Fake Freestyle Friday #22?

I have been lucky enough to recieve two invitations for tea; one to go out tomrrow night, and another round the house of some friends on Friday. Hence why I am doing my Freestyle Friday today!

It is a little bit fake for another reason as well. Let me explain. I have many jars of nut butters in my cupboard, including pumpkin seed butter. When I was putting it away the other day, I noticed some serving suggestions on the side, including the suggestion to stir it into pasta or rice. So that is where I got the idea from. The rest of the ideas are entirely my own. When I saw this, I immediately thought of stirring it into some brown rice. I thought it would look quite nice (pumpkin seed butter is a lovely green colour), as well as hopefully tasting nice as well! Sticking with my colour theme, I decided to add some goldenberries, which are a deep reddish-brown colour. I got a little bag of goldenberries for Christmas, and I have to say, I am quite a fan! They are dried physallis, and are slightly sweet but also sour and tangy. If you like sour sweets, I'm fairly certain you would like goldenberries. And then, as you can never have enough dried fruit in anything (well, I can't anyway!) I added some sultanas as well.

 

 

The light in our dining area isn't the best, as you can probably tell, but I think it still looks pretty good. I realy liked this, all the flavours, in my opinion, complimented each other very well. Sweet sultanas, slightly sweet but tangy goldenberries, nutty brown rice... and pumpkin seedy pumpkin seed butter! I really don't have any other way of describing it. The only ingredient is roasted pumpkin seeds, so the taste really comes through, as it does with most nuts when you toast/roast them. I'm glad I took the time to read the side of the jar, because if I hadn't, I would have missed out on a very good tea.

Freestyle Friday #21

If you take a trawl back through my posts, you'll see that there is a lot of curries dotted about. Which is no great surprise seeing how much I like Indian food! And this post will add to the curry pile.

I had a surprise ingredient added to my pile on Thursday. I had bought a pack of two fish fillets when I went shopping and frozen them, with the intention of having one on Thursday and keeping the other for another time. But. When I got the fish out to defrost, the two fillets were stuck together! I have seen people try to prize apart frozen meat pieces with a knife, but I quite like having all ten fingers really... so I decided to cook both and somehow use one Friday.

I steamed both of them together. I wasn't sure how much time I would have Friday, so I thought that if the fish was already cooked then it would cut time by about 15 minutes, which may not seem like a lot but to me, a very impatient person, it is!

I can't really explain my thought process behind how I came up with this, I rarely can with my Freestyle dishes... but what I ended up with was mixed vegetables and the fish fillet (which I first flaked) quickly sauteéd in curry powder with some brown rice (I also added curry powder to the cooking water) I was a little concerned that the delicate river cobbler would be overpowered by the spice, but the sweetness of it actually went very well. If I made this again, I would probably try to make the spice of the rice different to that of the fish and veg, purely for variety, but in actual fact there was nothing wrong with this as it was. And of course, the fact that it filled me up was a bonus.

I just couldn't get rid of the steam! And I obviously didn't want to let it go cold... but here it is!

Charming Chachouka and Top Treacle Bread

As I got a steamer for Christmas, I have't been doing my one meal a week as much. I ususally do steamed fish and vegetables, but last time I had steamed duck breast, which worked just as well. It only takes 10-15 minutes so it is really quick as well, which of course I like. For several meals this week I am having Chachouka, which is a North African dish made with peppers, paprika, cumin and eggs. It is very similar to the Italian Peperonnata if you remove the spices and eggs.

Not the prettiest dish in the world, but it is good!

 

 

Last weekend, I also made treacle bread. I got a loaf tin for my birthday last week, which I was also excited about as I have quite a few things I wanted one for. I chose to make treacle bread over other breads because I have treacle I bought for my 2012  Christmas cake that I want to use! I didn't use any for my 2013 cake so I really wanted to find a use for it. I liked the method for the bread as well, because it doesn't involve kneading, just mixing the ingredient, rising and baking. Quite easy to fit in around work. The treacle taste isn't overly strong, it just gives the bread a nice earthy kind of taste. The texture is somewhat chewier than a normal bread... well not chewy chewy... it is hard to explain! Like a normal textured load with a bit of rye bread texture thrown in. I'm sorry, it's the best I can do! I will definetly be making it again. I love homemade bread, it is so satisfying to make- if you've ever made some you'll know what I mean.

 

I got a good bake on it as well, because it springs back when you squeeze it. I am very happy with the first attempt, so like I said, it will definitely be reappearig in the kitchen when this loaf has gone!



Freestyle Friday #20

Hello! I have been super busy with university work and Christmas over the past month. I'll try to post more regularly... I'm still busy but I'll try! This is quite a good post to come back on I think; a very successful Freestyl Friday.

