Foodie Pen Pal Parcel - No added sugar fruit and seed bars

It's foodie pen pal parcel time and as I have been waiting in eager anticipation for my parcel to arrive FPP fever seems to have spread to a number of my colleagues (there may be a few new recruits to the scheme soon!!). In fact I think they may have been more excited than me as I tore in to my parcel to see what my Foodie Pen Pal Sheila sent me this month. Luckily Sheila didn't disappoint....look at what I got!

An Eccles Cake - Sheila lives in Salford and this is a local product. I haven't had an Eccles cake for years so am looking forward to tucking into this (possible as Sheila suggests, smothered in lots of custard!)

Strawberry Chocolate - Another local treat from a shop in Ramsbottom. Not a combination of chocolate I have seen before and a really yummy treat.

Black tea with sunflower blossoms - I love any slightly unusual tea and can't wait to try a cup of this one...it might even make a good accompaniment to the Eccles cake.

Zatar Spice Mix - This  spice mix is full of wonderful little sesame seeds (I think it is fair to say I regularly declare my love for all things sesame on the blog) and smells delightful so can't wait to find an exciting use for this one....the tin has a recipe for spiced flat breads on it that I may have to try!

So thanks Sheila everything in the parcel is really lovely :o)

And now onto the parcel I sent this month. This month I sent my first international parcel to Christien in the Netherlands (check out her blog to see what I sent her). Christien asked for healthy treats that she could eat at work so amongst some of my favourite bars and treats available in the shops over here I decided to make some fruit and seed bars which contain no added sugar or fat to send in the parcel too. I was really pleased with the result and I hope Christien enjoyed them too!

INGREDIENTS

280g of unsweetened apple and pear spread (I used Suma’s spread which is made from concentrated apple and pear juice and nothing else!)

50g dried papaya

50g dried pineapple

50g sunflower seeds

40g pumpkin seeds

3 tablespoons of poppy seeds

100g rolled oats

40g desiccated coconut

100g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 200 deg C /400 deg F

Line a rectangular (28cm x 22cm) baking tin with greaseproof paper

Spoon the fruit spread into a large bowl and add the dried fruit and seeds and mix together until well combined.

Next add the oats, coconut and flour and continue to mix before finally adding the eggs and stirring so that all of the mixture is well combined and the fruit and seeds are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and spread out so it is evenly distributed.

Then pop the tin in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rack. Finally cut into bars and enjoy!

This recipe was inspired and adapted from the beautiful recipes at Roxana's Home Baking

Sous vide steak

In the past couple of weeks my post-olympics / pre-paralympics TV void has been nicely filled by the return of Great British Bake Off and Celebrity MasterChef. The kitchen skills employed by the celebrities currently embroiled within the latest series of MC have yet to reach the level of molecular gastronomy but if like me you are a regular viewer of anything that features Gregg Wallace, Michel Roux Jnr or Heston Blumenthal I’m sure you will be familiar with the concepts of making ice cream with liquid nitrogen or the creation of foams with CO₂ loaded canisters.

Another technique that seems to have been adopted on TV cookery programmes in the last few years is sous vide cookery. If you don’t know what sous vide cookery is it basically involves cooking food in sealed plastic bags which are placed in a water bath at a specifically set temperature, which allows the food to be cooked for long periods of time without overheating and overcooking. By cooking for a longer period of time at a lower temperature than in an oven or under a grill the core of the food reaches the desired temperature without overcooking the outside and this is meant to help food retain its juices and flavours. Since the rise in popularity of this cooking method (despite it being first described in 1799 by Sir Benjamin Thompson…so Wikipedia informs me!!!) sous-vide machines for the domestic kitchen are now available but with a price tag in excess of £200 they probably aren’t classed as an essential kitchen gadget by the majority of people no matter how foodie obsessed they may be!

There are however numerous examples on-line of DIY versions of sous-vide cookery, often involving cool boxes or slow cookers. And so I was inspired to embark on the world of sous-vide cookery without the aid of fancy gadgets or machines but simply a slow cooker, some sandwich bags and a digital thermometer!

