Cauliflower Tikka Masala, Diwali and Memories of Gwalior

This weekend is Diwali, the Festival of Light, celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, so what better time for a vegetable curry recipe?

Diwali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness and good over evil; people clean and decorate their homes, put on new clothes and light lamps and candles both inside and outside their homes, praying to Lakshmi, the goddess of fertility and prosperity. Gifts are exchanged and Indian sweets are eaten - we had some in the office at work for people to try.

The festival has a different origin for other religions, and when I was reading up on it for an article I wrote for the intranet at work, I discovered Sikhs celebrate Diwali as marking the release of the Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, from a prison in Gwalior, India. The reason I was so fascinated by this is that I have actually been to Gwalior!

 

In 2008 I went to the wedding of two friends in Bhopal, India. Both bride and groom lived in the UK but both had families in India so they had a ceremony in England but the wedding itself was in India. A group of my university friends decided to go - I remember doing a lot of the planning, booking train journeys so we could fly into Delhi, visit the Taj Mahal and make our way down the country to where the wedding was taking place. While looking for somewhere to stop on the way we came across Gwalior and spend a day walking around the fort and a night in a hotel there. We had a fantastic time - looking back at the photos now I was struck by the majesty of some of the sights we saw (and then by how different I looked eight years ago!).

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe from the Sunday Times magazine - possibly quite some time ago. I'm not sure as I tore the page out and kept it in my recipe clippings folder. The recipe involves roasting a whole cauliflower but I wanted to make this a quicker, easier recipe so cut the cauliflower into florets. I actually steamed them rather than roasted as well to speed up the process so the flavour of my dish was undoubtedly different to the intended recipe, but I did use the recipe to make the sauce, which involved quite a lot of ingredients and a bit of effort.

This is the version I did with steamed cauliflower rather than the whole roasted one:
To serve 4, you need:
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
3 fresh red chillies
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, peeled
2 tbsp. garam masala
1 tbsp. sweet smoked paprika
1 bunch fresh coriander
75g flaked almonds
2 tbsp. tomato puree
groundnut oil
2 onions
400g tin light coconut milk
400g tin tomatoes
1 whole cauliflower

 

Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan then put in a food processor. Trim two of the chillies and add to the food processor with one of the pieces of ginger, the garlic, garam masala, paprika, most of the coriander and almonds. Pulse until you have a smooth paste, add the tomato puree, season and blend again.

 

Finely slice the remaining ginger with the onion and remaining chilli. Put a casserole pan over a medium heat and add some oil. Fry the ginger, onion and chilli for ten minutes. Spoon in the spice paste, turn down the heat and fry for ten minutes. Meanwhile cut the cauliflower into florets and steam.

 

Add the coconut milk and tomatoes, bring to the boil then simmer until thickened.

 

Toast the leftover almonds in a dry pan. Mix the cooked cauliflower with the curry sauce and top with the toasted almonds and rest of the chopped coriander. Serve with rice.

 

I'm sharing this with the Food Calendar at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

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How to Carve a Halloween Pumpkin

Before this year, I'd only carved a Halloween pumpkin once before and used a kitchen knife to make very crude triangles for eyes and a nose and some sort of jagged mouth. It really wasn't very good, yet year after year I've been marvelling at my friend Julianne's amazing creations. She carves brilliant designs and has done everything from spooky scenes to cartoon characters to Game of Thrones.

This year I asked her advice and spent a very enjoyable afternoon at her house learning the tricks of pumpkin carving. There are some basic rules or pieces of advice to follow, and after that it's just a case of patience and a steady hand!

The right tools are essential but not expensive. Julianne has invested in a set of proper wood carving tools, as she is now at the stage where she is adding shading to her pumpkin designs, but I used a simple set of pumpkin carving tools that only cost £2 in Sainsbury's (on sale right next to the pumpkins).

You get a scoop, two mini saws (one finer than the other), a cutting wheel and a poking tool. The set also comes with a book of stencils which are a mixture of easy and a bit more complicated (if you want really complex ones or something more topical, look online. Some of the Donald Trump pumpkins I've seen this year are brilliant!).

 

To start, use a large kitchen knife to cut the lid off the pumpkin. Angle the knife rather than hold it vertically; this will allow the lid to sit better. When you have taken the lid off cut the stringy bits of pumpkin off it.

