Vegetable Frittata

Hello everyone!

This is one of my most favourite recipes as it takes no time at all and can be done with any ingredients that are lying about in the fridge. The Veggie Frittata is a recipe from the cookbook ‘Learning to Bake’ from the Great British Bake Off collection. The rice is a recipe from Gordon Ramsay. I chose to do more exciting rice, but you could just have plain rice, or serve the frittata with potatoes and more vegetables.

STEP BY STEP.

Serves 4 people

Ingredients for frittata: 2-4 spring onions, 1 courgette (roughly 150g), 1 red pepper, 8-10 cherry tomatoes, 2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil, good pinch of dried chilli, salt and black pepper, 130g ball mozzarella, 4 eggs, 6 tbsp double or single cream.

Ingredients for rice: 250g basmati rice, 1 large onion – finely chopped, 3 tbsp of olive oil, 1 bay leaf, 1 small cinnamon stick, 6 cardamom pods – split open, 600ml of chicken stock (I used vegetable stock instead).

Step one

To begin making the Frittata you will need to preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius, and wash all the vegetables.

Step two

 You will then want to put the spring onions onto a chopping board and trim off the root ends as well as some of the green at the top. Using a sharp knife slice the across the way into small, thin circles. Using the same knife cut each end off of the courgette and cut lengthways in half, then go onto cutting each half into half again so you are left 4 strips. Cut across the strips to make 1cm chucks.

Step three

Cut the pepper in half lengthways and carefully remove all the seeds and white

‘ribs’ from each half. Cut the pepper into roughly 3-5 strips and then cut each strips into 1cm chunks. Rise off the tomatoes and cut them in half lengthways.

Step four

In a large pan, allow the oil to heat up on a low heat. When hot carefully add all the chopped vegetables, chilli flakes and black pepper. Turn the heat up and stir with a wooden spoon every so often for 7 – 10 minutes or until the courgettes have little brown specks on them, remove the pan from the heat and allow the mixture to cool.

Step six

While the mixture for the frittata is cooling you can start to prepare the rice. Add the finely chopped onion into a pan along with the oil and cook for five minutes.

Step seven

Add the rice into the pan along with the herbs and whole spices, cook this for one – two minutes, then add the stock and bring to the boil, then cover and then put into the oven for around 30 minutes or until the rice is cooked.

Step eight

While the rice is in the oven, you can start to make the frittata batter. Mix the cream and eggs together and cut or tear the mozzarella up into pieces.

Step nine

Spoon the cooled vegetables into heat proof ramekins or buttered Yorkshire pudding tins. Pour over the egg mixture and sprinkle on the mozzarella. Then place in the oven for 25 minutes until they are puffed and golden.

Step ten

Serve and eat at once. Enjoy!

Curry Night

Hello everyone!

                

My whole family loves spicy food, apart from my older sister, so when she was out one night, mum, dad and I decided to have a curry night, we went a little crazy. I was set the task of choosing the different dishes to cook. It’s fair to say it took me a while as there were so many delicious sounding recipes.

When I finally made my mind up I had settled on Saag Aloo, from the recipe book ‘Gaia’s Kitchen’ written by Julia Ponsonby and friends, Spicy green beans and Whole lentils with garlic and onion, both were from the recipe book ‘ Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery’ written by Madhur Jaffrey.  Since I had chosen three completely new recipes I decided to cook a rice I had already made, I choose ‘Cumin-infused Rice’ from the recipe book ‘Prashad’ written by Kaushy Patel. This rice was in my very first blog post.

The thing I hadn't realised before starting to prep the vegetables and spices was that all these dishes needed cooking within 20 minutes of cooking, and needed things added to them every few minutes. It was quite hectic managing to prepare it all in time.

Saag Aloo is one of my favourite types of curry as it is not to spicy so still taste everything after you eat it unlike some other types of curry.  

The Sagg Aloo only really took 10-15 minutes to cook as you just had to par boil the potatoes and then add  them to a pan with the different spices along with the spinach. This was relatively easy to cook and definitely worth it at the end.

The thing I really like about ‘Gaia’s Kitchen’ recipe book is that it gives you the amount of ingredients you would need for 4-6 people and for 40 people, so if you are holding a party or something like that you don’t have to faf about working out the different quantities.

The spicy green beans were extremely hot, but still delicious. Like the Saag Aloo  they were easy enough to make, you just had make sure you kept track of when and what you added. I would definitely recommend making these if you love spicy food, just be wary of how much chilli you add.

The whole green lentils with garlic and onion were lovely. They didn't really have a spicy kick as you added ¼ tsp of cayenne pepper to spice it up a little. It was kind of like a dhal but then not. The cumin seeds give the dish a delicious flavour and after taste overall. This would go really nicely along with a spicy curry as it is cooler and can cleanse your pallet.

Finally, the rice was, as before, delicious. I forgot how ‘easy’ it was to make, you just had to toast cumin seeds and caramelise onion, and then add the rice. Simple yet tasty.

I recommend trying these recipes as they are simple, you just need to plan ahead.

Lasange

Happy New Year, this year I have set myself a new years resolution to post more regularly on here, so lets hope I keep it up!

Do you ever have one of those days where you want to cook, but kind of can’t really be bothered?? Sounds strange but that is how I usually feel, so on those days I like to not really follow a recipe and use up what is in the fridge.

My Gran always makes the most amazing tasting lasagne I have ever tasted, and I thought I would give it a go. We already had some left over mushrooms and peppers in the fridge, so I added one onion to that to form a base. To make a good lasagne filling I use tinned chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, garlic puree and the secret ingredient... marmite. Even if you don’t like marmite add 1 tsp-2 tsp and it will give your filling a delicious salty, sticky, savoury flavour that is to die for.

