52 Recipe challenge - week 52 dauphinois potatoes.

So as my last post mentioned I've kind of failed this 52 recipe challenge... but I did actually try a new recipe last week. Honest!

The recipe I tried to make was Dauphinois potatoes from the Marks and Spencer's cooks bible.

To make this I used:

2 small red Onions
25g Butter according to the recipe but I didn't really measure..
900g/ 2 lb Potatoes
A block of Wensleydale cheese
300ml/ 10 fl oz single cream
Salt and pepper

To start off with I chopped up my onions, before washing and peeling my potatoes.

Then I greased my casserole dish with some butter, pre-heated my oven to 190c/ gas mark 5 and started to try and thinly slice the potatoes without slicing my fingers.

This was probably the hardest part of the recipe! Some of the potato slices almost looked like chips or wedges so I remembered there's that slicy bit on the back of the cheese grater and tried to use that but the potatoes were too big for it!

After I'd managed to chop up enough potatoes to create a layer in my casserole dish I took my knife and got some butter and dotted it on to some of the potatoes.

After doing that I sprinkled some of the onion on top of it this layer, then grated some cheese on it and shook a bit of salt and pepper over this potato layer.

I then poured over some cream and realised that the 150ml/ 5 fl oz of single cream the recipe suggested wouldn't be enough so I decided to use the whole tub.

Once I decided this I carried on chopping up the potatoes, making a potato layer, topping it, pouring cream over it and then making another layer for what felt like forever. Obviously it wasn't but I did make another four or five layers...When I eventually got to the top of the casserole dish I finished off by grating all the remaining cheese on to the top layer and poured the last of the cream on top of that before putting it in to the oven.

After about an hour and three quarters I, browned the cheese under the grill and then removed the dish from the oven and served it.  I don't have any pictures of this as I was too hungry...

Once we ate tea I remembered to take a picture of the left overs.

It was tasty and cheesy but there was a lot of it! I also probably over cooked it a little as when I started cooking it I didn't think about what I'd serve with it so I ended up popping to the shop for some peppers to stuff and put with this dish.  It was a good accompaniment to couscous stuffed peppers and to a cheese and spinach bake I had the day after.  I'm not sure if I'll make this again as it felt very time consuming, maybe for a special occasion as my scales aren't thanking me for indulging in this!

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 46

This week I decided to make a tart based on a blog post I saw on Kitchen Bitching, the recipe which inspired me was this one: Onion and toasted sunflower seed tart by Panda Bear.

I say inspired because I didn't exactly follow it to the letter I didn't have all the ingredients and wanted to use a few things up in my fridge so I added them to it but the idea came from the above blog post.

To make this tart you need:

1 batch of puff pastry (I cheated and used ready roll)
1 Onion
1 Shallot
4 Eggs
1 lot of Boursin (I used this garlicy goats cheesy stuff because it was reduced at the co-op,  goats cheese would probably do as good a job.)
Half a block of Wensleydale cheese (or whatever you have in your fridge!)
300ml Greek Yogurt (as a substitute for double cream)
1 Pepper
A sprinkle of Salt and Pepper.

To start with I got my ready rolled pastry out of the fridge and rolled it over my pie dish, I squashed it into the dish and cut of the excess.  Then because my pie dish is round and the ready roll pastry was rectangular I got some of the excess and stuck it in the places where it was missing at the edges and neatened it up again by cutting off the remaining left over pastry.

 I put this in the fridge, pre-heated the oven to 200c and got out my vegetables.  I chopped up my onion first before cutting up the shallot.

I then got the wok out put some butter in it and melted that then added the onion to start cooking it after a few minutes I also added the chopped up shallot.

Whilst the onion and shallot were cooking I sliced my pepper and then popped this in the wok as well.

Next I decided to grate my Wensleydale cheese, then I covered it with some clingfilm and put it in the fridge.

I then realised I didn't have any cream and consulted Google about whether yogurt could be used instead of cream in cooking.  I wasn't entirely sure if it could or not but got some out and put it in a bowl and then realised the onion, shallot and pepper was done and took them off the heat to cool.

