Blue cheese, butternut squash on a Monday

Something warming and vegetarian to kick start the week. This is a gorgeous mix of sweetness from the squash, earthiness in the blue cheese and a slight crunch from the toasted pine nuts.

It was perfect eaten in front of the fire and better still, it was made for me by my husband.

1/2 small butternut squash, cut into cubes
1/2 large onion diced
60g of blue cheese, crumbled
75ml of white wine
150g of Arborio risotto rice
3 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
30g of pine nuts, dry fried to toast
15g of Parmesan cheese, grated
1 tbsp olive oil
30g butter
500ml vegetable stock

Pre heat the oven to 180C and pop the butternut squash, tossed in the olive oil and some salt and pepper, on to roast for 35 minutes or until golden.

Sweat off the onions in the butter. When soft add the rice. Stir until all the rice is coated with the melted butter then add the wine.

Cook off the wine, stirring continuously. Add the stock little by little and continue to stir waiting for the stock to cook off before adding more.

When the rice is cooked through add half the blue cheese, the parmesan and the roasted butternut squash and stir together.

When the cheese has melted remove from the heat and stir through the toasted pine nuts.

Top with the finely chopped sage leaves and crumble the rest of the blue cheese over to serve.

Have a terrible picture of it. It tastes a lot better than it looks here.

Phok'ing amazing Pho

I’ve had one miserable cold after the other since the beginning of December.  I had a couple of days over Christmas where I felt a bit better, but then going back to work at the beginning of January meant another couple of weeks of snivelling and whining that I thought I was dying.  Apparently I’m not very good at being ill.  All that I’ve really wanted to eat was hot, spicy clear soup.

I demanded that my husband took me out for pho, a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup.  We’re lucky that we have several really good Vietnamese cafes and restaurants nearby, which are family run.  But then I started thinking about my idea to try a new recipe every week this year and I figured it couldn’t be that hard to make my own pho.  It’s basically a slow cooked bone broth, with spices and noodles.

I read several different recipes to try and come up with the best one.  All of them seemed to be missing a few steps here and there, so I muddled through the best I could and then tried to write a more coherent one myself.

Ingredients for the broth

2lb beef bones, including bone marrow

2lbs oxtail

3 large white onions

Large chunk of root ginger

Small beef brisket

2 cinnamon sticks

1 cardamom pod

2 star anise

2 tbs cloves

2 tsp coriander seed

Orange peel

2 tbsp salt

2 tbsp fish sauce

2 tbsp sugar

 

• Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the bones and oxtail and boil for 2-3 minutes.
• Remove the bones and oxtail, discard the water and thoroughly rinse the bones and oxtail with cold running water.
• Place the bones and oxtail in your largest stock pot and fill with cold water.  Return to the hob and heat.
• While the stock pot is heating again, peel the onions and cut in half.  Cut the ginger in half lengthwise.  Place these under the grill and cook until browned. 
• Remove the onions and ginger from the grill and trim any blackened parts off as these will make your stock muddy looking.  Add the onions and ginger to the stock pot.
• Take a clean pot, fill with water, a pinch of salt and bring to the boil.  Place the brisket in the boiling water and poach for 2 minutes. 
• Remove the poached brisket from the water and add to the stock pot, which should now be boiling.
• Simmer the stock pot for 1.5 hours.  During this time the stock will collect fat/scum on top.  Skim this off with a fine mesh sieve. 
• Once the 1.5 hours is up, remove the brisket.  This should still be in one piece.  Place to one side to cool.
• While the brisket is cooling, take a frying pan and dry fry the spices together to release the aroma. 
• Take the toasted spices and tie in a square of muslin and then add to the stock pot.
• Add the fish sauce, sugar and salt.
•  Add more water if you feel the stock pot needs it at any point.
• Take the cooled brisket, paint each side with fish sauce, season with salt and pepper, wrap and store in the fridge until required.

