food, reviews and of course coffee
Small, yet perfectly formed.
The Munchkin Pumpkin is as you would expect from the name, a miniature pumpkin.
Today I cut the one I had bought into wedges and roasted in the oven for about thirty minutes with a splash of olive oil and some honey.
The end result, looked quite nice, but there wasn’t much flavour. The parsnips and sweet potato I had done alongside were much nicer and with a really nice natural sweet flavour (no honey on them).
An amusing look at the online ordering system at Domino’s pizza.
But what I’ve become obsessed with is that when you only want a particular topping on half of your pizza, they make you specify WHICH HALF. LEFT or RIGHT.
I had ordered from them a few times but never paid attention to see if they got the halves correct. I was curious to see if it really would arrive the way I ordered it.
Last night I performed a test.
Can you really order a pizza with NO cheese, NO sauce and NO topping?
The BBC is reporting that the Soil Association wants to change the rules on organic produce which is air freighted to the UK.
Food flown into the UK will be stripped of its organic status unless it meets new stricter ethical standards, the Soil Association has warned. The association, which certifies 70% of the UK’s £1.9bn organic food sector, says firms must show trade brings real benefit to developing world farmers. It wants all air-freighted food to meet tough “ethical trade” standards.
Only 1% of organic food in the UK is flown in, so it only impacts on a small amount of the total. Will this impact on developing world farmers? I expect so.
I originally had these biscuits when I would make business visits to Scotland, so am always pleased when I can find them south of the border.
These are some of my favourite biscuits, they are perfectly cooked, extremely buttery and melt in the mouth like they ought to
Nice and easy this, take some lamb and cut into 1″ cubes. I used neck fillet, this is a relatively cheap cut, but after marinading can be quite tender and therefore suitable for making into kebabs and grilling.
I marinaded the lamb in a mix of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, ground black pepper and finely chopped rosemary. Watch how much rosemary you use, it’s quite strong and some may not like this. I left it in the marinade for a couple of hours, you could leave it longer, but a couple of hours is fine.
I placed the lamb cubes on wooden skewers. Now you are suppose to soak the wooden skewers before using them to stop them burning in the oven, to be honest I alwasy forget and don’t really have a problem. Might be a problem on a barbecue I guess.
I grilled the lamb for a about fifteen minutes, more if you like your lamb well done and slightly less if you prefer it pink.
Blinding obvious comes to mind when I read on the BBC about the CASH (Consensus Action on Salt and Health) report on salt in fast food.
The daily recommended intake of salt for an adult is just 6g.
According to the Cash survey, a family of four sharing a Pizza Hut meal deal – consisting of one Cheesy Bites Meat Feast, one medium Super Supreme, a portion of garlic bread, a portion of potato wedges, chicken wings, and a cheesecake dessert – could eat 12.3g of salt each.
Most fast food “meals” contain about the daily recommended amount of salt. That’s a lot of salt, and remember some people then add extra salt to their salted food as well.
Most people eat way too much salt, it’s not difficult to cut down, but people forget that herbs and spices can add a huge amount of flavour to a dish without needing to resort to salt.
However it can be difficult if you are going out to eat. It’s surprising how many chefs think that just because they haven’t added salt it’s not salty. I have been offered as salt-free dishes, a salad with olives, cured loin of pork (like gammon) and even ham sandwiches.
Researchers have cracked the mystery of why eating garlic can help keep the heart healthy.
In a previous post I mentioned a dish I had cooked, beef in red wine, however I did not post the recipe. This post was quite popular by people searching for a beef in red wine, so as promised here is the recipe.
Take some stewing steak, and in a hot pan, add a little oil (no need for olive oil as the flavour will be cooked out). The aggresively brown the beef. Only brown a little at a time, browning in batches and ensure that the pan is hot so that the beef does brown and doesn’t stew – as you don’t want it to stew at this time.
Once you have browned all the beef, remove the final batch of beef and add some chopped vegetables to the pan. I used carrot and onions. You could also add celery (yuck) or swede or parsnips or other root vegetables.
Once the vegetables have browned add some plain flour (just a spoonful) and stir.
Once it starts to stick add the red wine and some beef stock, this should deglaze the pan.
Place everything into a casserole dish, lid on and cook in the oven (not too hot) for a couple of hours, adding more stock if the dish starts to dry out.
In a frying pan cook some chopped bacon (I used pancetta) and cook off, then remove the bacon and add some button mushrooms and some freshly chopped parsley. Cook for a minute or two, in the main to soak up the bacon flavour.
Add the bacon and mushrooms about thirty minutes before you serve.
Serve with crusty bread, mash or roasted potatoes with some fresh steamed green vegetables.
This is a very quick meal to cook and shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, probably even less.
Take some chicken and cut into pieces the same size as gnocchi. You can use chicken breast, personally I use chicken thigh partly because it is cheaper, more so because it has a much better flavour.
In a large hot frying pan, add a splash of olive oil, then add the chicken.
In another pan add some pancetta. You can use the cubed pancetta, though when I cooked this I used the sliced pancetta cut into small strips.
Ensure that the chicken is cooking and remove the cooked pancetta from the other pan to the chicken. Add some freshly chopped parsley and some freshly ground black pepper.
Keep the heat up in the pancetta pan and pan fry the mushrooms in the fat from the pancetta (you may need to add a little olive oil).
In a pan of rolling boiling water add the gnocchi. Cook for two minutes.
Add the cooked mushrooms to the chicken and mushrooms and then add a couple of spoonfuls of creme frache.
Drain the cooked gnocchi, spoon over the chicken, mushroom and creme frache mixture, toss lightly.
Spoon onto plates, add freshly grated parmesan and ground black pepper to taste.
Hey look what I found in WHSmith at Paddington Station!
Yes it is a Cadbury Wispa!
I thought these had been discarded to the litter bin in the sky where all old chocolate bars go when they are replaced by new funky chocolate bars.
Probably a limited edition.
Buy hey it’s a Wispa bar!