Use the scoop to remove the seeds and stringy inside of the pumpkin - we ended up with a bowlful. Keep scraping until the inside of the pumpkin is clean - you will need to get your hands right inside the pumpkin as well to get all the stuff out.

We found it easier to do this on the floor, with a plastic sheet (a children's play mat, but you can use anything) to stop the mess getting all over the floor.

When you've done that, choose your stencil and sellotape it on to the pumpkin. Use the poking tool to poke holes where you need to cut (usually the black parts of the stencil).

 

Remove the stencil, and use the mini saw to cut out the sections you have marked. I was going to start with the largest sections first thinking they would be easiest, but Julianne told me that would weaken the front of the pumpkin and make it much harder to cut the smaller sections. Instead, cut the smaller, more fiddly parts first, and don't push out the sections of pumpkin you have cut. Sometimes they fall out which is fine, but if you leave them in place, it does make it easier to cut the rest of the pumpkin.

When you carve, hold the saw at a straight vertical angle and cut down - this is why we were sitting on the floor as the easiest way is to hold the pumpkin in your lap.

When you have finished, use the poking tool to push out the parts of the pumpkin you have cut and discard (carving pumpkins don't tend to be that good for eating). Put a tealight candle or battery operated candle or even some glowsticks inside the pumpkin to light it up and replace the lid.

I had a lot of fun carving these pumpkins; they are not perfect but for a first time at doing it 'properly' I'm quite pleased!

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Rocky Road Halloween Graveyard Cake

If you haven't got much time for Halloween baking but want to make something as a treat, then look no further than this recipe. It would make a great centrepiece for a children's party - and goes down pretty well with adults too!

The recipe comes from the Konditor & Cook recipe book 'Deservedly Legendary Baking'. It's basically a rocky road, arranged to look like a grave site, with some bones and skeleton hands coming out of the grave!

 

You can find the recipe online here. I left out the glace cherries as I don't like them, and used large marshmallows cut in half rather than mini marshmallows. I didn't bother making the grass around the edge of the grave either.

The recipe states to use white marzipan to make the bones and gravestone but I don't even know where to get white marzipan and didn't have time to try making it myself. Instead I used white fondant.

 

It was very easy to make the bones - I just rolled some sausage shapes and used my thumb to press in the ends. I used black food colouring and a cocktail stick to write R.I.P. on the gravestone.

 

I hadn't really thought about the recipe in advance as I'd had an incredibly busy week at work but did manage to make the rocky road on Friday night so it could set overnight in the fridge. When I came to arrange and decorate it on Saturday I realised I should have made the tombstone from rice krispies. You can make a giant rice krispie cake by mixing the cereal with melted butter and melted marshmallows, and pressing it down tightly into a pan. Once it has set you can carve it into different shapes and cover it with fondant; this would be a great way of making an edible tombstone to go at the top of the grave. Of course the fondant I used is edible but I'm not sure I want to eat a giant block of icing!

 

I'm sharing this with the Food Calendar challenge, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

 

 

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Another Tattered Lace Pink Shoe Card

I've made other cards with this Tattered Lace shoe die but I particularly like this one because of the background I put it on. It was a free printable featuring pink shoes which I used to cover a white square card blank. I used my Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine and the Tattered Lace high heel shoe die to cut out a delicate stiletto from pink card, which I stuck onto a square of pink paper and mounted that on the card. I used a silver 'happy birthday' outline sticker along the top, and to make it stand out put a purple border sticker underneath.

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Slimming World adapted Cheesy Broccoli and Cauliflower Bake

This broccoli and cauliflower bake can either be served as a side dish or as a main meal; it's a low-fat Slimming World recipe that is pretty filling and can be made in a large casserole dish to feed the whole family.

The recipe uses broccoli but I decided to make this with both broccoli and cauliflower and it worked really well - if you were having this as the main part of your meal, I think just having broccoli on its own would be a bit boring. I don't like cherry tomatoes so instead used tinned tomatoes.

 To serve 4, you need:
250g cauliflower florets
250g broccoli florets
200g cherry tomatoes, halved and quartered, or 200g tin chopped tomatoes
2 eggs, beaten
200g fat-free cottage cheese with onion and chives
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
salt, pepper
4 tbsp. finely chopped parsley
110g reduced fat Cheddar, grated

This recipe has 4 syns per serving if you are following Slimming World's plan.

