You can have too many Babybels...

I am back in Manchester! I have returneth from Bristol - the coldest city in England - well it was last week.
I was on a course for a week and only had a little jacket with me. At the end of the course in the feedback form we had to give five words to describe the course. By that time my fingers had stopped working from the cold but I managed to write 'Chilly'.

I shall describe my week with food.

We had a free breakfast every day - which is what happens when you stay in a hotel.

Day 1 Delicious Bacon sandwich. For the remaining breakfasts I ate fruit and fibre (leaving the dried bananas in a secret stash on the table for the next guest), fruit salad and babybels.







At breakfast every morning I made up a little emergency rations package for the day, including.....

and...

.......and a napkin full of dried apricots. The apricots were in a bowl next to the cereal counter (as you were meant to sprinkle them on your museli) but I like apricots SOOO much I just eat them without cereal. On days 4 and 5 of the course there were no apricots by the cereal :( I think they had become wise to my apricot poaching.)

On the first evening we had a posh meal with all the course leaders and important people and for the starter we had....

This was chicken with pesto and bit of curry (I think). One boy was so hungry he put his in his bread roll and wolfed it down quick as a bee! I was also hungry because we didn't eat the evening meal until 8.30 and I had eaten my packed lunch on the train that morning at 10.30 because I got overexcited. I didn't put mine in a sandwich though. After I had taken a picture of it a few people stopped talking to me as much so I talked to the sandwich boy as a few people had stopped talking to him as well.

This meal was also delicious.

After a week of being freezing, and eating a lot of chicken based dishes,(here's another one that I ate...)

I wanted something that didn't have chicken or babybels in it and was fairly easy to make so on Friday I had....

Smoked Salmon Pasta with a Rocket Salad.

This meal is delicious, fairly healthy and can be enjoyed at any time (i.e lunch or dinner)

You will need...

Smoked salmon trimmings (from the fishmonger, or you can get it from Tescos, but its a bloody rip off)

Half an onion or a shallot (I always think of shallots as a vegetable that would be fairly high up in a court in Tudor times)

2 tablespoons of white wine

Some munchrooms (maybe 8-10?)

Pasta

Rocket

Creme Fraiche (the sauce base for Guardian readers)

Put pasta on to boil, while boiling...

Finely chop your onion and simmer it in the white wine until the wine has evaporated.

Add the creme fraiche and the munchrooms to the onions and when the munchrooms have softened add the smoked salmon trimmings. Add black pepper.

Drain pasta and pour sauce over the top, grate on parmesan and add some rocket.

I often have this meal without the pasta as the sauce is quite filling, just add some iceberg lettuce to the rocket. You can also have it as a starter if you are hosting a posh dinner party. 

All I can remember from the last week is being cold (I also couldn't work out how to put the heating on in my room so once or twice I turned the shower on in the bathroom and sat near it for the warmth of the steam).

So today by mistake I bought another fur coat!!!! (ooops). However it was a Primarni Cheapo one but is still beautiful and lovely. I can't decided if I'm a dalmation or a leopard though...

Today I saw a poor old pigeon get run over and all its insides fell out. So tonight I will not be having pigeon. 

Poor old pigeon.

It's 6.24 now which means Gin and Tonic time! Goody!

Some people say Tuna tastes like Cat Food.

My Lovely New Coat

A couple of weeks ago I was having a serious dilemma. Where was I going to get my faux fur coat from and what animal would it represent?!!!! Many of you may have been seriously concerned for me as 'tis a serious winter problem. 

Worry no longer!!!!!!

After visiting every shop in Manchester (except for one's like Currys or Carphone Warehouse because they don't sell coats) I managed to find one. Hurrah!!!!

I decided to go for a plain colour as I already own trousers, 3 dresses, 1 playsuit, a bag, a tshirt and a jumper in leopard print so I realised I wouldn't be able to wear any of those with the coat. It is the warmest thing ever to happen to me. This week I have done a bit of sitting in my flat in it but I got too hot and had to take it off so I hung it up so I could look at it. Lovely Coat.

