Month: April 2012

Blogtastic Wedding!

Cooking, Events

So excited that my sister-in-law’s article has just featured on major wedding blog site Rock My Wedding! It was a completely brilliant day and a total honor to be asked to make their cakes.
The design process (for the cakes alone) I think took about 12 months, but I’m not complaining; I got to taste them too and what better excuse for churning out cake after cake than in the name of research!

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This Summer they will have been married a year and even now I cannot believe how much detail and creativity went into everything from the flowers to the cuff-links to the giant Japanese fish windsocks.
Do go and see the full account from my fantastic sister-in-law here: http://www.rockmywedding.co.uk/full-disclosure/

xx

In my bag this week….

In the bag

What does the snazzy London-based freelance food-writer carry around?

…no idea, but here’s what’s in my bag this week:

1. The end of the affair by Graham Greene. I love Graham Greene and I am enjoying this book very much. When I’ve finished it I might even book myself a table at Rules restaurant – it features heavily at the beginning of the book and is apparently one of London’s oldest restaurants

2. Graze boxes. These mail order snacks are super yummy and come in convenient little boxes to scoff anywhere. Great excuse to eat dried fruit, nuts and seeds; www.graze.com

3. These are my new sunglassess…what do you think? Cool? or used car sales?

4. So I’ve heard cold-pressed rapeseed oil is even healthier than olive oil…and because there’s a load of UK producers now that’s a couple less air-miles which I can spend on coffee and chocolate! This little bottle is from Culisse and I was given it by the Culisse people themselves at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair last year. This brand is nice, so is Borderfields.

5. TEA! This week my favourite teas are…Teapigs peppermint, Twinings Morning Detox and Pukka Night Time.

6. Oyster card in my Doctor Who Experience card holder. Brilliant. I also have the lanyard, T-shirt and Poster. I am cool.

7. This purse was £2 from Oxfam in Nottingham, I think it looks like it should belong to Mary Poppins

8. Chapstick, classic

9. Mini grater – I’ve used this for lemon zest, chocolate, nutmeg, garlic and even as a mini strainer, so useful.

10. It’s Easter and there are chocolate mini eggs everywhere! To stop me reaching for the sweet stuff I reckon that if I put a couple of these little chicks on my dinner I can pretend anything is an Easter treat, even salad! Might work 🙂

11. Lemons. Matches my bag and a zingy seasoning alternative to salt

12. AVOCADOS! I love these. My favourite breakfast right now is sourdough toast spread with avocado, topped with a poached egg and a little freshly ground black pepper – ace!

x

 

Sugar Free Easter

Cooking, Recipes

When you’re trying to stick to a new healthy eating plan celebrations and holidays can make huge demands on your willpower.

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I’m trying to make a permanent change to my eating habits to balance out some dodgy hormones. In a nutshell I realised I wasn’t getting anywhere near enough fibre and was consuming far too much sugar.
So far it’s going pretty well. I have been able to swap my firm favourites with very similar whole grain alternatives and am eating plenty of fruit. It’s almost easy, and I’m already feeling the benefits which is brilliant.
But now it’s Easter bank holiday weekend and I can’t have an Easter Egg, slab of simnel cake or a hot crossed bun. I figure if I’m struggling with this; how on earth am I going to get through Christmas?!
The only reason it’s been easy so far is because I’ve been switching things I can’t have (like butter) with things I really like but I can have (like avocados). In order to beat my Easter Blues I have decided to try and make a cake out of the things I can eat, but make it look like something I shouldn’t. Make sense?

Somehow Simnel Cake sounded like the easiest thing to mock up. Plus, I’m staying with a friend in Birmingham at the moment so this seemed like a recipe which wouldn’t leave the kitchen too messy.

