Crab cakes and updates

Cooking, Events, Recipes

I think I may have finally found a way to survive the dreaded “so what do you do?” question and the inspiration came from the depths of my childhood; the TV show Blue Peter.

I always find it difficult to say “I’m doing an assortment of food-related and profile-boosting activities with the sole purpose of one day opening a restaurant” it’s a mouthful, and generally sounds a bit odd. Then I remembered that when the Blue Peter team wanted to reach a goal they used a totalizer. On the show, every time they reached a milestone in their charity campaign the totalizer would light up a new level. I can’t build anything quite so impressive (and I probably shouldn’t as it might be disrespectful to their charity work) but I can draw a career plan with a picture of my restaurant at the end and post it on my about page. I’ll update it with each step along the way until I get there, by that time the internet will have advanced and there’ll no doubt be a widget to make it light up and fling out confetti.
Now when people ask me what I do I can say, “Hi, I’m a food blogger please read my about page”…

… and then I can leg it 🙂

The rehearsals for my TV pilot are going well too; am coping ok now with the whole talking into the camera thing by pretending the lens is that Johnny five robot from the 1980s film Short Circuit, I’m not sure why this helps but I’m gonna go with it.
As soon as we get a location confirmed we’ll start filming so watch this space for updates!

The second big collaborative project is the events company, Taylor & Nice which my new business partner Bradley and I are starting up. We had loads of fun launching our website at the weekend. We hit the shops early on Saturday and spent the rest of the day (and evening) churning out countless canapés and cocktails to liven up the PowerPoint presentations. I would definitely recommend giving your focus group booze and nice food they are bound to love you idea!

One of the best things about hosting a launch party/focus group for a catering venture is that the fridge is full of leftovers for quite a few days afterwards. This has led to a string of easy dinners and last nights Crab Cakes were no exception. In fact the tinned crab and curry paste were surplus items from filming rehearsals and the chilli jam and salad were from the bash. It was lovely to pull together ingredients from these two projects, an edible reminder that I have actually started making good use of my time by working and watching a little less of our Fraiser box set!

Crab cakes

Take 4 medium sized potatoes and boil for 12-15 minutes or until soft.
While the potatoes are boiling chop a handful of flat leaf parsley and put it in a mixing bowl with a tin of crab meat chunks, a tin of dressed crab and a little lime zest. I also added a tiny bit (about 1/4 teaspoonful) of Thai green curry paste but that’s optional.
When the potatoes are ready mash them till smooth and then fold them into the other ingredients.
Shape into 4 fishcakes and coat in breadcrumbs before shallow frying until golden brown
Serve with chilli jam, green salad and mashed avocado.

As Taylor and Nice is just starting out we would be really grateful for your ideas and feedback, if you have a few moments please do fill out our short survey on what makes a good night out in London. xx

Faster Flatbread!

Recipes

I first made these because I couldn’t be bothered to go to the shops and buy bread, but they tasted so good I started whipping up batches of homemade hummus, baba ganoush or smashed avocado to serve with them at dinner parties!
They take almost no time at all and the mess is minimal (which is always a bonus.)

Here I use wholemeal flour because that’s what I prefer to eat and I have found it harder to find wholemeal wraps or flatbread in the shops, but do mess about with the recipe and try different flours or perhaps a mixture of plain and wholemeal.

Wholemeal Flat breads
makes 4 (which is probably enough for 2 people)

Ingredients

1 cup of wholemeal plain flour, plus extra for dusting & rolling
1/2 cup of water
1 dessertspoonful of oil (any vegetable oil is fine)

Method

1) Stir all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
2) Dust the chopping board with flour
3) Knead the dough just enough to bring it together
4) Divide into four pieces and roll out into side-plate sized circles, about 2-3mm thick
5) Dry fry each flat bread in a non-stick frying pan on a high heat. Cook for a few minutes, turning regularly, until they turn a slightly paler shade and develop golden brown blotches.
6) Serve warm, sliced with dips or leave to cool and use as wraps (although they are slightly more brittle than the shop-bought ones so they may snap). I had mine with a poached egg – delicious!

Wedding Weekend

Events, Recipes

This weekend I went to the wedding of Richard’s friends Kate & Sam.
The happy couple had arranged for all the guests to stay in groups in lodges at a holiday park in Woodhall Spa. It was great, each lodge was crossed between a modern apartment and a log cabin in the woods…each one complete with a hot tub on the patio!

