food, reviews and of course coffee
Okay hands up, I “cheated” by using the Blue Dragon Thai Basil and Lemongrass Sauce. Though the vegetables were all fresh. I took some onions, pepper, courgettes, green beans, broccolli, mushrooms and baby sweetcorn. I stir fried these in a hot pan for a few minutes, before adding the sauce and a handful of cashew nuts. I then added the noodles that I had cooked earlier in boiling water for a couple of minutes.
I served the noodles alongside my spiced pork belly.
You know when you shouldn’t but you still do. Well it’s like that for me and Tunnocks.
Whether it be Chocolate Caramel Wafers or as it was tonight with a Teacake, there is something very nice, but also guilty about eating these very sweet delights.
The Teacake is a crumbly biscuit, covered in marshmallow and covered in a thin layer of milk chocolate. No matter how careful you are crumbs and flakes of chocolate drop over you.
Tasty, yet not quite delicious.
Like a lot of children, my children love bananas and eat a lot of them. They are very much a staple at home and we take a bunch of them when we are out and about.
I am not averse to them myself. However unlike when I was young, my children do not like bananas and custard. This was a staple pudding of mine when I was a kid. Reminds me that I haven’t had a banana split in a while either, probably not had one of those either since I was a child.
Interestingly they don’t really like banana flavoured stuff either, you know that banana milk or banana flavoured sweets. I would suspect that’s because they don’t really taste of bananas!
Recently buying bananas has been a little fraught with some purchased bunches going black very quickly, or very bruised already. So much so that I have been buying them loose rather than buying them pre-packed. It wasn’t unique to a single supermarket either, regardless of where I was buying them, pre-packed seemed to be bruised or ripened too much. I wonder if it was anything to do with the recent weather?
These cupcakes (or fairy cakes) are based on a recipe for a loaf cake.
It is based on a recipe from the BBC Good Food magazine for a chocolate loaf cake.
I had to adjust the ingredients as I had run out of cocoa.
Ingredients
175g softened butter , plus extra for greasing
175g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
140g self-raising flour
85g ground almonds
½ tsp baking powder
50ml milk
1 tbsp cocoa powder
50g plain chocolate chips
Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3.
Add paper cases to a bun baking tray
To make the cake batter, beat the butter and sugar with an electric whisk until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, flour, almonds, baking powder, milk and cocoa until smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips, then spoon into the cases.
Bake for 10-20 mins until golden, risen and a skewer poked in the centre comes out clean.
You could then drizzle melted chocolate over them, ice them, or leave them plain.
When poaching eggs I use to use one of those poaching pans, you know the kind a frying pan that has four little “cups” into which you break your eggs over boiling water. The eggs come out as though they were a top sliced football.
Having once asked for poached eggs in a hotel and getting those that had been done in just a pan of simmering water, I knew that I would have to attempt to do it.
I was surprised by how easy it was and since then I have always poached my eggs in this way.
Simply put, bring a pan of water to the boil, I then stir the boiling water into a “spin” and crack the egg into the spinning vortex. Turn down the heat to a simmer.
At this point I put my halved bagel (or slices of bread) into the toaster when this is done then I know my eggs are done.
A lot of books I have read (and seen Chefs on the TV) say that you should add vinegar to the water to “stop the egg from breaking apart” as you cook it. Personally I don’t add vinegar as I find it has a minimal or negligible effect (in other words I have seen eggs break apart even with vinegar in the water) and it also adds a vinegar flavour to the egg. I certainly noticed this when I last had poached eggs in a hotel recently.
I find that actually the best thing is to use really fresh eggs, it is old eggs that fall apart when poaching and not the use of vinegar, however I may be wrong on this. Though as you can see in the picture of my eggs above, still nice and whole!
I am never quite sure if I am a fan of quiche or someone who would prefer something else.
For me it always appears to be not quite a pie and not quite an omelette.
I do make quiche, and enjoyed it, but not quite sure if I am a fan.
I normally make a lemon and rocket risotto, however when I made this risotto I had no lemons or rocket! So I made this variation which was very tasty and went down well.
In a large frying pan, place some olive oil and butter. Then add some finely chopped onion. I also added some diced pancetta.
Soften the onions.
Bring up the heat.
Add the risotto rice and ensure that the rice is coated in the oil and butter. The key I have found to a good risotto is using good risotto rice.
Not having any chicken stock, I added some beef stock and some dried Italian herbs.
Keep topping up with stock to ensure that the rice doesn’t dry out.
Once the rice is virtually cooked I added a large handful of grated parmesan and some freshly ground black pepper.
Decided once more to have pancakes for breakfast.
I used Instagram to take the photograph on my iPhone.
There is something very nice about hot buttered toast. Whether it be for breakfast or afternoon tea (in front of a roaring log fire). Hmmm, now where’s the toaster!
I bought a Marlborough Cake from Waitrose.
Basically a bread based roll with dried fruit and topped with sugar. It was a little dry and stale for me, I suspect it would be much nicer just out of the oven.