Early Morning

I was up early this morning to make sure the flapjack was made and soup done before we had to be out of the house. I always find that if I don't do this before we go out, I can't be bothered when we get back. Do you ever feel like that? When we were on holiday, I had a lovely lentil soup so I've tried to recreate it this morning. I've used a recipe from the good food website. It's a twist on a plain lentil soup as it has carrots in too - useful as I had some carrots lurking away in the bottom of the fridge.

Here it is after it's blended. I've just tried a tiny amount and it's delicious. Perfect for lunch.

Puff Pastry Pizza

What do you make to take to a friend's house when your job is to provide a main dish and the weather is so hot, you don't want to spend any time in the kitchen? Puff pastry pizza. This is the easiest 'pizza' to make and allows you to spend a minimal amount of time in the oven. I started by roasting two peppers in the morning (when it was slightly cooler outside). I used a red and orange pepper. As far as I'm concerned, green peppers should never be used a they're just not sweet enough and even with the caramelisation process of roasting, they still don't work.

I roasted these for about 20 minutes, turning once. About an hour before I was due to go out, I unrolled the puff pastry. Now, usually I go for the cheaper option and but the block of puff pastry and roll it out myself but it was just way too hot yesterday to expend any excess energy. I placed the puff pastry on two oiled baking sheets and scored around the edge. This is to encourage the outer edge to puff up. I covered one sheet in homemade tomato sauce and the other with pesto (from a jar). I always use the Sacla organic pesto as that's the only one which is vegetarian.

I then topped both sheets with sliced baby tomatoes, mushrooms and roasted peppers. Having forgotten to pick up mozarella at the the supermarket in the morning, I topped it all off with grated cheddar cheese.

I then baked it for approx 15 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade. The mistake I made was not to prick the base first as the middle section puffed up during cooking so I had to put a fork in the base when I took it out to let the steam out. Apart from that, the dinner party guests seemed to enjoy my offering. It was so warm on Thursday night that we had drinks on the patio of my friend's house and then dinner on the lawn. This is really turning out to be a warm summer (although it is raining as I write this).

Happy Holidays

It's finally here - the start of the school summer holidays in the UK. School broke up for me and the kids on Wednesday and I've had some time for relaxing, visiting family and cooking since. My ds has been taking part in The Challenge which is an amazing experience. If you have a child who is 16 or 17 and live in the UK, they can apply to take part in this. He's had a week in Ambleside taking part in outdoor pursuits, a week at a university working with volunteer organisations and learning about photography and he's just about to do four days planning a community based project and all for princely sum of £50. I can't recommend it highly enough. In between ferrying him around, we've visited family in North London and today I topped up the dukkha which had run out.

I love to eat this with my homemade hummus, olive oil and fresh bread. To make this, put 100g of cashews in the oven at 160 degrees centigrade for 15 minutes until golden brown. Remove and chop. While they are browning, put 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds and 1 tablespoon of cumin seeds in a dry frying pan and toast.

Pour into a pestle and mortar and grind the spices so they look like this

Toast 3 tablespoons of sesame seeds and add to the ground mixture.

Mix in 1 teaspoon of dried crushed chilli and 1 teaspoon of flaked sea salt and add the chopped cashews. Leave to cool and put in a sealed glass jar. This can last me up to a month - try it, you won't be disappointed.

A Music Festival and Vegetarian Sausages

We hit the hottest day of the year yesterday and it just so happened that this was also the day of Ripley Rocks - our local music festival to raise money for the Scouts. As both my children have had wonderful experiences with cubs, scouts and explorers we always help out during the day. The music was great but it was so hot - I thought I would melt into a puddle on the ground at various points during the day. Hats off the the BBQ crew as it was even hotter on that job.

After the exertions of yesterday, today was much more of a lazy day. I had some bread left over and was just about to throw it in the bin when I thought I would find a recipe that used breadcrumbs. I searched for vegetarian sausages and found a recipe which not only involved breadcrumbs but carrots too. I haven't tried carrot based sausages before so I thought I'd give it a go.