We arrived on Friday night with a box of homemade cookies and a few goodies from the supermarket deli counter.
We figured that cookies would be good to share with the other guests at whatever time we arrived and would last the weekend. We made these double chocolate chip cookies from the Hummingbird Bakery recipe which you can find here.

And we made our own cranberry, cherry, oat and white chocolate ones too which also went down a treat. (see below for the recipe)

We unpacked the cookies and the booze and then opened the fridge to pile in the cheeses and cured meats we had brought, then suddenly burst into a fit of giggles when we realised that a couple of other guests had clearly had exactly the same idea, resulting in an extremely well stocked “assiette” fridge!

After being introduced to what felt like a hundred smiling new faces I sloped off to bed, sleepy from all the baking and travelling.

The following day was the wedding, it was wonderful, a really happy occasion. The bride looked brilliant in a dramatic white dress with lace accessories. I was particularly impressed that when the celebrations moved to the reception party Kate’s dress was swiftly altered to become slightly shorter for dancing and her fascinator was discreetly swapped for a tiny top hat with feathers as a nod to the Alice in Wonderland theme.

We shared a barbecue meal, drank pink champagne and signed our names on pieces of Jenga for a guest book that they can play with over the years to come: Genius!

Later on Richard and I pulled out a bottle of tequila and everyone started dancing to the live ska band (who to my surprise were the same band who played at my graduation in Norwich in 2006 and, fuelled by tequila, I proceeded to bore everyone I could about this coincidence).
The tequila was pretty special too because I had half remembered something I had seen on tv – the theory is that if it’s 100% agave you don’t feel hungover the next day. I would not wish to encourage binge drinking but I am starting to find that even one glass of wine can give me a bit of a hazy head the following morning and surely anything that’s 100% something sounds pretty good right? We found such a product in Waitrose called “el Jimador” so I decided we should give it a whirl.

Sunday arrived and I got up feeling sleepy but not as grotty as I had expected (thanks agave!) and we headed out for a quick round of crazy golf before hitting the road.

Big congratulations to the lovely Kate and Sam, wishing you lots of happiness xxx

Cranberry, Cherry, Oat & White Chocolate Cookies

Makes 18-20 cookies

Ingredients

85g butter, at room temperature
115g light brown sugar
1 egg
115g self-raising flour
55g rolled oats
100g of white chocolate, chopped
45g of dried cranberries
35g of glacé cherries, sliced
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Method

1) Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF, gas mark 4). Line a baking sheet with a piece of grease proof paper.

2) Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy in a free standing mixer with the paddle attachment, then beat in the egg.

3) Add the flour and cinnamon and beat once more until thoroughly combined, then fold in the oats, cranberries, cherries and chocolate

4) Drop rounded dessertspoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheet, leaving enough space around each cookie to allow it to spread during baking. Bake the cookies in batches – I made about 9 cookies each time and just changed the grease proof paper for each batch.

5) Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown at the edges. Cool slightly on the paper, then transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely. I keep forgetting to buy a wire rack so a few sheets of kitchen paper on a plate works ok too.

Super fast cakes!

Recipes

To make myself more productive I have taken on lots of collaborative projects as working with others makes me work harder.

This week meant a second meeting with Helen & Sophia who are to be the brains behind my next YouTube cookery show. I am extremely lucky to work with them, they are possibly some of the most professional and talented people I have ever met and I am constantly terrified of letting them down which pushes me on to make sure the scripts are done on time and the recipe is properly tested. Eeek!

This meeting was no different, I made sure my “homework” of completing the first draft of the script was ready and I had a quick tidy round. About 15 minutes before they were due to arrive I suddenly decided that I should give them something to eat. Cake; cakes are always good, right? But 15 minutes is a bit of a push even for me but most foodies have at least one or two solid recipes they can pull out at a moments notice and this is mine.

Orange Buns:

(excuse the imperial measurements – it’s the one recipe which I don’t do metric – weird, I know)

For the cakes:

4oz self raising flour

4oz of sugar

4oz butter, melted

2 free range eggs

1/2 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda

zest of 1 orange

juice of half an orange

For the frosting:

2 tablespoons of cream cheese

juice of half an orange

icing sugar to taste

1 passionfruit to serve.

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°c

Line a 12 hole bun tin with cake cases – this is brilliant for speedy cooking because you don’t need to grease the tin!

Mix all the cake ingredients together and whisk with a handheld electric whisk until smooth and pale.