Thats enough coat business for now. I shall move onto the cooking,

Tuna with a Bearnaise sauce

You will need (for two people)

2 Tuna Steaks

For the Sauce:
1 shallot finely chopped
2 tablespoons of white wine
1 bay leaf
Dried or Fresh tarragon (about a teaspoon of dried)
2 large tablespoons of butter
An egg yolk





A bearnaise or hollandaise sauce is not super easy to make. I felt like I had put my soul into this sauce by the time I served it up.

You will need time, patience and most importantly the ingredients. There seem to be very complicated recipes all over the internet involving things like muslin, the blood of a young carpenter, and a cooking process that needs moonlight. I am going to try and  be as simple as possible. i.e no blood.

Firstly put the shallot, tarragon, bay leaf and white wine in a pan and leave to reduce.This should take around 3-4 mins. Simples!

Next whisk up your egg yolk in a bowl and then place that bowl over a pan of SIMMERING water, make sure it's not boiling an add the reduced shallot and tarragon. At this point maybe take out the bayleaf as when you serve it up only one person would get the bayleaf which may cause a bayleaf barney!

Melt some butter (I do it in the microwave, you can do it wherever you want) and then slowly slowly bit by bit add the melted butter to the egg and reduction and keep whisking. If the sauce goes weird i.e curdles/splits/goes too thick then add in some cold water.

Cook the tuna on a griddle or frying pan for about 3-4 mins on each side so it is still a bit pink in the middle.

Serve with salad/mange tout/little potatoes.

You could also have it with rice or any other veg of your choice.

P.s to make a hollandaise sauce - follow the above directions but leave out the tarragon and bay leaf.

This week I saw a boy walking along the road eating a bowl of cereal like he was in his own home, but he was on the street!!!! Silly Boy. 

White chocolate doesn't contain any chocolate and Rat's can't throw up.

Goat's Cheese and Cameralised Onion Tart (s)

This is exactly like a Goat's Cheese and Caramelised Onion Tart (s) but I have taken a picture of the caramelised onions with my camera so they have become cameralised. See!







This weekend has again been all about cooking and also Autumn clothes. I have bought some rather lovely shorts which I believe are 'on trend'. I don't know if they are at all but I think if I tell enough people they will be.Also I don't know if 'on trend' is the right phrase to use but someone gave me a free ELLE at the beginning of the week so I have been pretending to be a fashion editor.

For your tart you will need:

Puff Pastry (don't bother farting around making it, no-one really does except for maybe Nigella Lawson but she's got loads of money ergo more spare time for pastry making)
3 Red Onions (you could use white if you ABSOLUTELY had to, but red are tastier, yumyumyum)
Goats Cheese (from a Goat is best)
Olive Oil
Peppers (I'd go for red or yellow if I was you)
Smoked bacon (2 pieces)
Spinach (just some, however much you want)
Rocket. (not an actual rocket, the salad stuff, but if you do have an actual rocket or a toy rocket, take a picture and send it in!)

To make

Firstly caramelise your onions. To do this cover the bottom of a frying pan - non stick is best - with olive oil and put in your roughly chopped onions. Leave for around 45 mins, gently stirring, add a bit of salt halfway in.

If they stick to the bottom of the pan then scrape the burn off and include in the onion mixture. Delicious burn! Then gently fry two pieces of cut up bacon in the caremalised onion juice. I mainly cut up things like bacon and spaghetti with scissors - much quicker and more efficient!

Next....Roll out the pastry and cover a tart dish or little tart dishes with some puff pastry - enough to cover. Then pop in the oven for 10 mins or so.

Take out and flatten the bottom which will have puffed out like a puffer jacket. Spoon on caramelised onions, fried bacon and chopped up red peppers then crumble over the goats cheese. Drizzle on olive oil and put back in oven for about 20 mins on 180.

Serve with a spinach and rocket salad

As a piece of this is not super duper filling, its a bit of an excuse for a pudding so earlier today I made...

White Chocolate and Raspberry biscuits....

What a bloody treat these are. Don't worry what shape they are, mine were a mixture of squares, circles and triangles. They still taste ace and are very easy to make.