I think the obvious choice for sous vide cookery is steak and so after a quick trip to my local butchers I returned with a couple of sirloin steaks all ready to go!

EQUIPMENT

Slow cooker

Digital kitchen thermometer

Large sealable sandwich bags

METHOD

Begin by choosing the temperature at wish you would like to cook your steak, which will of course depend on how you like to eat steak! The following table should give an indication of the temperature you should be aiming at;

Rare	52-55°C	125-130°F
Medium-rare	55-60°C	130-140°F
Medium	60-65°C	140-150°F
Medium-well done	65-69°C	150-155°F

Now you need to fill the slow cooker with water at the appropriate temperature. I did this by boiling a kettle and half filling the slow cooker with the hot water before adding cold water to achieve the desired temperature using the digital thermometer. Then I set the slow cooker to the ‘Warm’ setting to try and maintain the temperature of the water.

I found that during the cooking process the water temperature in the slow cooker did slowly creep up so I began by setting the temperature of the water at the lower end of the temperature range I required (e.g. for a medium-rare steak begin by getting the water to 55°C).

Next place the steak into a sandwich bag. I cooked 2 steaks at once in my slow cooker but placed each in a separate bag. To expel all of the excess air from the bag take a large bowl filled with cold water and slowly lower the sandwich bag containing the steak into the water until the opening of the bag is just above the water level. This should force the air out of the bag so that the bag can then be sealed up.

Then take the sealed up steak and lower into the slow cooker before placing the temperature probe part of the thermometer into the water and placing on the lid and leaving to cook for 2 hours.

As I explained I did find that the temperature of the water slowly crept up over the cooking period and didn’t remain constant as it would do in a real sous vide machine. So I kept checking the thermometer reading throughout the cooking process and as it began to near the upper limit of the medium-rare cooking range (60°C) I would add a little more cold water to reduce the temperature back down to 55°C. Handily my digital thermometer has an alarm that sounds when the desired temperature is reached so I was quickly alerted to an undesired rise in temperature and was able to adjust the water temperature when needed.

But apart from the odd addition of a cup of cold water you do just leave the steak cooking away for a couple of hours which left me with plenty of time to get on with preparing the all important accompaniment of chunky chips!!!

After 2 hours turn off the slow cooker and remove the steak containing sandwich bags. Take a large frying pan and place over an incredibly high heat and leave until the surface of the pan is volcanically hot. Then remove the steaks from the sandwich bags and place in the pan searing the steaks on each side to produce a nice brown and caramelised finish. This last cooking stage should really only take a matter of seconds on each side and just provides a little extra colour as the steaks are perfectly cooked on removal from the makeshift water bath.

And there you are…a sous vide style steak ready to serve up alongside those chunky chips and perhaps a good dollop of English mustard!!  

Yoghurt, honey and pistachio lollies

After tales of the child labour imposed on my brother and I during our summer holidays in my last blog post (sorry mum!!) this time I am recounting much happier summertime memories.

My mum taught me how to cook and most of my culinary skills were taken from watching her at work in the kitchen. Another incredibly important skill that I learnt from my mum was how to be resourceful in the kitchen!! One particular example of this culinary resourcefulness occurred on a particularly hot and sunny day back in those days when we actually got proper summers. Our stock of ice pops in the freezer had been depleted and my brother and I were desperate for a lolly! Due to living at the top of quite a big hill the ice cream van never ventured as far as our house and we were limited on alternative ice cream sources. So my mum came up with the ingenious idea of sticking teaspoons into petit filous that were sitting in the fridge and bunging the little yoghurt pots into the freezer for a couple of hours before removing from the freezer and ripping off the yoghurt pot to be left with a frozen yoghurt on a spoon….genius!

