One Year On - Chicken and Chorizo Pasta

Well it all began a year ago today and because I a) can't let go just yet and b) still feel guilty that I didn't manage a picture of the very first recipe I tried, I decided to make it again to bring my year full circle.  In fact, I've just realised that if I was to re-cook every recipe that I did over the last year on the same date for the next 12 months, I could avoid the cleaning until 2013.  Now there's a plan....

Actually, it's been quite refreshing today to not have to worry about finding the time to cook something new and photograph and write about it.  When the food plan for today got de-railed by the weather, it didn't matter that what I'd planned for tea was in jeopardy.  Nobody would've cared if I'd not made and blogged about the recipe other than me.

I kept pondering if anyone would care if I skipped a day throughout the last year.  I managed not to with some careful planning and creative thinking at times.  And I've been touched by the number of tweets and emails I've had from people asking if it's really all over.  Although 48,000 page views in just 366 days shows that people are reading the blog, the messages really mean something because it makes me know there are some people out there who actually take the time to read what I write and don't just click a link from Google and then wander off elsewhere when faced by the waffle.

I also spend a lot of time if people are more interested in what I've cooked or what I'm waffling/whining on about on any given day.  Today, the husband gave me perfect blog fodder - which I'll save for the next instalment of my blogging voyage.  I often get asked about if he minds me writing about him.  In truth he does, but he also knows that it's my way of working out my issues with him and laughing at stuff that would otherwise have me down at the doctors looking for narcotics.

366 days on, still need to work on presentation!

What surprised me most was yesterday when I said I'd completed the last of the 366 recipes and posts and there was no more blog and he looked me incredulously and said 'what never ever?  Aren't you going to at least do one a week or something?'  After his comment when I watched Julie and Julia the other day, I was floored that he was happy for me to continue in some way.

Whatever, thank you to everyone who has been with me on this journey.  From the tweets of support, to the bloggers who have let me try and blog about their recipes (in no particular order Sadia, Mike, the two Jules', Dan, Rachel, Fi, Cathryn, Paul and Jaim); Dan Lepard for being the nicest cookbook writer ever and for making my day and following me on Twitter; my Twitter 'Family' (Paul, Kate, Dicky and Maria), Sarah-Jane for letting me coerce her into starting Cake Club; Ewan for letting me join the Olympic Food Challenge; my gorgeous cousin Laura who inspired the blog in the first place; Miss A for keeping me in cracked eggs when it's been a baking day; my second-chief cake tester* who was the best mentor ever; and all other those poor souls who've taken one for the blog and had cake foisted on them (it's a tough job, but someone had to do it).  There's no way I could've made it without you all.

And the biggest thanks of all to my long-suffering husband.  Thank you for betting me that I wouldn't make it - I don't think there's anyone else on this planet that would have made me stick to this challenge so stubbornly as you did.  Thank you for attempting to eat some of the 366 recipes.  I don't thank you for your non-constructive feedback - saying 'I don't like it because I don't like it' is not particularly helpful!  Thank you for putting up with all the washing up - especially when the dishwasher broke right on top of Christmas.  Thank you for moving my cookbooks to the most prominent bookshelf in the house at the weekend and for not burning them as promised.  And thank you for giving me the opportunity to carry on experimenting and writing - even if it is less frequently than before.

So on to the recipe.  Well I enjoyed it just as much as I think I did a year ago when I first tried it.  This time I put creme fraiche in it which made it quite rich.  I also seemed to have masses of pasta - which wasn't bad because I'd not had a proper lunch today (Vanilla Coconut PowerBars do not a good lunch make) but if I make it again, I'd probably drop the pasta to 60g per head - especially as the husband insists on garlic bread with his.  And it definitely needs some green stuff on the side.  I couldn't be faffed to buy rocket which I won't use the rest of this week so salvaged the last tiny bit of my dying basil plant to perch on the top for the picture.

Here's the link to the original recipe which I also neglected to post a year ago.

*Miss A was obviously the first!

BBC Good Food Coffee Semi Freddo with Dan Lepard's Caramel Sauce

I'm known for bemoaning my husband's lack of interest in what I do.  Tonight was one of those nights when I wish he'd ignored what I was doing.  Because I had to end up sharing possibly one of my favourite dishes of this year.

With days to go and a whole heap of work and personal stuff going on, I've not had a minute to sit down and leaf through my cookery books and have to confess to increasingly resorting to t'internet to help me track down suitable recipes.  Instead of focussing on the end of this challenge, my mind has already raced ahead to future projects (writing for other blogs, Christmas hampers, my own new blog, getting back into running).  I'm probably in denial that I'm going to have a huge hole in my evenings between the child going to bed and my own bedtime and need to find something to fill it before the husband makes me do cleaning.

So this in turn led to lots of middle of the night 'window-shopping' on the BBC Good Food website where I happened across this recipe for semi-freddo.  I would love to visit Italy one day - it's something I doubt that will happen with my husband as he always gets to choose our holiday - but a girl can dream.  I want to stuff my face full of pasta although I'm less keen on gelato.  So the idea of making semi-freddo was a bit of a hit and miss chance.

Messy, but soooo tasty

For the uninitiated, semi-freddo is basically a frozen mousse so there's no faffy churning like you'd get with real ice cream.  It's texture is far lighter and it melts quite quickly so is more like an ice-cream that's been out of the freezer for a fair while.

The BBC recipe recommends using Toblerone but I could only get hold of a massive one and in my world, Toblerone is something you only ever buy in duty free and scoff on holiday (I did this once with one of the 2kg packs and it's pretty much put me off of Toblerone for life).  So I went with Green and Black's Burnt Toffee chocolate instead.

To complement the ice cream, and because I love caramel syrup with my lattes, I made Dan Lepard's Caramel Sauce from Short and Sweet and spiked it with a healthy dose of sea salt.  This stuff is lethally addictive.  I tested it several times to get the sugar/cream/salt ratio correct to ensure the slightly burnt flavour wasn't too intense but complimented the coffee and burnt toffee chocolate flavours.  Then I tested it several times more just to check for consistency as it cooled of course.  And a few more times for luck.  It's a good job I only made half the recipe or I'd be in a sugar-induced coma right now.