The most experimental part of this really was the pancake type things you see under the poached egg. Instead of flour I used polenta/cornmeal (finely ground), and just added two egg whites and a splash of milk. When I first started mixing the egg whites and polenta, it just clumped and I thought it wasn't going to work. I stuck with it though and a few seconds of vigorous whisking later, I had a nice batter. I just added a splash of milk to loosen it a bit, although I'm pretty sure it would have been fine without. The buffalo mozzarella and serrano ham, I originally bought to make a salad to recreate an absolutely amazing one I had in Belgium last year. I did have the salad, but there were some left over... shame! Yes, buffalo mozzarella is a little more expensive, but I honestly think it is worth the price. It has much more flavour than other mozzarella, and it is so soft you can spread it. As it is so flavoursome, you don't need to use as much, so really, the price isn't that bad. The same goes for serrano ham, a little dearer than normal ham, but I think it is worth the price, and again, it is very flavoursome so you don't need a lot. And, I personally feel mroe satisfied by a smaller amount of something more flavoursome. Both are a case of quality over quantity. The egg, I poached as I would poach any other egg, and the only thing I did to the avocado was to dice it. A fairly simple tea, but it seems so much more than what it is, due to the quality of the ingredients I think! Just imagine if you had made this with a supermarket pack of ham and supermarket own brand mozzarella and you'll know what I mean... both have their place of course, and I'm not knocking either, but in a dish as simple as this where the individual components speak for themselves, you really do need the 'good stuff!'

Pizza and a Party

Like most people, I like pizza. I much prefer homemade; it's less greasy for starters! Plus they're pretty fun to make. When I'm at home, we quite often make them on Saturdays. We do the dough for the base in the afternoon, then it's ready for when we want to eat tea. I didn't quite do it this way when I had pizza on Saturday, but similarly. You might remember me saying that when I made the dough for the flatbreads to have with the pearl barley broth I made last week, I made the whole amount of dough even though I wouldn't need it all. It's hard to divide quantities for dough, and it's always handy to have extras in the freezer so it seemed silly not to. As the dough was one which could be made into lots of different things, including pizza dough, I decided to use one to make one of the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall pizzas which were just a few pages further on in the book. I plumped for the beetroot and cheddar one (so I could buy smoked mackerel and have smoked mackerel and beetroot sandwiches- SUCH a good combination!). I simply got a portion of dough out of the freezer at lunch time and by the time I wanted to use it it was thawed. Now, I am all for variation and experimenting, but I do have a sliiiiight problem with something being called a pizza if it doesn't have tomato sauce on... this one did, but some of the Hugh recipes didn't. I'm sure they're nice, and I'll still try them, but to me it's not really a pizza!

 

 

The lighting is very bad, but there was literlly no other space to put my plate! The beetroot and cheddar were layered with mozzarella and onions before being baked. I also did sweet potato chips... no recipe, just half a sweet potato (it was giant!) baked in the oven on the very top shelf for about twelve minutes with the pizza. Of course, if you cut the pieces thicker it would take longer. I know that is a rectangle, which isn't traditional pizza shape, but I couldn't find a tray big enough to make a decent sized circle to get the filling on! Oh, and I would just like to mention that for the cheddar, I used a cheddar Babybel! As they were on offer, it was the cheapest way of buying cheddar, and one Babybel was just the amount that I needed. Plus I then had five more to eat for snacks. Wins all round I think.

 

 

That was the pizza, now for the party. I'm currently in  a house with five other students, and on Sunday we had a Christmas dinner before we all went back to our respective homes for the holidays. The meat we had was venison, which we all really enjoyed. The accompaniments were roasted parsnips, red onion and carrots with honey, roasted potato wedges, a mix of baby corn, sugarsnap peas and carrots, green beans with bacon, pigs in blankets, carrot and swede mash, stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce. We also had some Cadburys Marvellous Creations chocolate (I only hd one square to try because I knew there would be lots of food) and some tomato and cheese flatbread bought by two of our guests. Totally random, but hey, that's a student dinner for you! I think that's it! There were way too many vegetables, even with ten of us (We had four people join us; a girlfriend, two best friends and a former resident of the house!) but leftovers are the best part of big dinners like this. It's just not the same without leftovers! After we got the accompaniments from the shop, we prepared them together whilst drinking mulled wine and listening to Christmas music. One of the songs of which was Feliz Navidad meowed by cats. How people come up with such things I'll always wonder... Then while everything was cooking we watched the Harold and Kumar Christmas film. Such a festive afternoon and night. I love Christmas so this was the perfect way to end the week for me.