I was reminded earlier that when I was very small I used to make '1,2,3' biscuits - literally 1oz of butter, 2 of sugar and 3 of flour- and give them to all my friends. It seems that two decades later not much has changed but I've added a couple of extra ingredients.

You will need
(p.s I don't have measuring scales so I do a lot by eye and taste. I always take an oz to be a tablespoon.

12 oz self raising flour  (the most confident of all the flours)
8oz butter (unsalted)
8oz caster sugar
1 tablespoon of condensed milk (this will help the biscuits to stay soft in the middle and crispy on the outside)
LOTS of white chocolate broken up into pieces (about the size of a piece of cheese that you might see a mouse holding in a cartoon)
Half a punnet of raspberries (are raspberries measured in punnets? Isn't punnet an odd word. Punnet.)
Dried raspberries if you can get your hands on them.

To make

Cream together the butter and flour, add the condensed milk and then gently sift in the flour. When you have a doughy mixture pour in some melted white chocolate. This is an extravagance that is not necessarily necessary but delicious. Add some chopped up raspberries and some chunks of chocolate to the biscuit dough. Then make little balls of dough and flatten 'pon a baking tray.

If you have greaseproof  paper line the tray with this. I didn't as 'tis an extravagance that I would rather forgo for more biscuits so I rubbed a bit of butter on the bottom.

Put in the oven on 180 - I seem to bake everything on 180 - for about 17 minutes and then take out. Leave to cool for a  bit and then transfer to baking rack for a further cooling experience. If like me, your biscuits decided to join together in harmony whilst they had their oven times then chop 'em up into any shapes you like. If your biscuits stayed in their circular shapes then well done, you have no further tasks.
Enjoy!

As some of you may be aware, the Premier League has started once again. A friend reminded me earlier about a time I was told (as a crafty joke,) that every four years one French team are allowed into the English top League. I listened enraptured and then told all my mates the next day about how exciting it was for Lyon that they had a chance in England this season. That was super duper embarrassing.

That's all.

Autumn Fayre

This weekend I have been mainly sitting around in big jumpers thinking about falling leaves and also what kind of fur coat I'm going to buy for winter. Normal Leopard? Snow Leopard or perhaps even Tiger! I've also been cooking the type of food which feels like a big hug.


Chicken and Chorizo Risotto (serves 2-4) depending how much rice you use.

The secret to a good risotto is a lot more parmesan than you think you actually need


Things to put in your risotto..
2 shallots
Risotto Rice
White wine (any kind, but if you get a nice bottle then you can enjoy it with your risotto)
Chicken breast - or pieces of chicken any kind of chicken is fine.
Some chorizo - about the size of a travel shampoo will be enough.
A pepper - again your choice of colour.
Mushrooms
Chicken Stock (If you are a vegeeeeetarian use vegetable stock -obvs)
Parmesan - a LOT of parmesan. 


Here is how you make it....


Chop up shallots and fry in olive oil. Once browned add risotto rice and fry with the shallots for about a minute. Then add chicken stock (I use a full measuring jug plus a little bit more) and a generous slosh of wine.  Leave to simmer for around 20-25 mins.


In a separate pan fry up your chopped up chicken and chorizo...

As the rice is starting to go soft fold in the fried chicken and chorizo and the chopped up mushrooms and peppers. Keep stirring until veg are cooked and then fold in the parmesan, add some black pepper and serve with a rocket salad and a large glass of white wine. I saved some to have for lunch today but ended up eating it last night.

As I have been mainly Miss Haversham house bound all weekend and had a lot of spare pears (ooo a little poem) this is a double blog.

Pear, ginger and cinnamon muffins.

If I could have bottled up the smell that came out of my oven this morning and sold it I would have been a millionaire. But I would also have had to go through the rigmarole of learning about how to make air fresheners which I think would be boring.

You can get pears very cheaply at this time of year so these cost next to nothing to make and are also surprisingly healthy!

 I made these after seeing a tweet by @gilliandonovan (fellow foodie and defo worth a follow) who kindly showed me the recipe she used which I have slightly messed around with.