 

The secret to a good bone broth seems to be the longer you cook it, the better it tastes.  I left mine simmering for 4 hours after I had taken the brisket out, so 5.5 hours in total.  I added more water a couple of times and continued to skim fat or foam off it whenever it was required.  The house smelt amazing when this was cooking.  Then I turned it off, covered with the lid and left it to cool overnight on the hob.

 

The next day I skimmed off as much settled fat as possible and then strained the broth through a colander.  Set the bones and oxtail to one side for the moment*.  I sieved the broth through a muslin to remove any remaining sediment, before  placing in the fridge to cool, in the hope I could remove any more fat that I’d missed in the skimming process.  As it turned out, I’d actually got most of the fat and the remained amount was easily removed once it had solidified in the fridge.

 

Soup Ingredients

Rice noodles

Spring onions

Red chillies

Sliced brisket

Bean sprouts

Red peppers (if you want)

Lemon wedges

Thai basil (if you can find it)

Mint

Thin cut flank steak – sliced raw

sirracha

 

Layering up your soup bowl is a fairly personal choice.  I just gathered the ingredients together and ditched them on a serving platter on the table for people to help themselves.

 

The cooked noodles are placed in the bottom of the bowl and the boiling stock ladled over the top.  Each person then adds the other ingredients that they want afterwards.  The only tip that we had was to add the uncooked steak first to allow as much time as possible for it to cook through.

 

*I took the cooked oxtail and removed it from the bone and kept it back to make an oxtail ragu.  It was a delicious second meal and the meat was tender and tasty. 

 

Easy, amazing, lemon drizzle cake

This is an absolutely brilliant, easy lemon drizzle cake.  My lovely friend Cath made it last time I stayed with her.  She was raving about how easy it was to make, but I assumed it was just because she’s better at baking than me.  Turns out, it really is just dead easy to make.

It seems like a good place to kick start the blog in the new year, after a whole year of not posting.  I’ve been talking a lot about being stuck in a cooking rut recently.  This year I am trying to cook something new every week.   I might even try harder to write about it afterwards.  Taking decent photos will be next year’s project.

 

Ingredients

155g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

155g golden caster sugar

20g corn flour

155g butter (room temp)

3 large eggs

Grated zest and juice of one lemon

 

For the drizzle

160g sugar

Juice of 2 lemons

 

• Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin
• Sift the flours, baking powder and sugar in to the food processor and then pulse briefly to combine.
• Add the butter, eggs, zest and juice and then process until fully combined.
• Empty into the lined loaf tin and then bake for35-40 minutes, until golden brown on top.
• Remove and leave to cool in the tin.  Prick all over with a fork or skewer. 
• Mix the drizzle and pour over.  Leave the drizzle to set and then remove from the tin.
• The cake will keep for up to 3-4 days in a tin.  And it’s completely brilliant.

Overnight Oats - new favourite breakfast

As the weather starts getting a bit warmer, I'm less keen to have porridge for breakfast.  I'm not terribly good in the mornings although I know I'm much better when I do have breakfast, so I've spent most of the winter trying to eat porridge or have a protein shake which my very tolerant husband made for me, while I'm drying my hair.

My ideal scenario is always to have my breakfast while I'm actually at work, after I've woken up a bit, but unfortunately my new job doesn't have great kitchen facilities, so I either need to eat before I leave the house or have something I can take with me and eat at my desk.  Hence the winter of multitasking.  Recently I've started experimenting with overnight oats, this is my favourite recipe so far.

It's really easy to make, tastes delicious and keeps me going until lunchtime without any problems.  It also comes in at under 250 calories.  Obviously (with the overnight bit) I get to make it the night before and conserve my time in the morning for getting out of the door without falling over/sleeping.

Banana and Peanut Butter Oats

1/3 cup rolled oats

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp vanilla (I use vanilla paste)

1 tsp chia seeds

1 tsp peanut butter

1/2 banana finely chopped

1/3 cup unsweetened almond milk.

Then you just ditch everything into a watertight container (I use small tupperware people on pinterest tend to use Mason Jars because they photograph better and, you know, Mason Jars and Pinterest.  In real life I'm happier with bad photos and no broken glass in my handbag), shake and pop in the fridge.

