I just got a phone call from the Australian Healthy Food Guide saying that I won one of their subscription prizes: a Magimix 3200 Food Processor!
I'm so excited! Thanks, Healthy Food Guide!
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
In need of comfort food
I'm still feeling a little precious and really wanted something warm and soothing to eat. And since I have this big shelf of cheese in the fridge waiting to be eaten, something cheesy too.
Say cheese!
So macaroni and cheese it was, from Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian. I didn't follow the measurements of cheeses exactly, because I added Provolone as well, and I halved the recipe. It's very yum, but very very rich - I had a small plate for lunch and I can barely get through it. If ever there was a dish that just screams to be lightened by having a side salad, this is it.
The filling came out very very runny, and after reading the comments on the Food Network site it seems that there should have been 2 tablespoons of flour in the mix, rather than 2 teaspoons of flour. I've made a mental note for next time. Although even 2 tablespoons would give a runny mix, I halved the mixture but forgot to halve the flour, so added two teaspoons. I don't think an extra teaspoon (assuming three teaspoons to a tablespoon) would have been enough to thicken it. It must just be a runny dish.
Anyway, small plate is gone, and I am now feeling very very full. I don't want comfort food anymore... I want some nice light noodles!!! (Not right now, for dinner later)
mmm.. cheesy
mmm fattening (that's a saucer, by the way)
While I was at my local fruit shop/deli today, they had these awesome packets of mini breads. I was so excited, because I'm the only one in this household that eats bread and I love my ciabattas and turkish breads and sourdoughs, but whenever I buy a loaf it never gets finished and it sits around going stale. And there is only so many packets of home-made breadcrumbs one can have in one's freezer. I bought a packet of mini paninis and a packet of mini turkish breads. I'll keep a couple out and freeze the rest! Yay!
Say cheese!So macaroni and cheese it was, from Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Italian. I didn't follow the measurements of cheeses exactly, because I added Provolone as well, and I halved the recipe. It's very yum, but very very rich - I had a small plate for lunch and I can barely get through it. If ever there was a dish that just screams to be lightened by having a side salad, this is it.
The filling came out very very runny, and after reading the comments on the Food Network site it seems that there should have been 2 tablespoons of flour in the mix, rather than 2 teaspoons of flour. I've made a mental note for next time. Although even 2 tablespoons would give a runny mix, I halved the mixture but forgot to halve the flour, so added two teaspoons. I don't think an extra teaspoon (assuming three teaspoons to a tablespoon) would have been enough to thicken it. It must just be a runny dish.
Anyway, small plate is gone, and I am now feeling very very full. I don't want comfort food anymore... I want some nice light noodles!!! (Not right now, for dinner later)
mmm.. cheesy
mmm fattening (that's a saucer, by the way)While I was at my local fruit shop/deli today, they had these awesome packets of mini breads. I was so excited, because I'm the only one in this household that eats bread and I love my ciabattas and turkish breads and sourdoughs, but whenever I buy a loaf it never gets finished and it sits around going stale. And there is only so many packets of home-made breadcrumbs one can have in one's freezer. I bought a packet of mini paninis and a packet of mini turkish breads. I'll keep a couple out and freeze the rest! Yay!
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
today's recipe
It's a simple one, because I'm feeling sick.
Ginger Tea (Nausea Relief Attempt #3)
1 3cm knob fresh ginger, sliced thickly
2 cups water
1/4 tsp honey
sugar to taste
Place ginger, water and honey in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Once boiled, pour into a teapot and allow to steep. After steeping, pour over a tea strainer and add sugar (or more honey) to taste.
My other nausea relief attempt (#2) was to chew on a sprig of fresh mint. That worked, but I really don't like mint as a flavour on its own. It needs to be in a salad or in a dish or something, so while it helped, I like the tea better.