I double checked the recipe and realised that I had mixed up step 5 but decided that it would be ok and beat the eggs into the yogurt before mixing in half the cheese.

Next I got the pie dish out of the fridge and put some of the onion, shallot and pepper mix on the base.

Before mixing the salt and pepper, as well as the rest of the cheese into the egg, cheese and yogurt filling and pouring it on top of the vegetables that were already there. Then I got the boursin and crumbled that on top of the tart and put it into the oven for half an hour.

After half an hour the filling was done and the tart looked done but the bottom was a little soggy and my boyfriend wasn't convinced so he put it back in the oven for another ten minutes to make sure it was all cooked.

This ended up frazzling the edges but it still tasted good if you avoided the crusts! This make a great tea for two, lunch for me and a snack... I think it's a recipe I'll make again but on a weekend as it took me forever and made a few pots...

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 29.

This week’s recipe is one I made on week 28 but decided to post this week as I have been busy preparing for job interviews this week as well as working on my other blog called: Three Sixty Six Pics where I'm trying to take a picture for every day of the year.

So this week's recipe is another one from the Grandma’s Best Recipes book and is the Corned Beef Hash recipe. I promise I'll do one from another cook book next week! Honest!

To make this recipe you need:

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

A tin of Corned Beef (I used a 200g one and the recipe suggested using 675g)

A few potatoes cut into small cubes.

1 Onion diced.

¼ teaspoon Paprika

½ teaspoon Garlic

4 tablespoon diced Jalepeno peppers

A sprinkle of Salt and pepper

2 Eggs (The recipe says poached but I just boiled and peeled them as I don’t have a poacher.)

I started off by chopping up the onion, jalepeno peppers and the potatoes first and put them to one side, before chopping up the corned beef into small cubes.

I put a pan of water on to boil for the potatoes and then put the vegetable oil in my wok with the corned beef and onions then cooked them on a medium heat for ten minutes.

When the water in the pan had boiled I added the potatoes and cooked them for about five minutes whilst I stirred the corned beef and onions. 

One the potatoes were cooked I drained them and added them to the wok with the jalepeno  peppers, garlic, paprika, the salt and pepper.

I stirred this together to mix it all in and pressed the mix down to flatten it as directed in the recipe.

I also put another pan of water on the hob to boil and carried on stirring the mixture to ensure it didn’t burn to the bottom of the wok.  Once the water in the pan next to my wok had boiled I lowered two eggs in and set my timer for six minutes.

It was probably around this time that I got distracted and wandered out of the kitchen... I was to pay for this by smelling the unmistakable burning smell shortly after. Distaster! Half the mixture seemed to have burnt but I couldn’t throw it away as it was supposed to be my tea. I got rid of the most burnt parts and added extra paprika,  salt and pepper to try to get rid of the burnt taste. From then on I kept a better eye on the dish trying to ensure that it didn’t burn again.

So I carried on stirring the corned beef hash mix and then took the eggs from the pan when the timer went off. The eggs hadn’t exactly gone to plan either, one of them had cracked itself against the side of the pan whilst cooking and looked somewhat Picasso-esque. I let the eggs cool for a moment as I removed the corned beef hash mix from the hob and dished it on to two plates trying to ensure my boyfriend didn’t get many of the burnt bits.

Hash monster!

I then peeled the boiled eggs and placed them on top of the corned beef hash to try to mimic the poached egg on the picture nest to the recipe.

I must admit it was an ok dish but I couldn’t help thinking that it was completely burnt and charred. My boyfriend told me that he enjoyed his portion, so maybe I had the misfortune of getting the lousy half.We're still in debate as to what a corned beef has acutally is as what he calls a corned beef hash is what I know as hotpot... which also isn't this! I'll have to try this again one day with more concentration and see if it can be added to my repetoire of meals.

Leftover lunches.

