Reciplace

Eggy Nest (egg and mashed potato) for breakfast

Every week the veg box arrives, and every week it contains a bag of potatoes the size of carry-on luggage.  We're not really a meat and potatoes household, so we often find ourselves with bags and bags of potatoes piling up on the vegetable rack. 

New year, new start.  After coming back from a fabulous three week holiday in everyone's favourite North American country, I decided I was going to use the potatoes up each and every week before the next bag arrives.  Being 90% vegetarian, it's going to be tough - meat and potatoes just go together so well!

So, the first weekend back, and I pulled out an old favourite breakfast recipe that my mum used to make all the time when I was growing up.  It uses up leftover mash potato, and has tons of protein to start your morning off right.  It isn't filled with tons of different coloured vegetables, so it's not normally the kind of thing I make, but it's bloody tasty.

It's called Eggy Nest.  You simply line a bowl with leftover mash, crack in some eggs (I used 3, oink), and cover with lots of cheddar or red leicester cheese, salt and pepper.   Cover the bowl with clingfilm, and microwave for 4-5 minutes. 

Can you believe I used to get this for breakfast on a school morning?  Heaven.....

Merry Christmas!!!

I haven't done much in the way of blogging this month.  Work has been brutally busy, and is only getting busier.  It's now Christmas Eve, and I haven't even done any Christmas shopping!  I'm at work now, hoping to buy a few online presents that just require printing off, before I leave at lunchtime.  Shameful.

I'm in London for Christmas this year.  It should be a good feast.  I'm planning a lovely breakfast complete with bucks fizz, fruit salad, ham and mustard, and rye bread.

Lunch is a grazy-affair of olives, cheese, biscuits and balsamic onions.

Dinner is root veg and goats cheese salad, roast potatoes, honey roasted carrots, and pork loin stuffed with apricot and pine nuts. With a lovely bakewell tart sent to me from my Veggie Bowls playing friend. Yum!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Spelt risotto with beetroot and greens

Here's a quick little after work knock-up I made.  It's funny how sometimes, when you least expect it, you can create a dish in a hurry with whatever scraps you have in the house, and it turns into something worthy of the Masterchef finals.

I'm really into spelt lately... it's got some great health benefits over wheat, and a fab nutty flavour that works really well in bread. 

Risotto is a great after-work-too-tired-to-cook-need-to-finish-off-this-weeks-veg-box kind of meal.  So I decided to trade in the Arborio rice for some pearled spelt.  I then threw in some garlic, red onion, greens and cooked beetroot.  A little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to finish it off, and shabam!  Another quick, healthy weeknight meal accomplished. 

Good Food Channel Goes All Masterchef

My friend Nora from work represented us (Good Food Channel) at the BBC Good Food show in November at the Masterchef challenge. 

Of course, she did brilliantly.  Read all about it here: http://uktv.co.uk/food/blogpost/aid/632348

Hummingbird Bakery Green Tea Cupcakes

I'm enormously addicted to Japanese matcha (green tea) flavoured desserts.  I'm not hugely into desserts (much to my chocoholic mother's astonishment), but matcha really appeals to me.  I think it's because it's sort of sweet and bitter at the same time, and tastes chalky and powdery like delicious Pepto-Bismol.  

While in Japan, we ate matcha candy, matcha rice balls, matcha cake, LOTS of matcha ice cream, and even matcha pancakes.  This crazy bright green powder actually tastes nothing like green tea - but when whipped up into a dessert, it becomes a totally bonkers taste sensation.

These cupcakes are from my new cake-porn book, The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. They were totally moist and yummy - and the frosting on top was a matcha fueled explosion.  I took the leftovers into work, and they were a hit!  Even with the people who weren't sure about the taste of green tea in a cupcake.

My only complaint about them would be that they might have a bit too much matcha powder in them.  Matcha desserts in Japan are usually a more subtle shade of green - and these look a little like Oscar the Grouch green.   And at £7 for a tin of matcha powder to make 12 cupcakes, I'm not sure I'll be rushing to make them again any time soon.  But I think the dozens of other recipes in the Hummingbird book will keep me plenty occupied until the next time!

Where to buy fresh yeast in London (Scandi Kitchen)

 

I have a lot of people coming to my blog searching for, "where can I buy fresh yeast in London?".   Although I talk about fresh yeast quite a bit on this blog, I may have never actually said where I buy it. 

I've heard rumours that you can ask for free fresh yeast at the bakeries of large Tesco and Sainsbury's.  Frankly, I'd be surprised if anyone working at these "bakeries" even knows what fresh yeast is, seeing as everything they sell has been intensively manufactured off site and part baked before they even get it. 

I think that any real bakery worth their salt will sell fresh yeast if you ask them nicely.  If they don't have it, it might be a sign that they too are having their bread sent in from elsewhere.  Down in my part of London, you can find fresh yeast in Luca's Bakery, and the East Dulwich Deli, both on Lordship Lane in Dulwich.

But the place I always buy my fresh yeast from is The Scandinavian Kitchen on Great Titchfield Street, London.  It's conveniently located 3 minutes away from my office, and on the way to my gym.  There's no having to politely ask anyone if you could inconvenience them for a block of yeast - they proudly sell it in the fridge near the counter.  And for the bargain-rific price of 45p.  