I should probably add, that as much as we liked it, I did make it for my parents in law at the weekend and they were not particularly enamoured with it.  They both looked particularly relieved when we offered them an alternative breakfast instead.

Celebratory drinks

Last weekend the Very Tolerant Husband and I had a late Valentine's day meal.  We'd had a really busy couple of weeks, with house guests and birthdays, so thought we take time to have a special meal together the two of us.

I kicked things off with new cocktail. It was so good that I made it again this weekend when my little sister, brother in law and their gorgeous daughter came to stay. My sister and BiL thought that it tasted of Christmas,  but I think that it's just the cointreau that made them think that. It's a lovely cocktail for any time of year and it's a gorgeous colour.

The Garnet
2x measures of vodka
1x measure of cointreau
2x measures of pomegranate juice
12 blueberries
Teaspoon of honey
Splash of lime juice

Muddle together the blueberries and honey,  add the other ingredients before shaking over ice. Double sieve into cocktail slippers and garnish with blueberries on a cocktail stick.

Weekend Breakfasts

I'm a big fan of weekend breakfasts, usually because I tend to only eat two meals at the weekend.  I keep thinking that I would like to open a breakfast club, but I have no idea how I would make it work. This week's offering was a breakfast quesada, with some gorgeous freshly ground coffee which a friend brought me back from her recent travels in Columbia.

The breakfast quesada was super simple to make and would be excellent for children, should you have them. 

I took two mini wraps, spread a thin layer of peanut butter on one,  placed some thin slices of banana on top of this, quartered some strawberries and added these to the banana and then scattered a few chocolate chips over the top (these were left out on the very tolerant husband's version because of his chocolate allergy)

Once topped with the other mini wrap, the quesada was lightly toasted on both sides by dry frying. This is just enough to start cooking the strawberries and bananas and make them really juicy and gorgeous. 

Further experiments in quiche

The quiche Lorraine with added broccoli was good,  but I was looking for something a little bit more interesting for my new niece's naming day. I found pictures of this carrot and courgette tart,  but no recipe, so I've had to make it up as I went.  It's actually worked out pretty well,  but it could use a bit of refining.

As an added bonus I got to buy some new kitchen toys;  a mandolin, which I've wanted for ages,  and a large flan case,  which I really needed.

I used the rest of the pastry from the last set of quiches and blind baked in the same way. 

I then took two courgettes and two carrots, peeled them and used the mandolin to slice them into long thin ribbons.  These were used to layer in alternative ribbons around the flan case to create a flower effect.  This could probably be neatened up on a second attempt by trimming the vegetable slices to a more similar widths.

For the filling I used the same two large eggs, 250ml single cream combined with a bit of salt and pepper as last time,  but this time I added in 150g of finely grated pecorino.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180C, or until set and golden. 

Experiments in quiche

I've never made quiche before.  I've eaten it,  I'm a big fan of its work.  But pastry isn't really my strong point; mine always tends to shrink inside the flan case and I never leave enough hanging over the edge to counteract this. 

However,  this didn't stop me offering to make quiche for my little sister's daughter's naming day. My youngest niece is getting named in April, so only three months to perfect some sort of recipe. I thought I would start with a basic quiche Lorraine. I'm making mini quiches, partly because I only have mini tart tins and partly so they'll fit in the tolerant husband's lunch.

Pastry
85g butter cubed
175g plain flour

I made double quantities for a future experiment, if it works it'll be a future post; if it doesn't we'll never speak of it again.

Rub together with your fingertips until breadcrumb consistency, add about 3 tablespoons of water until it comes together in a ball. You can do this in the food processor if you don't want to do it by hand.

Rest in the fridge for 30 minutes,  roll out and line the tart tin(s). Prick the base all over with a fork,  line with foil and fill with baking beans.
Blind bake for ten minutes, remove beans  and bake for another ten minutes at 220C.