Last week I didn't delve into my cookbooks and pull out a recipe to try or take pictures of the new things I cooked on Christmas day. There was a spreadsheet, followed by a list and a few advisors on hand but it never occurred to me to stop for a second and take step by step pictures. I was just concerned about all the food. Mainly not dropping or burning it. Looking back that was a missed opportunity... maybe next year?! I'd have to be quite foolhardy to do that again! The food itself was great Turkey, Gammon, Salmon, Yorkshire Puddings... all the trimmings! (Except sprouts.) The only problem was there was so much of it! We had the left over roast potatoes with the remaining salmon and some of the gammon the next day, then we had to work out with the other half of the turkey we still had left.

In the end we used a quarter of it in a turkey curry, this wasn't some fancy recipe from my new Indian food cook book. Alas this was me frying off onions and  peppers, then cooking off some turkey before adding some Saag sauce from a sachet and frozen spinach. Suffice to say this didn't go very far so I added some more water in and it just diluted the flavours further. It was around this point my boyfriend came along and tried to rectify the situation by adding the last of the tomato puree and a tin of mulligatawny soup.  This made an ok curry but it still wasn't amazing.  So we covered up the copious amounts of leftovers, then the next day I stocked up on tins of chopped tomatoes and added a couple to the mix as well as another pepper and a few more spices.

This is what it looked like.  At the time we finished it I couldn't face more turkey curry so froze the lot and I had this lot for my lunch today.

Despite making the curry we still had a lot of turkey left so I ended up chopping this up and cooking it off with some chopped onion, carrots and potatoes.  I then added a gravy sauce and cooked this mixture until the carrots and potatoes were done before rolling out some ready prepared pastry and making them into pies.

These are two of them, which took us three days to eat! There is one last pie sat waiting in the freezer, it's time will come just not this week.

What did you do with all your leftovers? Or do you have any tips for preventing the accumulation of leftovers?

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 18.

This week has been a bit of a nippy one so instead of making a sweet recipe I decided to make a savoury one, a nice warming curry!

As well as cooking this week I have been marvelling at the fireworks going off on the building up to bonfire night and on November 5th.

I have also decided to start a new challenge and have a go at NaNoWriMo the novel/ 50,000 words in a month challenge. I used to write a lot and even did a creative writing element to my degree at university but since then I've hardly written and seemed to have fallen out of the habit. So this is my attempt to see if I could write a novel and to kick myself back into the fiction writing habit. Although this will take a chunk of my time up I'm still planning to keep up my blogging at the same time!

So this week I decided to try the Channa Masala recipe that Carly Mountain had published in the same edition of Now Then Magazine my curry recipe was featured in as it looked tasty.

To make this recipe you will need:

1 Onion
A handful of cherry tomatoes
4 Cloves of Garlic
10g Ginger or a few teaspoons of ginger powder
1/2 easpoon Turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon Chilli powder
8 teaspoons Coriander powder
1/4 Garam Masala
1 Mug of water
1 tin of Chickpeas
1 tin of chopped Tomatoes
2 Sprinkles of curry leaves
1 Tablespoon of oil
1 Sprinkle of Salt

To start this I got out the ingredients I thought I needed and sliced the onion.

Once I had sliced the onion I put that, my garlic and some ginger powder into the food processor to try to make it form a paste.

When I was happy it was paste like I heated some oil in my wok then added the paste and started cooking it.

Before glancing back at the recipe and realising I'd forgotten to add tomatoes. So I turned the heat off the wok and moved the existing paste to once side, chopped some cherry tomatoes in half and threw them in my food processor for a few seconds.  Once they were blitzed up a bit I added the existing paste and mixed them with the tomatoes.

Then I poured it all back into the wok and started to cook it again.

I cooked it over a low heat and added the spices, stirring them in, then slowly added the water.

After the sauce had cooked a little longer I decided to add a tin of chopped tomatoes to it instead of sauteing some tomatoes in another pan them and then adding the gravy to them.  After a few minutes I decided to add the curry leaves, the tin of chick peas and a sprinkle of salt.