Just in case you're wondering, nausea relief attempt #1 was a bowl of plain boiled white rice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm going to blame this one's failure on the fact that rice was basmati, and the whole theory behind the remedy is that the starch coats your stomach and basmati is hardly the starchiest of rices.
Ginger Tea (Nausea Relief Attempt #3)
1 3cm knob fresh ginger, sliced thickly
2 cups water
1/4 tsp honey
sugar to taste
Place ginger, water and honey in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Once boiled, pour into a teapot and allow to steep. After steeping, pour over a tea strainer and add sugar (or more honey) to taste.
My other nausea relief attempt (#2) was to chew on a sprig of fresh mint. That worked, but I really don't like mint as a flavour on its own. It needs to be in a salad or in a dish or something, so while it helped, I like the tea better.
Just in case you're wondering, nausea relief attempt #1 was a bowl of plain boiled white rice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm going to blame this one's failure on the fact that rice was basmati, and the whole theory behind the remedy is that the starch coats your stomach and basmati is hardly the starchiest of rices.
Never be too hasty
Yesterday I was pretty certain that I would never make lahmacuns again. But today, I'm feeling a little more positive, especially since my doctor thinks that my dizziness and stuff is due to nothing more than a viral infection rather than the something more serious that I though it was. I will try them first with store bought tortillas or pitas so I don't have to deal with pastry mess, and if that works out okay, we'll try them again.
I might even have picked up Nigella's recipe for them by then too!!!
I might even have picked up Nigella's recipe for them by then too!!!
Monday, 23 July 2007
Cooking something without really knowing what it is you're cooking
I have been reading The Next Nigella's blog and she mentioned making Nigella's Lahmacuns from How to be a Domestic Goddess and loving them. I was intrigued by her description, and thought that I'd have to try them, even though How to be a Domestic Goddess is the only Nigella book I don't own (Nigella Express isn't out yet, so it doesn't count!). There is a surprising lack of recipes for Lahmacuns on the internet. I found this one and off I went. I mixed the dough in the breadmaker on the dough setting, but boy was it runny. I added heaps of extra flour and it was still so sticky when I turned it out. It made such a mess!
I managed to get it into a workable dough though, but then my unfailing ability to screw up any Imperial measure chimed in and somehow I took 1/8 inch to be much thicker than it actually is. See, I'd never actually seen a picture of what Lahmacuns are meant to look like beyond The Next Nigella's blog picture, which I never looked at full size. So mine are much much thicker than they are supposed to be:
How it is supposed to look (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
Here are mine.
They were very tasty, but way way too filling with all the doughy base. I'd love to find Nigella's recipe for them - How to be a Domestic Goddess seems to have vanished from all the local bookshops - but without that to inspire me not even the nice taste could push me to make it again. For now anyway. Even though the failure was totally my fault for not paying attention to the recipe.
I managed to get it into a workable dough though, but then my unfailing ability to screw up any Imperial measure chimed in and somehow I took 1/8 inch to be much thicker than it actually is. See, I'd never actually seen a picture of what Lahmacuns are meant to look like beyond The Next Nigella's blog picture, which I never looked at full size. So mine are much much thicker than they are supposed to be:
How it is supposed to look (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
Here are mine.They were very tasty, but way way too filling with all the doughy base. I'd love to find Nigella's recipe for them - How to be a Domestic Goddess seems to have vanished from all the local bookshops - but without that to inspire me not even the nice taste could push me to make it again. For now anyway. Even though the failure was totally my fault for not paying attention to the recipe.
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Cooking for today
Even a crazy crazy sick feeling I had today which left me so dizzy I could barely stand up, and made it unbearable to move my head at any speed couldn't keep me out of the kitchen... (the worst of it came on after breakfast, and had passed enough for me to make dinner tonight, provided I moved slow and didn't bend over)
Bill Granger's Ricotta Hotcakes with Honeycomb Butter
Nigella's Sake Steak and Rice
and a double batch of Honey Madeleines.
