Happy Halloween

Lemon salty chicken

Following on with the theme of simplicity, I love this recipe. It hardly takes any time at all, its easy to make and it tastes delicious.

Half a lemon (use the other half to make an icy cold gin and tonic)

Two pinches of sea salt

2 chicken breasts

Olive Oil 

Green Salad

Chop the chicken into a smallish chunks, add to a hot pan with the olive oil. As it cooks, squeeze the lemon juice all over the chicken. Then add the salt.

In the meantime, make a quick plain salad, I like a combination of lettuce, rocket and basil personally. Once the chicken is cooked, add to the salad and enjoy with a nice cold drink.

Simplicity = Heaven

Tonight was lazy food night. The night where you use up whatever is lurking in the larder to make fast but tasty food. We had sweet tomatoes chopped with chunks of feta cheese with french bread. Simple but heavenly. The salty cheese provided the perfect counterpoint to the sweetness of the tomatoes. 

Red Cabbage - Storecupboard

Whilst you SHOULD make your own, I admit to cheating these days. Given the amount of Polish goods being sold in the supermarkets, its far easier to buy it by the jar, especially if you eat as much of it as we do.

• Cheese and red cabbage toasties
  
• As a quick splash of colour and texture to a plate of roast meat
  
• As a topping for soups, particularly things like Borscht (the colours go perfectly together)
  
• Mixed into crunchy salads/salsas
  

I also admit to eating it out of the jar late at night when i need a snack.

Roasted Pork Belly with garlicky potatoes and red cabbage

Autumnal weather calls for autumnal food. Its been raining here for the last couple of days and the fog is hardly lifting. Seems as if the weather is practising for a haunting halloween.

Pork belly

2 heads of garlic

3 to 4 large potatoes

Red Cabbage

Salt

Olive Oil 

Preheat the oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Cover the pork in olive oil and rub with a good handful of salt. Place in a roasting dish with your potatoes and the garlic and pop into the oven.  Cook for an hour and a half, the pork skin down on the garlic.

Increase the heat to 180 °C (355 °F), turn the pork over and cook for a further 30 minutes or until the skin is golden and crunchy.

Peel the roasted garlic, chop into slivers and serve with the roasted potatoes. Serve with a large helping of red cabbage.

Beware beware there is beetroot everywhere (Drover's Inn)

Went out last night for dinner to a nice little spot near Kirriemuir that was recommended by friends (Drover's Inn) and guess what was on the menu... yep thats right beetroot cured smoked salmon with horseradish. It seems there is no escaping from the beet.

That said, dinner was delicious and we will definitely going back. Food aside, its a really pretty spot with a lovely walk through the orchard from the carpark to the Inn and a warm sunny day sitting in the garden to eat would be lovely (guess ill just have to wait for spring for that).

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

John Keats

October is here and its most definately misty, the haar is edging off the sea most nights leaving a chill in the air. My food thoughts are turning towards pumpkin pie and thick gravy covering huge slabs of beef with yorkshire pudding. Autumn and winter are my two most favourite seasons, perhaps because they house my two most favourite festivals, halloween and christmas. Nothing beats hurrying home in the cold, wrapped up warm and being greeted by delicious hot food. In fact the only depressing food related thought  on the horizon is the dreaded sprout. Still need to find a way of making them palatable before december the 25th.

Beetroot Blues

The Bf's parents grow everything and in huge quantities to boot.

Red and yellow and PINK

Pink for beetroot in fact.

http://www.lovebeetroot.co.uk/

This is just to say

I succeeded with day 1 of the healthy eating regime, oh and

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
William Carlos Williams

Ok, I admit to eating the plums primarily to post that poem, I could have had an apple or banana instead. Surprisingly enough, despite studying Literature for 4 years at University, thats the only Wiliam Carlos Williams poem Ive read. Luckily there are still a few plums left to eat whilst I google him.

I love the unrepentent tone of the poem, sure hes admitting to eating your breakfast and asking for forgiveness but at the same time he's painting you a picture of just what you missed, rubbing it in so to speak. "Forgive me" but this is what you missed out on, the softness, the sweetness, the deliciousness, which implies that he isnt particularly sorry in the slightest.

5 Alive

I keep reading about various campaigns to make us eat more fruit and vegetables. Its something Ive always taken for granted, after all eating healthly makes perfect sense. The other night however, I got a bit distracted and actually started thinking about how much I eat, or rather dont eat a day.

Suddenly 5 pieces a day seemed like a lot, maybe 4 and in some cases 5 pieces more than I was consuming. So obviously I need to fix this, but how...

When Im busy with work related stuff, we eat really badly. One meal a day kind of badly and fitting that much fruit and veg into one meal is pretty tricky. But then if Im being strictly honest with myself, even when Im not busy we tend to only eat one meal a day. Ive skipped breakfast ever since my secondary school days when my mother could no longer force ready brek down me in the morning. Lunch tended to be an optional extra that again usually ended up missed (so many more useful things to spend your dinner money on when you are sixteen). Then I went to University and lived on cigarettes, tomato cuppa soup and red wine for four years and by that stage my eating habits were pretty much set in stone.