As the bloggers scream for ice cream challenge set by Kavey at Kavey Eats this month is lollies I thought I would take inspiration from my mum and those glorious summer days and have made a slightly more grown up version of the original frozen yoghurt lollies. And the great thing about these is that you don’t need any specialist lolly making equipment or moulds….just some empty yoghurt pots, some tea spoons and some cling film.

INGREDIENTS and EQUIPMENT

The exact quantity of ingredients needed will depend on the size of the yoghurt pots used as moulds but this recipe is based on used 125g yoghurt pots.

Makes 4

4 125g empty yoghurt pots

4 teaspoons

Cling film

500g Greek yoghurt

4 tablespoons honey

80g pistachios

½ teaspoon of orange blossom water or rose water (depending on taste)

Place the yoghurt and honey into a bowl and mix until well combined.

Add the orange blossom water or rose water to the yoghurt mixture and stir together (I thought that traditionally rose water combines best with the pistachio and yoghurt combination of this lolly but I sometimes find rose water a little overpowering so I also tried the recipe out with orange blossom water as an alternative and it worked really well too…so the choice of flavouring is up to you!).

Put the pistachios into a food processor and pulse until the nuts are chopped into small chunks then fold the nuts into the yoghurt mixture until they are evenly distributed throughout the mix.

Distribute the mixture evenly between each of the yoghurt pots and place a teaspoon in each pot.

When we made these as children we always left the lids on the yoghurts and inserted the spoons through the lids to help keep the spoons in place while the lollies are freezing. In this instance because empty yogurt pots are being used as moulds once the spoons have been placed into the pots cover each pot with cling film carefully pushing the end of the spoon though the cling film. Tightly wrap the cling film around the top of the pot so that the spoon is held up vertically. Then place the yoghurt pots in the freezer.

Leave overnight and then remove from the freezer. Remove the cling film from the top of the pots and then with the aid or a pair of kitchen scissors cut away the yogurt pot (I did try to remove the lollies from the yogurt pot moulds without damaging the pots but found it really difficult so ended up just cutting away the pots…but seeing as these are already recycled items I didn’t think it mattered too much!).

Then tuck in and enjoy!

This recipe was inspired by my mum!

Broad Bean Hummus

As a child I really wasn’t a big fan of broad beans. I think some of the aversion I felt towards this vegetable stemmed from family camping holidays where my brother and I would be forced to sit down outside of the tent and pod what seemed like 1000’s of the things for hours before then sitting down and reluctantly munching through them during dinner. I should probably state that my memories may be a little distorted and my mum would probably argue that we were nicely asked to assist in dinner preparation and no real child labour was forced upon us during these summer holidays (but that’s not how I remember it!!!).

But anyway I seem to have overcome this dislike for broad beans and they are now one of my favourite summer vegetables. As soon as locally grown beans start appearing in the greengrocers I start to get excited. I think it is best to keep recipes with fresh vegetables as simple as possible and I usually through a handful of broad beans into a salad or risotto but another of my favourite broad bean recipes is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s broad bean hummus.  I’m not sure what the actual definition of hummus is but unlike the traditional chick pea dip this simple recipe has none of the typical ingredients such as tahini but this really allows the summery freshness of the broad beans to shine through.

INGREDIENTS

400g shelled broad beans (if you can’t get fresh broad beans frozen are fine)

1 clove of garlic, crushed

3 tablespoons olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt and pepper to season

Put the broad beans into a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the beans are tender. Remove from the heat and drain. Once cooled slip the beans out of their rubbery skins.

Put the beans along with the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and whizz to produce a thick puree like consistency. If you find it a little too thick at this stage add a little more oil or lemon juice to thin out slightly.

For a slight twist add some freshly torn up mint leaves to the food processor with the rest of the ingredients.

Then transfer to a serving dish and enjoy with crudités, flat breads and crackers.

This will keep in the fridge for a couple of days and after making a very large batch of this recently I also successfully froze smaller portions in sandwich bags.

Recipe taken from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s broad bean hummus recipe.

