She's cooking, AGAIN...
I baked a Moleskine iPad Mini case! Okay I didn’t bake it, but its handmade by me following instructions from the blog of the wonderful John Chandler: http://www.byjohnchandler.com/2012/12/12/the-worlds-niftiest-ipad-mini-case/
There’s more pics here: http://photoset.com/lvv3afb5I amended the design by buying a cheap back cover off eBay and sticking that rather then my iPad to the Tack n’ Peel, but apart from that I followed John’s instructions and it worked super-well, thanks John!
You may remember that last year I posted about producing a “Barbie cake” for one of the little B’s birthdays. This year, predictably, she asked for the same again. I didn’t want to go to the farrago of baking two cakes (one in a pudding bowl and one regular round one for the base) so this time I did one and a half times the recipe for Nigella’s “Buttermilk Birthday Cake” and baked it all in the pudding bowl. I already heard a cautionary tale about the importance of testing pudding bowl cakes very thoroughly for doneness before turning them out-my sister inadvertently turned one out with a still-runny middle :0(
So I hovered by the oven and ended up giving it another five minutes and then another and then another before I finally trusted myself to turn it out. It was a little bit “bronzed” (ahem), but at least it was all cooked. As you can see in the picture above, once it was covered in icing, who’s to know? I think this one got even more compliments than last years, even though it was actually a fair bit easier, and I slightly messed up by forgetting to slice it through the middle and whack some jam in there. The rice paper daisies cover a multitude of sins, and bearing in mind they were a mere £1.69 from Tesco’s, they were worth every penny. That and the “Jelly Belly” jellybeans, in a suitably full-on pink and she was ready for the ball (I hadn’t the heart to tell her she was going to be cut in half in front of a group of screaming seven year olds at a soft-play centre).
Next year, I swear, I’m ordering one in.*
* I said this last year.
Cider Apple Butter! No, I’d never heard of it either. I saw it in The Sharrow Marrow last week and I was just intrigued, and also it was only £2.60 so I figured I’d fly by the seat of my pants and try it. It’s divine. I could easily just spoon it out of the jar straight into my mouth. It’s kind of like an apple-y version of lemon curd, but it doesn’t have any eggs in it. The label says it goes well with cinnamon bagels, so I’ve got some coming on the online shop this week. I’ll keep you posted, if the jar lasts that long! Get some yourself at The Sharrow Marrow or at www.madebybrambles.com
Jamie Oliver! He is turning into one of these OmniMedia corporations isn’t he? Still that hasn’t stopped me buying both of his iPhone apps. The latest is his “15 Minute Meals” app. This one is based around the idea of buying videos of him cooking meals, and these can be bought in packs of 10 or individually. I’ve only bought one so far (though there are some free ones), and the picture above is of the meal I made “Happy Cow Burgers”. The alarmingly purple bit on the plate is what he terms “Old School Slaw”. Basically it’s a kind of coleslaw made with red and white cabbage, and fat-free yoghurt instead of mayonnaise. I didn’t manage to make the meal in 15 minutes, predictably, but it probably did only take about half an hour, which isn’t bad going. And I’m loving on the coleslaw. The burgers were pretty good too…
Check out this dazzling array of dinners! In the top left hand corner we have last night’s dinner, which was polenta, to which I always add a bit of stock, with chilli tomato sauce from Nigella’s Nigellissima book, and Linda McCartney Red Onion and Rosemary Sausages. At the top right, there is a new Linda McCartney (do you see the theme emerging here…) burger that is frighteningly meat-like and comes with some peppery melt stuff on the top. We had that with quinoa (cooked in my adored rice cooker) and pan-fried brussels with lemon zest and garlic oil. The main pic is yesterday’s lunch which was a salad of spinach, fried mushrooms, Quorn bacon and a bit of leftover quinoa from the previous picture. Bottom left is our New Year’s Eve dinner of red wine and Stilton risotto with roasted root veg, and bottom right is my meal at a wedding just before Christmas- classy pie and mash (it was so nice to get the same kind of dinner as the carnivores, especially as it was pie)!
I’ll blog about Christmas and its myriad food-based highlights, soon.