Bill Granger's Ricotta Hotcakes with Honeycomb Butter
Nigella's Sake Steak and Rice
and a double batch of Honey Madeleines.
Thought for today
I want to find a picture of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street saying "C is for Cookie" so I can change it to "Weekend is for Cooking". It's so lame, but I can't get the idea out of my head!
Today's cooking adventure: Bill Granger's ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter and some more madeleines.
I really want to buy one of Bill's books, but I can't decide which one. First I think Every Day is the way to go, then I find a recipe from Bill's Food that I think is awesome. Even flicking through both in the shops the other day didn't help! I can't decide!
Update: while visiting Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for the links above, I saw that Amazon.com has Bill's Food for US$6.99!!!
Today's cooking adventure: Bill Granger's ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter and some more madeleines.
I really want to buy one of Bill's books, but I can't decide which one. First I think Every Day is the way to go, then I find a recipe from Bill's Food that I think is awesome. Even flicking through both in the shops the other day didn't help! I can't decide!
Update: while visiting Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for the links above, I saw that Amazon.com has Bill's Food for US$6.99!!!
The wonderful world of the Asian supermarket
I've been getting together a little list of recipes I want to try that have some Asian ingredients in them that my local supermarket doesn't stock. So, I dragged DD out to Chinatown yesterday morning to visit an Asian supermarket.
It was awesome! So much to look at and so many things I want to try, plus a giant Wall of Noodles. And everything is so cheap. I filled a basket and could have kept going but DD was giving me the "don't spend too much" look, so we left after just $30! I got some tamarind paste, authentic hoisin sauce, sushi soy, lots of noodles, some fried garlic... *sigh* It was so exciting. Right next door is a poultry shop where they sell Chinese duck and chicken and have them hanging in the windows, but I was too nervous to go and buy some. (I have a problem asking people for help or assistance - it's a bit of anxiety). I wanted some dashi, but couldn't find it and wouldn't ask (again) so we left without it. On the way back to the car we passed another supermarket, so we nipped in for a look. It was a bit of a jackpot actually, DD loves Ayam Thick Soy Sauce and you can't get it in supermarkets anymore. I emailed them and they said it was out of production. But we found it in this store. So we bought 3 bottles and my dashi and it was a very happy DD.
The other day, I bought Noodles by Beverly Le Blanc and found so many recipes I wanted to try (some of which inspired the above trip to Chinatown) that I decided that dinner last night would be noodles. I didn't use a recipe from the book though, because I was visiting Lifestyle Food's website and found this by Bill Granger and I'd bought an extra packet of fresh mint at the market that morning by mistake. I substituted chicken for duck, using a recipe for Hoisin chicken I had found that morning looking for any recipes that used Chinese five-spice. I love Chinese five-spice.
I made the sauce for the Hoisin chicken, but omitted the cornflour and water paste as it was plenty thick enough. I used my authentic Hoisin sauce for this too! I pan-fried the chicken in a non-stick pan instead of grilling it, but it still worked really well. Tasted good too! I used chicken schnitzel fillets instead of regular fillets and I really shouldn't have cooked them for as long as I did, but with them being a little dry it made them easy to shred. I also used my very first real chilli. I am a big chilli chicken, and lately I've been feeling a little left out because I have been leaving out chilli in so many recipes. I even investigated the Scoville Scale looking for wuss chillies but around here all chillies are just labelled "Chilli" and left at that. And I'm not that good at identifying them by sight.
I chose some big red ones at the market, put on my chicken cutting gloves (I hate the feeling of raw chicken juice on my hands so I always have food handling gloves around), took out a different cutting board and a different knife - what did I tell you, chilli chicken - and got to deseeding. I felt a little silly after all of that kerfluffle when I tried a chilli and got almost no heat, but still...