Foodie Pen Pal Parcel - Flourless Poppy Seed Cakes

Oh yes people it is foodie pen pal parcel time again. If you don’t know what this is yet where have you been? Well it basically involves wonderful foodie loving people sending and receiving little parcels of culinary wonders each month.  This is still the highlight of my month, not only due to the delight of receiving a parcel full of unknown goodies but also compiling an individualised parcel for someone else.

This month I sent a parcel to Kim and you can see what I sent to her at her blog For The Love Of Post. 

I was then lucky enough to receive a parcel from Carol Anne from This Is Rock Salt and just look at all the goodies I was sent. There were so many things to pull out of this parcel it kept me entertained for a considerable amount of time!!!

White Tea and Raspberry – I am a massive fan of white tea and the fruity addition to this blend is really summery and delicious.

Mini Gingerbread Men – Yum…and soooo cute!

Kinder Pingui – I love all things coconut and hadn’t come across this Kinder variety before…will definitely search out this chewy bounty like treat in the future.

Olive and Pine Nut Crackers – These were homemade by Carol Anne and were really mourish, great dunked in a little tapenade!

Organic Hot Chocolate – Well who isn’t a fan of a good hot chocolate…, and this really is a good hot chocolate…smooth, rich and creamy.

Wild Garlic Salt – Thanks to the Foodie Pen Pal parcel scheme my salt collection is starting to look rather health. I added a good pinch of this to a watercress soup I made the other week and it proved to be the perfect seasoning.

Limoncello – Another homemade item from Carol Anne. I was determined to wait until a real summer’s day before I enjoyed this one (and in Northern Ireland we don’t get all that much Italian style weather). But my patience paid off and the sun finally emerged for one whole afternoon last week!!! So I savoured this tipple whilst sitting on the patio in the sunshine…it was pure summer in a glass and I will definitely be following Carol Anne’s recipe and making my own batch of this.

Stodka Chwila – A warm Polish cherry drink…I think I followed the directions correctly (well I copied the pictures rather than the wording on the back of the packet!!)

Dip Dab – I used to love these as a kid…and well I still love them now, woot woot for a good old retro sweet shop classic.

Grape tic tacs – I didn’t know there were varieties of tic tac beyond the white the orange and the green ones! But according to Wikipedia 57 different flavours have been produced world wide…am going to have to start to work my way through all of these!

Almond and Arrack essence – These cute little bottles of flavourings were from a local Polish store…a great little addition to my store cupboard.

So I think you will agree this really was the most amazing little box of wonders. And you may have noticed there was quite a selection of Polish goodies as Carol Anne had been raiding a local Polish shop. So I thought it was only right to find a Polish recipe to test using some of the ingredients sent. After a little bit of an internet search I came across a few poppy seed cake recipes containing the arrack essence and so my own take on these classics developed and poppy seed cupcakes with arrack and white chocolate icing were born!

Thanks sooooo much to Carol Anne for the wonderful parcel and the inspiration for this flourless recipe!

Flourless Poppy Seed Cakes

INGREDIENTS

150g butter

5 eggs, separated

225g caster sugar

175g ground almonds

175g poppy seeds

60g sesame seeds

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon arrack essence (you could replace this with vanilla extract if you can’t get your hands on arrack!)

½ teaspoon salt

Makes 24 cup cakes

Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C / 350 deg F and line a cup cake tin with paper cake cases.

Put the poppy seeds and sesame seeds into a large bowl, cover with warm water and allow to soak for 1-2 hours.

After soaking drain the seeds using a fine sieve, return to the bowl and add the ground almonds.

In a separate bowl beat together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Then add the egg yolks and arrack essence and continue to beat until well combined. Then add the poppy seed mixture and stir together until the seeds are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

In a clean bowl whisk the egg whites together with the baking powder and salt until light and stiff, forming stiff peaks.

Carefully fold the egg whites into the rest of the mixture.

Then spoon the mixture into the cake cases and put the tins into the oven and bake for 15 to 18 minutes until golden brown. Then remove from the oven, transfer the cakes to a wire rack and allow to cool.

