Meal Planning Monday 2017 - Week 11

Finally this week things should be getting back to normal...I've finished my coursework (hooray!) and had booked a day off on Friday but might cancel it now I don't need it for coursework - depending on how busy I am at work. I've certainly got plenty of other things to be getting on with at home!

Monday
Lunch: chicken salad
Dinner: fishcake with poached egg for me, gammon with fried egg for him

Tuesday- working from home
Lunch: jacket potato
Dinner: sausage, mash and cauliflower cheese

Wednesday:
Lunch: salmon salad
Dinner: chicken parmo, similar to this recipe, with chips

Thursday
Lunch: chicken salad
Dinner: chicken chargrills for him, bubble and squeak patty for me

Friday - got a day off work booked today
Lunch: whatever I can rustle up from the fridge or store cupboard
Dinner: burger and chips

Saturday
Lunch: eggs benedict on waffles from this recipe - might miss out the marmite!
Dinner: individual pastry tarts based on this recipe with a side dish of green beans with blue cheese from this recipe and sweet and sour carrots from the same page, and potato of some kind for my husband who doesn't like either
Dessert: cookie cup with biscuit base, filled with some concoction I haven't created yet

Sunday - going to a birthday party for one of my husband's nephews over lunchtime
Brunch: scrambled eggs with bacon on toast for him, poached eggs, smoked salmon and toast for me. That's a lot of eggs this weekend but it's good for you!
Dinner: toad in the hole I was going to do last Sunday but didn't

This is a blog hop, join in!

An InLinkz Link-up

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Slow Cooker Butterscotch Pudding

I use my slow cooker quite a lot but never really for desserts. I have a book called The Slow Cooker and it has a section at the back on cakes and desserts and decided a little while ago to try a butterscotch pudding.

It's not very healthy - full of sugar and cream - but as an occasional treat I think it would be OK! I reduced the quantities to serve two, and definitely wouldn't have been able to get six ramekins into my slow cooker at the same time. You cook the puddings in a water bath so they set like a custard - they taste really good.

To serve two, you need:
1 tbsp. butter
pinch of salt
137g soft brown sugar
150ml double cream
85ml milk
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt the butter in a small pan and mix in the sugar and salt. Pour in the cream and milk and heat until just simmering but don't allow the mixture to boil.

Put the egg yolks into a bowl and pour in the cream mixture slowly, whisking as you go. Stir in the vanilla extract and pour the mixture into two ramekin dishes.

Put the ramekin dishes into the slow cooker and carefully pour water into the slow cooker, taking care not to get any water into the puddings, until the water comes half way up the sides of the ramekins.

Cook on low for about two hours or until the puddings are set.

Cool the ramekins on a wire rack for 15 minutes then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Top with whipped cream to serve

These are very sweet as you might imagine and I could only eat half of one- but I couldn't have made them smaller as these were the only ramekins I have! My husband had no problem polishing one off anyway!

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooked Challenge, hosted by Lucy at BakingQueen74 and also Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer.

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Slimming World Coronation Chicken Jacket Potato

One of my favourite lunches for when I am at home is a jacket potato. I hardly ever do them at weekends, because I just don't get out of bed organised in time, plus my husband isn't that keen on them, but often do one if I have a day off or am working from home. They are ideal for "wfh" lunches as you can put the potato in the oven, come back to it an hour later and just slater some butter onto it, grate over some cheese and you're done.

Of course, there are loads of more interesting jacket potato fillings than cheese (though if you haven't tried grated cheese and chopped tinned hotdogs, put that on your meal plan now!). I recently made coronation chicken as a filler, from the Slimming World 100 Extra Easy Days book. It's a good way to use up leftover cooked chicken as well, if you have some left over from a roast or another meal.

Adjust the quantities you need to taste - the chicken depending on how many people this is for, the red pepper and spring onion to personal taste (I don't like red pepper that much) and the same with the fromage frais and mayo - some people like their baked potato fillings quite 'wet' for want of a better word than others.

Simply mix together some cooked chicken pieces, some diced red pepper, diced mango, lime juice and zest, chopped spring onion and chopped fresh coriander. Season and mix in mango chutney, a little bit of curry powder, some fat free natural fromage frais and some extra light mayonnaise. Stir everything together and spoon into your jacket potato.

 

I'm sharing this with a new blog challenge, Desert Island Dish. Jacket potatoes would be one of my desert island desires but the theme for this challenge this month is actually fruit - there could well be mango growing on my desert island anyway but if not I'd like to have some! The challenge is hosted by the Good Egg Foodie.

 

I'm also sending this to One Potato, Two Potato - a new link-up for potato recipes, hosted by Family Friends Food.

 

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Red Velvet Cheesecake for Valentine's Day

I spent my first Valentine's Day with my husband at his mother's house - our boiler had broken down and luckily we were able to move in with her for a week. It did mean that my planned Valentine's dinner got postponed to some extent - I had wanted to make a nice dessert but didn't really want to make a mess of her kitchen!

So I waited until the following weekend when we were back in our house where I could make as much mess as I wanted, and finally made my husband his Valentine's dessert. I had fancied making a red velvet cake as I don't think I'd ever made one before, then while searching for a recipe online found this Eric Lanlard recipe for a red velvet cheesecake. It's a cross between a cake and a dessert so great for after a meal or in the middle of the afternoon on a weekend with a cup of tea.. any time really!

This cake-cum-cheesecake is absolutely amazing. It was pretty easy to make and tasted so, so good - the creamy filling in the middle was much better than buttercream!

You can find the recipe on the Baking Mad website; the only part I didn't manage to do was the cream cheese frosting around the sides. I made my frosting following the recipe but it was far too runny, and also slightly yellow in colour rather than white; I decided that I actually preferred to leave the sides of the cake exposed so you can see the depth of the filling inside.