When I was first diagnosed with ceoliac disease the nurses told me that I could not eat quorn products, this was slightly depressing as my whole family is vegetarian (apart from me) and they ate it a lot, so I would have to cook separate meals for myself. But recently when I was looking through the freezer I read the back of the quorn mince packet and low and behold...I CAN EAT IT!!! This made me slightly too happy as it meant less faffing.

Thanks to my new discovery I added quorn mince to the mixture along with the vegetables. The gluten free lasagne sheets I used did not need pre-cooked so I could just build it without them being part cooked.

Finally, the topping. This has to be my favourite part, my Gran uses Boursin for her sometimes, but I decided to use some garlic and herb Philadelphia and a little grated cheese.

I guarantee any left over veg will make a great lasagne and you should definitely try it!

Food Haul

When I went to The Good Food show in Glasgow, it’s fair to say I went a little crazy and bought quite a lot.

We had seen this stall in previous years, but thought the sausages were meat. I managed to drag mum up to it and we found out that they were actually vegetarian sausages, and they were gluten free!!! They have several other flavours, but we went for Rosemary and onion, Lincolnshire and Chilli and Coriander.  Fair to say that was a good choice. They were delicious, full of chunky vegetables and lovely flavours.

Orkney Smoked Cheddar makes lovely cheese. We have previously had cheese from them so went straight there to buy the dark smoked flavour. They have lighter smoked ones, but I prefer the more intense flavour. They had a deal where you got three cheeses, a garlic dip and the smoked garlic for £10. We decided to get it all. The cheeses were as good as we remembered and the smoked garlic smells amazing and I’m really looking forward to cooking with it.

Mrs Crumbles are a gluten free company that sell their products in my local supermarket and I regularly buy their products. When I went looking around the ‘free from’ stalls I saw that they not only had a stall, but were selling any 5 items for £5. This may seem a lot, but for gluten free it’s really cheap. Usually they cost a lot more. Obviously I begged mum to get some things, she was easily persuaded. We bought some crackers, potato bites, cheese bites and peanut cookies. The cheese bites are my favourite so far, especially the tomatoes and olive flavoured ones.

Punjaban Curry Sauces are amazing. There are varying spice levels such as mild medium and hot. AS my sister doesn’t really like spice we didn't

get any hot spiced ones. They are all gluten free and taste amazing.

Mum and I managed to book into a master class and see Paul and Mary, it was great and some lucky members of the audience got to go up onto stage and taste what they both had cooked.

Poached Pears

Recently The Great British Bake Off has been on television. During pudding week, Louis made a pear dessert, I can’t remember it exactly, but this gave me the idea to make poached pears for the first time. It was actually easier than expected and tasted like heaven! My family and I ate it up too quickly for me to take a photo, so instead, I’m going to give you the recipe! I found this recipe in ‘Dangerous Desserts’ which is a cook book full of recipes from the Good Food magazine.

Poached Pears with Chocolate sauce.

Serves 4 people.

Ingredients

·         

       4 firm pears, peeled

·         50g/2oz golden caster sugar

·         Juice and pared rind of ½ lemon

·         100g/3 ½ oz plain chocolate, broken into pieces

·         3-4 tbsp double cream

1.     Slice the pears in half, leaving the stalks intact, and scoop out the cores. Pour 450ml/ ¾ pint water into a shallow pan, add the sugar, lemon juice and rind and heat gently until the sugar dissolves.

2.       

      Bring the liquid to the boil, then add the pear halves and cover with a dampened disc of non-stick baking paper. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until the pears are tender when pierced with a knife. Leave to cool in the poaching liquid.

3.      

            Place the chocolate in a small pan with 6 tablespoons of the poaching liquid and melt over a very low heat, (I did this in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water) stirring continuously, until smooth(you need to keep stirring, even though it may look like it is going wrong). Remove from the heat.

4.       

        Divide the chocolate sauce between 4 dessert plates. Spoon little dots of the cream on each plate and feather with the tip of a skewer. (I didn't do this as my mum doesn't like cream, instead I poured the chocolate sauce over the pears and didn't use the cream). Remove the pears from the poaching liquid, pat dry with kitchen paper and arrange on top of the chocolate sauce, serve at once.

Overall I loved this recipe, but my mum didn't like the sauce as it was slightly too bitter. However I prefer dark chocolate so I liked it. If you have a sweet tooth, you could try substituting the plain chocolate for milk chocolate and see how it turns out.

Later on this week me and my mum are going up to Glasgow to see the Good Food show. There will be lots of stalls selling cooking tools and food. Also we have booked into the theater there to see Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry doing a master class, so keep your eyes peeled, as I will be putting up a post about it and there will hopefully be some pictures.

I'm Back!

It appears that I forgot I actually had a blog for the last 6 months, I’m sorry. I have been busy cooking and baking, but they were gone to quickly to take photos! Also, I have mastered making gluten free pastry at last!! I will try to upload a picture next time I make it! 

Soup

As the weather has been colder mum said that for dinner I could cook soup....I LOVE SOUP!!!

We didn’t actually have a recipe as we thought we could just use up what was in the fridge.

I started off by chopping and peeling carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips and leeks into chunks as we would whizz it up after cooking. When mum got home I had to re-chop all the vegetables as apparently they were ‘too big’. We cooked the veg with coconut milk, vegetable stock and garlic. Near the end we added a tbsp of ‘Simply Add Chilli’ which is a sauce/ chutney, which would add even more flavour to the soup.

It was served with Gluten free rolls for me and baguette for the rest of my family.