I did the same with the semi-freddo - making it in my 500g loaf tin.  The tin is long and shallow so the slices aren't as elegant as on the BBC website but it's all about the taste for this post.  Plus I thought I would be eating it all (over a few days of course) and semi-freddo apparently doesn't keep well with the egg whites forming little frozen blobs after a few days.

I won't be able to test this theory.  Especially now.  Because for the first time since last November when I made Mary Berry's chocolate roulade, the husband seemed hell bent on stalking my every move all evening.  He normally slumps in front of the telly until midnight but everywhere I went he was a couple of paces behind.  Consequently, he asked to try a bit of my pudding.  He ate half of one slice and said he liked it but then insisted that I make him his own bowlful.

I left him watching the X-Files to come and eat mine in peace and type this post but knowing him as I do, he will have licked the bowl completely clean.  And I when I say licked, I mean licked.

This is definitely on the make again list.  You can find the semi-freddo recipe here.  For the caramel sauce, you can use this recipe here although the one from Short and Sweet doesn't use butter or golden syrup and is flavoured with vanilla bean paste and a touch of salt (or a big pinch for the salted caramel I used)

BBC Good Food Paprika Pork

I bought some pork belly a few weeks back with the intention of cooking something from Bulgaria (or somewhere) for the Olympic Food Challenge.  It's been clogging up my freezer ever since as pork is something that is definitely not on the menu in our house*.  In fact, since I've known my husband, I've only cooked pork once - which was a rather yummy satay pork and apple dish for this challenge a couple of months ago.

With just a few days left of this self-imposed year of cooking something new, I knew I had to do something with that pork before it got left to languish in the freezer for a couple of years and then ended up in the bin as it was long past its freezer-life date.  Having thumbed relentlessly through my recipe books, there was nothing that was quick and easy for a work night so I took to good food where I found the paprika pork recipe.

This particularly appealed because my Grandma used to make a turkey-based dish just like this when I lived at home, served with tricolore pasta twists**.  It was during a particularly difficult period in my life when my mother had just 'abandoned' me in favour of her first husband.  My mother had never liked the dish and I swear that my gran used to make it whenever my mum was coming to visit just to spite her on my behalf.  My Grandma was an amazing woman and always saw both sides of every story, but in this case, she didn't approve of the husband and approved even less that my mum effectively picked her own happiness over her daughter and so I'm sure this was her secret way of making a point.

As the dish was cooking last night, all I could hear in my head was my mother going 'Oh no.  Not smoky turkey again, you know how I hated that'.  To make the dish authentic, I added red and green peppers which give it a little colour through the thick sauce and they're also great for bulking out the dish a bit if you're stretching it to feed a few extra mouths (or if you're just greedy like me).

Not one for my family - I didn't even bother to try convincing them to try it after the 'stinky winky sauce' of last night - but something I'll make again in the future, probably with chicken when it's just me and Miss A for tea and her palate's developed a little.

You can find the original recipe here.  I added the equivalent of two bell peppers to the dish if you were making it for four and fried them with the onions.


*Unless you count bacon and sausages
**So Nineties

BBC Good Food Hidden Vegetable Sauce

"I don't like that.  It's stinky winky!" came the plaintive voice from the dinner table.  I was in the kitchen photographing my own plateful and I knew at that moment that I'd failed.

I'm sure you've guessed from the title that I was trying to fool Miss A into eating vegetables.  It's one of those great bugbears of parenting.  The child who won't eat vegetables.  Thankfully, because I don't have the opportunity to hang round with many other mothers for more than a few minutes - apart from a minute or two's snatched conversation in the Ladies' with equally harrassed looking female colleagues who are also trying to juggle parenting and working - I've not had the misfortune of coming across one of those awfully smug mothers whose child eats every vegetable placed in front of it.

It smells quite nice, actually

Awful person that I am, I almost wept tears of joy when one day I spotted one of my neighbours returning with their child from McDonalds*.  Although deep down I know that Happy Meals are nothing like they were when I was young (I have only read about this in the papers), I was just a little bit smug that Abigail has never been inside the place.  And if I have anything to do with it, won't go in there until she's in her teens.

In fairness, my neighbour is a keen cook and on the rare occasions when we've spent time together, I've nodded sympathetically whilst she bemoaned her own child's adventurous palate.  It's so heartening to hear honesty from another mother.  Women of a certain age and background willing to admit that their child is far from perfect are as rare as hen's teeth.

The closest Miss A comes to eating vegetable is having a bit of lettuce in her mini fajitas.  It's been a trial over this past year to get her to eat meat.  I am proud to say that she no longer has fish fingers or pasta for tea every night and will eat chicken or steak or meatballs with aplomb.  But despite her eating fajitas, she'll religiously pick out every trace of onion and pepper.  It's also difficult to hide them as I make her mini wraps using a pastry cutter from a big tortilla.  They're barely big enough to hold a piece of chicken so the veg is really obvious.

Pretty colours

So tonight's experiment was to make this tomato-based sauce which is rammed solid with carrots, leeks,  peppers, onions and celery.  I thought it would be a good thing to do regularly as I usually end up with various leftovers of all of those rotting slowly in the bottom of my fridge.  In winter I'd throw them in soup but in summer they wilt until I end up feeding them to the dogs.

The sauce is really nice.  Its smell is reminiscent of my grandmother's minestrone and despite processing, it keeps a good texture.  The addition of balsamic gives it a little kick.  Sadly, Miss A didn't like it and although I didn't dare serve it to the husband, he took one sniff and agreed that it was 'stinky winky' and then asked what was in it in his own inimitable style.  The answer did nothing to persuade him it was worth trying.

But it freezes well so I have now stocked up on a great, healthy pasta sauce for me to eat all to myself.  And the grumpy pair can just have plain pasta with cheese.

You can find the original recipe here.

*I wonder what Mrs Sconegate would have to say about that?