350g carrots, peeled, chopped, cooked and cooled
220g breadcrumbs
175g cheese (I used cheddar)
1 onion sliced and lightly fried
1 egg
parsley and sage (but I had marjoram and oregano in the garden so used that instead)
pepper

Put everything in a food processor and pulse until everything has combined. Divide into twelve and form into sausage shapes (I used some plain flour at this stage to help with the rolling out as the mixture was quite sticky). Leave to chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Oil a baking tray and bake in the oven (preheated to 200 degrees centigrade),  for 20 minutes, turning once. I cooked six and froze the other six for another day. I had them with a green salad and the left over potato salad from yesterday's picnic. DH and DD had there's in rolls. And the verdict - lovely taste although my dd said they were too cheesy. I think this is definitely a recipe that will be used again). 

Chocolate Pots

So dd's German exchange student arrived late on Wednesday night which left me as a zombie during the day yesterday and when I haven't had enough sleep, I become grumpy. That feeling started to improve by yesterday afternoon, in part helped by invigilating students in a computer room with air conditioning - bliss and it kept me awake.

We don't normally have a pudding during the week unless I've made something at the weekend and we're eating leftovers. It was only the girls in last night and as we were eating dinner, I suggested we could go for a walk afterwards or maybe pop down to the pub on the river for a dessert. I left the girls to think about it and they were obviously thinking so hard that they forgot all about it. I thought I'd use the time to surf the internet and I came across this post on honey and soy. To be honest, I had book marked it a while ago thinking it would be great to make as the chocolate pots looked so luscious and I can reliably inform you that they tasted luscious too. As I hadn't heard anything from the girls for a while (deep into watching The Big Bang Theory) I decided to make these chocolate pots for pudding. So easy and so yummy.

130g chocolate (the recipe states dark chocolate but I didn't have enough left so I combined milk and dark)
115g butter
half a cup of caster sugar
2 eggs
3 tbsps plain flour

Break the chocolate up in a bowl with the butter. Put in the microwave on defrost for 6 minutes. Stir to combine.

















While the chocolate and butter are melting, butter some ramekins. The recipe says 4 but I filled 6. These are left over from when we bought some Gu desserts.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and sugar. I used my hand whisk at this point.

Combine all the ingredients and divide equally between the ramekins.














Bake in an oven pre heated to 200 degrees centigrade for 20 minutes. I think if I had baked them for a slightly shorter period of time they would have been more gooey. Regardless, they were delicious.

This was a really easy dessert to make and saved me money as well - it would have cost us at least £15 for dessert in the pub. Not many steps to something so tasty.

St. Clement's Cake

I love baking using Nigella Lawson's recipes. In particular, the recipes in How to be a Domestic Goddess. I have a well thumbed copy and have tried a number of the recipes over the years. I love her lemon drizzle cake and decided it was time to do some baking at the weekend. I had some oranges that needed using up but I had already used the orange rind so I decided to use lemon rind instead, hence the St. Clement's element.

Here is the recipe...

125g marg or butter

175g caster sugar

Grated rind of 1 lemon 

2 eggs

175g self raising flour

Pinch of salt

Cream the marg and sugar, add the eggs and lemon rind and beat well. Add the flour and enough water or milk to make a dropping consistency. I added water as I was making the cake for colleagues at work and one of them is lactose intolerant. I also used pure margarine which has no dairy products in it. 

Line a loaf tin and spoon the mixture in. Bake in an oven pre heated to 180 degrees centigrade for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. 

While the cake is baking, mix 4 tablespoons of orange and/or lemon juice (I used both) with 100g icing sugar in a saucepan and heat gently until the icing sugar dissolves. 

Once the cake is out of the oven, skewer all over and pour the syrup over and leave to soak in. 

Allow to cool completely. I made double the mixture so I ended up with two cakes. Both are now in the freezer (they freeze beautifully) ready for cake Friday.