So, you just mix the shredded chicken, your salad of snowpeas, coriander, mint, spring onions and chillies (though that wasn't in the recipe and it should have had cucumber but DD doesn't like it) with some lovely soy-based sauce with lime and chilli and rice wine and a few other things and the noodles and you have dinner.
It was really yummy, but very unphotogenic because I can't work out how to mix everything through the noodles rather than just keeping the noodles as a big clump with everything else down the bottom.
It was awesome! So much to look at and so many things I want to try, plus a giant Wall of Noodles. And everything is so cheap. I filled a basket and could have kept going but DD was giving me the "don't spend too much" look, so we left after just $30! I got some tamarind paste, authentic hoisin sauce, sushi soy, lots of noodles, some fried garlic... *sigh* It was so exciting. Right next door is a poultry shop where they sell Chinese duck and chicken and have them hanging in the windows, but I was too nervous to go and buy some. (I have a problem asking people for help or assistance - it's a bit of anxiety). I wanted some dashi, but couldn't find it and wouldn't ask (again) so we left without it. On the way back to the car we passed another supermarket, so we nipped in for a look. It was a bit of a jackpot actually, DD loves Ayam Thick Soy Sauce and you can't get it in supermarkets anymore. I emailed them and they said it was out of production. But we found it in this store. So we bought 3 bottles and my dashi and it was a very happy DD.
The other day, I bought Noodles by Beverly Le Blanc and found so many recipes I wanted to try (some of which inspired the above trip to Chinatown) that I decided that dinner last night would be noodles. I didn't use a recipe from the book though, because I was visiting Lifestyle Food's website and found this by Bill Granger and I'd bought an extra packet of fresh mint at the market that morning by mistake. I substituted chicken for duck, using a recipe for Hoisin chicken I had found that morning looking for any recipes that used Chinese five-spice. I love Chinese five-spice.
I made the sauce for the Hoisin chicken, but omitted the cornflour and water paste as it was plenty thick enough. I used my authentic Hoisin sauce for this too! I pan-fried the chicken in a non-stick pan instead of grilling it, but it still worked really well. Tasted good too! I used chicken schnitzel fillets instead of regular fillets and I really shouldn't have cooked them for as long as I did, but with them being a little dry it made them easy to shred. I also used my very first real chilli. I am a big chilli chicken, and lately I've been feeling a little left out because I have been leaving out chilli in so many recipes. I even investigated the Scoville Scale looking for wuss chillies but around here all chillies are just labelled "Chilli" and left at that. And I'm not that good at identifying them by sight.
I chose some big red ones at the market, put on my chicken cutting gloves (I hate the feeling of raw chicken juice on my hands so I always have food handling gloves around), took out a different cutting board and a different knife - what did I tell you, chilli chicken - and got to deseeding. I felt a little silly after all of that kerfluffle when I tried a chilli and got almost no heat, but still...
So, you just mix the shredded chicken, your salad of snowpeas, coriander, mint, spring onions and chillies (though that wasn't in the recipe and it should have had cucumber but DD doesn't like it) with some lovely soy-based sauce with lime and chilli and rice wine and a few other things and the noodles and you have dinner.
It was really yummy, but very unphotogenic because I can't work out how to mix everything through the noodles rather than just keeping the noodles as a big clump with everything else down the bottom.
Shhh, don't tell the diet police
DD (my boyfriend) requested a cake yesterday. I put my foot down when he made a beeline for the packet cake mix at the supermarket and told him I'd make him one from scratch. I felt a little decadent, so I went straight to Nigella. More specifically, to her Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from How to be a Domestic Goddess. It was a pretty easy cake to make actually: cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, mix, add chocolate, mix. Fold in flour and water alternatively and ta-da! Ready. Unfortunately, I seemed to miss the bit in the recipe where it specified "loaf tins" (the name of the recipe went right by me too) and made it in 2 small springform tins. I read the bit about the size of the tin and even industriously got out my ruler and measured my large springform tin and rejected it because it was "too big".