Silvana Franco's Patatas Bravas

I think I should have been born Spanish.  Tapas definitely appeals to my inability to make a decision.  I hate going to a restaurant where I want to try just about everything on the menu and have to commit to one dish per course.  If I luck out on what I choose, then fantastic.  But if I pick something and it's below the par of my expectation then I spend the rest of the evening (or if you ask my husband, the rest of the week) mithering on about how I wish I'd chosen something else.  Give me a restaurant where you have three choices per course and only one of those is chicken or vegetarian and I'm happy.

I did manage to save a bit for a picture

On the other hand, I love tapas. Because you can order lots of little portions of different things without feeling terribly greedy and if I don't like one thing, there's always something else I'll like.  Plus I can order something I'm not quite so sure about and if I like it, then happy days; if I don't then I can just compensate myself with an extra spoonful of something else.

When we first moved to the sticks, there were only Chinese or Indian restaurants in town.  Italian was limited to Pizza Express - and at a push you could just about say that Pizza Hut was the alternative.  Or fish and chips (which Buckles do very well thank you).  Anything else and you had to travel.  We now have a lovely tapas restaurant, which I'm dying to try.  But I just know it's not the husband's type of place and being a full time working mother, there's just been no time to cultivate relationships with other women* in order for me to suggest it as a venue.

So today, given that it was meant to be sunny and I had the house to myself for a whole hour and a half (the child was having her nap, the husband was out) I decided to make myself patatas bravas to go with the six grain loaf** I'd knocked up earlier.

The recipe was simple enough - a bit of chopping; pop the stuff in the pan; wait impatiently for it to cook; get disturbed by husband coming home early; don't eat as planned due to domestic issues; stand in the kitchen later on eating cold patatas bravas straight from the pan and consequently feel sick from overeating.

Really really liked it and it's a great way to use up leftover new potatoes.  We rarely use them and I normally end up letting half the bag go rotten.  So now, I will be really good and use them up making patatas bravas instead.  The only thing missing was the sunshine and a glass of chilled white or Rijoa.  There's always a next time.

You can find the recipe here.

*I do know other mothers but most of them either make me feel totally inadequate for working full time or just make me want to stab myself in the eyeball with a fork with their competitive mothering antics.  And if any of them read this blog, I'm sure they'll dislike me even more!
**Flour purchased from Wessex Mill.  First time I've made a brown loaf that the husband has liked.  Result!

Barney Desmazary's Lobster with Thermidor Butter

Okay, I wimped out in the end.  I just wasn't brave enough to buy myself a real, live lobster and so ended up with a pre-cooked one instead.  In my defence, living a fair distance from a decent fishing port means that live lobsters are hard to come by.  Some research on the t'internet revealed a fishmonger on a farm shop some forty miles from here.  As I was only cooking this for me, I really couldn't justify the petrol and expense of a huge, live lobster.  At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Pinchy's final mug shot

I've mentioned before how I'm a bit of a wuss and if I had to kill my own food, I'd be a confirmed vegetarian before you could say 'peanut butter on celery'.  Had I gotten my hands on a live lobster, I most certainly would've been tempted to be like Homer Simpson and turn it into a pet.

That particular Simpsons episode evoked memories of a holiday on the Isle of Wight with friends of my mother.  I was probably about five or six at the time and they drove an estate car which back then, we kids just used to ride in the boot of.  That particular summer, we got to share the boot with the world's most ginormous live lobster.  I swear blind that it lived in the boot of that car for most of the two weeks of our holiday.  I don't know why it was there or what was meant to happen to it but it definitely happened as there's a picture of us all sat in the back of the boot somewhere at my mum's house.

Anyhoo, having avoided the need to choose between stabbing the poor thing through the head or flinging it into a pot of boiling water, I turned to Dame Mary for advice on how to cut and clean the lobster.  There are a squillion and one online guides on how to do this, but the trusty 'Know How' section in Mary's Complete Cookery Book (the original one, not the re-released one Amazon now peddle) has a step-by-step pictorial and I just knew that I'd be safe with Mary at the helm.

One downside of having a cooked lobster was that the husband failed to be terrorised by it.  He's a bigger wuss than I am and will not remove spiders or moths from bedrooms nor will he collect seaweed with Miss A at the seaside.  On the other hand, Miss A wanted to play with pinchy and had a full on meltdown as I tried to explain that he was for tea.

It's lobster, not mini octopusses.  Or octopi??

I now also know that I wouldn't ever want to get into a fight with a lobster.  It was pretty easy to knife through the shell but ouchy - those claws have got some nasty sharp bits on the outside when you're trying to extract the lovely claw meat.

I'd originally intended to serve it with Thomasina Miers' pumpkin mole but forgot the coriander (next time I see langoustines, I'm so doing that recipe) so I went for thermidor butter instead.  Next problem was assuming it was possibly to change a nappy in the time it would take for the wine to reduce from 150ml to not much at all.  Wrong.  Burnt shallots do not taste good.  Nor do shallots burnt in white wine that has been open for several weeks.  Oops.  Did I mention I rarely drink?

I got there in the end.  I must say the mustard was slightly overpowering - but that may have been just the brand that I had (Waitrose own) or that I used a little too much.  Other than that, it was a really simple recipe and should I ever find myself cooking a meal for another lobster lover, it's great because you can prep both the butter and lobster well in advance of serving.  Chances of that are probably less than zero but hey - you never know what life may bring you.

You can find the recipe I used here.

Angela Nilsen's Twice Baked Cheese Souffles

Having been lulled into a false sense of souffle-making-knack-security when I made Kerstin Losch's Mousse di Limao for the Olympic Food Challenge, I figured that I was expert enough to pull off these twice baked souffles.

First bake....

I first happened across the recipe in Good Food Magazine a few months back and filed it away in the 'to do list' as a tick in the 'learn to souffle' box.  It also had the added bonus of being cheesy and low in calories so it was definitely a must-make.

Because the recipe is done in two stages, it allowed me to start it off on Sunday and then finish it today for dinner, thus claiming the recipe for today (my blog, my rules!).  With a full day of Prince2, including the practitioner exam late in the afternoon, I knew I'd be pushing it.  Any other Thursday, I'd've probably given into the hubby's demands for a chippy tea, but now he's on this health kick, chippy trips are banned (by him, not me for once).  But it forced me to not give up on this madcap challenge at the last fence.