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the cake cases dividing it evenly and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cakes are cooked through (check by inserting a cocktail stick – if it comes out clean then they are ready)

Put the cakes on a wire rack to cool and get back to the meeting!

Sneak back to the kitchen and mix up the frosting, adding a dessertspoonful of icing sugar at a time until it tastes sweet enough to your liking. Whisk until smooth then plonk dollops of the frosting onto the cooled cakes. Top with a few passionfruit seeds and serve. Winner!

Vegan in the house

Recipes

Richard is rehearsing for Kin right now and we have the stage manager, Liam staying with us. He arrived straight from Heathrow airport on Tuesday night after spending the last 18 months travelling. It must have been a bit of a shock to his system to be thrown straight into a busy London theatre schedule only hours after stepping of a plane from a very extended holiday in India. Richard had made some pork and lentil stew with some boiled grain mix so there was plenty left over to heat up when he arrived, but on the realisation that Liam was Vegan I quickly began frying plantain, toasting sunflower seeds and slicing avocado in blind panic. I have never cooked Vegan food before because I know so few. Luckily he seemed happy enough with the strange plate of grains, seeds, vegetables and salad I handed to him but I felt that I really should come up with some proper food to give him next time.

I asked a few leading questions to find out what sort of food he likes and last night, after consulting a handful of vegetarian cook books and a whole host of vegan blogs I decided to try and make him a decent meal.

I found it extremely hard at first because it seemed to me that almost every thing I like to make included egg, yoghurt or cheese somewhere so I really had to concentrate and not finish sauces with butter or add a splash of milk to anything. I chose to make these Vegan Bangers and Mash and a Carrot cake recipe I found online and I think, for my first attempt at Vegan cookery it wasn’t too bad.

Vegan Sausages

Ingredients

1 punnet of mushrooms, weighing around 400g, finely diced

2 small onions finely diced

1 clove of garlic, crushed

100g of oats

1 tbsp of wholemeal flour (plus extra for coating)

1 tbsp of peanut butter

dried thyme

tsp of fresh herbs like savoury, chives or flat leaf parsley

salt and black pepper

Olive oil

Method

Fry the mushrooms in a little olive oil until cooked through. Place in a large mixing bowl and then fry the onions. When they start to soften add to the mushrooms. Into the mushrooms and onion mix add the flour, oats, peanut butter, herbs garlic and seasoning. Stir really well squashing and mashing everything together. (I blitzed mine in the hand blender very very slightly so that it stuck together a little better but still kept lots of chunks of mushroom and onion, I won’t lie, it’s not a pretty mixture but it will turn out ok).

Leave the mixture to cool until it is cold enough to handle. Put about 2 or 3 tablespoons of flour onto a plate and dust your hands with flour too – the mixture is sticky – and shape the mixture into 9 sausages. Roll them in the flour and then shallow fry in a little more olive oil until golden brown.

I served mine with mashed potato (made with soya milk and olive oil) with spinach and nutmeg folded though it and a splash of onion and rosemary gravy.

For dessert we had this Carrot Cake from the Permaculture Magazine website. Although, I didn’t have any maple syrup so I used honey which was still really nice…big slices got eaten so I suspect that is a good sign.

When Jack came to stay.

Cooking, Recipes

Jack is my sister-in-law’s brother…or my brother’s brother-in-law . . . surely there has to be a shorter way of saying this.

Anyway, Jack has been asking for my help to prepare for his new university course in digital games design. His background is in engineering which, excitingly, means all his digital designs of trains and cars would actually work if made in real life. The other students on the course are likely to have come from art courses and Jack wanted to hang out with me and try and get up to speed on arty fartiness! I found a timeline of art history, selected some examples of key pieces I like and why, and came up with this analogy to help him evaluate works of art.

“Lashings of Orange Juice & Lemonade”

The best thing I could come up with was “orange juice and lemonade”. Normally this is a mocktail, perhaps chosen by designated drivers down the pub or anyone in need of a quick thirst-quenching sugary hit.

I use it to explain art (I promise there is method to this madness):

The orange juice represents the conceptual integrity of the work, the idea, story or message that the artist wishes to communicate with the viewer.
The lemonade is representative of the aesthetic quality or the level of technical skill required to produce the work.

And finally:

The glass in which these liquids are poured is my perception of the piece.