FOR THE ICING

100g white chocolate

140g butter

200g icing sugar

1 teaspoon arrack essence (again use vanilla extract is you haven’t got arrack)

Break the white chocolate into chunks and place in a heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (ensuring the bottom of the bowl doesn’t touch the water). Allow the chocolate to start to melt before gently stirring the mixture until smooth and lump free and remove from the heat.

Beat the butter and icing sugar together in a bowl. Once light and fluffy add the melted white chocolate along with the arrack essence and continue to beat until smooth and thick.

Once the cakes are cooled pipe the icing on top and then sprinkle with a few extra poppy seeds to complete the decoration.

Recipe adapted from Poppy Seed and Black Sesame Cake recipe at She Shimmers 

Vegetarian, Tomatoless and Gluten Free Lasagne

I had some friends round for dinner last week for a simple mid-week meal prior to heading out to the local pub quiz. A simple but delicious dinner was called for and I decided on making lasagne. I really love a good lasagne and as I am normally just cooking food for myself I don’t often get around to making this Italian classic so this dinner provided the perfect opportunity. As my housemate is allergic to tomatoes I had already thought about how best to make a tomatoless version but then I found out that one of my other dinner guests is wheat intolerant. After really setting my heart on making a good lasagne (developing an ever increasing craving for the dish) I wasn’t about to let a little bit of gluten get in my way. And so I set out to make a tomatoless and gluten free lasagne which also turned into a vegetarian dish to assist with making a dent into a bit of a veggie mountain that had been growing in my fridge. And I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised with the results and I think my guests shared my enjoyment as four very empty plates were left at the end of the evening!

Serves 4

FOR THE PASTA

180g rice flour

85g tapioca flour

55g powdered yam

40g gluten free flour mix

3 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 tablespoons water

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add the eggs and olive oil. Using a fork slowly bring the flour mix into the centre of the bowl to combine the wet and dry ingredients together.

Start using your hands to bring the mixture together and add a little water if required to produce a smooth dough.

Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for a couple of hours.

FOR THE TOMATOLESS SAUCE

1 red onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 bay leaves

2 red peppers, deseeded and roughly chopped 

3 carrots, peeled and diced

50ml red wine

300ml vegetable stock

Place a large saucepan over a medium heat, add a splash of olive and the onions and cook until they begin to soften. Then add the garlic and bay leaves and cook for a couple of minutes before adding the pepper and carrots. 

Continue to cook for another 5 minutes before adding the wine and stock.

Bring the mixture to the boil before reducing to a gentle simmer and leave for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Fish out the bay leaves, add the mixture a food processor and blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

FOR THE CHEESY SAUCE

35g butter

20g corn flour

550ml milk (warmed)

½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

100g grated parmesan cheese

Melt the butter in a saucepan placed over a medium heat.

Reduce the heat, add the corn flour and stir vigorously until a smooth paste is formed.

Add half of the milk and again stir vigorously (a whisk may work better than a spoon) until a smooth paste is formed.

Add the remaining milk, increase the heat and continue to stir until the mixture begins to bubble and thicken forming a smooth sauce.

Remove from the heat and season with the nutmeg (as well as salt and pepper to taste). Add the cheese and stir until it has melted.

EVERYTHING ELSE!

1 aubergine, chopped into large chunks

1 courgette, chopped into large chunks

1 red onion, chopped into large chunks

2 peppers, deseeded and chopped into large chunks

1 cup mushrooms, roughly chopped

150g mozzarella

Now pre-heat the oven to 220 deg C / 425 deg F

Place a large saucepan over a medium heat, add a good glug of olive oil and the onion. Cook until softened then turn up the heat a bit and add the rest of the veg (you can use any selection of veg you like, I just used up what was kicking around in my fridge) and continue to cook until all the veg becomes tender.