Things started well on Sunday with the really cheesy sauce.  The roux is made from olive oil with just a touch of butter.  I'm not sure if the oil makes a difference but for once, I didn't have to battle to beat lumps from the sauce.  The addition of parmesan, Philly, chives and mustard made an amazing tasting cheese sauce.  I carefully folded in the whipped eggs as instructed and set them in the oven to bake in a bain marie.

....second bake....Disaster!

They rose well.  I timed them.  They looked cooked.  I left them to cool, and then ejected them from their pots.  Not good.  All three broke coming out of the mould - it looked like they weren't actually cooked enough in the first place.  Trouble was, even though it said how long to cook them for, there was nothing saying how to check that they'd reached the desired consistency in the middle.  Undeterred, I carefully transferred them to a tupperware box, wrapped as best I could and froze them.

But of course, once they hit the oven, they just spread into a huge, cheesy mess.  And to be honest, they went from tasty to bland - perhaps after the addition of the egg whites to the cheese sauce?  To say I was disappointed to have no tea after such a bad day would've been an understatement.  However now I'm all Prince2'd up, I saw the risk on Sunday and made sure I had some bread in to make toast for my tea instead.  I believe that's a Fallback Plan to use the correct terminology.  Or what mere mortals would refer to as Plan B.  Shame my risk budget didn't extend to lobster and champagne to celebrate surviving the exam with my sanity (just about intact).

So it's a thumbs down to this recipe for me.  But don't let me put you off trying it.  Just make sure you have a risk mitigation plan in place first!  You can find it here.

BBC Good Food Asian Steamed Fish with Shiitake Mushrooms and Noodles

There is definitely no such thing as a free lunch.  Where I work, the pork pies are one of the favourite features of a working lunch.  I'm really fussy when it comes to pork pies and will only eat them if they don't have jelly in them.  In some ways that's good because it stops me from eating them too often.  I only really like the pastry bit but when in polite company, it's not really the done thing to hoick out the pink (or more often grey) nugget of 'pork'* and scrape out the jelly bit.  But the work pork pies are pretty good.  Pink meat*.  Crusty-ish pastry.  No jelly.

So of course I had one.  Or a half anyway.  My boss kindly showed his chivalrous side and let me have the only diet Coke to make up for a less than healthy lunch.  But even that did little to negate the impact of my poor lunch options and my need for a consolatory Flake in the late afternoon.  Hence why I ended up with a super-healthy fish dinner tonight.

I wrote yesterday that I'm still having trouble letting go of the Olympic Food Challenge.  Three days on, and I was really tempted to do another foreign recipe, but I ended up saving the Chimmichurri Steak (inspired by our esteemed OFC Coach Ewan**) for tomorrow night and cooking a country-agnostic fish dish instead.

Overdid the veg - the fish and noodles are in there somewhere!

Having not quite managed to let go completely, this allowed me to make a second use of the steamer I bought to make Nepalese Chicken Momos for the OFC.  I need to embrace my steamer and make good use of it before it manages to disappear into the black hole that my tupperware dishes have fallen into.***

The dish is pretty simple in that you just pop everything into the steamer for ten minutes, and hey presto healthy, tasty, low fat dinner for one.  The downside is that it is a pretty expensive dish what with the mushrooms, ginger, chillis etc which you can generally only buy in multiples and not in quantities for one - so something that you would possibly only afford once in a while.  It does use Pollack however which is pretty cheap in the fish stakes (no pun intended!).

I still have my head very firmly buried in the sand about just how much I've spent in this past year buying food I wouldn't normally buy just to complete this 'challenge'.

That point has actually given me some inspiration for my future ramblings over on my new blog which will be coming online in October.  I'll also be doing a bit of guest blogging elsewhere - more on that shortly.  In the meantime, I'm thinking about how to best let go of this blog.  I'd like to do so with some input from the lovely people who've taken the time to read my blog.  At the moment, I've had just over 35,000 page views since started.  This has blown me away and so I feel I should draw a definite line at the end of the year and celebrate the finish.  So I'd like to invite anyone who has read this to ask me a question about the blog.  If you visit 'The Last Post' page and leave a comment then I'll do one final post after 26th September (day 366) where I'll answer them all.

PS In lieu of me posting a flag today, I'll leave you with this cartoon I pilfered from FaceAche on the subject of Tupperware.  This sums up my relationship with plastic boxes perfectly.

PPS: The recipe for the fish can be found here


*factory floor sweepings in most cases
**I stole the asterisk thing from Ewan as I use to many bracketed comments in my stream of nonsense (it's not quite a stream of conscience)
***the husband sneaks things he deems to be clutter into the bin when he thinks I've not used them recently and I might not notice they are missing.  I then end up buying new boxes to replace them.  He then throws them away so I buy more....you get the vicious circle...

BBC Good Food Lemon and Courgette

Today's quick and dirty recipe was a Good Food special.  I've been so busy pondering the Olympic Food Challenge (OFC) and researching my nineteen recipes that I forgot that I had to cook something different today.  And then I forgot that I actually have to blog about it too.  I've heard the rule of thumb for learning to do something is that you have to do it twenty times before it becomes habit.  I've done this 306 times.  You'd think it would be second nature by now.

And whilst I was busy neglecting the regular blog for the OFC, I also failed to note that it starts tomorrow and not on Thursday.  B*gger!  I had what I needed for tomorrow's recipe which was going to be a rhubarb crumble cake and I was going to start on Thursday with a dish from the Solomon Islands.  I've now had to reshuffle things and will be making a souffle tomorrow - cue manic panic because I've been strategically avoiding that one all year.  Tuna and papaya salad on Thursday.  Rhubarb crumble cake?  Well let's just say that I may not be getting good feedback from my boss at my mid-year review now.