As there was a lot of liquid I turned the heat up to reduce the mix a bit, I also changed it by deciding it tasted a bit bitter so I added a sprinkle of sugar to the sauce near the end.  (I didn't add this to the ingredient list as I thought this was a matter of personal taste.)

After about ten fifteen minutes the curry had reduced a bit and we dished it up and served it with onion bahjis and naan breads.

It tasted lovely in the end despite all my fretting about tweeking the recipe but it made loads so we ended up having the other half as part of our lunch the next day!

52 Recipe Challenge – Week 14.

This week I decided to make another savoury recipe as my new recipe for the week.

Whilst looking for a recipe to make last week I saw this recipe for Baked Aubergines in my Marks and Spencer Cooks Bible and decided to try it out as it sounded similar to another favourite dish of mine  Mousakka.

To make this recipe I used:

2 Aubergines

4 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

4 Slices of Prosciutto Ham

375g Mozzarella

2 Small Onions/ 1 Large Onion

4 Cloves of garlic crushed

1 Tin of chopped tomatoes

A handful of Cherry Tomatoes

450ml/ 1 Pint of hot vegetable stock

1 Tablespoon sugar

1 Tablespoon Lime Juice

150ml/ 5 Fluid Ounces Red Wine

25g Butter

25g Plain flour

300ml/ 10 Fluid Ounces Milk

A sprinkle of Nutmeg

To Start with I preheated the oven to 190c/ Gas Mark 5, put the olive oil in the pan and then sliced up the onion.

Next I heated the oil and added the onion and garlic , whilst they were frying away I started to cut up my aubergines. (One small one and one large one which reminded me of something...)

The recipe said to chop them lengthways which seemed a bit weird but that’s probably because I’m used to chopping them the otherway.  Halfway through chopping the aubergines I checked on the onion and garlic and realised they had started to soften so I added the tin of chopped tomatoes, put the water on the boil for the stock and chopped up the cherry tomatoes I had in my fridge.  After I had chopped up the cherry tomatoes and the water had boiled I added the cherry tomatoes and then put a vegetable stock cube in my measuring jug, added the boiling water gave it a decent stir and added it to the mix. After that I hunted a sprinkle of parsley, the sugar, the lime juice and wine then gave it all a good stir and there looked like there was tonnes.... it looked soup like!

So I brought it to the boil to try to reduce it. Once that was simmering away I set the alarm for 15 minutes, put the kettle on again and finished chopping up my aubergines.  Now my recipe says to cook the aubergines in a large pan for 5 minutes but my biggest pan is my wok and the next biggest pan isn’t all that big so I had to cook the aubergine in batches. I put the boiled water from the kettle in the pan and started trying to cook the aubergines.

Then I realised the recipe said “bring a large saucepan of water to the boil” which my boyfriend helpfully pointed out is not the same thing as boiling water in a kettle... After a good six or seven minutes I took the first batch of aubergines from the pan and realised that I had run out of kitchen roll to drain it on, so I popped them in my sieve over the sink and dashed across the road for the kitchen roll. After I returned I put the aubergines on a plate with some kitchen roll to drain and started on cooking the second batch.

Whilst the second batch of aubergines were cooking I oiled the roasting dish I was using and started chopping up the mozzarella , before I checked on the tomato sauce and decided it had reduced enough and spooned half of it into the dish as instructed in the recipe. Next I took the second batch of aubergines from the pan and drained them, got a separate chopping board out for the prosciutto ham, then I finished chopping up the mozzarella and then I patted the aubergined dry with the kitchen roll. After patting the aubergines dry I used half of them to form a layer over the tomato sauce.

Then I put just over half the mozzarella over the aubergines and tried to cut up the prosciutto ham and put that on top; however, it worked better just to rip it into pieces than cut it.