Granola for a healthy breakfast

I'm trying to have a healthier start in the morning. During the holidays, I've been having toast with homemade jam and fresh strawberries - yummy, but not particularly healthy. So, I decided to make some granola. I couldn't remember where I found the recipe I used last time so I decided to google one and this is what I came up with. I'm always worried about the amount of fat and sugar that goes into a granola but this recipe didn't seem too bad. This was the original recipe:

4 cups of rolled oats
2 cups of nuts and seeds
1 cup of dried fruit
1/2 a cup of sweetener
1/2 a cup of oil
pinch of salt

Place the oil and sweetener into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Meanwhile, mix together the oats and chopped nuts with a pinch of salt. Mix the liquid with the dry ingredients and spread out onto a baking tray. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes, turning every 10 minutes. Leave to cool, mix in the chopped dried fruit, then place in a air tight container.

I decided to tweak the recipe slightly. I used honey from a jar I found tucked at the back of the cupboard. I had to microwave it (without the lid on of course) as much of the honey had crystallised and turned solid. I also only used 1 cup of nuts. I had a basket of nuts left over from Christmas so I cracked most of those open and then found a bag of fruit and nut (in the back of another cupboard) which had just reached its sell by date. This is the end result

I'm planning on eating this for breakfast with yoghurt, fresh strawberries and blueberries. I'm hoping this will work as a slow release food so I won't need to reach for the flapjack mid morning. I don't know about you, but I have a terrible time persuading the rest of my family that this is a healthy start to the day so this batch of granola will probably last me quite a while.

Update - I was featured on The Crafty Blog Stalker so now even more people can make some healthy breakfast.

Grape Cake

I bought a punnet of grapes from the supermarket last week. Both my children like red grapes so I thought it was a safe bet. When I got them home we soon realised that they weren't the tastiest of grapes so they've been sitting on the side since then. I hate to throw food out so I decided to google cooking with grapes this morning and is stumbled on this recipe which looked really easy (it's currently baking in the oven so the true test will be in half an hour). I found the recipe on this New Zealand website. I started to get the ingredients ready and was reaching for the butter when I realised it doesn't have any in the recipe. Could this be too good to be true? Here's the recipe....

2 eggs
Three quarters cup caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
Rind and juice of one lemon

Beat all the ingredients together until the mixture thickens. My mixture didn't seem to get very thick. Then add one and a half cups of self raising flour. Fold in gently and add 500g seedless grapes. I just added the grapes I had left. Spoon into a greased and lined 20cm round baking tin and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade.

Just before I made the cake, I finished off the pretzels that I had started making yesterday evening. I divided the dough into 8 pieces, rolled each piece into a tube and then shaped into a pretzel shape. This is how they turned out

I then left them to rise again and then covered em in egg wash and sprinkled them with sesame seeds.

Finally, I baked them for 15 minutes. By this stage they had lost any resemblance to pretzels so I guess this will be a case of practice makes perfect.

I left the oven on to bake the grape cake and here is the finished cake, dusted with icing sugar.

 
And with a slice taken out so you can just about see the grapes inside.

It's a surprisingly tasty cake as it has no fat in it - definitely worth making again.

Bread Making

It's heading towards the end of the holiday so I spent the day running errands (doctor and opticians), finishing the bags I'd started at the beginning of the week (three more to go) and pottering around the kitchen. I started by making some basil pesto this morning. I had bought a pot of basil last week from sainsburys. My DH hates this herb as he says it makes the house smell of cat wee! I have to admit that this morning, he had a point so I pulled all the leaves off, put them in the blender, added some grated cheddar that I found lurking at the back of the fridge, a handful of pine nuts and a few glugs of olive oil. I added some salt and pepper to taste and then put the finished pesto into a glass jar and covered it with olive oil. This should keep us going for a while.

I then decided to make Babka (sweet Shabbat bread) as my DD is returning from scout camp tomorrow and she loves this bread, especially as it includes Nutella. I love bread making when I have a whole day available. Here is the finished product (see the previous post for the recipe).

 This smells delicious fresh from the oven. I'm also making a batch of bagels which are a little bit trickier as they need boiling as well as baking. Come back tomorrow to see how to make these. I hope you're having a lovely day.