I levelled the cake and crumbled up the part I sliced off, and spread the top of the cake with whipped double cream and then sprinkled the cake crumbs over the top; I'm not really sure that made a lot of difference to the appearance, taste or texture, but it did mean the crumbs all rolled off when I ate a slice of cake!

Did you know that when you make red velvet cake, it's not exactly a chocolate cake but does have 2 tbsp. cocoa powder in the mixture?

And the red colour originally came from the way the cocoa powder reacted with the acidity of baking soda, buttermilk and a dash of vinegar. But these days the cocoa powder that is commonly sold doesn't have such an acidic Ph level so you won't get the same kind of red colour any more. So most of the time when you see red velvet cake the colour has come from food colouring - which is exactly what I did here.

Spooning the cake mixture into the tin and levelling the surface.... yum

The cake came out of the oven with a fair dome to the top and a couple of cracks but that doesn't matter as I was going to level it.

Making the filling was fairly easy though involved a few steps. First you beat together the cream cheese, sugar and lemon juice then dissolve the gelatine and mix that in. Finally whip some cream and fold that in.

Here's the levelled cake, sliced in half - there is definitely a red tinge to the chocolate!

 

The way to get the filling to set properly inside the cake is to place a large piece of clingfilm in the loose-bottomed cake tin you used to make the cake (when it is cold of course). Put the bottom layer of cake into the tin onto the clingfilm and thickly spread the cream cheese filling over the top. Place the other layer of cake on top and wrap the whole thing in the clingfilm by bringing the film over the top. Put in the fridge overnight.

Carefully lift the cake, still in the clingfilm, out of the tin and unwrap. You have a delicious looking cake with a very deep layer of cheesecake in the middle.

 

I spread some whipped cream over the top and sprinkled over the reserved cake crumbs as I mentioned before.

I decided it needed something else - having decided that I wasn't going to or couldn't do the cream cheese icing around the sides and on the top, so piped on rosettes of double cream all around the top.

It looks quite pretty I think!

The cake and cheesecake combo was absolutely delicious and definitely something I would make again - I might try in a different flavour next time!

I'm sharing this with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

I'm also sending it to Cook Blog Share, hosted by Kirsty at Hijacked by Twins.

 

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Restaurant review: Pizza Sophia, Bloomsbury, London

One of the benefits of living in central London is that you are able to explore the city's nooks and crannies and find neighbourhood restaurants that people passing through - even those who work there - may overlook. I'm one of the latter - I work in London but commute in, and so only know the area around my office and the main streets elsewhere (think Upper Street, Wardour Street and so on). One of my friends lives in Bloomsbury and she stumbled across a gem of a local restaurant on Tavistock Place: Pizza Sophia.

It's one of those restaurants that barely has a website (it just has the address and phone number), only has a handful of tables at street level (with more downstairs) and you'd almost walk past it if you weren't looking for it.

 

My friend has been a couple of times now and said the pizzas were amazing and she wasn't far wrong. They are absolutely huge, clearly homemade and smothered in delicious toppings - for instance the menu states that the restaurant smokes its own meat. There is a wide choice of pizzas and some pasta on the menu and they were happy to cater for my vegan friend by altering some of the toppings.

I had the New Yorker, which was a steal at £9 for a giant pizza, with smoked beef brisket, pepperoni, caramelized red onion, mozzarella and tomato. It was delicious and I barely managed to finish it. I spotted takeaway boxes on the way out so if you don't manage to finish the pizza you can ask for the rest to go!

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 - Week 10

I have three days off this week as study leave to complete coursework for a professional qualification. I've been working on it for several weekends over the past few months and really hope I can get it finished!

 

 

Monday

leftover chicken in garlic sauce from Sunday

 

Tuesday

tagliatelle and meatballs
 

Wednesday – at home
Lunch - either leftover pasta or a baked potato
Dinner - fishcake with poached egg for me, gammon with fried egg for him

 

Thursday – at home

Lunch - macaroni cheese on toast
Dinner - burgers and chips
 

Friday – at home
Lunch - baked potato if I didn't have one on Weds, or whatever I can find in the fridge or cupboard!

Dinner - Maggi So Juicy Mexican chicken - found a packet mix in the cupboard I need to use! 

 

Saturday-
Lunch- croque monsieur
Dinner - out somewhere before we go to the cinema

 

Sunday – was supposed to be on a Wordpress course which was disappointingly cancelled (by the same college that has cancelled cake decorating courses more than once on me in the past!
Lunch- baked croissant French toast from this recipe.
Dinner - toad in the hole

 

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Slow Cooker Lemon Chilli Chicken

I've been using my slow cooker a lot lately as I work from home every Tuesday, meaning I can put something on at lunchtime, forget about it while I go back to my laptop and work for the rest of the day. When I work from home I pick my husband up from the train station which means I would otherwise have to wait until we were back to start dinner, so this way it's already cooked!
I mainly do chicken in the slow cooker as my husband is a very fussy eater and he likes chicken. I love lemon chicken but he doesn't like sweet and savoury food together, and lemon chicken often ends up tasting quite sweet and tangy at the same time. I came across a recipe for lemon chilli chicken on SlimmingEats.com which was ideal, as it's citrusy and spicy and not really sweet at all.

The recipe given is cooked in a pan while I did mine in the slow cooker, and I didn't reduce the sauce at the end so it was quite thin - I think it would be nicer thickened a little.

I browned the chicken in a pan and added the spices - coriander, cumin, chilli, turmeric:

and then put the chicken in the slow cooker on high for 4 hours, along with the stock, lemon zest and juice

Serve with rice and a green veg.

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