The filling
3x rashers of bacon
1x onion diced
Broccoli  (because I love it, it's not in the recipe)
250ml single cream
2x large eggs
Grated cheese
Salt and pepper

Fry off the sliced bacon and diced onions in a little olive oil,  remove from heat and add in finely chopped broccoli.

Mix together the eggs, cream and salt and pepper.

Place the bacon, onion and broccoli mixture in the bottom of the flan case,  top with a handful of grated cheese and then pour over the cream/egg mix.  Return to the oven and bake foe 25/30 minutes at 180C until golden and set. 

Mine actually look ok for a first attempt. The pastry could be neater which isn't really a surprise,  but otherwise I just hope that they taste as good as they smell.

Breakfast of champions

As usual, the very tolerant husband and I have been doing dry January.  But without the irritating insisting people sponsor us part and just not drinking.

Obvious upsides of dry January are always getting more done at the weekend, better sleep and more enthusiasm (from me) when it comes to cooking first thing.   I've been  trying out a new breakfast this month. It's taken a couple of goes to perfect it, but I think I'm nearly there. 

The first time I tried this I did individual hashes in ramikins but they were too deep to get the whites of the eggs cooked while retaining the runny yolk. If you want to make it veggie just leave out the bacon.

Baked eggs with sweet potato hash
1x sweet potato, peeled and diced
1x onion diced
2x rashers of bacon sliced
2x eggs
Butter
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
Pinch of sugar
Coconut oil

Peel and dice the sweet potato, toss with coconut oil and half a teaspoon of paprika.  Preheat the oven to 180C. Cook for 20-30 minutes or until soft and golden.

Caramelise the onion and bacon in the butter, with the sugar and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Mix the potatoes with the onion and bacon mix and set to one side.  I normally do this the night before.

Preheat the oven to 220C. Place the potatoes/onion/bacon mix in a cast iron frying pan. Make a small dip in the middle and crack in the eggs. Put in the oven and cook for 10 minutes or until the eggs are baked to your liking.  Serve with strong coffee.

Dessert is done (finally)

I've finally managed to make  Christmas day dessert. My attempts to do this yesterday were hampered by my over enthusiastic cleaning of the cupboards which apparently led me to throw the flaxseed out. Try not to do this at home,  flaxseed is not only ridiculously hard to find when you want it,  it's also quite expensive. 

Having restocked I eventually got started. I made double quantities of the below vegan pastry recipe as I need some for tomorrow's dessert. I played around with the previous vegan recipe that used.  I swapped out the coconut oil for soya margarine and the agave syrup for sugar. I found the oil too heavy and although everyone raves about agave, I'm never convinced on the aftertaste. 

1.5 cups of gluten free flour
.5 cup of ground almond
6 tbsp soya margarine
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
.5 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp ground flaxseed

I threw all the ingredients in my new toy (isn't it pretty,  it was a wedding  gift from my incredibly kind Aunt and Uncle) except for the flaxseed.

Once everything was mixing, I took the flaxseed and mixed it in a separate bowel with 4 tbsp water.  I then added this to the rest of the pastry. As it was a bit too sticky I threw in another half cup of gluten free flour.

When combined I cut the dough into six pieces and squidged into the tart cases.

These sat in the fridge for half an hour before being blind baked for ten minutes at 160C.

After they had cooled I filled them with my little sister's homemade mincemeat, made with vegetarian suet, so suitable for all the allergies. I then decorated with vegan marzipan and baked for another 15 minutes.  I'm actually quite pleased with them. And because my sister did the hard work it was relatively simple in the end,  which gave me time to make BBQ sauce, braised red cabbage and duck stock for the gravy at the same time.

Vegan Christmas Ice Cream

My lovely Mother in Law is allergic to dairy and eggs as well as wheat, gluten and yeast (as well as many other things including chocolate) so when it comes to dessert, vegan is a good place to start.

I've already made Christmas Pudding Ice Cream for the people without allergies and I really wanted to make her something equivalent to that. So here's my first go at vegan ice cream. It was dead simple and is super tasty.