I think I could count the number of times I’ve made a shepherd’s pie on one hand, with the photo above being the latest of them. I’ve been meaning to have a go at making shepherds pie with lentils, but yet again I failed to get round to it. However it seemed worth blogging about my usual (cough) way of making vegetarian shepherds pie. I use either Quorn or Linda McCartney brand veggie mince. Overall my recipe is based on the way I remember my mum making shepherd’s pie, so it has finely diced carrot in it, fried onions and garlic and a good squirt of ketchup and brown sauce. On this occasion I really pulled out all the stops and made the mash the old-fashioned way by peeling and boiling the potatoes, but normally I nuke them and then use the potato ricer to mash them. It really didn’t take that long and it was even nicer when we had the second half a couple of days later. I guess you could call this “Shepherdless Pie” but I prefer “Shepherdess Pie”- humour me…
Its Stir-Up Sunday! Traditionally, this is the day when you make your Christmas pudding and Christmas cake. I haven’t even managed to do the Christmas pudding in its entirety let alone the cake, but I’ve made a start. Making your own Christmas pudding is something that would seem daunting to a lot of people, I know, myself included, but breaking the job up over two nights is a great idea, as with very little work you can have most of the preparation done so come the next day what you’re doing is mixing everything together. As ever I’m making Nigella’s Non-conformist Christmas Pudding. It’s hardly rock ‘n’ roll, but it’s as close to radicalism as a Christmas pudding recipe can get. It contains Tia Maria and dried blueberries, as well as cocoa powder among its off-piste list of ingredients. I’ll let you know how it turns out tomorrow!
Mince pies! I know it’s a bit early, but one of the little b’s has her school Christmas fair this weekend, and they were specifically asking people to bake mince pies this year. I’m more or less embarrassed to admit that I didn’t just make the pastry I made mincemeat as well.
I used to think that making mincemeat was pretty much analogous with making jam or chutney-that it involved huge amounts of chopping, peeling and preparation, the use of sugar thermometers, getting spat at by a pan of volcanically hot liquid, sterilised jars, etc etc
In fact it turns out that you can stick all the ingredients in a bowl, stir them up and leave them for a couple of days, no cooking involved! However if you are very pressed for time, and when were you ever not?, you can cook it all in a saucepan and have your mincemeat done and dusted, genuinely, in 10 minutes. I’m going to be annoying and give you the old cliche that it tastes so much better than shop bought, but the thing is, it really does taste much, much nicer than shop bought mincemeat. I’ve lost count of the number of adults who’ve told me in recent years that they don’t like, never liked, mince pies. I bossily tell them that they just don’t like mincemeat, and that they should try mine. So if you want to have a go at making your own, here’s how:
Into a biggish, but not ridiculously big, saucepan put half a cup of dried cranberries, half a cup of currents and half a cup of sultanas. Add half a cup of orange juice, two rounded tablespoons of ground almonds, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, a quarter of a teaspoon of nutmeg and a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cardamom. Finally add a heaped tablespoon of black treacle and bring it all to the boil, then immediately turn down to a simmer and keep stirring for 5 minutes. Done.
You can also chuck in any alcohol you like at the end, and in recent years I have favoured vodka, but you add whatever you like (though I draw the line at advocaat…)
A pizza of two halves… what else can you do when you’re making pizza for 4 and two of you like Mozzarella and two like cheddar?
And when you think about it, why stop at the cheese? You could do half and half sauces well, though I guess I draw the line at a half and half base…
We had the in-laws over this weekend, and I was trying to do a kind-of Sunday lunch for them. I can’t say I really pulled this off with the starter or the main, but for pudding I decided to do a crumble. Mr B managed to get some early forced rhubarb in the supermarket, and you can see it pictured above all chopped up in my pie dish ready to go. I grated some frozen ginger over it and added about four desertspoons of sugar. If you’ve ever been put off attempting to cook rhubarb, particularly if you’ve only ever heard of “stewed” rhubarb, don’t be put off! Rhubarb actually cooks very, very quickly. Keen-eyed readers may notice that there is a little tiny bird in the middle of the pie dish. You obviously don’t really need one of these for a crumble, but I put it in anyway as it looks very rustic/vintage nd it appealed to my inner food-stylist. The crumble topping was the one that Nigella recommends for her Jumbleberry Crumble in Nigella Express, although I did add about a teaspoon of ground ginger to it as well, just to ramp up the overall ginge-factor. Rhubarb really is the best thing to go with ginger since, errr, Fred?