Hmmm...it wasn't that yellow in reality... #instagram

Ah well.  So the blog is going to be short and sweet tonight as I go into panic mode.  I picked this recipe up from a chicken recipe book that came with Good Food this month.  It's also been languishing in my binder on the Good Food website for over a year as something to make in an emergency on a hot sunny day.  It ticked all the boxes today.

Some of the reviews weren't great so based on advice, I added some garlic to the courgettes while they were cooking and with the lemon and lots of seasoning, I could've just eaten a massive pile of them as they were.  That would actually work really well as a low carb alternative to spaghetti if you grated them lengthways (as I did) rather than across the round end.  Sprinkle on a few parmesan shavings and you'd have an ace, low-fat, low carb meal.

With a pile of well seasoned couscous and a well seasoned chicken breast, this made a quick, simple tasty meal that I will definitely make time and again.  I even got Miss A eating chicken today by telling her it might just turn her into a butterfly (yes I do own a copy of Great Lies to Tell Small Kids although that's not in the book).  Couscous wasn't proffered because even the dogs are rubbish at cleaning that off the floor and I wasn't in the mood to clean up.  Hubby doesn't like couscous so this is definitely one for me and me alone but I'm happy I have something healthy and low fat that I can quickly cook alongside other meals.

You can find the recipe here.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Raspberry Margarita Polenta Cake

The theme for tonight's Clandestine Cake Club is "Sporty or Naughty" as a celebration of the forthcoming Olympics.  Having singularly failed to come up with a cake idea that is synonymous with Sport, I settled for Naughty, which basically means anything goes.

Ready for cake club

With time not being on my side, and a need to make something that I've never made before, I decided to go for a polenta cake, to further use some up some of the bag of polenta that's still languishing on my storage shelves.

The lovely Jacqueline from the Cake Boule blog recently wrote about a similar cake that was Mojito-inspired.  I loved this idea, but lacked the 7" cake tin to make it in.  I toyed with the idea of scaling it up to fit my eight inch tin but having read some theory on the Ruth from the Pink Whisk's website, I decided I didn't have the time or patience for that either (and her method required me to have a 7" tin to start with which kind of defeated the objective of the exercise for me).

A quick search turned up a similar recipe in Kitchen by Nigella Lawson.  The recipe is also available online which is really helpful.  And it uses a 9" springform tin which I have so there was no faffy adapting.

I then hit on the idea of using up some of the raspberry glut that my garden seems to be producing on a daily basis.  I know this makes my CCC offerings rather typecast - my last effort was an epic Raspberry and Lime Swiss Meringue Cake - but I figured that it would be a pretty twist to an otherwise flat, yellow cake.  Googling around for another recipe, I found this one from Jane Hornby on BBC Good Food.  I was intrigued by the idea of using frozen raspberries rather than fresh so I popped some in the freezer, mixing three quarters in with the batter and adding the rest ten minutes before the end of baking.  Given the often delicate nature of raspberries, it works really well.

The healthy/sporty factor was further increased by the lack of flour in the cake.  It's made with ground almonds and polenta so with the use of gluten free baking powder, it has some virtues.

My biggest baking problem is always time.  I never seem to have the time to savour the process.  It's something that's always squeezed in during Miss A's nap or before work (so at about 5am) or late at night just before bed time.  This often means I make mistakes or get a little stressed by missing ingredients.  The entire kitchen was turned upside down looking for the baking powder.  It's always to the right of the bunny biscuit jar.  But while I was away at the weekend, the husband took it upon himself to "tidy up".  I couldn't find it for love nor money so ended up making my own courtesy of this fabulous substitutes guide from Joy Of Baking.

Fresh from the oven

Everything was going smoothly.  I was thinking about the look and texture of the batter so I could comment on it for this post.  It had a lovely, sunny tinge yet was quite stiff and heavy.  Obviously from the almonds and polenta.  I popped it into the oven.  Started to tidy.  Found egg number three still sitting uncracked next to the bunny biscuit jar.  That serves me right for trying to bake without my egg-cracking assistant.  She would never have allowed such an oversight.

As for other adaptations, I replaced the one of the lemons with two limes and added 25ml of tequila and a pinch of sea salt to the syrup for the Naughty bit.  Just enough tequila to get a taste without putting you over the drink-drive limit.  Essential when driving back from cake club.  The salt to balance the sweetness of the sugar and give it that authentic margarita twist. It does make quite a lot of syrup, but if you spoon slowly, the cake will drink it in.

If I was serving this for dessert, I'd probably use a side of lightly whipped marscapone, thinned with a little creme fraiche, sweetened with some icing sugar and spiked with lime and a pile of fresh raspberries from my garden.

Will update with the verdict and some pics from cake club in the morning.

Raspberry Margarita Polenta Cake - Adapted from "Kitchen" by Nigella Lawson

for the cake:

• 200g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
• 200g caster sugar
• 200g ground almonds
• 100g fine polenta/cornmeal
• 1 1⁄2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 3 eggs
• zest 1 lemon and 2 limes (save the juice for the syrup, below)
• 200g frozen raspberries

for the syrup:

• juice 1 lemon and 2 limes
• 25 ml tequila
• pinch of Maldon sea salt (other brands are available, but Nigella would approve!)
• 125g icing sugar

• extra icing sugar to dust

• 1 x 23cm (9") springform or other round cake tin

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C (fan)/gas mark 4.
2. Lightly butter the base and sides of the baking tin then base-line with baking parchment.
3. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Mix together the almonds, polenta and baking powder.  Beat a third into the butter mixture followed by one egg.  Repeat until all the dry mixture and eggs are incorporated.
5. Beat in the zest, carefully fold in 3/4 of the raspberries (reserving the rest for decoration) then pour into the baking tin, smooth the top and bake for 30 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and decorate with the remaining raspberries by gently pushing them into the surface.  Take care not to push too hard!  Return to the oven for another ten minutes.
7. Remove from the oven and check with a cake tester which should come out clean.  The cake should be shrinking away from the sides at this point.  Place the tin on a cooling rack.
8. Make the syrup by boiling together the lemon and lime juice, tequila and salt with the icing sugar.  Once the icing sugar has disolved, carefully prick the sponge all over (in between the raspberries) and carefully spoon the warm syrup over the cake.
9. Leave in the tin to go cold before removing to serve.