Lunchtime Treats

I've been toying with the idea of making falafel burgers for a while but haven't quite found the opportunity to try them out. We decided to spend the day at home yesterday sorting out the house and garden so I had time to potter around the kitchen. I found a recipe on the good food website and I added a little extra myself to produce these .....

This was a really simple recipe - store cupboard ingredients that resulted in a tasty lunch. It's even easier with a food processor. Put the following ingredients into the food processor - 2 cloves of garlic, 1 onion, cut into quarters, 2 green chillies, 1 tsp of ground cumin and 1 tsp of ground coriander, 2 tbsp plain flour and a pinch of salt. Whiz all the ingredients up then add one drained tin of chick peas. Form into 4 or 5 burgers, place on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and cook at 200 degrees centigrade for 10-15 minutes, making sure you turn them once. The recipe said to fry them but they worked really well in the oven. This was such an easy recipe that it's likely to be used again and again.

Frugal Cooking

I always love a bargain and I found a couple today. We spent the morning at synagogue celebrating a Bat Mitzvah which was lovely. I love the way that everyone always helps out to support the person who is celebrating a special occasion, often without being asked. When there are constantly reports in the newspaper about communities falling apart and people walking by when they see someone in trouble, I am happy to say that this is certainly not the case where I live. I remember a time last year when we were all snowed in. As we were outside shovelling snow,  a lady who lives round the corner from us happened to be walking past and she told us that her neighbour was desperate to get to the hospital to sit with her desperately ill mother but she couldn't get her car out. So everyone who was out in the street walked round to the lady's house and dug out her car. She was able to get to her mother and sit with her as she passed away. That's what makes a community special and somewhere to cherish.

This afternoon, we popped into our local high street. I think it's one of the loveliest high streets in the country. Here is one of the buildings that we walk past on the way to the shops.

This used to be a hospital and now houses the poor elderly of the community. We pottered around the shops, buying supplies for the Duke of Edinburgh Award trips that my children are on next weekend. We also went to the Saturday market and managed to get some bargains - 29 satsumas (yes I did count them) for £1 and 4 punnets of raspberries for £2.

The only problem is that I'm the only one in the house that eats satsumas. I may have turned orange but the end of the week. We're planning to have the raspberries with home made pancakes tomorrow night - yummy.

When I went to put the raspberries in the fridge, I found a block of paneer (a bit out of date). I hate to throw anything away so I decided to make a paneer curry for dinner from my Prashad cookbook. I made the paneer masala and here is the recipe:

Blend together 6cm root ginger (peeled and roughly chopped), 4 cloves of garlic and 3 fresh green chillies. In a saucepan, fry this mixture and one chopped onion. In the meantime, chop 350g block paneer cheese into cubes and fry in some il until browned. When the onion mixture has browned, add 1.25 tsps salt, 1.5 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp ground coriander and 0.5 tsp ground cumin. Cook for 30 seconds then add 1 tin chopped tomatoes. Fill the tin half way with water and add this too. Cook down for 5 minutes then add the cooked paneer and some frozen peas. Cook for a further 5 minutes. You can add some butter to make the sauce creamier but I decided to miss this out. At the end of the cooking time, add half teaspoon garam masala and leave for at least 15 minutes to all the flavours to mix together.

I served this with rice (2 cups rice and 4 cups water covered in a saucepan, brought to the boil and leave to simmer, covered, until all the water is absorbed). My children find this curry too spicy so my dd had rice and sweetcorn and ds had egg fried rice. We had a lovely evening watching Doctor Who followed by the Voice. I normally hate these talent competitions but the fact that the decision is made on a person's voice rather than their looks really appeals to me.
Hope you all had a lovely day.

One of those days

Do you ever have one of those days when you have lots of things to do, places to go and people to see. Today was one of those days. We started off with synagogue lessons for my dd where I managed to complete my marking while I was waiting. Before we arrived at synagogue, I had made a new batch of dukka as I ran out last night. I used the recipe from the Veg book again butthis time I toasted the cashew nuts for linger. Ok, I took my eye off the clock and cooked them for longer than I should have but I think the overall result actually tastes nicer. I also made a batch of pizza dough which I've left slowly rising all day.

