Odd one out

I had one of those moments the other week when I had a few things to use up and no idea what to make. Seeing risotto rice in the cupboard, I thought I could use up my celery and make a veg risotto. I ended up throwing in quite an odd combination of things, remembering some peas I had in the freezer, some leftover lamb and mint that had begun to wilt.

I sweated celery with garlic, and added the rice, then soaked some porcini in hot water to add later. Once I'd started adding stock I threw in the plumped up porcini, its water, some frozen peas, lamb, and at the end a smattering of mint and parmesan.

The result was a minted pea and lamb risotto. Possibly one of the oddest things Ive ever made, but it was actually really nice. A lot nicer than it possibly sounds anyway :)

Trying new things

There have been a lot of delicous recipes in the various magazines Ive picked up in the last couple of months,and the slight improvement in weather has had me in more of a Summery mood with cooking. The past few weekends Ive been making a bit more of an effort to try something new.

I found an amazing recipe in Waitrose food magazine. Yottam Ottolenghi's salmon curry was light, fresh and absolutely delicious. It was a doddle to make, and the end result was great. The recipe can be found here http://www.waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/recipes/recipe_directory/b/braised_salmon_with_tomato_cinnamon_and_black_mustard_seeds.html Its definitely worth a go. I had it with chapatis and some brown rice, which made it seem almost virtuous to eating it.

I also attended a wonderfully themed party to celebrate my Supervisors promotion. Possibly the best theme ever, actually. It was a cake party, and everyone had to bring some sort of offering. There were scones, lemon drizzle, sticky ginger cake. My insistence that I wasnt going to eat too much instantly went out of the window and it was a wonderful afternoon. I took along a lime and blueberry loaf cake, covered in a cheesecake-like vanilla frosting. The loaf cake itself was a variation on Nigellas Lemon Syrup Loaf, and the recipe I used is below:

125 g unsalted butter
175 caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lime
175 g wholemeal flour
pinch of salt
4 tablespoons of milk

Half a punnet of blueberries
Juice of 2 limes
Tablespoon of icing sugar
Nip of cointreau (*optional)

Preheat the oven to 180 C and butter and line a loaf tin. Cream butter, then add and beat in the sugar.  Add eggs one at a time, beat again. Sift in flour and salt, then add stir in the milk to loosen. Add in the lime zest and blueberriesand stick in the over for around 40-45 minutes.

I made a syrup using lime juice, icing sugar and a little cointreau, by heating until syrupy in a small saucepan, and then poured over the cake whilst still hot.

The frosting I made using

A tub of Cream cheese
A little vanilla paste
Some icing sugar
Sour Cream

Beat these together in a bowl until thickened, I give no measurements because I just used what I had in the fridge. When it was done I sprinked some lime zest on top :). Not the neatest pictures ever. I also made some cupcake versions.

I've also tried making a moroccan style mezze. I love houmous, and it tends to be my go to storecupboard lunch, so I decided to make a dinner featuring that, and other moroccan style goodies. I made koftas, using lamb mince, cumin, ground coriander and mint, which I griddled. Falafel, with chickpeas, cumin, ground fresh coriander, mint, parsley and coriander, one egg and some brown breadcrumbs to bind, baked in the oven. I made sweet potato and feta cous cous sprinked with sumac, an aubergine and tomato dip (Roasted aubergine scooped out, fried garlic, ground cumin and coriander, fresh tomatos, YUM) and pittas. It was lovely.

Most recently, I tried making cornbread. I used a recipe from BBC Good Food, the recipe of which is here http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/681654/cornbread-muffins but I added Snowdonia cheese company smoked cheese, which gave it a lovely mellow smokiness. They were very nice warm, with some scrambled eggs and chorizo

I also had a go at making some thai chicken skewers. I'd seen a recipe in delcious magazine for an easy supermarket supper, and decided to have a go at making it from scratch, as opposed to buying most of it ready made.
I marinated chicken thigh pieces in basil, coriander, garlic and yoghurt and then threaded them onto lemongrass stalks to grill. I served it with homemade coconut and lime zest rice.  It was so light and fresh, and the lemongrass permeated the chicken beautifully, definitely one to have a go at making. Would be gorgeous done on the BBQ in the summer!

Boyfriend cooking

My partner his recently moved into his first 'live alone' home, and has been cooking a lot more, which has meant that I've been subject to some really delcious meals that I havent had to make myself. I may have to watch out, if he keeps it up I'll have to up my game.

Scallops with pea puree and pancetta

 Duck with plum sauce

The best thing is though, that we've been cooking together a little. We attempted to make Heston's lemon tart, which turned out pretty well :)

He has yet to outdo my brownies though.....

Creme egg cheesecake

A friend posted a great recipe for creme egg cheesecake (it can be found here http://blog.groupon.co.uk/2012/04/02/creme-egg-cheesecake/ )

I didnt follow the exact recipe, it was by the looks of it, for a much bigger tin than mine. I used about half the cream cheese, and altered the other quantities accordingly. It turned out pretty damn well, if I do say so myself :)

Easter Feasting

Easter bank holiday preed me with a whole world of fun to be had, I had time to spend cooking, and enjoying cooking. I'd found some recipes that I wanted to try, and Easter was the perfect time.

The weekend started early, and so Thursday I decided to make pizza, I really love homemade pizza, and wanted to go all out. The toppings were chicken, proscuitto, chorizo and salami...it was a bit of a meat fest. I made my own tomato base using onions, herbs, anchovies and tomato. The anchovy gave it a lovely salty depth, it is definitely my new favourite ingredient.