Make sure you freeze the ice cream machine 24 hours beforehand

1x Can of full fat coconut milk
1 cup almond milk
3x tbsp sugar
1x tsp salt
1x tsp vanilla paste
3x tbsp brandy
Zest of one orange

Take the coconut milk and open the can, take out the cream and discard the coconut water. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat with an electric whisk until frothy.  Pour into the icecream machine and churn for 30 minutes. Decant and pop in the freezer.

Seriously,  it's that easy, it's super tasty and it is so Chrismassy.

Fingers crossed my Mother in Law likes it as much as we did. 

Cheat's Christmas Pudding Ice Cream

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by Christmas this year.  Work is completely mental, we got back from India (amazing honeymoon)  at the end of November and I have all my lovely  in laws coming to stay. Loads of cooking to do and loads of food allergies in the house to cater for, so there'll be lots interesting things to make - when I'm not panic writing thank you cards and frantically wrapping presents.

I finally got out of the starting blocks this evening with a cheat's Christmas Pudding Ice Cream.  My mother, who was staying at the weekend is making a non cheat version and talking to her about it gave me the idea to use a Christmas Pudding that one of my team gave me. This one is going to be for the people without any allergy.

I used a basic ice cream custard recipe.

284ml carton double cream
300ml full fat milk
115g golden caster sugar
3 large free-range egg yolk

And added in two tbsp of brandy. 

The milk, cream, half the sugar and brandy were heated together gently and then cooled to room temperature. 

The eggs and the rest of the sugar get beaten together until light and falling in ribbons. Beat in 125ml of the milk/cream mixture. 

Return the rest of the cream to the heat and warm through.  Remove from heat and add in the egg mixture slowly. Stir continously and return to the heat. Cook over a low heat for 8-10 minutes until the custard coats the back of a spoon. Do not allow to boil.

Remove from the heat a cool, stirring to prevent a skin forming. You're meant to put it in a bowl in another bowl of iced water. I put the pan in a sink of cold water which worked just as well.

All ice cream custard needs to be chilled throughly before churning.  So I popped it in the freezer for 30 minutes (rather than the fridge over night) but this is all about cheating today and just getting through the food prep for Christmas.

I then churned the ice cream in the ice cream maker for 30 minutes.  When that was finished I stirred it through with broken up Christmas Pudding before transferring to a tupperware and sealing.

Apparently it'll last three months in the freezer but I don't expect it to last past next week. It tasted delicious.

Up next will be a vegan icecream especially for my mother in law.

Chicken Zoodle Soup

I realise the this blog has been woefully neglected this year,  There’s nothing like trying to do everything at the same time to prevent you writing about what you're doing.  This year we moved house and immediately started tearing the walls down (the state of the original kitchen is the main reason that the blog’s inertia), I moved to a new job which has taken up a lot more of my time and The Very Tolerant Boyfriend asked me to marry him and organising that’s been taking up a load of time as well.

 

Anyway, now my kitchen is in, I thought I’d try and get back into the swing of blogging a little more regularly; kicking off with one of my new favourites – chicken zoodle soup.  This is brilliant warming, spicy soup to make the day after a roast chicken dinner.  It’s incredibly easy to make as well as being low carb.

 

Ingredients

Scraps of left over roast chicken

1x tsp garlic paste

1x tsp ginger paste

1x onion

2xtbps green thai paste

1x can light coconut milk

300ml veg stock

1 x red pepper roughly chopped

1x bunch spring onions diced

1x tsp fish sauce

1x handful of coriander roughly chopped

1 x courgette.

 

For the courgette ‘zoodles’ I use a spiralizer to create courgette ribbons, if you don’t have one then a potato peeler can be used to do the same sort of thing.  But really, buy a spiralizer, they’re amazing!

 

Place the raw courgette ribbons in the bottom of the bowls you’re going to serve the soup in, the heat of the soup will cook these later on.  Slice the onions and sweat these in the bottom of the saucepan for a couple of minutes with the garlic, ginger and a little oil.  Add the chicken scraps, the green thai paste and the fish sauce and cook for a further five minutes.