On the way home, we popped into the local farmers shop and I made a few purchases.

I have no idea what I'll make with the bag of thyme but it looked so nice I had to have it. I did add some of the thyme to the tomato sauce for the pizza. Chop and fry some garlic, add a tin of chopped tomatoes, 2 teaspoons of sugar and some fresh thyme. stir together, cover with a lid and turn the heat down to low and simmer for 10 minutes then blend the sauce. I've made an apple crumble with the Bradley apples and we'll use the broccoli tonight. A crumble is the easiest thing to make. Just peel and chop the apples then cover with a crumble mix made by rubbing in 100g butter or marg into 200g plain flour until it looks like breadcrumbs, then stirring in 100g caster sugar. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees centigrade for about 30 minutes and enjoy.

Not content with the flapjack and chocolate muffins I made yesterday, I made some jam drops this afternoon. There's nothing better than an afternoon pottering around the kitchen and as the boys are away this weekend, I could potter to my heart's content. I found this recipe in one of my many Rachel Allen books. I doubled the recipe as I wanted to try a number of different flavours. In a food processor, mix 400g self raising flour and 200g marg or butter (as always I use Pure sunflower margarine). Mix in 200g caster sugar and then add one egg (I also added a teaspoon of vanilla extract). Mix together until it all comes together. Take walnut sized pieces and roll into balls, placing them on a baking sheet. Slightly flatten each ball and make a thumb print. Fill this with a filling of your choice. I used Nutella, homemade raspberry jam and lemon curd. The mixture made 42 biscuits (the recipe said 60). Bake in an oven heated to 190 degrees centigrade for 10-12 minutes until the biscuits are golden brown. This is the end result.

Packed lunches are looking that bit more exciting next week.

Chocolate Yeast Bread (Babka)

My Israeli friend made a delicious chocolate bread when she came round last week. She said that it's traditional to have this bread on the Sabbath in Israel but it is so delicious that I think it could be traditional to have it at any time (although I'm not sure my diet can cope with it). Here's her recipe for Babka:

500g strong plain flour
1 sachet dried yeast
1 tsp salt
50g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
125ml milk
100g softened butter

Put all the ingredients except the butter in the food processor with a dough hook. Knead together for 5 minutes. I added a splash more milk as the dough wasn't coming together. Keep mixing and add the butter bit by bit. Keep kneading for another 5 minutes. Put in a bowl and allow to rise.

Once risen, dived into two and roll each piece of dough out into a rectangle.
Cover each rectangle with Nutella (or butter, sugar and cinnamon or a filling of your choice). Roll up each rectangle from the short end and place into a bread loaf tin.

Leave to rise for an hour until doubled in size.

Brush with a beaten egg and cook in an oven preheated to 170 degrees centigrade for 25 minutes. Once out of the oven, cover with icing sugar or a sugar syrup or leave plain. Enjoy.

Curry Night

The thing I love about holidays is not having to get up early in the morning. My dd arranged a day out today (lunch and skating) so I thought it would be great if I could organise a night in. I'm always looking for ways to save money and cooking for a night in is certainly cheaper than us all going to a restaurant. The only negative is the washing up. I think we are probably the only household in the country that doesn't have a dishwasher, as a result I am starting to have dishpan hands. There aren't many things I like about washing up but I do like the fact that it's immediate and I don't have to wait for the dishwasher cycle to finish. It's also quite sociable when you have friends over.

Luckily, I have friends who were available at the last minute so I've spent the day cooking a vegetarian Indian feast for tonight. My cooking world has really opened up since I bought the Prashad cookbook. I love the look of the book and the stories behind the recipes. I'm the kind of person who reads cookbooks as a way of relaxing. Even last night, I was reading Jerusalem by Yotam Ottalenghi and Sami Tamimi and deciding if I was going to make their Krantz cake. Their version is full of butter and sugar. My friend brought an equivalent sweet bread the other day to feed us after a walk and I've asked her for the recipe as it isn't full of so many bad things. The plan is to make it tomorrow so look out for the recipe.

