catching, until the sugar has completely dissolved and the mixture starts to darken. Now gently stir in the pecans until they are all coated in the caramel. Tip the nuts on to the oiled (or lined!) tray and separate them out into one layer. Allow them to cool until the caramel has hardened. Don't be tempted to taste the caramel at any point as it will be very hot!

2. For the dressing put the orange zest and juice, Dijon mustard and white wine vinegar into a large salad bowl and add a good lug of extra virgin olive oil. (I used a jam jar) Whisk together and have a taste - you want to get a nice balance between the sharpness of the vinegar and the smoothness of the oil, so add a little more oil if needed, then season carefully with salt and pepper.

3. Core, quarter and finely slice your apples and add to the bowl with all your leaves. Break the cooled pecans apart, add half of them to the bowl, and use your hands to delicately toss and dress everything.

3. Serve on one big platter, or divide up between plates, and finish by crumbling over the rest of your beautiful caramel pecans.
Serve immediately - I made sure everything else was ready before adding the dressing.

Nigellas Spiced Nuts

Last Christmas I was given a copy of Nigella Christmas, which I really love and read all year round to keep the festive spirit alive! This weekend we had some family over for an early, full, Christmas meal and I had been meaning to make these 'Seasonally spiced nuts' for ages, and with two nut lovers over it was the perfect opportunity. Or at least it seemed a good idea when planning, forgetting I was doing everything else from scratch on the day! Luckily these only take about 10 minutes from start to finish, and can also be made up to a day ahead. Makes a great little, rather addictive nibble!

The recipe made a very large baking tray full, which I decanted into bowls over the day, and also sent little bags home with our happy guests!



500g mixed nuts (mine were Sainsburys basics!)
1 tsp celery salt
1.5 tsp garam masala
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp light muscovado or soft light brown sugar
3 sprigs rosemary, + extra for garnishing
sprinkle salt (I left this out)

Prepare a large baking tray with foil.

Heat a large frying pan, add the nuts (dry) and toast for 2-3 mins until lightly browned, add the garam masala and celery salt, and mix well

Add the oil, sugar, rosemary, stir again, when the nuts are browned, transfer to the baking sheet, sprinkle with salt if desired

Serve warm (I kept mine loosely wrapped in foil) Serve and garnish as desired

The Secret world of Curries

Firstly, big apologies for delay in recent blogging activity, I have changed jobs, and along with the pre-Christmas festivites I don't seem to have had much spare time!

Somehow in between the above, I found time to enter a great little competition over on Deb Cooks and won two Indian cookery books (much to the horror I think of my boyfriend who thought I had been buying cookery books again, lol!) which arrived perfectly timed from Amazon, as I was unfortunately off sick at the time, so had all day to read through :)

The Curry Secret:


The New Curry Secret:


I am really impressed with both books, all the recipe ingredients are very accessible to me and recipes are written clearly, I'm looking forward to trying them very soon! Both books are written by Kris Dhillon, who has also become a blogger, please visit both Kri's and Deb's great blogs.

White Onion Soup - A tribute to Keith Floyd

I'm sure I am not the only one who was saddened by Keith Floyd's passing, I loved watching his programs, mainly for his unique style of cooking, which made me feel quite at home in the kitchen, complete with a glass of wine, whilst cooking :)

I had planned as a tribute recipe to Keith Floyd, to make his Prawn's with chilli and coriander, (hoping to make very soon as it sounds so good!) however due to a few dinner guest changes, this glorious White onion soup ended up being first. This soup is so easy, delicious and will be a regular make here! It allows onion fan's to really get a lovely, oniony hit but within gentle, creamy, velvety surroundings. This recipe is taken from the book 'A splash and a dash' by Keith Floyd.

This is also my entry into the blogging event being held by Julia at A Slice of Cherry Pie and James of Back to the Chopping Board in tribute to Keith Floyd.



Not sure on recomended servings but I halved it and it serves 3 as a starter

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter
4 Spanish onions
2 celery sticks, stringed and finely chopped
50g plain flour
300ml milk
900ml good, hot chicken stock (I used a AWT chicken cube, worked well)
Nutmeg (I didn't add as not huge fan in savoury dishes)
S&P to taste

Garnish:
Single cream
Parsley (I didn't use)

Heat in a saucepan a little of the butter with 1 tbsp water, add the onions and celery, cover and sweat until nice and soft (15-20 mins). Blitz in a food processor/ Liquidizer.

Using the same pan, heat the remaining butter, add the flour and cook gently until creamy (a roux), add trhe milk slowly, whisk until smooth and thick, add back the onion/ celery puree and the stock, heat through until smooth. Season with nutmeg, s&p.

Garnish with a swirl of cream and parsley. I used homemade croutons, in lieu of parsley and think they work very well, made me think of bread sauce...:)




RIP Keith, I've raised a toast to you this evening :)