Review: Eat by Nigel Slater

Another review of another Nigel Slater book and one that I would wholeheartedly recommend buying. The book is split into several different sections according the method of serving, eating or cooking. At the beginning of each chapter Nigel offers tips and tricks to getting the best out of that particular method of cooking or eating along with a few informal recipes which are his favourite for that method. Eat isn’t a typical recipe book as for each recipe there are at least 2 or 3 suggestions for variations of that recipe which is good if you weren’t keen on an aspect of the original recipe. Like all Nigel Slater recipes they are very simple and quick to rustle up. Its a very good book to turn to if you have ingredients in the kitchen you think you could make a meal out of but aren’t sure as you can look up recipes by main ingredient. The focus is on everyday eating and nothing is too showy or complicated. Expect simple twists on ‘blueprint’ classics. On my ‘to cook’ list: Vietnamese prawn baguettes, artichokes with cannelini beans, pork and mango kebabs, lentil bolognaise, spiced mushrooms on naan.

Review: A Modern Way to Eat by Anna Jones

Anna Jones provides over 200 satisfying, everyday vegetarian recipes that will make you feel amazing  in this brilliant recipe book. It’s split into breakfast, snacks, soups, salads, lunches, dinners, desserts, drinks, and jams and chutneys. The meals are intended to be nourishing, quick and simple and are all entirely vegetarian. Despite being vegetarian the recipes don’t rely heavily on cheese and carbs but are healthy, nutritious and satisfying. Anna tries to bring together a type of food where clean and healthy meets delicious, where sustainable meets affordable, where quick and easy meets hearty. As with many healthy recipe books Anna guides her reader through the often confusing world of new healthy ingredients, explains the benefits of being gluten-free and eating less meat and most importantly includes helpful flow diagrams to help you put together your own recipes such as salads, soups and smoothies. Don’t miss: charred pepper and halloumi stew, pan-dressed noodles with crunchy cabbage and crispy tofu, sweet potato quesadillas and the apple molasses cake.

Cranberry and White Chocolate Flapjacks

I made these flapjacks for my grandparents when I went to visit them a couple of weeks ago and they went down well! I am always hesitant to make flapjacks as getting the consistency right can be tricky; too long in the oven and they will break your teeth and not long enough and they will sloppy. The recipe is from John Whaite Bakes (a previous Great British Bake Off winner) and I was really impressed by the outcome and how easy it was to follow the recipe (I want to try out one of the more complex recipes such as macarons soon). I made a few adjustments to the recipe such as swapping died apricots for dried cranberries and I shortened the cooking time to 15 minutes to reduce the risk of over-baking.

Cranberry and White Chocolate Flapjacks

Ingredients

• 200g dried cranberries
• 225g salted butter, cubed
• 120g light brown muscavado sugar
• 150g runny honey
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp treacle
• 400g rolled oats
• 200g white chocolate, for topping

30 x 20cm Swiss roll tin, greased and lined with baking paper

Preheat the oven to 180C. Finely chop the cranberries. Put the butter, sugar and honey in a saucepan over a medium heat and stir until melted and well mixed, then add the cranberries, lemon zest and treacle and mix in. Tip in the oats and stir into an oaty mush.

Dollop into the prepared tin and even out. bake for 20-25 minutes (15 minutes was long enough for me), or until just darkened around the edges and golden brown in colour. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before turning out from the tin and slicing into 16 rectangles.

Melt the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the flapjacks. Allow chocolate to set.