So now I need to find a way to sneak those fruits and vegetables into my diet.

Marmite Monster

Im a bit of a grazer, I like to snack, small meals offering different tastes are far better than one large plate of food. This in part is why I love tapas and mezes, the whole concept appeals to my snackling side.

Which brings me to Marmite, whilst I realise its an acquired taste and you could argue its colour and texture, not to mention the smell could be classed as offputting, to me, its childhood in a jar. Even when we lived in Germany, there was always marmite in the larder. When we traveled anywhere marmite sandwichs was always on the menu, not to mention the marmite and buttered toast before we even left home.

One of my favourite comfort come snackling food is a very simple marmite on toast with a fried egg splatted on top. When you cut into the egg and the yolk spills out intermingling with the marmite and the buttered toast, Im five again and sometimes thats no bad thing.

Pesto flavoured everythings

Another of the foodstuffs I can not live without is Pesto. I like to have at least 2 different flavours in the house at all times.

• Use it instead of butter, smeared on crusty bread either as a snack on its own or to hold sandwich fillings together. It goes particularly well with salami and brie.
• A dollop of it makes a great garnish for soups
• When you feel lazy, toss some pasta in a couple of spoonfuls of pesto and grate some cheese over the top.

Which raises the question, savoury pesto and sundried tomato muffins, possibly with a touch of blue cheese? Hmmm.

Dundee Food and Flower Festival

The great thing about Food festivals is the chance to try and buy stuff from local producers. So with a lunch consisting of multiple courses, from Falafal to chocolate coated strawberries we explored and ate our way around Scotland. Eating strawberries and marshmellows off a skewer whilst thick warm melting chocolate is dripping everywhere is not a job for the fainthearted by the way, in the end to protect my cream sweater I had to abandon mine. Luckily the bf had no such issues and fell on it.

To burn off all the calories we consumed, we (the bf, his best friend and I) headed off to Dunkeld for a healthy walk in the woods.

Roasted Garlicy Tomato Soup

The starting platform for this soup is my roasted tomatos.

1 knob of butter
1 or 2 onions depending on the quantities of tomatos you used (I tend to go with 1 onion per oven proof dish of tomatos)
Roasted garlicy tomatos
Roasted garlic bulb
Crusty french loaf to serve with

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add your diced onion and cook it gently until the onion softens but isnt browned.

Take the cooled roasted tomatos, garlic and the onion and blend it. If you are making large quantities and have to blend it separately, make sure that you have tomato, garlic and onion in each mixture. Place it all in a large saucepan and heat. Serve it with crusty bread.

The lemon the tomatos were roasted with help cut through the sweetness of the tomato and the roasted garlic. The soup being mostly tomatos ends up with a rich red colour and keeps well so can be made the day before.

Roasted Garlicy Tomatos

These fill your kitchen with a lovely aromatic smell conjuring up the scent of the Mediterranean.

Tomatos (at least 6)

1 Bulb of Garlic, top and bottom cut off

1 Fresh Lemon

Salt, Pepper and Olive Oil to season.

Cut the tomatos in half and place up in an oven proof dish. Cut the lemon in half, squeeze the juice of one half across the tomatos, add the garlic bulb to the middle and then drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper across the whole lot.

Put the dish in the oven at 180 degrees for 30 minutes and then turn off the oven leaving the tomatos inside to cool.

I love these because they are so versatile:

• Serve them piled on bruschetta, roughly chopped with basil leaves as a snack or starter
• Add it to an antipasti platter alongside some cold meats, cheese and crusty bread
• As a base for a pasta sauce, chop or blend it and add pancetta or bacon
• As a base for tomato soup

Tomato Salad

This is simplicity itself and a taste of pure heaven as well.

Tomato Salad

• 2-3 large ripe tomatos
• 1 lemon
• salt and pepper to taste

Slice the tomatoes, sprinkle liberally with the lemon juice, salt and pepper. Cover and leave for at least 10 minutes. I love this on its own, served with at most some crusty bread.
If you want something more substantial you can add:

• slices of mozzarella
• cubes of feta cheese
• crispy bacon bits

Or a combination there of.

I also use this as part of an antipasta plate, adding cold meats, usually salami and bresaola, a handful of olives and some crusty bread smeared with pesto or tapenade.

In the Larder

When I was a little girl, my Grandmother's pantry used to fascinate me. So many mysterious things lurked within its shelves. She had everything you could ever need, and if by chance unexpected guests showed up, she could prepare a tasty meal in minutes. Perhaps by genetics, I too am a hoarder and there are somethings I just cant live without in my kitchen.

Lemons and Limes: Not only do they look lovely sat in a big bowl on the worktop, but they are so useful in so many ways.