Problems started when I found that almost every Nigella icing recipe has cream of some kind in it, and I had no cream. So, to the internet I went to find an icing recipe sans cream but with melted chocolate. I found one, and got to working. However, it didn't register with me (again) that 16 ounces of icing sugar is actually quite a lot - see, I like metric! And even though Recipezaar kindly has an option to convert to metric it still didn't click, and I ended up with a huge amount of icing. Plus, I didn't quite have enough icing sugar and I should have really adjusted the amount of milk I added so it didn't end up completely runny, but I didn't. Insert sad face here.
Anyway, mini-disasters notwithstanding (I didn't even tell you about when I sneezed tipping the icing sugar from its bowl to the sifter - I didn't sneeze into the bowl, don't worry - and knocked the bowl, spilling icing sugar I couldn't spare everywhere and when I was trying to tip the leftover icing into a freezer bag the bag slipped and the icing kept pouring - I saved that one though), I iced the cake and then immediately moved it to the fridge so it could set without running everywhere. That was last night, and this morning when I checked I still have icing on top, so phew!
And just to rub salt in the wound, when I was putting the cake into the fridge to set the icing, I had to move a couple of things so it would fit. One of the things I moved? An unopened carton of double cream. Which I thought we didn't have.
We haven't tried any yet, the boys (I live with DD and a friend) weren't allowed to touch it until the icing had set a bit and by that time I'd gone to sleep. Now I can't wait for morning tea!
Edited: we had some for afternoon tea today. Very rich and yummy. Even better after 15 sec in the microwave because the chocolate in the icing starts melting...
Oh well. Blogger is not playing with me this morning, so photos to come, but they actually turned out pretty good. Nigella warns that the cake may sink due to its denseness, but mine seemed quite stable. They didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (just because I was frugal with the amount of batter I put in each cake tin so I'd have two cakes - or more batter to eat! The raw mixture is heavenly) so I decided to sandwich the two together for a layer cake.
see my loaf tins?
Problems started when I found that almost every Nigella icing recipe has cream of some kind in it, and I had no cream. So, to the internet I went to find an icing recipe sans cream but with melted chocolate. I found one, and got to working. However, it didn't register with me (again) that 16 ounces of icing sugar is actually quite a lot - see, I like metric! And even though Recipezaar kindly has an option to convert to metric it still didn't click, and I ended up with a huge amount of icing. Plus, I didn't quite have enough icing sugar and I should have really adjusted the amount of milk I added so it didn't end up completely runny, but I didn't. Insert sad face here.
Anyway, mini-disasters notwithstanding (I didn't even tell you about when I sneezed tipping the icing sugar from its bowl to the sifter - I didn't sneeze into the bowl, don't worry - and knocked the bowl, spilling icing sugar I couldn't spare everywhere and when I was trying to tip the leftover icing into a freezer bag the bag slipped and the icing kept pouring - I saved that one though), I iced the cake and then immediately moved it to the fridge so it could set without running everywhere. That was last night, and this morning when I checked I still have icing on top, so phew!
And just to rub salt in the wound, when I was putting the cake into the fridge to set the icing, I had to move a couple of things so it would fit. One of the things I moved? An unopened carton of double cream. Which I thought we didn't have.
We haven't tried any yet, the boys (I live with DD and a friend) weren't allowed to touch it until the icing had set a bit and by that time I'd gone to sleep. Now I can't wait for morning tea!
Edited: we had some for afternoon tea today. Very rich and yummy. Even better after 15 sec in the microwave because the chocolate in the icing starts melting...
Friday, 20 July 2007
A migraine won't stand in the way of a day of cooking
My orange juice migraine isn't a really bad migraine, but still lying-down worthy. I tried to lie down, I really did, but the lure of the kitchen was too strong. After reading Sarah's blog over at Sarah Cooks and her latest batch of madeleines, I really wanted to try them myself. I didn't have a madeleine tray so I just used a small rounded patty tin. It wasn't a problem though, they were divine. Oh, yum! I used the recipe Sarah posted from The Roux Brothers on Patisserie.
see the poor little squashed one?