 

Review: Hemsley Hemsley: The Art of Eating Well

This collection of delicious recipes come from the gorgeous Hemsley sisters. Their philosophy on food is eating the best food that you can, making healthy eating easy to maintain, sustainable and enjoyable. The place an emphasis on using local, fresh produce free from chemicals yet encourage you only to spend what you can afford by planning, bulk buying and making things from scratch. This is not just a recipe book but a guide to living the ‘Hemsley Hemsley’ lifestyle by advising you on how to stock your kitchen with the right ingredients, such as oils and fats, nuts and seeds, pseudocereals, natural sweeteners, herbs and spices, and vegetables. They also explain each set of ingredients, why they are important and how to get the best from them. The book takes you through breakfasts, soups, salads, sides and snacks, meat and fish dishes, vegetable mains, baking and desserts, and drinks. There is also a further section comtaining basic recipes and methods such as cashew milk, almond flour and hazelnut butter. My favourite recipes that I have tried out so far are the baked courgette fries eaten with the feta and black bean burgers. I also whipped up some of the broccoli, pea and mint mash which was delicious on sesame Ryvita crispbreads. Be sure to try: the baked broccoli fritters and avacado dip, the beef ragu with courgetti, buckwheat burritos, BB brownies and the strawberry, mint and cucumber smoothie.

GBBO March’s Recipe: Mexican Breadsticks

March’s recipe was for Mexican breadsticks for which you have to make two types of dough and twist them together to achieve the striped pattern. I really enjoyed making my own dough as normally it is something I struggle with and turns out rubbish. However, the dough for this recipe worked out well! We ate the breadsticks with this amazing avocado aioli; the freshness of the dip matched the spicyness of the breadsticks perfectly.

Mexican Breadsticks

Ingredients

• 90g cornmeal plus extra for dusting
• 370g strong white bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 5g (1 tsp) fast-action dried yeast
• 1/2 tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp smoked sweet paprika
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 4 tsp virgin olive oil
• 300ml lukewarm water
• 100g drained sliced jalopeno chillies (from a jar)

Put the cornmeal, flour, salt and yeast into a bowl and mix thoroughly with your hand. Tip half of the mixture into another bowl and add the chilli powder, cumin, both paprikas and the garlic and onion powders. Mix well. Make a well in the dry ingredients in each bowl.

Add half the oil and the water to one bowl and mix to a soft but not sticky dough. Sprinkle the worktop and your hands with cornmeal, then turn out the dough and knead it thoroughly for about 5 mins until very smooth and elastic. Return it to the bowl and cover the top with clingfilm. Repeat all this for the other bowl. Leave the 2 doughs to rise in a warm spot for about an hour until doubled in size.

Towards the end of the rising, heat your oven to 180C. Chop the chillies finely. Put them on a clean tea towel and squeeze them dry.

Sprinkle the cornmeal on your worktop. Place the white dough on this and sprinkle it with a little cornmeal. Roll out to a rectangle about 18 x 16 cm and 1 cm thick. Cover the dough evenly with the chopped chillies and gently press them into the dough. Roll out the dark pink dough to a rectangle exactly the same size as the white one, then set it on top and gently press the 2 doughs together.

Roll out the layered dough to a rectangle 36 x 20 cm and 5 mm thick. Using  pizza wheel-cutter or a large sharp knife, cut the rectangle in half to make 2 pieces each 36 x 10 cm. Cut each piece across into strips 2 cm wide and 10 cm long.

One at a time, roll each strip with your hands back and forth on the worktop to make a thin pencil shape about 25 cm long. Twist the strip to give a striped candy-cane effect, then roll in a little extra cornmeal. As the breadsticks are shaped, set them slightly apart on baking sheets.

Once they are all shaped, place in the heated oven and bake for 30-35 minutes until golden and crisp; give the baking sheets a little shake halfway through the baking time so the breadsticks turn over slightly. Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container.

A Trio of Danish Flowers

I stitched up these flowers (dandelion, daisy and iceland poppy) from the Gerda Bengtsson cross stitch book I picked up a little while ago. I chose these three flowers because of the similar fresh colour scheme. I decided to display the finished flowers in a different way to my usual hoop as the pieces of evenweave I used weren’t big enough for hoops. I quite liked the idea of displaying the flowers as if they were specimens from a book on flowers so I stuck the finished design to a piece of white card and then stuck that to a piece of brown card using green washi tape. I then wrote the name of the flower on some white tape and stuck that along the bottom of the brown card.