You will need

2 pears, peeled and chopped

1 and a half cups of self raising flour

1 cup of wholemeal flour

1 cup of brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp of ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

1 beaten egg

Half a cup of red milk

A bit of butter - the less you use the healthier it is, I'd say about a tablespoon does the trick.

In one bowl mix together the flour,sugar, baking powder and spices. In another mix together the milk and beaten egg. Make a a hole in the flour mixture and add the milk mixture, whisk/stir/fork the two mixtures together and then fold in the chopped pear. Spoon into a greased cupcake tray or cupcake paper holders, sprinkle a little bit of brown sugar on top and then put in oven on 180 for about 20 minutes.

The hot pear mixed with the brown sugar is one of the loveliest autumn tastes I have ever enjoyed. These are probably best eaten wrapped in a blanket sitting on Hampstead Heath.

This week has seen the early introduction of my winter hat. I love it so much I wish I could wear it at times where it is not acceptable to wear a hat with bobbles on it.

Time to think about what to make for tea.....

Seabass and Spiders

Tonight I ate a particularly delicious meal......

Pan fried seabass with warm tomato,pepper and chilli salsa with mini roasties with the skin left on. 

Seabass is delicious, it could happily just be accompanied by a squeeze of lemon and some olive oil. If you can get some from the fishmonger, that's the best thing to do but don't worry if you have to go to Tescos. The fishmonger in Manchester's Arndale market will give you 3 for a fiver. However if you're in the market you probably won't end up eating the sebass that night as all the other delicious food stalls will tempt you away.

Tonight I used Seabass from my Tesco Big Shop which was in fact called Basa  - The basa fish, Pangasius bocourti, is a type of catfish in the family Pangasiidae. Basa are native to the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam and Chao Phraya basin in Thailand. So remember that if you are ever on Uni Chal. It wasn't quite as nice but the salsa was so delicious it didn't matter.


This recipe will feed two. You will need...


2 seabass fillets
A couple of potatoes (doesn't matter which kind, I used some old ones that have been in our dishwasher for a few weeks and they tasted fine)


For the salsa
Tomatoes (I used half a pack of plum tomatoes which are very sweet so make a good salsa, but if you don't have them to hand chuck any old ones in)
Garlic (4 cloves)
2 small onions
A fresh chilli
Sugar
Lime
Assorted herbs (I used basil, oregano, salt and pepper)
Half a pepper (colour up to you, red are the queens of the pepper land though)


To make........


Firstly roughly chop up your potatoes, put in a baking tray sprinkle on a bit of salt, pepper and olive oil and put in the oven on 180 for about half an hour. Whilst they are cooking......


For the salsa: 
Chop up the onion, garlic and chilli into fairly small pieces but big enough for fairies to hold in their fingers and then fry in a teaspoon of olive oil till browning.
Add the chopped up tomatoes - squeeze all their innards out as you are putting them in - satisfying and squelchy.
Add the chopped up pepper and give a good stir to the mixture.
Then add a squeeze of lime, a teaspoon of sugar and your 'erbs and spices. Leave to simmer for 20 mins or so.


For the sebass:
Use a pan similar to this:

If you don't have one like that, any frying pan will do. Using one like that just makes you feel a bit more like a proper chef.

Heat up some olive oil and when hot and spitting add the sebass. Fry for a minute on each side then serve.

You might end up with something like this....

If it looks completely different to this you might have made another meal by mistake. 

A story from the weekend....

On Saturday night I rolled over in bed and killed a spider. This is what he looked like....

That is his spider blood next to him. That is in fact what woke me up. Spider blood smells BADMAN.

If anybody reading this has made anything delicious please tell me about it because I love to try other people's food ideas. 

The End. 

Don't spill your soup in a vintage bag.

Last night I went to a my first ever wedding which was lovely, and what made it even more lovely was this....

I ate THEM ALL.

As I haven't done any cooking since my last blogette I shall instead talk about the delicious wedding meal.