• You can slice them into your Gin and Tonic.


• If you take water to bed and find its gone a bit stale tasting by morning, lemon juice helps it stay fresh and tasty.


• Lemon chicken is a huge favourite in our house, just a simple roasted chicken cooked with lots of lemons and served with a big salad.


• I also use fresh lemon or lime juice to dress salads, squeezing the juice and then leaving the salad for 10 minutes or so before serving.


• Warm water and lemon juice is a great way to start the day.


• Squeeze them over plain crisps for a more exotic taste (One of my favourite Mexico City streetfoods is crisps with lime or lemon juice and a sprinkling of chili power).

In short, my kitchen feels naked without them.

Wordled

Whilst browsing my reading list this morning, I came across http://wordle.net/, its a simple but brilliant concept. It takes the front page of your blog and plays around with the words to make a picture of the themes most important to you.

On the hunt for the perfect Tomato soup

When he was little, my other half went through a phase of only eating Heinz Tomato Soup. It didnt matter where in the world he went, he only wanted that and no other brand would do.


Which leads me to my current dilemma, obviously now he eats pretty much everything so thats not the problem. No, my issue is, how to make the perfect soup. We have tomatos everywhere so thats not it. Ive been experimenting with a variety of recipes but all of them fall a bit short, too sweet, too sour, too rich and so on.



My task this week then is to try and make a soup Im happy with, one i want to eat again and again. Im going to start with a gazpacho as its still fairly warm and muggy here.

Tomato Heaven

The greenhouse is loaded with tomatos. When you enter the heavy sweet scent assails you, enticing you into a leafy grotto where the fruit hangs like rubies.

We cant eat them fast enough. Salads loaded with them, roasted in stews, raw on their own with a sprinkling of salt and crammed into fresh crusty bread with cheese. Yet they are still winning, for every one we eat, another four seem to ripen and take its place.

One of my favourite quick snacks/salad is:

• 2 or 3 tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1 avocado, roughly chopped
• half a cucumber, sliced
• blue cheese, crumbled into chunks
• salt and pepper to taste with the juice of half a lemon or lime squeezed over it

Its simple, fresh and tasty.

Heaven or Hell

Every Saturday morning I watch "Saturday Kitchen". Partly because I like James Martin and partly because I like the formula of the show, guests, clips of other cooking shows and of course the egg challenge. However what has me fascinated the most is Food Heaven or Food Hell. Some of the choices people make have me amazed, how can rice.. a staple for so many people be considered hellish? That then got me thinking, what would be my food heaven and my food hell? Despite the fact im considered a picky eater by my entire family and the family of my Boyfriend, as it turned out, picking heaven was far harder than choosing hell. In fact, im still not sure what my favourite food is. On the other hand, whilst thinking of hell, one thing came straight to mind.. a smirking cavorting sprout. What makes my hatred of sprouts particularly odd is the fact that I love all other green vegetables. So yes, the whole sprout thing is irrational and because food should never be about hell only heaven its time to deal with it. Im giving myself between now and Christmas to find a way of making myself enjoy sprouts.

Marmite

Marmite has to be one of my favourite foodstuffs. Nothing beats marmite on toast coupled with lashings of melted butter. Its my ultimate comfort food.

It takes me back to my childhood. It was the only thing my father could make so when he was left in charge, it was all we got to eat. Now when im feeling down or cant be bothered to cook, its the marmite I reach for.

Picnics

Ever since i was a child, i have loved picnics. My father was in the military so in the school holidays we would often return to the UK to spend time with family and because Daddy doesnt believe in prolonging journeys... stopping for food was a no no. Hence the picnics, eaten in the car whilst on the autobahn. Bovril or salami and cheese rolls, hard boiled eggs, fresh tomatos with a pinch of salt. Simple food, wrapped up in paper napkins.
Im the opposite of my father in that respect. I love exploring places found by chance when going elsewhere but picnics are still one of my favourite things. Sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, scotch eggs, salami sticks (something else ive loved since childhood).

Composing the perfect sandwich.
Ive spent many happy hours trying to compose my perfect sandwich. As a young girl, i used to put everything i could find into a crusty roll and retire to my sofa, curled up in a ball to munch and read. Hard boiled eggs, salami, ham, cucumber, pickle, cheese, tomatos... anything in the fridge was fair game. However, with age has come some restraint. I still prefer crusty rolls, soft on the inside but with plenty of bite on the outside but ive downsized the filling somewhat.

My current favourite has to be slices of chorizo and salami mixed up with salsa, tomato slices and phildephia. Each bite oozes with fresh tomato goodness and salty meat.

A Brief Introduction

Some of my earliest memories involve my parent's kitchen and getting to lick the bowl clean of the fairycake mixture. As long as i can remember i have loved cooking and food. There is nothing better than preparing a meal for people you love and seeing the looks of pleasure and happiness on their faces as they eat.