It was delicious. :)
We went out for dinner on the Friday, so the fish I'd had in mind was saved for Saturday instead. I had seen a great paella recipe in Olive magazine, from the chef Jason Atheron. The recipe itself can be found here http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2138651/roast-cod-with-paella-and-saffron-olive-oil I used salmon in mine instead of cod, and I didnt leave it to rest inbetween. The result was great anyway, we both really enjoyed it

Sunday was (of course) lamb. I roasted it with anchovy and garlic, and served it with roast veg and gravy. I also made nutella brownies for dessert. A recipe from a friend, and possibly the most simple brownies ever, they consist of

8 tablespoons of nutella
8 tablespoons (or enough to create the right texture) of wholemeal flour or half and half wholemeal and ground almonds
2 eggs

They were really gooey and delcious, AND (if you want to kid yourselves like we do) full of slow releasing energy .

Post-holiday Posting

So Ive been rubbish at updating. I went on holiday in March and havent really found time since then to post, so Im updating with several new posts at once.

The holiday was fantastic, I went to Almeria, Spain, with a group of friends. We were self catering, so a lot of what we ate we made ourselves, though we did go out for some delicious meals, cluding, of course, Paella.

The first day we visited this little restaurant just down from our Hotel. It was great, it had this 3 course, 10 euro menu, so I ordered salad, paella and fried anchovies (Yum). It was delcicious, and SO cheap. The food in the supermarkets there was amazing too, again, cheap and good quality stuff. We found the hugest tomato

And some awesome looking cakes....

We made a lot of pasta, it was something everyone seemed to enjoy, so we had it with pesto, tomato and chorizo and homemade garlic bread, and as part of a delcious Italian style broth that the wonderful Hannahs grandma taught her to make.

We also had delcious homemade burgers


And we got to eat some delcious fish, paella and even experiment with new flavours of ice cream

 Overall it was a fab trip, great food, plenty of sangria, and wonderful company :)

Lamb rice pudding?

This week I've actually done a fair bit of cooking on weekdays. I havent been going to the gym as much since I sprained my ankle a few weeks back, which means I've been eating more exciting food than tuna, brown rice and vegetables (as yummy as it is).
I bought a pack of flatbreads last week, and decided to make houmous and falafels, both of which are very easy to make (especially if you own a food processor) and very tasty.

Friday this week I decided to make a lamb biryani. I got a lovely piece of lamb shoulder from the market, and set about putting together a delicious dinner.
Oh, did I mention I forgot to wash the rice, and stirred the stock in. Argh!
I made a wonderful dhal to go alongside, just using some shallot, garam masala, chillil, garlic and ginger. I added some tomatoes and creamed coconut too, and was really looking forward to a delcious ricey, lentily dinner. I opened the oven and brought out my lovely big pan, and took the lid off to reveal....rice pudding?!
The rice was VERY stodgy. It was essentially an indian, lamb rice pudding. If I was being flattering I'd call it a risotto, but lets call a spade a spade.

It tasted lovely but the damage was done. I'd fried up some little shallots and chilli's and almonds to add the its beauty, but was left feeling distincly like you cant polish a turd. Anyway....

Saturday we went out for dinner again, this time to Prezzo. Prezzo http://www.prezzorestaurants.co.uk/restaurant/nottingham-low-pavement is a relatively nice italian chain. It does decent pizza, pasta, etc. This branch has just opened recently in Nottingham, but there was already one in a different part of the city (about 5 minutes walk). My partner really likes the food here, and seeing as the other never seems to have a table free on a Saturday, we tried this one instead.
We got a table straight away, service was friendly and efficient, and the food was nice. The menu doesnt change too often, so we always end up fighting over who has the prawns for starter, but there are a good range of mains, and the desserts (though obviously from the same place as some other restaurants, seeing as the honeycomb cheesecake is the same one served at Ask) are lovely. I ate every bit of every course. The most entertaining part was also that we were sat across from the most miserable woman. Even her husband seemed unimpressed with her rudeness towards the staff.

Sunday held more success than Friday on the cooking front. I made another loaf of Mrs B's fabulous Soda bread, and used some blackened old bananas to make a delicious banana loaf. I used a recipe from Nigella's Kitchen, and modified it a bit. It consisted of

4 black bananas, mashed. Then add
150g sugar, 2 eggs ad 100g butter.
In a seperate bowl, mix 100g wholemeal flour and 75g of ground almonds. Add 100g dessicated coconut and some chocolate chips, and around a teaspoon of baking powder.

Then fold the dry ingredients into the wet, pour into a loaf tin, and bake for about 40-50 minutes on 180 degrees. I covered the top with a little foil as the over had previously been up to 230 for the bread.

The cake was wonderful. Really moist, and made me feel much better about the baking disaster that was the birthday cake (which Ive frozen and am sure will make a lovely trifle once soaked in some limoncello).


I was in a bit of a piggish mood yesterday, and spent the afternoon on the sofa after my partner had returned home, watching Charlie and the chocolate factory with some curried popcorn. I love home popped corn, as you can add whatever flavourings you like.

Dinner was a simple affair,another Nigella recipe, for pasta in a creamy truffle oil sauce. Egg, cream, truffle oil, parmesan, pepper mixed and poured onto some cooked spagetti. I added some peas to make it look less white. It was SWIMMING in cream, maybe too much even for Nigella,but it was lovely with a nice crisp glass of white wine.

So another mixed bag this weekend. Lets hope its onwards and up from here :)