Saturday, November 4, 2017
Friday, November 3, 2017
I don't eat fish as often as I should, as my husband doesn't like it and I find plain fish quite dull, so it needs a proper recipe - and during the week I don't tend to have time to cook complicated recipes from scratch. Of course, the recipes don't have to be complicated, but sometimes even getting out all the ingredients is more bother than I want when I get home from work!
It was a week night when we had my mother-in-law over but I was working from home. I always think that will give me plenty of time to make something a bit more elaborate for dinner but I usually end up logged on to work for far later than my official finish time (who doesn't?) so in the end it's still a bit of a rush. However on this occasion my husband was late home from work so we had quite a late dinner!
That gave me the opportunity to do some potatoes I've wanted to try for ages - have you come across hasselback potatoes before? They look a bit like mini hedgehogs - I think they would be a nice treat to serve on Bonfire Night (instead of jacket potatoes which a lot of people make then) as they are a bit different. They would also go down well at children's parties (so I imagine) - especially if you added little edible eyes to make them look like hedgehogs!
Back to dinner and sensible things.... to make these potatoes all you do is take a fairly large potato (not quite a baking potato size but a large standard potato) and make several slices into it, going two thirds of the way down, spacing the slices evenly apart by about a centimetre or a bit less depending on the size of your potato.
You can see the baked potato in this picture here:
Melt a little bit of butter in a pan or the microwave and brush the potato with the butter, getting into all the cuts you've made. Then put the potatoes on a baking sheet and bake at 180C for around an hour - it will depend on the size of the potatoes. The potatoes will be nice and soft in the middle when they are done and the slices you've cut will have fanned open a little and gone crispy. We really enjoyed these!
For the fish, I used this recipe by Nagi at Recipe Tin Eats - I didn't add the shallots/ spring onions at the end because I wasn't sure if my mother-in-law liked them (though in retrospect I'm sure she does - never mind!). It was a very easy dish to make and tasted delicious.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Another fish recipe from me now... I was going through the freezer seeing what needed using up and found some smoked haddock I'd bought to make a fish pie. I've gone off home-made fish pie a bit though -for some reason when I make it, it's always more bland than the shop-bought versions. I think I need to play around with the recipe a bit!
I had a look online to find something else I could do with the smoked haddock and found a recipe from Delia Smith online for smoked haddock with crème fraiche and a chive and butter sauce.
It's easy and quick to make - put the fish in a frying pan and add some freshly milled black pepper. Pour in some milk and simmer until the fish is cooked.
Remove the fish from a pan, increase the heat and add the crème fraiche to the pan. Simmer until reduced, then whisk in the butter and return the fish to the pan to heat through.
You are supposed to then scatter with chives but I used dill instead as I didn't have chives!
I used my brand new Ozeri Artesio electric pepper grinder for this recipe; it was part of a set (with the salt grinder as well) that I received from the company to review.
It took me a while to get started as I hadn't realised each grinder needed four batteries, and I didn't have eight of the right type in the house. I'm hoping because it needs so many batteries that they will go a long time without needing changing but I haven't had the grinders for long enough yet to know!
I had to read the instructions to figure out how to unscrew the grinders as I hadn't used ones like this before, then put some whole peppercorns into the chamber at the bottom. For such tall grinders there isn't actually much space for the salt and pepper as the chamber is mainly for the batteries! But you only use a little bit of salt or pepper at a time so shouldn't have to refill too often.
The simplest touch of the button sets the device grinding and you get a fine dusting of freshly milled pepper which is really nice - I almost got carried away and used too much as I liked pressing the button and seeing the pepper come out!
The grinders are sleek and stylish, and with black for pepper and white for salt, you won't confuse which is which. You can buy the grinders from Amazon.
I don't actually use pepper that much and have never had electric grinders before but I think I'm converted!
I had a look online to find something else I could do with the smoked haddock and found a recipe from Delia Smith online for smoked haddock with crème fraiche and a chive and butter sauce.
It's easy and quick to make - put the fish in a frying pan and add some freshly milled black pepper. Pour in some milk and simmer until the fish is cooked.
Remove the fish from a pan, increase the heat and add the crème fraiche to the pan. Simmer until reduced, then whisk in the butter and return the fish to the pan to heat through.
I used my brand new Ozeri Artesio electric pepper grinder for this recipe; it was part of a set (with the salt grinder as well) that I received from the company to review.