Preheat oven to 220C. Cook the cauliflower and broccoli in a pan of lightly salted water and drain.

Mix the broccoli, cauliflower, spring onions and tomato in a large ovenproof dish. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with the cottage cheese and garlic. Season and add the parsley.

Pour over the vegetables and fold together. Sprinkle the cheese on top and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

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Meal Planning Monday - Week 43

I've had a couple of really busy weeks at work which always plays havoc with my meal plan! So there are a couple of repetitions from last week's plan where they are things I hadn't got around to making.

Monday
I'm working late on a project and probably won't be home in time for dinner.

Tuesday
I'm working from home. I had been planning to make mac and cheese but swapped and did that last Saturday as my mother-in-law came around so tonight I will do roast chicken - probably thighs but possibly a whole one.

Wednesday
prawn stirfry with spiralized veg and creamy quark sauce; my husband will either go to his mum's or I can cook him something from the freezer

Thursday
bubble and squeak patty for me, gammon for him

Friday
end of the week treat - something like fish and chips (from the freezer not the chip shop!)

Saturday
Lunch: beans on toast as we are going to some friends in the afternoon where there will be cake
Dinner: steak and chips perhaps - unless I get time to think of something else

Sunday
Lunch: beignets
Dinner: TBA. I'm off all next week so will spend a bit more time planning meals from tonight onwards

This is a blog hop - join in!
 

An InLinkz Link-up

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Hoxton Street Monster Supplies Cookbook Giveaway and Halloween Chocolate Orange Tart

 

 

I've got a great giveaway just in time for Halloween where not one, not two, but three of you can win a spooky cookery book full of recipes and ideas for party food for Halloween and any sort of horror-themed party (movie night?) you might want to hold at any time of the year.

The Hoxton Street Monster Supplies Cookbook is worth £13 and is a beautifully illustrated 160 page hardback cookbook with over 70 recipes and humorous advice for entertaining.

Hoxton Street Monster Supplies claims to be London’s "and quite possibly the world’s only purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind." All profits go to the Ministry of Stories, a creative writing and mentoring charity for young people which looks absolutely brilliant; I would have loved something like this when I was a kid and am going to look into signing up as a volunteer.

The cookery book says it is a revised edition featuring recipes suitable for humans, but has plenty of advice for what to do if you are inviting the undead to your party - allow extra time for zombies to eat dinner as they tend to be very slow; never seat a cyclops next to a giant spider (cyclops are sensitive about the fact that they only have one eye) and so on.

Recipes are divided into chapters: sweets and pastilles (including crunching bone toffee and fairy brain fudge), biscuits and cookies  (phlegmy dodgers, gingerdead men and toenail macaroons), cakes and bakes (clotted blood cakes, fresh maggot brownies, which I couldn't bring myself to make, and spiced earwax pie, which looked like treacle tart from the recipe), jams and curds (including human snot curd and pickled eyeballs), savoury snacks (chunky vomit dip, small intestine skewers) and potions and poisons (eg satanic smoothie).

The recipe for brain cake, or rather 'braaaiiiinnnn cake', made me laugh - translated for use by zombies. The recipe runs: "Oooooooog. BBBRRRAAAIIINNNNS! Brraaaauuuunnnnns. AAR! Errrrrg" and so on. So I won't be attempting that one.

If you can get past the slight sense of revulsion that I felt when reading the names of some of the recipes (yes I know they are not serious but some are just gross!) and read the introduction to each recipe they are really funny - and I can assure you that the recipes contain perfectly normal ingredients! I think this would go down really well with children in particular so if you fancy being in with a chance to win a copy of the book scroll down to the end.

 

The giveaway is open to UK addresses only and the books will be sent to the winners directly by the publishers.

I decided to make one recipe from the book so I could review it, and since it was over a week until Halloween and I wasn't about to throw a party I decided to make one of the most normal sounding recipes: Night Terror Torte. This is basically a chocolate and orange tart, using a ready-made sweet shortcrust pastry base.

You slice two oranges and cook them in a sugar syrup (mixture of sugar and water); bake the pastry case blind and then make the filling from ground almonds, butter, sugar and eggs then dark chocolate. Add some of the orange slices which you have chopped while keeping the rest for decoration, and bake the assembled tart in the oven.

 

raw:

 

 

cooked

 

 

scroll down for the giveaway- starting at midnight tonight!

 

 

 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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