If you don't need this to be gluten free, but want it to be nut free instead, you could replace the almonds with 200g of plain flour.

Updated: 2nd September 2012 - I've decided to enter this for the September 2012 Alphabakes competition.  The key ingredient this month should begin with 'P' so polenta cake definitely counts!

BBC Good Food Griddled Chicken and Corn on the Cob

There's a quote from my favourite film that just about sums up the advice I'd like to give out to several people that I know today.  It's something that I need to learn to remember as well.


"But sometimes a person we love, through no fault of his own, can't see past the end of his nose."


I won't go into any details on the subject, but it just about sums my day up.  And why although I think my day today has been a Crappy day from Crapsville, there are people around me who've had worse days and have worse problems in their lives.  There are also people who I know are currently judging me for apparently not seeing past my own mediocre problems who if they knew the whole story (which of course, is none of their business) would understand my apparent myopia.

This July weather makes for rubbish light in my kitchen

Anyway, enough myopic belly button staring.  Monday's are always a tough day for fodder in our house.  It's a long day in the office, now preceded by a 4am start for a run so by the time I'm home at 6pm, tea needs to be quick, simple and tasty.


Monday's are the day I really rely on the simplicity of BBC Good Food to come up with something from the content of my fridge.  This is from the June 2012 issue of the magazine which is still lurking on my sofa.  I've still to find the time to read the latest edition.


I needed to stop off for a couple of bits and was horrified to find that corn cobs were £1.99 for two.  I know it's out of season, but I just couldn't justify the expense at the moment.  Especially when I know in a few short weeks, they will be selling them fro about 25p each.  So I improvised with tinned corn, cooked it in a smoking hot frying pan and it still chargrilled really well.


There's not much else to say about the recipe other than it's simple and quick.  I'd not thought about making my own spice coating much before - I tend to use the Schwarz pre-made ones - but this worked quite well and I'll use it again to add a bit of variety.  


You can find the recipe online here.


PS: Without Googling, do you recognise the film that this line is from?  I've only watched it about 1,000 times and know it word perfectly.

Inside Out Chicken Kiev

I so, so, so want to make something from my new copy of Wahaca: Mexican Food at Home by Thomasina Miers, but because I'm a) supposed to be on a diet and b) didn't get the book before I booked my Ocado order about two weeks ago, I've been left with basic store cupboard ingredients.  I have feta cheese and avocado and flour tortillas, which I'm sure could go a long way towards trying one of the recipes, but it would most likely equate to my entire daily food allowance.  So I'm just making do with longingly reading the book.

According to a recent study that I read about in the Daily Fail Online, adventurous eating makes us fat. Bland, predictable and repetitive food is the key to slimming because nobody really cares to eat more of that kind of food than they need to sustain them and satiate any hunger.  Which is probably why I've struggled to lose weight doing this challenge.  Baking aside, I know I've not been consistently good - mostly towards the end of the week when I'm exhausted from work and motherhood and just cook something new for the sake of cooking something new and blogging about it.

Uber healthy dinner

Day three of the current diet and the food has still been pretty bland.  I managed to sort myself out with a low-calorie prawn wrap for lunch (stuffed with little gem lettuce and thinly sliced radishes) that was very tasty and breakfast is consistently bircher muesli or a protein bar, but teas are still proving to be a little bland.

Take tonight's recipe from the BBC Good Food website.  I picked it for being low calorie, simple and something that I knew that we could all eat with varying accompaniments.  It was easy to prepare, using all storecupboard ingredients (except my addition of fresh parsley to give it some colour) and I ate mine with a mountain of vegetables.  The crumb was tasty - I used garlic puree for laziness and to save my hand from smelling.  But the chicken was still bland, as was the cauli and broccoli.

The carrots, however were great.  I'm not a massive fan of boiled carrots unless they're accompanying a roast and under a significant puddle of gravy.  I'll eat them by the bucket-load if they're raw.  Or if they're cooked Vichy style - thinly sliced then cooked in a tiny amount of water with butter and a little sugar to make a glaze - so not a vegetable I would normally buy given that we never eat roast dinner at home (apart from Christmas day).

But tonight, I picked up a bag of tiny Chantaray carrots in Waitrose, tossed them with a little olive oil and baked them alongside the chicken.  Yummy.

This is how I made my version

Serves 2

• 2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• 15g unsalted butter, softened
• 15g natural dried breadcrumbs (I used Paxo breadcrumbs but would've preferred Japanese Panko)
• 1/2 tsp garlic puree (I use Gia)
• couple of sprigs of parsley, finely chopped
• 200g Chantaray carrots
• 2 tsp olive oil
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 190c (fan).
2. Place the chicken breasts on a baking tray and make two diagonal slashes in each, cutting about 2/3 of the way through the flesh with each slash.  Season with salt and pepper.
3. Mix the butter, breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley.  Divide between the tops of the two pieces of chicken. 
4. Toss the carrots in the olive oil and add to the baking tray.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.

BBC Good Food Chicken Chow Mein

Chicken-based recipes are a recurring theme in our household.  It's about the only meat the husband will reliably eat.  And pretty much, if a new recipe contains chicken, he's open to trying it.  Hence my decision to do chicken two days in a row.

For some strange reason, he always used to order Chicken Chow Mein and Special Fried Rice from the Chinese.  Every time he did it, he'd complain that he had too much food (we never have 'sharing' Chinese) and eventually he braved a Chinese Chicken Curry and has never looked back.

One of my early thoughts for things to do on this blog was to have a go at 'Fake-away' (homemade versions of takeaway meals).  I had one hit with Singapore Noodles and on less successful attempt at Salt and Pepper Chicken.  Since then I've not tried anything else.  So this seemed an ideal crowd pleaser.

Low fat, low carb and simple

I found it under the Kids Cooking section of the BBC Good Food website and even though Miss A is too small to help prep and cook it, I'm hoping she might try it as it comes with noodles which she does like.

Due to holidays, this is another pre-authored blog so do check back for an update with a picture and a verdict.