Passion Fruit Madeleines

A quick post today on Nigel Slater’s yummy passion fruit madeleines I made a few weeks ago. Madeleines are one of my favourite sweet treats to bake and eat as they are quick to whip up and, if made properly, they are so little and light. These madeleines differ from classic version as they are drizzled with a passion fruit syrup which makes them very moist and then drizzled with a passion fruit icing to inject them with more flavour.

Healthy Banana Bread

My sister and I love baking but also are into our healthy eating so when I saw this recipe on Niomi Smart’s youtube channel I really wanted to give it a go when my sister came to stay with me for a few days. I adapted the recipe slightly to my taste and I also found the mixture to be very doughy rather than a wet batter as is normal for banana bread.

Healthy Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 1 cup rye flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup coconut oil
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 Medjool dates

 

If you’re dates don’t feel squishy then place them in a bowl of water for a few minutes. If they feel soft enough skip this step.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the ground almonds, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice and a pinch of salt.

Melt the coconut oil in a small pan over a medium heat.

Mash the 3 bananas with the back of a fork until they are smooth and then remove the dates from the water and remove their stones. Mash the dates with the back of a fork too until a thick paste forms.

In a small mixing bowl, mix the mashed bananas, egg and dates together and add the vanilla extract. Add the coconut oil. Pour this wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir until combined.

Spoon the mixture into a lined loaf tin. Bake for 35 minutes. After 35 minutes poke a knife through the centre of one of the loaves and remove it. If it is clean, the banana bread is ready.

What Delilah Did Anatomical Heart

In our living groom we had a spare space under a poster which was crying out for something to fill it. I hung the floral folk heart in the space but my boyfriend wasn’t as keen on it as me so as a compromise I suggested that I cross stitch something we both liked. At first we liked the idea of a sugar skull but I remembered this design and thought it would work even better. Having stitched up some all black designs by What Delilah Did before I knew that it could be a bit of a challenge and require some concentration. However, it wasn’t too bad and was relatively quick to stitch up. I painted an embroidery hoop black and temporarily framed it in that until I can find a good framers in Liverpool.

Apple Molasses Cake with Honey Icing

This is a recipe from Anna Jones’ new cookbook A Modern Way to Eat which I received for my birthday from my boyfriend (I will be doing a review of it on here soon). I was in the mood to bake so I turned to this book I knew quite a lot of the recipes are healthier than your usual cake recipes. There is a big emphasis in this book on using fresh, good quality ingredients which are as unrefined as possible. I tried to use the ingredients recommended but had to substitute some things that I couldn’t find. Although I did overcook the top of the cake slightly it still ended up being very moist, full of flavour and, most importantly, delicious!

Apple Molasses Cake with Honey Icing

For the cake

• 250g buckwheat flour
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• pinch of ground allspice
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp molasses
• 150g soft brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150ml olive oil
• 3 apples (I used Pink Lady)
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated

For the icing

• 125g butter, at room temperature
• 3 tbsp honey
• 200g icing sugar
• small handful of almonds, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 200C. Sift your flour into a bowl with the cinnamon, allspice, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. In another, mix the molasses, sugar, eggs and olive oil until you have a deep, dark, even mixture. Stir in the flour mixture and mix again, until evenly combined. The mixture should be quite thick. Grate in the apples and ginger and mix well.

Butter and line a 450g loaf tin, pour the cake mix in and smooth out the top with the back of a spoon. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until a skewer poked into the cake comes out clean. Check from time to time by peering through the oven door. If the top looks like its browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil.

Once golden, remove from the oven and cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing: beat the butter, honey and icing sugar together in a bowl until whippy and fluffy. spread the icing thickly over the cake and sprinkle over the almonds.