It took me a while to get started as I hadn't realised each grinder needed four batteries, and I didn't have eight of the right type in the house. I'm hoping because it needs so many batteries that they will go a long time without needing changing but I haven't had the grinders for long enough yet to know!
I had to read the instructions to figure out how to unscrew the grinders as I hadn't used ones like this before, then put some whole peppercorns into the chamber at the bottom. For such tall grinders there isn't actually much space for the salt and pepper as the chamber is mainly for the batteries! But you only use a little bit of salt or pepper at a time so shouldn't have to refill too often.
The simplest touch of the button sets the device grinding and you get a fine dusting of freshly milled pepper which is really nice - I almost got carried away and used too much as I liked pressing the button and seeing the pepper come out!
The grinders are sleek and stylish, and with black for pepper and white for salt, you won't confuse which is which. You can buy the grinders from Amazon.
I don't actually use pepper that much and have never had electric grinders before but I think I'm converted!
Monday, October 30, 2017
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Halloween baking is such fun - you can really push the boundaries of how you would normally decorate a cake, and make it as over the top as you like! Obviously subtle black and purple looks very stylish and striking but this Halloween I decided to go for..... green slime!
The theme for Food 'n' Flix this month is Ghostbusters - the 2016 remake which was chosen by host Coffee and Casseroles. I did enjoy the film and didn't think there was anything odd about an all-female cast - the film was funny, it carried on the ethos of the original Ghostbusters film and there were even several nods to the original - which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it, but you will have fun spotting the cameo roles to the extent that I'd worked out who Patty's uncle was (who she refers to a few times) long before he appears on screen!
My heart is loyal to the original Ghostbusters though (the first one anyway, not the sequel - which I don't remember being that bad but is largely panned). It came out when I was five years old so I don't imagine I would have seen it right away, but by the time it was shown on TV (in the days of only four channels, you had to wait a couple of years for new movies to appear on screen!) I would have been about seven or eight and was transfixed. I even used to run around the playground at primary school with a group of friends acting out Ghostbusters stories - though as one of the only girls I was always forced to be Janine. Though it could have been worse, the other girl played Slimer!
In terms of choosing a recipe for Food 'n' Flix, my mind turned straight away to the Stay Puffed Marshmallow man from the first movie... from the remake, one of the over-riding foodie references is to Chinese takeout - there's a standing joke about takeaway food that Abby (Melissa McCarthy) gets from a Chinese restaurant, and their HQ is above a Chinese restaurant.
But as it's Halloween I wanted to make something 'spooky' and not Chinese food. Slimer, the friendly green ghost, features in both the original movie and the remake, so I took him as my inspiration and decided to make a cake oozing with green 'slime' buttercream!
For the cake itself I used this recipe from RTE for Irish chef Rory O'Connell's toasted coconut and lime cake though I did change it a little. I didn't cover it with the toasted coconut and I didn't make the cream cheese filling and instead did a lime flavoured buttercream which I then added green food colouring to.
Despite being green the cake looks quite elegant like this... but I wasn't going to stop there!
On top of the cake there is more green buttercream, plus some green candy floss I bought in a tub from a shop called Tiger and some marshmallow ghosts and chocolate eyeballs, also from Tiger.
Does it look like Slimer has been at this cake?!
I'm sharing this with Food 'n' Flix and Cook Blog Share.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Monday, October 23, 2017
Monday
smoked haddock with crème fraiche from this recipe for me, chicken chargrills for him
Tuesday
macaroni cheese with bacon and sausage
Wednesday- chicken pie and mashed potato
Thursday something from the freezer with chips
Friday probably at yoga though haven't booked it yet
Saturday
Lunch bacon sandwich for him, sardines on toast for me
Dinner chicken schnitzel in katsu spices from Waitrose
Sunday
Lunch fresh filled pasta
Dinner pan-fried hake in lemon butter sauce
Join in the blog hop!
smoked haddock with crème fraiche from this recipe for me, chicken chargrills for him
Tuesday
macaroni cheese with bacon and sausage
Wednesday- chicken pie and mashed potato
Thursday something from the freezer with chips
Friday probably at yoga though haven't booked it yet
Saturday
Lunch bacon sandwich for him, sardines on toast for me
Dinner chicken schnitzel in katsu spices from Waitrose
Sunday
Lunch fresh filled pasta
Dinner pan-fried hake in lemon butter sauce
Join in the blog hop!
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