 

Add the coconut milk, the stock and red peppers.  Bring to the boil and then simmer for ten minutes.  Remove from the heat and stir through the spring onions. Ladle the soup over the courgette zoodles and sprinkle the coriander over the top. Allow to stand for five minutes before eating.

 

You can increase or decrease the heat of this soup dependant on how much curry paste you add in. I like a spicy soup so I tend to up the amount I use.  This is a super quick and easy mid-week dinner which is great for using up left over bits and pieces as you can use pretty much any leftover meat or random veg that you have lying around, it’s also super warming and low carb.  I think if you leave out the fish sauce it might be paleo as well, but don’t hold me to that as I’ve never really got the whole paleo thing.    

What to do when it's been a seriously crap day

Today has been utterly rubbish.  The unending, ongoing, relentless awfulness that only really happens in January; when it's wet and cold and you're tired and just when you think you've got everything under control and generally heading in the right direction, and you've tentatively started to feel optimistic about things, something else gets thrown at you.

Today my car had to go into the garage because the clutch failed yesterday (£600 worth of joy), the Very Tolerant Boyfriend got delayed in Gloucestershire which turned his 14 hour day into a 16 hour one, I fell down the stairs and finally our lawyers called this morning to tell us that EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD had gone wrong with our house purchase and our exchange on Friday was going to fall through.  Fortunately the Lawyer was wrong, but that's never the sort of voicemail you want to pick up and it took quite a lot of shouting from me and (mainly) the Very Tolerant Boyfriend, or as I suppose he's been promoted to, the Very Tolerant Fiancé,  to get it sorted out.

So we're till moving on Friday and this evening all we really wanted was some comfort food and a large drink.

So this evening while waiting for the Very Tolerant Fiancé to get back from his very long day, I knocked together something warm and soothing (while drinking a very large gin).

Slow cooked pork belly
Low on imagination and energy, I kept this as simple as possible.  I heated a tablespoon of oil in a casserole dish and placed the pork belly skin down in the hot oil.  I fried it for ten minutes until the skin crisped up and then flipped it back over, turned the heat off and when the oil had cooled added a bottle of cider (I used Thatchers), some sage, salt and pepper.  I then heated the oven to 180C and cooked for 30 minutes before reducing to 120C for another two hours.

Bourbon and maple baked beans
I got the idea for this from a slow cooked vegan recipe and completely bastardised it (spoiler - it's not vegan anymore).
1lb black beans (dried)
1 cup tomato sauce
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 cup coke
1/4 cup bourbon
2 tblsp maple syrup
1 packet lardons
1 cup water
2 tsp spice mix (really must write up the recipe for this at some point)
2 tsp garlic paste
2 tsp worcestershire sauce.
1 cup water
2 tbsp tomato puree

I had soaked the beans overnight, planning to make them in the slow cooker and then I had all the other rubbish to deal with today, so I skipped the slow cooking.

I fried the lardons off in the bottom of a cast iron casserole dish and then just threw everything else in and cooked it down for a couple of hours.  I have more beans than we will ever be able to eat, but I'm sure they freeze fine and they taste amazing

And then I served it all with some jacket sweet potatoes.  I'll probably need to run a couple of extra miles tomorrow but it was amazing.

Slow cooked Quinoa and Black Bean Chilli

This is really brilliant vegan chilli. Not least because you can just stick it in the slow cooker and leave it for three hours.

½ cup uncooked quinoa
15 oz can black beans
½ container 28 oz diced tomatoes
¼ cup chopped red pepper
¼ cup chopped green pepper
1 shredded carrot
½ onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
½ small chili pepper
2 teaspoons chili powder
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 ½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
½ cup sweetcorn

Once I'd made it,  I opted to serve it as a burrito so I made up an easy guacamole with half an avocado, some chilli, salt and lemon juice smooshed together.

We had ours with yogurt and cheese,  but vegan substitutes could be used. 

Butternut squash and Lentil curry

This is a really hearty vegan meal. It's meant to be a slow cooker recipe, but it worked just fine making it this way.