Recipe can be found here

Updated: 5 July 2012 @ 20:26

It got eaten.  The hubby's complaint was that it was a lot of the same - which is true.  Because it's all mixed together and there's not much complexity to the flavour.  Which is odd.  Because that's how all the meals he enjoys normally are.  I think he had an issue with it being healthy and not having a huge pile of bread on the side - which is how he normally eats his food.

This was the first signal that the eight-week healthy eating plan is going to be more stressful than I'd first anticipated.  I'm not sure that he is really taking the health kick seriously....watch this space.

BBC Good Food Cinnamon porridge with banana & berries

After at least a week of unhealthy eating, I'm going to slowly start preparing the husband for his new diet regimen when we get home.  He's doing this new hardcore exercise plan (he'll last about a week) and it comes with one of those diet plans that revolves around oats and fish with brown rice and veggies.  None of which he'll eat.  So this morning, as we're in Scotland, I thought I'd try convincing him to at least give porridge a go.  I doubt that he'll even look at it.  Normally he can't bear to be on the same floor as it, let alone in the same room. And we're in a single storey log cabin, so he may have ended up sitting outside in the rain whilst I made this.

Will update with the tale of how it went later as I'm assuming we have no mobile signal and pre-authoring this post.

Loving the retro Blue Willow Ware china

Recipe can be found here

Updated: 05 July 2012 @ 19:58 

I must have been seriously deluded when I wrote the bit above, thinking that he husband would even be present at the breakfast table at the same time as everyone else, let alone that he might consider eating porridge.

Maybe he knew what I was thinking and purposely avoided getting up until Miss A and I had finished breakfast so that I couldn't try and force feed him porridge.  Or because he was on holiday, he got to have a lie in every single day where I was up at 6am, which I guess is a lie in for me as I'm normally up at 5 and off to work at six.

Enough of our marital discord.  There's not too much to say about this recipe.  I enjoyed it enough to make it two days on the trot.  The second day, however, I managed to burn the porridge to the bottom of the pan whilst dealing with a Cheerio-related crisis (I hate stainless steel pans on electric hobs) so I've not made it since.

Cooking the bananas in the porridge meant that it needed minimal sugar for sweetening - I normally use maple syrup - so it's a fairly good and filling diet option.  Definitely one for a weekend breakfast when I've got the time (and the non-stick pans) to make this.

Apricot Pancakes with Basil and Strawberry Butter

Despite all my good planning, the blogging schedule has been interrupted already.  For all the best reasons but this post is technically about a recipe I tried yesterday and I'm making yesterday's pre-blogged recipe tonight.

The interruption was very welcome - the lovely Allison Patrick hosted a special meeting of the Edinburgh Cake Ladies because I was holidaying very close to her house.  Because I'd intended on making the husband try something different for tea, I switched to a new breakfast recipe for myself and Miss A yesterday and let the hubby have a (rather dodgy) lunch in a chippy.  And then I went out and ate lots of cake and had a really good time.

Rocky would give it a thumbs up if he had any

The recipe for today (yesterday) was inspired by a BBC Good Food recipe.  Pancakes used to be staple weekend fayre for Miss A to help me assuage the guilt of not being with her for breakfast Monday to Fridays because I'm already at work when she gets up.  She then got fussy and stopped eating them.  Since then, I've tried a number of recipes to try and tempt her but she's having none of it.  And today's recipe met with a similar reception.

Personally, I liked this batter.  It was the perfect consistency, simple to make and produced light and fluffy pancakes.  Abigail took hers from her plate, turned them into drums, pounded on them for a while, picked out the apricots and then fed the remains to her stuffed toy rhino Rocky.

Because I had no honey (probably a crime in Scotland!) I made use of the leftover basil from Monday's dinner and some strawberries to make strawberry and basil butter.   This gave them a lovely fresh taste, despite being packed with dried fruit rather than fresh.

Recipe - serves 4 (or three plus a hungry stuffed toy rhino) - adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe

• 140g plain flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 25g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 150ml milk
• 50g dried apricots, chopped
• a little butter for frying

• 100g lightly salted butter, softened
• small handful of basil leaves, torn
• 50g strawberries, finely diced

• extra strawberries to serve

1. Mix the basil into the butter then carefully press the strawberries into the mixture.  Mould into a log shape, wrap in cling film and pop in the fridge.
2. Mix the flour, bicarb, baking powder, sugar, egg and milk together to make a thick, smooth batter.  Fold in the apricots.
3. Heat the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat.  Once melted, drop tablespoonfuls of batter into the pan, leaving space to spread.  Cook until firm and browned on the bottom then flip over and cook for a further two minutes.
4. Once all the pancakes are cooked, remove the butter from the fridge and carefully slice into circles then use to top the pancakes.

BBC Good Food Fully Loaded Cajun Burgers

This recipe is a variation on something I used to regularly make the husband for dinner.  One of those calorie-laden meals that have thankfully been banished to the 'once in a blue moon' list of emergency meals that I can make with little effort.

It kind of seems appropriate to do this one while we're away on holiday because hopefully we'll have been out somewhere nice today and I will need a quick meal to feed the troops.

This post has been pre-written so I can't comment on the taste yet, but hopefully if we have a decent 3G signal where we're staying, I can update the post before the auto-schedule kicks in and give you my considered opinion with a picture as evidence of what I did.

That said, what's not to like about a ciabatta roll filled with chicken, bacon, avocado and cheese?  Anyone?  Well except for the veggies of course...

I expect the only way it could be improved would be with a homemade ciabatta roll and a pile of curly fries on the side.

*Note to self* - time to buy some elasticated waist jeans!

If you, too, want to become a weeble, you can find the recipe here.

Updated 20th July 2012 @ 15:28:

Of course, this one went down really well with the husband.  He had his without avocado, I had mine with the works.  Miss A ate peanut butter on toast.  Mission to get everyone to eat the same thing?  Failed.  Mission to turn us all into weebles?  Accomplished.