Also, with the meal we had some mead, a treat from one of my housemates. It was Lyme Bay 'Christmas mead' ordered from the internet (you can get it for £9.95 per bottle from Amazon) and it was so nice! It was just like drinking liquid honey. You could actually taste honey though, it wasn't just sweet and sugary. I'd definitely have it again. When I looked online, Lyme Bay do quite a lot of varieties which I would also like to try...

Very missmatched table heights, cutlery and serving dishes, but it's all part of the fun!

This is more to prove that I don't always spend time making my food look pretty ;)

 



Afterwards, we had a bonfire. We dragged two sofas outside and toasted marsmallows, and after a while we had my Christmas cake (by the way, I thought I had posted a photo of the finished product but I was mistken! I don't have one on my phone but I will try and figure out a way of getting one on here because I am rather pleased with the result.) I was SO full afterwards, but it was totally worth it. A great start to the festivities.

Freestyle Friday #19, Brownie Bites and Barley Broth with Flatbreads

Last night was my university's Christmas lights switch on. I ate before I went so I wouldn't be tempted by all the food that was there! My ingredient to use this week was a few new potatoes, so I decided simply to make potato cakes. But flavoured not simply of course ;-) Potato cake one was inspired by something I saw on Masterchef: The Professionals. It was a dish that had raisins and capers in, so I added the last few of my raisins and a teaspoon of capers. For cake two I mixed mustard into the mash and put a piece of ham in the middle. Number three was a little bit of mozzarella surrounded by tomato and basil mash. Number four was supposed to be an egg in the middle of plain mash, but I didn't leave enough mash to surround it... So I just mixed it in with the potato! In for a penny, in for a pound... However, I did use some of the white for something else. I tried to make a little tart base with a crushed cracker... But to be honest I couldn't be bothered to properly crush the cracker because I was getting short on time (despite starting in plenty of time!) It did kind of work though! Definitely potential there... I spread the last of my genuine French pâté on top, which softened and melted just  a little bit. It was unusual as I've never had pâté warm like that, but it was good.

Left to right: eggy mess cake, tomat, basil and mozzarella cake, ham and mustard and caper and raisin. Plus my tasty little tart. And a carrot. I needed some veggies in there!

 

Melty mozzarella... yum, is all I can say!

 

My mum and dad are visiting tomorrow, and I wanted to make them a little something. Last Christmas I received the Snog Healthy Treats Cookbook, which I still haven't used, so I decided on the chocolate brownie bites. All you do is blend walnuts, cocoa powder or cacao powder and salt, then blend in agave nectar, vanilla extract and dates. Roll them into little balls, make a little indentation and pop on a fresh raspberry. Done. I will admit, I used tinned raspberries. If I made them again I would use fresh, as the tinned ones kind of turned into pulp! I haven't tried one yet, but I am looking forward to it. I have also never used agave before, so am looking forward to trying it for that reason as well. I am quite excited that now I have the agave nectar I can make other things from the book as well!

Soooo not as neat as the ones in the book, but I prefer the homemade look to be honest!

Last up, my barley broth and flatbreads. My narrowed down choices for tea this week were cauliflower curry and pearl barley broth- both from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Veg! book. I plumped for the barley broth, but thought I would make the flatbreads that were suggested to go with the curry anyway. I already had all the ingredients, and I would have had bread with the soup anyway, so it seemed a natural conclusion. The dough recipe was actuall 'the magic bread dough', which can be used for different things such as pizza bases, flatbreads, pittas and breadsticks to name a few! I made the whole amount of dough and portioned it up to freeze. I'll have three portions spare from the soup, and I already have an idea for one of them... You'll see. I like the flatbreads because once you've made the dough, it is literally three minutes tops to cook them, which I could do while the soup was simmering. So it worked well all round.

Doesn't look pretty, but it tasted ten times better than it looked. It is also a coincidence because on a Paul Hollywood cookery programme I watched today, he had never used nutmeg in a savoury dish, and this had nutmeg in. It was good!

Nice brown spots, just as it should be. And yes those are nibble marks you see at the top...

Freestyle Friday #18, Sweet and Sour Chinese Chicken, Smokey Sunday and Christmas 'Cake'

I haven't posted these things separately, as I've cooked them, because I've been very busy with university work lately. Well, I'm still busy, but I do have to have a break sometimes I suppose! I'll start at the beginning. That's always a good place to start.

