Recently we decided to sort through our mountain of cookbooks to separate the wheat from the chaff and provide us with a bit more space. Whilst going through this we’ve rediscovered some of our more sporadically used books. Flicking through The African Kitchen by Josie Stow and Jan Baldwin I spotted an exciting looking alternative [...]
Posted in Lunchbox, Main Meals on Feb 18th, 2009
This is the first recipe I have tried from the River Cottage Preserves hand book I got for Christmas. I fancied making some marmalade in celebration of the end of citrus fruit season. There were two methods for making marmalade given in the book, I went for the whole fruit method (as opposed to the [...]
Posted in Hints + Tips, Vegetarian on Feb 16th, 2009
More adventures in baking with Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters book. This time I tried out some Italian pie technology (or is it pizza technology?). The calzoni were really fun to make and tasty too. You need: * 160g of basic savoury bread sponge – there’s plenty of recipes for this on the web. * 120g [...]
Posted in Baking, Lunchbox, Main Meals, Recipes, Vegetarian on Feb 15th, 2009
I’m not entirely sure if this is technically a pizza or a tart. It’s was a pretty nice lunchtime snack though. Firstly, cook and mash 4oz potato, let it cool. In a pan melt some butter and fry a sliced onion until golden. Let it cool. Rub 3oz butter into 5oz plain flour. Once you’ve [...]
Posted in Baking, Food on the Go, Lunchbox on Feb 14th, 2009
A while ago now, whilst visiting some of the local asian shops I found a jar of Date Syrup. Being quite into Dates I decided to buy some without anything particular in mind to use it for. It’s sat at the back of our cupboards for a few months now, partly because I keep forgetting [...]
Posted in Baking, Desserts, Lunchbox, Vegetarian on Feb 13th, 2009
I watched an episode of the Hairy Bikers‘ recent TV series “Hairy Bakers”. It was about Pies and Pasties. I was inspired to make my own Pasty because it looked so incredibly simple. I loosely followed the recipe from the programme which can be found here. I par-boiled the potatoes and swede (which were in [...]
This recipe is a king of thrift and simplicity. Quite often if we’re making a quick meal utilising some time saving pie technology (shop bought pastry) we end up with a surplus of puff or shortcrust. We’ve started trying to use it up by making lunch time snacks. There really wasn’t much to it – [...]
Posted in Baking, Food on the Go, Lunchbox on Feb 9th, 2009
My friend Emma from work went away for a few days, leaving some bananas on her desk. By Friday afternoon, they were brown and squasshy and headed for the bin – ideal for a banana cake I thought! I didn’t know a recipe, so I searched through some books at home. There is a great [...]
I know I’m not Scottish, but Burns Night is a food event I always look forward to. Unfortunately, I usually tend to go without partaking in the Haggis, unable to find anyone willing to share it with me – this year however Jenny gave in since I promised to get a nice one from our [...]
Posted in Main Meals on Jan 28th, 2009
I’ve been meaning to post this for about a month so it’s a bit out of season now, but it was so good I had to put it up. I decided to give mince pies a miss this year (although Belle’s were very tempting!), and have a go at some stollen from a recipe in [...]