For example; I feel that a painting like John by Chuck Close would be a full glass of lemonade – this is because of the incredible photorealistic quality requiring enormous technical skill. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp is a urinal (which he didn’t make himself, basically he just chose it to exhibit to challenge the art world). In its historical context this is a brilliant and humorous thing; a big glass of orange juice for me! Another of my favourite paintings is Empire of Light by René Magritte. In my opinion this is a large glass of both orange juice and lemonade in equal quantities. Check it out if you haven’t see it before.

I use this analogy because it reminds me to split my evaluation into an analysis of the concept and of the aesthetic quality. Also, it’s a little less risky to go around a small gallery whispering to your friend “barely a drop of orange juice in this one, no lemonade either” rather than “that’s a rubbish painting, the message it is trying to convey is weak and it’s not very well drawn”.

We spent the rest of the day loading up on coffee and creativity. We discussed conceptual art in the Tate Modern, grabbed a quick lunch from the stalls at Borough Market and then went sketching in the V&A. We arrived home with sensory and caffeine overloads and completely drenched from a downpour.

After a quick change I took a look in the kitchen cupboard to see what I could do for dinner. We were due at a party that evening; a fundraiser for the production of As You Like It which my boyfriend Richard is currently performing in – catch it quick before it ends on the 19th of May!

The party was 1920s fancy dress and aptly named Jazz You Like It! Knowing there would likely be a number of cocktails (and we all still needed time to get dressed up) a speedy-stomach lining meal was required. Manwiches seemed the only answer!

Manwiches

Roast a selection of your favourite root veggies, garlic and onions in olive oil or cold pressed rapeseed oil.
Toast some thick slices of bread and spread both sides with hummus (store bought is fine)
Pile in the roast vegetables, sprinkle with zahtar mix and some crumbled feta and form the sandwich with the other slice of toasted bread.

Scrummy! If you are about to go out on the tiles I suggest you scoff these before you get your glad rags on- they’re mighty messy!

The party was brilliant, there was a raffle and Jack won an hour of personal martial arts and fitness training! We donated a dinner party for 4 which we shall be cooking in the winner’s house…a blog post for another day I predict.

Happy cooking!

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.

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

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:

Take 750g of potatoes and boil them whole and unpeeled for 30 minutes
Drain them, rinse with cold water and leave them to cool.
Peel the potatoes and put them through a potato ricer.
Gradually add 125g of plain flour stirring with a wooden spoon.
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)
Press a fork into the sides to give small line indentations and drop a third of the gnocchi pieces into boiling water
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.
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.

Sundays & Smoothies

Cooking, Recipes

Last weekend I went to visit my brother and his wife in Hampshire. We spent a sunny Saturday at the allotment getting the plot ready for their first crops and looking at creepy crawlies!

After a well deserved lie-in on the Sunday morning I woke to find my sister-in-law Em and her brother Jack in the kitchen making us all a big batch of blueberry pancakes.

They were really scrummy and made with blueberries and cornmeal they were superfoodtastic! Em used this recipe from Martha Stewart but made it even more exciting by laying out a great selection of toppings. We had maple syrup, honey, almonds, bananas, walnuts and seeds to choose from.

Blueberry Pancake Toppings

This weekend I’ve gone smoothie mad! Smoothies have always ended up being a bit of a fad for me as I’ve tried a few times to have one a day but I often end up finding that the effort involved in cleaning the juicer/blender/jug/processor always outweighed the yumminess of the end result.

This new wave of smoothie love started off badly with my 10 year old hand blender dying a death. With a sliced banana in one hand I hurled it into my housemate’s blender and haven’t looked back. It even has a smoothie setting and completely purees an orange in seconds. It’s easy to clean too, I just whizz up some hot water and a smidge of washing up liquid and then rinse it – hoorah!

This morning’s smoothie was really simple and made enough for 2 large glasses:

Blend 2 peeled oranges with 2 peeled bananas until smooth. Pour into tall glasses and top each one with all the innards of half a passion fruit!

Other smoothie combos I’m gluzzling at the moment:

Orange, banana, pear, fresh ginger, pinch of spirulina
Orange, carrot, ginger

To keep up my smoothie-enthusiasm I need to get experimenting, next up I’m thinking cucumber, mint, apple and limes. Maybe some herbs too; strawberries, lemon, basil and black pepper might be nice in the summer…would love to hear some of your suggestions or your trusted favourite smoothie combos. x

Miriam Nice

creative – author – presenter

Recipes

Crab cakes and updates

Faster Flatbread!

Wedding Weekend

Super fast cakes!