Freestyle Friday number 18. I did a soup, because I had planned to do mulligatawney soup this week (I'll get to what I actually made in a minute!) and I won't take you through my entire thought process, because believe me, that would be a looooong post, but I didn't, but I still kinda wanted soup. So I took all the random things I had and put them together. Half a carrot, half a serving of my messicani pasta shapes and some broccoli were what I started with. Ah, the broccoli. I had been having it with my roast during the week, just chopping a few florets of as and when I wanted them. But here's the thing, I sometimes nibble when I chop. Even raw broccoli. And I happened to discover that broccoli stalk is quite sweet, and very nice to eat. So along with the last few florets that were left, I grated the stalk in as well. The carrot I just chopped into smallish chunks, a little bigger than the pasta pieces. To make the soup, I just cooked the pasta in chicken stock (as I didn't have any vegetable) and then added the other things to it. I also ended up adding a couple teaspoons of capers and some chopped pickled jalapenos. Oh yes, and the 'croutons'! I also had potatoes with my roast, and while they weren't really something that needed using, I added one nonetheless. It was only a new potato, but it was quite a big one! I was originally going to grate it in, but I actually cut it into tiny cubes and baked them with some mixed herbs while the soup was cooking. I hadn't intended them to be croutons, but I realised when I put them on top that they kind of were!

The tray is for security as I carried it to the table... it was a very full bowl...

 

I turned the heat off as soon as I added the grated broccoli, and the residual heat just tenderised it. One of the Freestyle Friday dishes I am actually rather proud of!

 

Sweet and Sour Chinese Chicken, come on down! This is what I made instead of soup. It took a long time and some help to decide, but I am so glad I made it. It starts off as the 'usual' sweet and sour chicken, in that it also has pineapple and green and red peppers in. But it also has lychees in! I am a big fan of lychees, but I have never had them in a savoury dish before. Okay, I know this isn't the most savoury dish in the world, but you get what I mean. The sauce is also made with the juice from the pineapples (and lychees in this case), again, as per usual. But in this recipe, you mix them with two tablespoons of cornflour before adding to the stir fry. I really think it makes a difference, the sauce was lovely and thick and just delicious. Also, in terms of being unusual, the chicken was marinated beforehand in rice wine and soy sauce, and then browned before stirfrying. The recipe said 30 minutes minimum... I did mine at lunch time so it had three hours! I'm sureit would have been fine with less though. Again, I could definitely tell it was different to usual. It just goes to show that sometimes the little things really do make a difference.

 

It is hard to take photos when cooking this type of dish as everything goes so quickly, but I had to get a snap of this, just because of the festive colour scheme- and NO, it ISN'T too early to think about Christmas!

This is when the sauce was thickening, so I did have a second to get another quick shot.

There is rice under there, I promise!

All that's left to say about this is that I am really glad I have it for the rest of the week.

 

Also, I know I said I wouldn't batch cook ALL the time after placement, but I seem to have gotten into the habit of it! Not sure how that is going to go... will have to wait and see I suppose.

 

 

The next two posts are Christmassy, and I know it's November but I don't care. I love Christmas, I really do.

 

 

Now, this I am posting because it was just really tasty, and is very similar to our traditional Christmas morning breakfast.



 

I wasn't going to put it on my blog, hence the bad picture. It is simply scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toast. I bought the smoked salmon for a pasta dish I had last week, and used half of the remainder to make a smoked salmon cream cheese sandwich, and froze half for this for a special smoky salmon start to my Sunday. It was worth the wait. The only thing we really do differently at Christmas is that we have English muffins instead of toast. I am looking forward to it already.

 

Still reading? Not got bored? If you're still here, you'll be glad you got this far when you read about this next (And final!) thing. Now, having already established that I am a die-hard Christmas fan, it probably won't surprise you to learn I love Christmas cake. I wasn't sure what to have for lucnh today, and after another lengthy thought process came up with this. Christmas Cake Baked Oatmeal. I have oats every day, so if I don't have them for breakfast I get antsy. Hence why I wanted them for lunch. I used the basic method of half a cup of oats, 65ml of milk and then went to town with the Christmas add ins: mixed dried fruit, chopped hazlenuts, cinnamon, allspice, mixed spice, ginger, almond essence (for the marzipan bit!), vanilla essence, a teeeeeny bit of treacle and a glacé cherry. I think that's it! And the baking powder and bicarb to make it extra cakey. Bake in a greased ramekin for twenty minutes, et voila- Christmas cake! I honestly cannot stress enough how much this smelled and tasted like Christmas cake! I just can't. Words defy me for how Christmas cakey this is. I am definitely going to be having this again. So, if you are as Christmas mad as I am, and start waiting for next year on December the 26th, this one is for you. If you only ever try one of my suggestiond, make it this one, I PROMISE, you won't regret it!

 

It's healthy Christmas cake in less than half an hour, how can you not love it! (If you were feeling indulgent you could always chuck a spoonful or two of glacé icing on top!)

There were scrapings, just another reason to love this.