I've spent the afternoon cooking vegetarian curries. I've always been quite scared of recipes with lots of ingredients, particularly all the spices, but I've realised there was nothing to be scared of.

As long as you have all the spices to hand, it's much easier than it looks. Thank you Prashad restaurant for making me see the light. Here are the curries that I've made - I'll reheat them nearer the time.

Paneer Masala (spicy tomato and Indian cheese) and Vegetable Handi (tomato and chunky vegetable)

Mushroom Palak (Spinach and mushroom curry)

Wattana and Flower (pea and cauliflower curry)

Just got the rice and samosas to make and I'll be ready. Indian banquet here we come. 

Pesach Baking

So, the first night of Pesach (Passover) is tomorrow night so today it was time to decrumb the kitchen and start the preparations. I'll be cooking for 14 tomorrow (and working all day) so today was baking day. Pesach is the festival that celebrates Moses leading the Jewish slaves out of Egypt. Whilst it is, of course, about remembering a sad story in the past it is also about all the food that needs to be prepared. I've bought the matzah - I love Waitrose. Who would have thought that a supermarket in Surrey would stock kosher food - normally we have to go up to Golders Green to get our supplies. I've also stocked up in matzah meal that I'll use to make kneidlach (matzah balls) and kremsels (matzah pancakes). I've boiled the eggs (traditionally everyone has an egg dipped in salt water at the Seder meal) and the parsley is ready on the windowsill (this will be the green herb that represents spring).

Pesach is the festival when we don't eat bread for 8 days - the story goes that the Jews had to leave Egypt so quickly that the bread didn't have time to rise so we eat matzah (unleavened bread) instead. All the baking that I've done today has therefore not used any flour. I always make a chocolate cake and then trawl the net for a new ground almond based cake. This is the best chocolate cake I have ever made and the recipe came from the Waitrose magazine. The recipe calls for green and black chocolate but I use value dark chocolate instead. It's one of the simplest recipes that tastes gorgeous. Here it is...

300g dark chocolate
275g caster sugar
165g unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
5 large free range eggs
1tbsp ground almonds

Break the chocolate into a microwave proof bowl, add the sugar, butter and pinch of salt. Microwave on defrost for 10 minutes (stir halfway through). Whisk the eggs with the ground almonds. Add the eggs to the chocolate mixture, pour into a 20cm greased tin and bake in an oven heated to 180 degrees centigrade for 35-40 minutes. And here it is....

I also found a new recipe on the net for apple and almond cake. I've been trying to find a recipe for ages that would use up the apples that have been sitting in the fruit bowl and here it is. It's a little more complicated than the chocolate cake but I'm hoping it will taste as good.

3 large eggs
3 apples
Lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
170g marg/butter
1 1/3 cups ground almonds
1tsp baking powder

Peel the apples. cube two of them and put in a bowl with half the lemon juice and 1tbsp sugar. slice the other apple and add lemon juice. Cream the marg and sugar. Add the egg yolks and continue mixing. Add the almonds and baking powder and fold in. Whip the egg whites until the stiff peak stage. Fold into the mixture. Add the cubed apples and fold in. Pour into a 20cm cake tin and place the sliced apples onto the top of the cake, fanned out. Bake in the oven at 150 degrees centigrade for 1 1/4 hours until browned on top.

And here it is (sorry about the dark photo). I'm now looking forward to eating them.

Mother's Day

The whole family was away this weekend which doesn't really work for being treated on Mother's Day but I had a lovely weekend anyway. It started with sales of my Leah Makes products - I was so pleased that other people liked them as much as I do. I then went on to see the school production of Little Shop of Horros which was awesome - we have so many talented students and it wouldn't surprise me if I see some of them on the west end stage in the future. Today was spent crafting and cooking. I made some replacement large hearts as I sold four of them yesterday.

In between crafting and making flapjack, I made two curries using the Prashad cookbook.

The first curry was vegetable handi (tomato and chunky vegetable curry) which has just the right amount of spice in it.

And the second curry was based on the mattar paneer (sweet and spicy cheese and peas) recipe.

The boys are back now so I'm looking forward to an evening of curry eating. Yum.