food, reviews and of course coffee
A week or so ago I linked to a site that scanned the inside of chocolate bars, well this week it’s a site that scans the inside of sandwiches!
So if you don’t like chocolate, but do like sandwiches then this site is for you!
Apart from the obvious silliness of the whole affair it is quite useful in some respects in giving you ideas for your own sandwiches.
Go to Scanwiches
I didn’t buy it, but was quite impressed with the Lloyd Grossman Puttanesca tomato sauce. It tasted fresh and you could certainly taste the chilli, olives and even a hint of anchovies in the sauce, as well as the tomatoes.
Generally I am not a fan of prepared sauces, they often taste processed and too salty. However as I am not the only person who cooks in the house, sometimes they prefer the convenience of a jar of sauce. This one though we quite liked.
For the dish in the photograph I first cooked off some diced chicken breast before adding some diced onion, red pepper and courgette. I cooked this for a further five minutes before adding some chopped mushrooms.
Once the linguine was cooked, I added the sauce to the pan with the chicken, onions, pepper, courgette and mushrooms and heated it through.
I then tossed the linguine with the sauce before serving with some freshly grated parmesan.
According to Italian tradition I should have used spaghetti, but we didn’t have that in the house and I actually prefer linguine myself.
I know that some people get bored with plain lettuce, but it doesn’t take much to take that plain lettuce and jazz it up!
For this salad, I took some mixed leaves and added slices of tomato and cucumber. I do like to use “proper” tomatoes, you know the ones that actually taste of tomato.
To jazz it up, I added some mini chilli salami (no not pepparami, but a posh version) and some Spanish manzanilla and couchillo olives.
I didn’t add a dressing, as there is plenty of flavour in the olives, the oil from the olives and the spicy salami. However if you are that way inclined I would make a simple dressing of good olive oil and some white wine vinegar.
So do you enjoy eating chocolate bars?
Have you ever wondered what was inside them? Well more did you ever wonder what the inside of them looked like?
Nope me neither…
But wonder no more!
For all those people who like chocolate http://scandybars.tumblr.com/
Probably the best way to describe these is as posh Pepparami. Though they are very much better and taste nicer than the over processed salty snack that is Pepparami.
They are thin salami sticks with chilli. They are chewy and slightly spicy. The chilli is subtle and certainly doesn’t overpower them.
I enjoyed them as a snack, but not sure if I would buy them again.
Made a quick paella the other day. I took a large frying pan and added a splash of olive oil. To this I added some diced onions and cooked them until soft. I then added the paella rice and it always makes sense to use paella rice, and never any other kind of rice. I ensured that the rice was well coated in the oil and onions before adding some chicken stock and saffron. Always got to use saffron.
Simmer for twenty minutes adding more stock if required.
While this was cooking I grilled some cod and prawns that I served on top of the paella rice.
I didn’t have any “proper” chorizo so I cooked some sliced chorizo which I placed on the finished dish with the cooked prawns and cod.
Though delicious and all eaten up, I was slightly disappointed with the paella rice I had used, which was from Sainsbury’s. My normal paella rice is the one from Tesco, so I think next time I will buy that instead.
Fancying a salad for lunch I found this Mozzarella, Tomato & Pesto Salad with Rocket & Pine Nuts in Sainsbury’s.
It was quite nice. The pesto wasn’t overpowering, there was enough to cover the pasta and there were ample pine nuts too. The pasta was the right texture, the sunblush tomatoes were nice and the mozzarella was fine.
Overall it was a nice packaged salad and certainly much nicer than a sandwich.
Yesterday I made a very simple risotto.
In a large frying pan, place some olive oil. Then add some finely chopped onion.
Soften the onions.
Bring up the heat.
Add the risotto rice and ensure that the rice is coated in the oil and mixed in with the onion.
Now add some chicken stock.
Keep topping up with stock to ensure that the rice doesn’t dry out.
Stir on a regular basis. This will help create a creamy texture.
Once the rice is virtually cooked, add a large handful of grated parmesan and some freshly ground black pepper.
Serve.
A traditional English breakfast usually consists of bacon and eggs with sausages, beans, fried bread and maybe a portion of tinned tomatoes. Obviously there are other things you can add such as grilled kidneys, black pudding, mushrooms, hash browns.
Actually the more you think about it, a cooked breakfast can be quite diverse and much more than just bacon and eggs. Eat a little later and it turns into Brunch.
I quite like a cooked breakfast now and again, but very rarely go down the traditional route. This was the basis of a recent breakfast and consisted of grilled tomatoes, mushrooms and onions.
I took some cherry tomatoes and halved them. If you halve them with the stalk point at the top then they will always look nice. If you slice them through the stalk point then they may (well usually) don’t look as nice. I splashed a little olive oil on them and some torn basil leaves.
For the mushrooms I trim the stalks and then spread a small knob of butter on them and some freshly ground black pepper.
For the onions I just again splashed a little olive oil and more black pepper.
These were all then roasted in a hot oven for about 10-15 minutes.
I served them with some toast and a poached egg.
The recipe for this delicious chocolate cake is from the BBC Good Food magazine.
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
100ml milk
4 tbsp cocoa powder
50g plain chocolate chips or chunks few extra chunks white, plain and milk chocolate , for decorating
Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Grease and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin with a long strip of baking parchment. To make the loaf 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 scrape into the tin. Bake for 45-50 mins until golden, risen and a skewer poked in the centre comes out clean.
Cool in the tin, then lift out onto a wire rack over some kitchen paper. Melt the extra chocolate chunks separately in pans over barely simmering water, or in bowls in the microwave, then use a spoon to drizzle each in turn over the cake. Leave to set before slicing.
I found that I needed to cook it for longer than 45 mins, taking about an hour in the end. I also split the mixture between two loaf tins.