I can’t really have cake because it contains refined sugar but I found this recipe for banana bread online. It seems there’s enough sweetness in the bananas so that you don’t need sugar- brilliant.
I substituted the plain flour for wholemeal because I thought I might as well make it as good as possible and I baked it in a round cake tin to further trick my brain. When it came out I let it cool and then sliced it in half through the middle. I sandwiched it back together again with a scrummy paste made from about 25-30 dried dates softened with around 4-5 tablespoons of boiling water (keep adding a splash and mashing them until they are the consistency of thick lemon curd). Add to the date paste half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a dessert spoon of cocoa powder. This made a really sweet chocolate filling ideal for this cake, but it’s also good on toast if you miss the occasional chocolate spread.
Obviously the marzipan was going to be the next hurdle, but i winged it and soaked some dried apricots in the same way as the dates (and about the same amount). Using a hand blender I processed 150-200g of whole almonds into the apricot mix. It turned out like a pale peanut butter. It tasted quite pleasant but I think next time a drop of almond essence would give it a more convincing marzipan flavour.
Finally I lightly grilled the cake to make it look authentic and that was it. Simnel Cake.
It was like eating cake, without the headache inducing sugar rush and probably at least one of my five a day; result!

Happy Easter xxx

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Gnocchi o’clock!

Cooking, Recipes

About a month ago a friend of mine posted this entry on facebook: “1st attempt at gnocchi making and it’s gone very badly wrong”. Underneath this statement was a photograph of a saucepan filled with the offending yellow paste and a wooden spoon which looked like it might never return. I invited her round for a gnocchi masterclass.

I say ‘masterclass’… I have made gnocchi before but that was ages ago and I cannot remember how it turned out. I think it went ok but I honestly have no memory of it either way. She seemed so disheartened that it hadn’t gone well that without thinking I invited her round to make gnocchi with me. I had been joking when I called it a masterclass, but I realise now that I haven’t actually known her for that long so she may have just assumed that I knew what I was talking about. (It’s probably better that I am concerned about this now and not on the day).

She arrived keen to get started and once the kitchen was free from coffee making housemates we got to work. I might not be a gnocchi expert but I know what it feels like when things go wrong in the kitchen. Usually this happens to me when I am being impatient or if I get distracted. It feels so much worse when it’s the mistakes you wouldn’t normally make; over-cooked veg, an undercooked casserole, burnt cake, in my case all of which are almost always followed by my flouncing off into another room dramatically exclaiming “I can’t cook” and “my career is a failure”. I hoped that if I helped my friend resolve her gnocchi nightmare I would simultaneously be sending a metaphysical drop kick to every failed flan, terrible terrine or that lumpy mashed potato I was sorry to serve to my boyfriend’s mother last year.

It was a really fun afternoon and I am pleased to say that we made some rather yummy gnocchi. It was a lot easier than either of us had expected/half remembered. We ate it in the garden until I noticed a hungry squirrel take a strong interest in the hazelnut butter so we ran in.

I really enjoy cooking with other people; sharing the labour of something which might normally be fiddly or complicated and swapping kitchen hints and tips.

If you want to make gnocchi too, here’s what we did:

  1. Take 750g of potatoes and boil them whole and unpeeled for 30 minutes
  2. Drain them, rinse with cold water and leave them to cool.
  3. Peel the potatoes and put them through a potato ricer.
  4. Gradually add 125g of plain flour stirring with a wooden spoon.
  5. Knead the mixture briefly and bring together into 3 lumps. Roll them into thin sausages and chop into small pieces (you’re aiming for boiled sweet size blobs)
  6. Press a fork into the sides to give small line indentations and drop a third of the gnocchi pieces into boiling water
  7. Once they rise to the top, give them about 10 seconds or so and then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and place in a serving dish.
  8. Repeat the process with the rest of the batches.

Add pesto or your favorite cheese or toasted hazelnuts tossed in melted butter. As you may know I’m trying to change some of my eating habits at the moment so I made mine with butternut squash in place of potato and used wholemeal flour. The mixture needed more flour than the potato version and I stuck an egg in too (for luck!) The butternut squash version is great with the hazelnut butter, mint leaves and feta and I served the classic version with a simple salsa verde made with mint, parsley, basil, capers, lemon juice and oil.

Say hello to these dudes!

Cooking

You know when people tell you they’re not good at cooking by saying “I can’t even make toast”, well whatever the gardening equivalent of that phrase is then I’m it. This is why I am currently jumping up and down at the sight of these dudes! My new tarragon seedlings, aren’t they cute. Wish me luck!