1 tablespoon ground cumin
3 teaspoons garam masala powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons salt
2 bay leaves
3 teaspoons vegetable oil,
1 large onion, diced finely
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cans of diced tomatoes
6 cups water
2 cups red lentils
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and seeds removed then cubed into 1" pieces
1/2 cup coriander, chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Pop the diced butternut squash in the oven after tossing it in a little oil and some chilli flakes.  Roast until soft.

In a cast iron casserole dish, heat some oil and soften the diced onion with garlic and ginger. At the same time rinse off and sieve the lentils.

Add all the spices and the tomato puree to the onions and cook together until they start to caramelise. Then throw in the rest of the ingredients and cook together for 30-40 minutes or the lentils are tender.

Serve with chapatis and dressed with more coriander and some yogurt (or soy yogurt for vegans).

I forgot to take a picture of this because I was too busy eating it.  It was amazing.

Boozy bread and butter pudding

Today some lovely friends cooked an amazing Sunday Roast. I offered to take along some dessert, but I was a bit stumped for ideas until I remembered that I had frozen the left over berries from making the Christmas bramble whiskey.  So I just needed a suitable vehicle for whiskey sodden fruit.

I wanted something where the fruit was an added extra rather than the main ingredient, as I (fortunately) guessed that the fruit might be quite strong.  So I opted for a brioche bread and butter pudding.

1x loaf of brioche, sliced with the crusts cut off
600mls full fat milk
100mls double cream
2 oz sugar
4 x eggs
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Whiskey soaked fruit

Arrange the sliced bread in a greased pie dish, after completing each layer sprinkle on a little cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and a few (seriously not very many at all) whiskey berries. Then add the next layer. 

Continue like this until the dish is full.

Heat the milk and cream together but don't boil.  Separately whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale.  Add the cream/milk mixture to the eggs and sugar, stirring so add not to cook the eggs. Strain the custard and pour over the brioche layers.  Allow to sit for 30 minutes and then bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.

Don't eat of you're driving.

Sunday night cocktails

I thought that while I wrote up some recipes from the last week, I might treat myself and the Very Tolerant Boyfriend to a Sunday night cocktail. 

We were given some homemade sloe gin for Christmas by one of friends, which I thought I would use as the base for a Sloe Fizz. My Christmas sloe gin was slightly sweeter than I'm used to so I upped the lemon juice content to compensate.

15 ml sloe gin
15 ml gin
15 ml lemon juice

Shake over ice and pour into the bottom of a champagne flute. Top up with sparkling wine.

Courgette 'pasta' spicy tomato sauce

So after a terribly decadent weekend in London where we ate all the meat; including amazing roast bone marrow, a spectacular chateaubriand, the best crackling either of us has ever eaten, a veal heart, we needed to get back on the healthy eating for a while.

This evening we experimented with pasta made from spiralised courgette ribbons.  After the courgette was ribboned we fried it with a tiny smidge of butter.

The sauce was simply some diced onions, red peppers, a tin of tomatoes, tomato puree, a couple of tablespoons of red wine, garlic, some diced chorizo and some green peppers cooked until thickened.

Non pasta, pasta bake

So things took an unexpected turn last week which postponed our cooking plans a little bit. We're back on track with the vegetarian cooking with this non pasta, pasta bake.  The original recipe called for spaghetti squash which I've never been able to find in the UK,  so I substituted with some butternut squash which I spiralised into squash noodles.  

This worked really well and then I cheated on a second meal by using the leftovers to make burritos.

1x butternut squash spiralised
1x courgettes diced
1x carrot diced
1x onion diced
2x clove garlic minced
1x bottle passata
1x ball mozzarella
1x cup grated parmasan
1x tsp oregano
1x tsp  Italian herbs

Mix the veg and spices together loosely with your hands.  Pour over the passata, then top with the cheeses and some grated pepper. Bake in the oven for 45 mins at 180C.

The Very Tolerant Boyfriend topped his with a fried egg.