Beautiful Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese

Tonight was a wonderful night. I had a dish I haven't had for a long time, which is completely outrageous considering how absolutely wonderful it is. It was, (drumroll please) Nigella Lawson's butternut squash and blue cheese pasta. That's not the actual recipe title but it wasn't on the photocopy my mum sent me and I can't quite remember it. And I used tagliatelle because the supermarket had no parpadelle (although the recipe does say either!). But that doesn't matter. All you need to know is that it's made of tender chunks of butternut squash simmered with onion and smoked paprika, then mixed with tagliatelle, sage, and crumbly blue cheese which melts quite delicously throughout the whole thing. And if that wasn't good enough, toasted pine nuts are sprinkled on top. Perfect for cold winter days like today. Quite frankly, heaven in a bowl.



Pine nuts toasting away...



Two bowls of heaven, one for tomorrow as well.

A Fabulous Festive Cake

So... I finished it! My first ever totally solo Christmas cake! I'm very pleased with it looks. I haven't tasted it yet, but I promise I'll let you know when I do- and if it tastes as good as the mixture did... I finished it yesterday morning; all I had to do was ice and decorate it. I only actually decided how to decorate it the night before, despite having made the cake about a month ago! I went for a design that would be cheap, as student budgets don't usually stretch to cake decorating, but I still think it looks very effective, which shows you don't have to spend much to create something special!

Look how smooth I got it!

Tada! Sorry it's the wrong way :(

My ingenious cutting tools

 



As the snowmen were completely white, all I had to buy as extra were the silver balls. And I didn't have any smooth cutters, so I had to improvise a bit! But I am very pleased with how it turned out, and I can't wait to taste it!

Freestyle Friday #1 (plus Cupcake Cases!)

Welcome to the very first Freestyle Friday, my experimenting day! It was quite a simple dish, but still very nice, and most importantly, it was filling! This is what I did. I cooked some dried egg noodles and drained them, then added stir-fry sauce, carrot, and sesame seeds. There was going to be a one egg omlette on the top... but I may have dropped an egg on the floor this morning... Anyhow, here's some photos!

They were going to be matchsticks, but the noodles were already done!

The finished prouct!

I'm very excited about next week's Freestyle Friday as I know that I'm going to have some butternut squash left over...

 

And, as promised, here are the Christmas cupcake cases I made the gingerbread muffins in.

 

 

 

I'm decorating my Christmas cake tomorrow... check back in the next few days to see how it went!

Experimental Entertainment

Let me get this straight. I am not usually an experimental cook. I like recipes. I am quite happy to play aroung with recipes, but I don't do freestyle... until today!  I've been watching Nigel Slater's tv programme, and to start with I couldn't believe how he didn't plan any of his meals! But suddenly, while watching one episode, I wanted to try it. I could barely believe I actually wanted to do it! But I decided I would have a go, and maybe experiment every Friday with what I had left from my weekly shop. I'm doing it two days this week, as that's just the way things have worked! So, please give a very warm welcome to my first freestyle dish!

Apologies for the half eaten meatball, but I forgot to take a photo before I started eating!

 

It's based around some pasta sauce I had leftover from the pasta bake I made last week, which you can read about here. (I don't usually buy my sauces!). The meatballs are made from one sausage I had in the freezer. I added tomato puree and some Worcestershire sauce to the tomato sauce, which made it lovely and rich. I could get used to this experimenting lark...

Batches of Baking!

I had a rather productive morning: First, I made gingerbread muffins. They're a Nigella Lawson recipe we've made lots of times before, and as always, they were absolutely deicious. Just imagine eating a soft, light as air gingerbread cloud and you're there. I ate one as soon as they came out of the oven, as it was past my mid-morning snack time, and it was so good warm! You could even have one with custard as a dessert, or for breakfast, just because you can... I made them in some Christmas cases I got from Accessorize, which had little owls in winter outfits one! You can't see it too clearly here, but I'll definetely post a photo of them soon as they are so cute! These really are Christmassy, gingerbread in a Christmas case... I just can't get enough!

Next up was covering my Christmas cake with marzipan. Read about the making of it here. It went really well, considering this is the first time I've done it totally solo!  There were some scraps- some of which I ate, I adore marzipan!- but look out for what I'm going to do with the rest...

For lunch I made some tortilla wraps from a quick recipe I found on the internet. It really was easy, just mixing flour, water, and baking powder, then leave for 15 minutes. Then roll out and dry fry! It made two as well, which is perfect for spur of the moment wrap making thoughts. It's also good as if it made too many they would go off before I could eat them all!

And last but not least, tea. I had a Mary Berry cottage pie recipe. The recipe had the option to do smaller ones so I made mine in ramekins as I bought them with me but hadn't yet used one. I halved to recipe; one I had tonight, one for tomorrow, and one for the freezer. I thought they were quite cute in their little ramekins! It was the perfect meal for this weather. Eating a steaming, hot pie when you know it's so cold outside is just, well, perfect.

Not Quite a Curry

Tonight for tea, I had a curry- kind of. It was a normal vegetable curry, but I didn't have the turmeric. Or the ground coriander. So all the 'sauce' was was water with chili powder, lemon juice and cumin in! Even though the recipe didn't call for cumin, I put some in anyway, just because I thought it might need something extra because of the missing ingredients... The recipe just said 'mixed chopped vegetables', and I used carrot, celery, onion and peas. That was partly why I picked this recipe- I'd already bought those things for other recipes, but they wouldn't get used up. Anyway, despite the missing ingredients and the rather strange sauce, it was very tasty. I even left the celery leaves in, which turned surprisingly sweet!

Lovely bright colours to chase away the gloomy weather!

Tantalising Thai Chicken

There's a dish I used to make a fair bit at home, called Lime Sherbert Chicken. As with quite a few recipes, there are some variations, and when flicking thorough the book to choose this week's menu, I found it hard to believe I hadn't tried any. As I had most of the ingredients, I went with the Thai Chicken fingers- the chicken is marinated in lemon juice, fresh ginger, fresh mint and chili. I used chili paste because it retains it's spiciness after cooking much better than an actual chili.

To accompany it, I had an 'adapted' rice recipe. You might remember the Indian-Style rice salad I had last week? (If not, you can read about it here.) Well I replaced the curry powder with Thai-7 Spice, and omitted all the other ingredients apart from the dessiccated coconut... And it was very good! Some of the best things are things you just happen accross, so don't be afraid to try something you think of off the cuff in the kitchen!

 

You might also remember I went to the Winchester Cathedral Christmas market yesterday... and it was fabulous! Lots of food (I ate SO much) craft and gift stalls. I can't post a photo of one thing I bought as it was a present for someone who might read this (hi mum!), but this is what I got...

 

Krakauer (smoked bratwurst) with sauerkraut and curry ketchup

(I've had this in Germany, I love it!)

Chocolate fruit pot- strawberries and marshmallows

Roasted chestnuts

Black Forest Slice

A felted fox bag- see, I didn't just buy food!

I got the hazelnuts- original caramel with sesame seeds, orange peel and cinnamon sticks

The cathedral itself!

My feet at the end of the day... my boots leaked as well!