After this I moved on to my organic chicken breast. I chose to make a chicken Saltimbocca from Nick Nairn's Top 100 Chicken Recipes. Nice and easy, just cut the chicken into escalopes and then pound them flat. Season with salt and pepper then fasten a half slice of prosciutto and a sage leaf on the escalope with a toothpick. Dust the escalope in flour and then fry. Serve with lemon wedges and a crispy salad.
mmm... ready to fry escalopes
I served my salad with a "Classic Italian Dressing" from Ursula Ferrigno's Easy Italian. It's just the zest and juice of one lemon, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, fresh Parmesan cheese and sea salt and pepper mixed together. I love it!
I served it with a nice tall glass of Coke and an episode of Hell's Kitchen.
see the poor little squashed one? 
After this I moved on to my organic chicken breast. I chose to make a chicken Saltimbocca from Nick Nairn's Top 100 Chicken Recipes. Nice and easy, just cut the chicken into escalopes and then pound them flat. Season with salt and pepper then fasten a half slice of prosciutto and a sage leaf on the escalope with a toothpick. Dust the escalope in flour and then fry. Serve with lemon wedges and a crispy salad.
mmm... ready to fry escalopes
I served my salad with a "Classic Italian Dressing" from Ursula Ferrigno's Easy Italian. It's just the zest and juice of one lemon, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, fresh Parmesan cheese and sea salt and pepper mixed together. I love it!
I served it with a nice tall glass of Coke and an episode of Hell's Kitchen.Owww
I love orange juice, but it does not love me. In fact, it gives me migraines. And I have only got 1 more painkiller tablet left when a single dose is two tablets!!! Owww.
Spoils of war (or the ugliest set of mixing bowls ever)
After my doctor's appointment today I had the uncontrollable urge to go and buy a noodle cookbook. I love noodles, and I have no idea how to properly utilise their versatility. So, off I went to the little local shopping centre and I wandered first into Kmart and then into the cooking section. Where they had a %-off sale. The last time this happened, I had picked up two enamelled cast-iron pans, an electric knife, a silicon pot holder and a few other non-cooking related bits and pieces before thinking to myself "I had better leave now before things get out of hand" and stopping halfway through the cooking section and heading to the checkouts. I left determined to not go to Kmart's big sales unsupervised again. But then I forgot about it.
So today, I quite happily acquired two 20cm baking tins (for cooking layered cakes because I am really bad at cutting them - don't ask how this makes it easier, I don't know either), a rounded patty tray and the Ugliest Set of Mixing Bowls Ever.
The photo doesn't do them justice, they are really quite ugly. But I didn't have any mising bowls beyond one absolutely massive stainless steel one and one relatively tiny stainless steel one and things were starting to get desperate. These mixing bowls are a set of 6 (nested too!!!) and have a size for everything. They are microwave and dishwasher safe and they were.... (drumroll please) $9. Score! Hee.
On the way home I stopped at an organic supermarket/cafe. I've been there once before when it just opened and wasn't very impressed, so have never gone back. Today I was feeling open minded, and went for a visit. It's improved heaps since it opened, when they hadn't really gotten the supermarket thing ready and it was really just a cafe. It also had really cheap prosciutto!!! Or rather, smaller packets of normal priced proscuitto. Normally I buy shaved proscuitto from my local Zone Fresh Gourmet Market, where it's about $11 for 10 or so slices. This one was $6 and I think there is about 6 slices in there. Since I'm the only one in the house that likes proscuitto, this is a pretty good deal.
I also bought my very first organic chicken breast. I've had free range before, but this my first certified organic. I don't know what to do with him yet, but I'll let you know.