When I had done that layer I put the last batch of aubergines in the pan to cook and hunted for the ingredients for the béchamel sauce which was going on top.  When the aubergines were done I put them on a plate to drain like the other two lots and washed the pan they had been cooked in to make the béchamel sauce. Whilst the aubergines were draining and the pan was drying I poured the last of the sauce into the roasting dish and it had reduced more than I had expected.  The recipe I had followed said to use a tin of chopped tomatoes and 450g/ 1 Lb of fresh tomatoes but I only had a handful of cherry tomatoes so when I make this again I’ll either have to buy more tomatoes or out two tins in.

After I had poured this I put the last of the aubergines on top and tasked my boyfriend with chopping the last of the mozzarella whilst I cracked on with the béchamel sauce. To make the sauce I melted the butter in the pan then added the flour and stirred until they were mixed before stirred in the milk and stirred it over the hob until it stopped being lumpy. Once that happened I stirred in a tiny sprinkle of nutmeg after last week’s disaster... then I spooned it on to the aubergine and tomato mix but I didn’t make enough so I got some more butter, flour and milk and made some more sauce and covered the rest of the mix up before grating Cheshire cheese on top and bunging it in the oven for 35 minutes.

Once it was cooked I dished about a third of it up as it made tonnes!

It looked quite sloppy to me but my boyfriend thought it looked ok.  (Then again it was late he was probably famished at this point!)

This dish actually tasted as good as it looks in the book! I was impressed with this one despite not having, marjoram to sprinkle, parma ham, mustard powder for the béchamel sauce or the right type of wine it was very tasty, even if it did make a mess of my cookbook...

The best part of this recipe is it makes loads! Now, should I have the rest for tea tonight or tomorrow?

52 Recipe Challenge - Week 4.

This week I ended up tried a couple of recipes although I didn't manage to blog about them as I got over excited about the free music festival happening in my city.... I have a bit of a soft spot for live music which got in the way of my blogging. I tried part of a recipe from another blog I enjoyed reading called Domestic Sluttery, this is the link to that recipe.  I haven't included my attempts to make that recipe as I interpreted part of it and ignored the other half... I didn't attempt to spatchcock a chicken I just made Jalepeno  butter and put it on some chicken thighs. This made a lot of mess and didn’t look very appetising but tasted quite good.

The recipe I decided to blog about this week was another spicy one from a Spice Box I received as part of a Christmas gift earlier in the year. This recipe is one for Aloo Gobi a spicy potatoes and cauliflower dish which I haven’t tried before as the chocolate thief doesn’t like cauliflower.

To Make this recipe you need:
1 Small Cauliflower
3 or 4 Medium Potatoes
1 Onion
1 ½ teaspoons of Mustard Seeds
1 ½ spoons of Cumin Seeds
1 teaspoon of ground Corriander
1 teaspoon of Tumeric
½ a teaspoon of Garam Masala
½ teaspoon Ground Cumin
2 Long Chillis
200ml Water

When I started this recipe the first thing I did was start to chop up the Cauliflower into florets as advised in the Spice Box recipe before putting it to one side. Then I put the Mustard and Cumin seeds in my pan and started to cook them.

Whilst they were cooking I sliced up the onion. When the Mustard and Cumin seeds started to pop and jump I added  the recommended glug of oil and the onions and started to fry them off.

As the onion fried I cut up the potato, the recipe said to peel the potato first but I didn’t because I was tired and I don’t mind potato skins.

Once this was done and the onion had turned golden brown I added the spices, chilli’s, cauliflower and potatoes to the pan.  I stirred the cauliflowers and potatoes in the spice mix so they were covered in the spices before adding the water.After I poured in the water I turned up the heat to boil the water; however, there didn’t seem to be enough water so I added enough to cover the potatoes and most of the cauliflower.

Next I brought it to the boil, put the lid on the pan and let it simmer for about half an hour and then let it simmer with the lid off for another then minutes. The recipe I have for Aloo Gobi didn’t say how long I should cook it for so I turned it off when the mix potatoes had become mushy and the cauliflower had broken up into pieces.When I went to try it I worked out that I had made loads.

It tasted like a spicy, slightly mushy mash potato.

Not a standalone dish but it will go great with other curries!  Now, who's got a good Naan bread recipe?