Updated: Jo Pratt's Chunky Sausage and Tomato Pasta

The seven year itch begins today.  In an attempt to ward it off and remind us that we are a family, I'm enforcing a mutual dinner on everyone this evening.  If you've read other posts on this blog, you'll know I often cook three different dinners each night.  About the only time hubs and I eat the same thing is on a Sunday when we have Chicken Tikka and Naan (a winning combination of recipes discovered whilst writing this blog) or when he persuades me to let him have takeaway.

I said before we came on holiday that we'd eat as a family every night.  So far we've had two dinners, both of which have just been me and hubs due to Miss A having her daily pattern disrupted and being too fractious at dinnertime to sit and eat with the grown ups.  So tonight, we will all be trying this recipe.  I'd pre-written this post as a placeholder in case we had no internet.  We have a sketchy signal so I've taken the opportunity to update the pre-written blog and will hopefully post the verdict on Monday evening.  Unless of course hubs has secretly arranged to whisk me off somewhere fancy for dinner.  Like the North Berwick Fish Bar if I'm really lucky...

The recipe I'm planning on making can be found here

Updated 20th June 2012 @ 07:55

Quick update.  Everyone ate it and everyone loved it.  It actually didn't taste that much different to my normal recipe but it had a lot less sauce and I preferred it that way.  Normally my sauce is made from a mix of pre made tomato and basil pasta sauce, some pesto and tin of chopped tomatoes and some caramelised onions.

The only downside was that there wasn't much sausage.  I used half the pasta as I was only cooking for three and the four stated sausages which was about right for two adults.  If the lack of sausages in the stated meal for four is due to cost then I'd question the use of wine and fresh basil in the recipe at the expense of a filling meal.  But then I'm probably just greedy!  Definitely a make again for the family once the post holiday diet is over.

BBC Good Food Pineapple and Pink Grapefruit with Mint Sugar

The final recipe in this week's mint quadrilogy.  I was feeling really virtuous when I came home from work and tucked into a plate of soft, sweet pineapple and cheek tingling red grapefruit (I didn't pay attention to which colour grapefruit I picked up at the shops so don't shoot me) and summery mint sugar.  And then the husband persuaded me to have a chippy tea so now I'm feeling fat and bloated and a bit greasy.  For every yin, there is a yang and all that.

Not much to say tonight, mostly because I have to do a whole load of washing, ironing, packing, recipe printing and more cooking related packing.  And work.  Hence the really quick and easy recipe and lack of soul searching post.

Never would've thought about doing anything with these fruit other than eating them by themselves.  I added a squeeze of lime to the mix for a really tropical taste.  Will definitely be eating this a lot post holiday!

Recipe is here.

BBC Good Food Black Pudding Potato Cakes

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet by @TheFoodNut saying that the odds were on Stephen getting fired from The Apprentice.  I was desperate for Stephen to go as he was truly irritating so I tweeted back that if he didn't, I'd eat black pudding - the culinary equivalent of eating my hat.  We Sky+'d The Apprentice that night and I left the telly on BBC2 instead.

A waste of a perfectly poached egg

Rather stupidly, I came down just after 10pm and saw that someone else had been fired.  Annoyed both that Stephen appeared to still be in and that I'd seen the result before the programme, I wandered back upstairs and added some black pudding to my Ocado order.  Never let it be said that I don't keep my word*.  Even to someone I've not met.

You can imagine how gutted I was several days later when we finally watched that particular episode and I discovered that Stephen had indeed left in a double firing.  And of course, I already had my black pudding.

This has bothered me for nearly two weeks now.   Every time I've opened the fridge, it's been staring at me.

I decided to discuss it with my mentor.  Normally I like him and respect his opinion which I why I asked him to be my chief cheerleader and motivator (at work!).  One of his roles is to ask me why I'm making particular decisions in my (work) life and challenge me if he thinks I should be doing something else.   I'd desperately been hoping he'd say something like 'Are you completely mad?  I wouldn't feed that to my dog!'**  He told me that black pudding is one of his favourite foods ever and I should definitely try it. I'm now considering looking for a new mentor.

So this weekend it came time to bite the bullet.  I'm emptying the fridge of perishables in advance of our impending holiday and conveniently, it went out of date today.  I'd researched this recipe a while back.  It seemed like a good idea because it wasn't a whole piece of black pudding; nor did it require expensive ingredients to go with it (scallops and black pudding is such a waste of good scallops).  I made my mash yesterday but couldn't bring myself to eat it at lunch time so it became today's breakfast.

That fateful tweet

Having forgotten to mix in the spring onions, I panfried them and served them on the side.  As I don't like cherry tomatoes - and didn't want to buy some just for this one recipe - I used up some of the Chilli Jam that I made a while back (batch number three!).  And I served it with a poached egg because I prefer them to fried ones.

The verdict?  Well it was okay, but it's not something I'll be cooking again.  Ever.  Unless the husband ever decides to like black pudding (in which case I'll probably just divorce him).  It had a very earthy flavour.  Almost like I'd made the potato cakes by mashing in the (unwashed) skins.  And it gave them a bit of spice too.  But it didn't rock my world.

Maybe I should just try it on it's own as part of a full English.  Or in some fancy restaurant, cooked perfectly with scallops or made into pakora or something.  But the chances of going to a swanky restaurant in the current millenium is probably hovering around the zero mark.  So I don't think I'm ever going to have a torrid love affair with the stuff.

Here's the recipe for your delectation.  If I adapted it in any way, I'd drop the black pudding and serve it with some lovely pink rashers of smoked bacon.

*Well most of the time....
**He doesn't have one

BBC Good Food (Beef) Stroganoff with Herby Pasta

There was a small flaw in my plan for tonight's recipe.  I forgot to defrost the beef and so it became Mushroom Stroganoff with herby pasta.  Not much to say about this one other than the sauce was really tasty; it worked really well with just mushrooms and I think it's even better with pasta than with rice (which is what my mum always used to serve stroganoff with).  If I'm honest, I welcomed the lack of meat too.

A good store cupboard meal.  You can find the recipe here.

And you can breathe a sigh of relief that for once, I'm not going to waffle.  Goodnight.

It tastes far better than I presented it!