They also sell loads of lovely food things, and serve amazing open faced sandwiches on rye bread for lunch.  Yum!

Fresh from the Oven: White Tin Loaf (or not)

This month's Fresh from the Oven challenge was for a white tinned loaf from the lovely Dan Lepard (The Handmade Loaf).  Yet another FFTO challenge that I'd had my eye on for a while, but hadn't gotten around to baking!

This one was SO GOOD when I baked it last week, that I made it again today.   It's amazing.  So soft, so buttery, so sweet.   It's like cake - but a cake that you can make into a sandwich.

So imagine my devastation when today, when I came to write my blog post about my new favourite bread recipe, and found out that I'd baked the wrong bl**dy recipe.   There are two simple white loaves with milk in them in Dan's book.  The one we were SUPPOSED to bake was the Quick White Loaf on page 63.   I baked the Simple Milk Loaf on page 46.  Gutted.

The two are quite similar - the one I baked uses 100% milk as it's hydration, (instead of part water, part milk), and has butter and syrup in it.  It's dead easy to make, but has a long-ish fermenting period - so I stayed in today and baked it along side a plain white sourdough.

So here I am, on the eve of the Fresh from the Oven challenge deadline, with the wrong loaf.   To top it all off, today's sourdough became really vigorous during the final two hours of rising, and blew up and out of my new cane proving basket - which is all yucky and sticky now.  Oh, and because of the rain, the TV isn't picking up ITV, so I can't even watch the XFactor results.  I'm off to go sulk now.

Here's a photo of the milk loaf though - it's wonderful:

Can I eat dried yeast straight out of the jar?

To the person who came to my blog by searching for "Can I eat dried yeast straight out of the jar?" Um.... no. Yuck.

Sweetcorn Relish

BBQ season is over now, but I still had a glut of sweetcorn from my vegbox.  Luckily, this stuff keeps for a while in the fridge, so I'll serve it with sausages or fishcakes on a week night.  Here's this lovely corn relish recipe from BBC Good Food Magazine.

BBC Good Food Masterchef Live at Kensington Olympia

Hot diggidy!  Another big huge food exhibition.  And once again I blagged free tickets from work to go!  (Thanks, Nora!) 

This time it was the BBC Good Food Masterchef Live show at Kensington Olympia in London.  I couldn't believe my eyes when we walked through the entrance - that place is enormous! We didn't even know where to begin!  (Certainly not at the coat-check with the 20 minute long queue!)  There were rows upon rows of booths from various producers and food companies.  Michelin starred restaurants offering samples of their food.  Theatres, masterclasses, tastings, and a Japanese food pavilion.  (Heaven!)  

Me being a Canadian girl and all, I was a little overwhelmed with the ridiculous crowds.  It was a bit like being on the Victoria Line during rush hour, but with no one knowing where they're going.  Hoards of middle-class foodies trying to keep hold of their English civility while being crushed in a crowd, grabbing samples of organic Wiltshire smoked cheese and brightly decorated cupcakes.  There wasn't enough room to bring a cat, let alone swing one.  I kept having to find empty corners to stand in and breathe. 

 But the excitement of it all more than made up for it!  I saw James Martin in the flesh. John Torode, THE John Torode was right beside me!  Harumi Kurihara was cooking before my very eyes!  We ate the best Udon noodles outside of Japan at the Oishii pavilion. We met loads of lovely people, and ate loads of lovely food.  We bought bottles of oil, fresh buffalo mozzarella, hot sauces, coffee beans....

There was an overwhelming amount of ethical organic blah-dee-blah going on.  I'm as in to this as anyone else right now, but one company really impressed me as we were walking around: The Coffee Fairy.  These lovely girls sell coffee beans direct from farmers in a town in Nicaragua, where the founder spent time teaching English.  You can sign up for a coffee subscription, and all the money goes towards helping schools in the area.  They haven't been around for very long, but they've already raised enough money to buy all new desks, and re-do the toilets in the school. 

This really got me excited!  I've never been a fan of fair-trade.  Companies like Sainsbury's and Tesco make a big deal out of fair-trade because they know they can pull on our heart strings and make us spend more money.  And maybe the farmers do get a better deal.  But the supermarket sure isn't making any sacrifices!  They've got the same big profit margin on the fair-trade coffee as they do on the cheapo stuff.  (Maybe bigger).  The responsibility is left to the consumer alone to pay more.

So I loved this idea. Martina Gruppo imports the beans direct from the farmers, and sells it in London at a fair price.  Apparently the stuff is great.  I wouldn't know - I'm a tea girl.  But the sample I tried was pretty drinkable, even for a coffee-phobe like me.

The Oishii Japan pavilion was fantastic.  It was Harumi Kurihara (the Japanese Martha Stewart) and her entourage of about 30 chefs and tourism commission people from Japan.  We bought a bowl of Udon noodles to share, that brought back great memories of our honeymoon in Japan.  The Husband even ordered in Japanese, much to their squealing delight!   

I missed the best bit of the whole day though.... lovely Nora from work represented the Good Food Channel in the Invention Test!  She'll be blogging about it soon, so I'll stick a link up of her successful salmon and Hollandaise sauce, which Greg Wallace declared good.  Go Nora!