Arrival: Prosecco. I smiled a lot at the waiters and waitresses and they kept giving me more prosecco, that is why I don't work very well today. We also had little canapés with tomato purée and parmesan on. Incidentally parmesan has the highest occurrence of natural MSG than any other food.(WOW)

Starter: Leek and potato soup with a few bits in that looked and tasted a bit like chewing gums but I expect it was gnocchi (which is a good word to say out loud). A few months ago someone asked me at the canteen lunch table where my top was from. As I turned around to check the label I knocked a whole cup of Leek and potato soup into a vintage bag which has been in the Power family for about 40 years. Even though I did my best to clean out the bag, it still whiffs a little bit of leek and also the crap soap you get in office toilets which is nice and shiny but not very good at cleaning things.

Main Course: STEAK - I love steak. I would sacrifice my going-out-to-the-pub-on-a-friday-money (which is always a bit more than going out the the pub on a Wednesday money) for a good steak. This one did not disappoint, although I could have handled it slightly rarer. I do think the best way to cook steak is to hold up the steak and say to it 'look there's the pan' and then put it on the plate. However if you do like it a bit more done then heat up a griddle VERY HOT and when boiling put the steak in. 2 mins on each side for medium rare, 4 mins on each side for medium and 6 mins on each side for well done. If anyone ever asks you for steak well done though you should just eat their steak for them as they clearly don't deserve it.

Pudding: Lemon tart with what I think was raspberry sorbet. At this point though it was quite dark and I'd drunk quite a lot of delicious wine so it could have been made from a different type of berry although not blackberry as then it would have been black not pink. I think lemon is a fantastic fruit to have in a pudding, being more of a savoury than a sweet person I will often choose cheese (also fun to say out loud - it makes you sound like a train) instead of pudding but, put a lemon in it and I'll gobble it down - quick as a bee.

SWEETS

Before home-time there was cheese. It was delicious but after I ate it and drank all the wine my tummy hurt A LOT.

Since doing my blog I have become much better at computers. I can now upload stuff and do linkings.
Finally here is a little joke that you can tell to all your friends.
Q. What do you call a gay chickpea?
A. A houmousexual.

As it is Saturday I'm off to eat toast (delicious and exciting) and clean the bathroom sink (boring, but necessary).

Pringles and Porky Pittas.

Throughout my life Thursdays have always been worstdays. In schooltimes I always had double maths with Mr Low who smelled of Nescafe and hamsters and then after school I probably had a stupid piano lesson.

Today was no exception - a day where everything went wrong, even the seat on my bicycle turned itself upside down back to front on the way home and I had to cycle with my bottom next to the tyre with all boys staring at me funny. Because of this it was time for some naughty pringles and a  tasty recipe which involves about 7 mins preparation and because it's so delicious probably about 3 mins consumption. I call it  'Porky Pittas' .

Recipe: Chop up ANY vegetables you have, tonight I used onion, courgette, pepper, fresh chilli and garlic and put in a baking tray.

Add diced pork - doesn't matter what kind, as long as it's from a pig its fine. Although if you are Jewish or you don't like pork or you don't have any pork to hand use some chicken instead. Also if you are a vegeeeeetarian OMIT the meat full stop as you are not allowed to eat it.

Then on top sprinkle all of or some of the following spices: cajun, chilli, cayenne, all spice and season with a little salt but not too much I am not Rick Stein. 

Put in the oven for 20 mins on 200. If using chicken p'raps a little longer.

Then heat up (in oven or in toaster) a wholemeal pitta bread. Cut in half down the middle so you have two pitta pockets if you will. Spread houmous (meee mous?) in the pockets and stuff with porky vegetable mixture and iceburg letture. And that is literally it. Absolutely delicious. Also boys like it because they think it's a kebab.

Tomorrow I am off to my first ever wedding, which of course is food focused. Back in August I had the choice of salmon, steak or vegeeeetarian option. Of course I chose steak.

Finally, there is a little cricket who has lived outside my bedroom window for the last few months - he must be very hardy to live in Manchester. He is such a noisy fellow! I wonder what will happen to him in the colder times to come....