Once the vegetables are cooked add the tomatoless sauce to the pan and heat through. If the sauce seems a bit think add a little water to thin it down to ensure all of the vegetables are coated in the sauce.

Remove the pasta from the fridge. Liberally flour the work surface and a rolling pin with gluten free flour. Cut small chunks from the pasta dough and carefully roll out into thin squares. This will require a bit of patience and quite a lot of extra flour to stop things sticking but after attempting to put the mixture through my pasta roller I realised that the lack of stretchy gluten in the dough makes this impossible. It is however possible to roll the dough out pretty thinly with a rolling pin, honest! So keep rolling out the pasta using small portions each time.

Now take a square or rectangular oven proof dish. Spread 1/3 of the tomatoless mixture in the bottom of the dish and then cover with pasta sheets, creating a patchwork until all of the tomatoless mix is covered. Next take 1/3 of the cheesy sauce and spread over the pasta until the past is covered by the sauce. Repeat this process twice more until three layers of tomatoless sauce, pasta and cheesy sauce are piled on top of each other in the dish. (You may have some pasta dough left over, but don't worry you don't need to use it all and any leftover dough can be frozen for later use).

Finally break the mozzarella into small chunks and scatter across the top of the lasagne. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until the mozzarella has melted and turned golden brown and the lasagne is volcanically hot and bubbling.

Remove from the oven, cut into 4 large sliced and tuck in and enjoy!

(Apologies for the slightly lengthy recipe but if you have the perseverance to get through this one I think you will agree with my dinner guests that it tastes pretty good)!

Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream

Last month I participated in ‘Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream’ for the first time. This is organised by Kavey of Kavey Eats and each month she sets a theme to inspire a multitude of bloggers to get into the kitchen and create appropriate ice cream recipes. This month the theme was ‘condensed milk’. Now ice creams based on condensed milk aren’t meant to require any churning and at the most basic level simply contain cream and condensed milk. So without the need for an ice cream maker and with no eggs needed to make a custard base as in many other ice creams there were already two ‘things missing’ making it a perfect month for me to take part again.

This isn’t actually the first time that I have attempted to make a condensed milk based ice cream. A little while back I made a dark chocolate version that also contained corn flour as an ingredient. But everything turned out as a bit of a disaster and I was left with a big frozen block of chewy fudgyness. It generally tasted ok (most things with chocolate in taste pretty good) but if there is one thing you don’t want ice cream to be it is chewy. So that was one kitchen experiment that didn’t make it onto the blog. When I saw the theme for this month’s BSFIC however I decided to bite the bullet and give condensed milk ice cream another go, and I’m glad I did because it couldn’t be easier and the results were rather tasty.

I started with a basic recipe from the Good Food website but wanted to jazz it up a little and so decided on a mint choc chip version. This is one of my favourite ice cream flavours but I was prompted to go for a minty version for this particular challenge after winning a box of after eight mints in my local pub quiz a few weeks back…what better way to use them up!!!

INGREDIENTS

1 tin of condensed milk (397g)

600ml double cream

50g fresh mint sprigs

50g caster sugar

200ml of water

15 After Eight mints (about half a box)

Begin by stripping the mint leaves from the springs. Put the leaves to one side for later. Chop up the stems from the sprigs and place in a saucepan with the water and sugar. Place the pan over a medium heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and allow to simmer gently for 15-20 minutes until the sugary syrup has reduced.

Add the mint leaves to the syrup and leave for a couple of minutes then remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Once the syrup has cooled blitz in a liquidiser until fully blended. Then pass the syrup through a sieve to remove the mint stalks. Add the condensed milk to the syrup and stir until fully combined.

In a large clean bowl whisk the cream until it becomes thick and starts to stiffen up forming soft peaks.

Fold the syrup and condensed milk mixture into the cream mixture before chopping up the After Eight mints into small chunks and folding these into the mixture as well.

Once the After Eight chunks are evenly distributed throughout the mixture transfer to a freezer proof container and bung in the freezer overnight.

Then scoop into a bowl and enjoy.