So today, I quite happily acquired two 20cm baking tins (for cooking layered cakes because I am really bad at cutting them - don't ask how this makes it easier, I don't know either), a rounded patty tray and the Ugliest Set of Mixing Bowls Ever.
The photo doesn't do them justice, they are really quite ugly. But I didn't have any mising bowls beyond one absolutely massive stainless steel one and one relatively tiny stainless steel one and things were starting to get desperate. These mixing bowls are a set of 6 (nested too!!!) and have a size for everything. They are microwave and dishwasher safe and they were.... (drumroll please) $9. Score! Hee.
On the way home I stopped at an organic supermarket/cafe. I've been there once before when it just opened and wasn't very impressed, so have never gone back. Today I was feeling open minded, and went for a visit. It's improved heaps since it opened, when they hadn't really gotten the supermarket thing ready and it was really just a cafe. It also had really cheap prosciutto!!! Or rather, smaller packets of normal priced proscuitto. Normally I buy shaved proscuitto from my local Zone Fresh Gourmet Market, where it's about $11 for 10 or so slices. This one was $6 and I think there is about 6 slices in there. Since I'm the only one in the house that likes proscuitto, this is a pretty good deal.
I also bought my very first organic chicken breast. I've had free range before, but this my first certified organic. I don't know what to do with him yet, but I'll let you know.
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Marsala chicken
I bought a bottle of marsala after reading many a Nigella Lawson cookbook. I have used it here and there, but only recently decided to make something with a more pronounced flavour.
I made Marsala Muscovado Custard from How to Eat the other night. I was my first attempt at custard - I took the easy way out and made a baked one. I did forget to add sugar though and not just once, but twice! I managed to catch my mistake with the white sugar and I added it before I put the custard in the oven, but by the time I realised I'd forgotten the muscovado, it was too late.
In the end I found it to be sweet enough, so it was a happy consequence!
Tonight's dinner was an Easy Chicken Marsala.
It looked beautiful cooking in the pan.
All that was needed was to make steamed vegetables on the side (none for my darling dearest) and some roasted potatoes.
Yum!
I made Marsala Muscovado Custard from How to Eat the other night. I was my first attempt at custard - I took the easy way out and made a baked one. I did forget to add sugar though and not just once, but twice! I managed to catch my mistake with the white sugar and I added it before I put the custard in the oven, but by the time I realised I'd forgotten the muscovado, it was too late.
In the end I found it to be sweet enough, so it was a happy consequence!
Tonight's dinner was an Easy Chicken Marsala.
It looked beautiful cooking in the pan.
All that was needed was to make steamed vegetables on the side (none for my darling dearest) and some roasted potatoes.
Yum!
What's better to start a blog than to share my spice rack?
I'm quite proud of my spice rack. I love the smell of herbs (fresh or dried) and spices, and since I manage to kill any fresh herbs I try to grow, I indulge in dried. My collection has grown quite substantially since this picture, and I love each and every one of them!
Food is an important part of a balanced diet (Fran Lebowitz)
Welcome to my attempt at a food blog!
I've been reading my way through so many wonderful food blogs which have inspired me to try new things and expand my cooking repertoire. I want to share these experiences (both good and bad) with like minded people.
I love Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver and I adore Italian food. However, I have a fussy boyfriend to contend with - nothing green, slimy, fish or seafood related, soupy, vegetable-y... the list goes on. My other challenge is trying to improve my diet and lose weight, so lots of Nigella isn't always an option.
I look forward to sharing this with you!
I've been reading my way through so many wonderful food blogs which have inspired me to try new things and expand my cooking repertoire. I want to share these experiences (both good and bad) with like minded people.
I love Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver and I adore Italian food. However, I have a fussy boyfriend to contend with - nothing green, slimy, fish or seafood related, soupy, vegetable-y... the list goes on. My other challenge is trying to improve my diet and lose weight, so lots of Nigella isn't always an option.
I look forward to sharing this with you!
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