Mexican munchies

Tonight's feast is brought to you by FH.  I selfishly went out to meet my lovely friend (although I am biased) for a swift cocktail or two, and left the man at home to prepare the constituent parts for the dinner, so that I could stumble through the door, chuck it all together and take all the glory.  He even did the washing up - I am too spoilt.

On the menu tonight:

Quesadillas with avocado, mexican cornbread and chill jam

The quesadillas are our own recipe, but the cornbread comes straight from The Meat Free Monday Cookbook.  The recipe can be found here.  As I say, I didn't cook this one, but FH said that it was very easy.  His exact quote was "Chuck it all in and cook until brown."  I'm not sure if that's exactly how it went down, but it was delicious either way.  For the UK version of the recipe, the oven should be at 180 degrees/gas mark 4, and a "heaping cup" of polenta means 175g.

On a side note, it's odd how even in this one short recipe, there are so many divergences from UK cookery to US.  Aside from the above, you also have cilantro and scallions.  I've also seen some confusion over polenta/cornmeal/cornflour.  Pfft... you'd think we spoke different languages, or something.

The quesadillas are so easy to make that they hardly need a recipe.  The filling is two sliced onions fried in a little oil on a high heat for about 20 seconds until they just begin to catch at the edges.  Then turn the heat down to medium and add two sliced red peppers and a handful of sliced mushrooms.  Fry for two-three minutes, depending on your preference for crispy/crunchy then add just over half a teaspoon of smoked paprika, and a tablespoon or so of chopped coriander.  Sometimes I like to add a tablespoon or so of orange juice at this point.  It adds a sweetness to the paprika and makes everything a little sticky.  We don't drink much juice now though, so this got missed this time.  Turn the heat back up for a minute, and you're all set.

When you're cooking the quesadillas, heat a dry pan big enough to comfortably accommodate your flour tortilla.  Pop it in and cook on high for 10 seconds.  Then spread with a teaspoon of sour cream, dot on some pickled jalapeños to taste, two tablespoons of the pepper mix, and grate over as much cheddar cheese as your arteries can take.  I would usually hoy on some salsa too, but our pantry let us down and there was none to be had.  This recipe is adapted from one that I would usually stick left over roast chicken in, but actually I don't think it loses much in the meat-freeing process.

Finally, serve with avocado seasoned with chilli salt.  Chilli salt is amazing and very easy to make.  It comes out almost like chilli sherbet.  Mix a tablespoon of chilli flakes with equal parts sugar and salt and the zest of one lime.  Mix and keep in a jar until needed.  We don't keep ours in the fridge and there's no sign of mould a few months later.  On that note... yum yum.

Lime and chilli salt

Appe-Thai-sing lunch (all puns courtesy of FH)

We are four days into our vegetarian experiment and have only... five weeks to go.  Crikey.  So far, so good, though.

We have been quite busy since Wednesday evening, so we grabbed a pizza (spinach and ricotta) from Sainsbury's on Friday before heading over to a house party (and I thought we were too old for such shenanigans) at Mr. B's.  It turns out that I am too old for it, and got over excited - by which I mean had toothache, not GDFO - and had to be sent home to bed.  I let the youngster bat on, though and the party drifted on into the night.  According to FH, a jolly fine time was had by all.

Today was the first cooking I've done since Wednesday, so I rustled up the vegetable laksa that had been on the menu for Friday night.  I have adapted this recipe from a chicken one I've done a couple of times.  I'm not usually one to follow a recipe, but this does owe a debt to a Ching-He Huang recipe that was in the Good Food magazine back in 2012.

Vegetable laksa

Vegetable laksa with carrot and courgette noodles

Feeds four

For the laksa paste
A good glug of sesame seed oil	2 peppers
3 garlic cloves	1 carrot
2 stalks of lemongrass	1 courgette
A thumb of ginger	300g beansprouts
2-3 chilies	2 tsp chopped coriander
1 tsp shrimp paste	25g dried mixed mushrooms
1 tsp each turmeric, ground coriander and cumin	225g can of water chestnuts
A squeeze of honey	100ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp of coconut milk taken from can	Juice of 1 lime
	400ml can of coconut milk
	1 tbsp fish sauce
	Thai basil, if available

Chop the ingredients for the laksa paste roughly and pulse together in a mini-blender. 

[If you do not have a mini-blender and think “huh, what a waste of cupboard space”, you could not be more wrong.  They are amazingly useful.  Buy one today!]

Another handy tip is to peel ginger using a teaspoon.  The skin is papery thin, but tricky to get off using a normal peeler because of the irregular shape of the ginger, and if you use a knife you end up losing quite a bit of the ginger.

Anyway, the paste should turn out a beautiful yellow colour because of the turmeric.

Prep the veg for the soup by finely slicing the peppers, soaking the mushrooms in warm water, ribbonning the courgette and carrots with a vegetable peeler then slicing the ribbons so that you have something resembling wide colourful noodles.

Heat a wok or high-sided pan, and add the laksa paste and fry for about a minute on a medium high heat. 

It should give off a fantastic smell, but make sure that you don’t have your washing hanging in the same room; what smells good in food, doesn’t smell so great on laundry.

Add the peppers to the pan and give them a stir to coat with the paste and fry for a few minutes more.

Add the liquid ingredients, the mushrooms and the mushroom-soaking water.   Fish sauce often smells a little funky just after you add it to things, but it soon mellows out, so don't worry too much.  I tend to use less than recipes generally call for, but it does make a difference in the end, so stick with it.

Bring to a simmer and add the rest of the ingredients.

The broth should be enough to just about cover the other ingredients.  Add a little more water if necessary, or some light soy sauce.  Taste as you go to see what’s needed; if you need to add a lot more water, another stock cube probably won’t go amiss.

As the vegetable noodles are only thin, they should only need a minute or so in the broth.

Dish up and sprinkle over the garnish ingredients. 

I served this with some thai crackers and it was delicious.

You can use pretty much any veg you have knocking about for this recipe.  It also works well with chicken and prawns.

This fortified us for a trip to the pub to watch the Irish spanking the Italians, and the wretched French team somehow beating Scotland at the death.  As things stand, it would still be possible, I believe, for France to win the Six Nations.  Let's hope that doesn't happen, because it would be a travesty; Huget would have won all by himself.

Anyhow, after the rugby, we came home for a spot of pasta.

Rocket and blue cheese pasta

Rocket and blue cheese pasta

Feeds two

Enough pasta for two (I’m not great at pasta or rice quantities, so I’m not going to try and guess)

1 onion

1 courgette

3-5 mushrooms (depending on size or mushrooms and appetite)

2 cloves garlic

2 tsp sundried tomato paste

1tsp tomato puree

1 large handful of rocket

30g blue cheese

Chili oil

10g parmesan (or veggie alternative)

Pop your pasta on to boil according to packet instructions.

Dice the onion, mushrooms and courgette and fry in olive oil with the crushed garlic until the onion is translucent.

Add the tomato pastes and stir.  If the sauce is too thick, add a little water to loosen it.

When the pasta is done, drain it badly so some of the cooking water is transferred when you add the pasta to the sauce.

Stir until the pasta is well coated, and take off the heat.

Stir through the rocket and the blue cheese (you’ll want to break it up before you put it in).

Dish up and top with the parmesan, chili oil and plenty of black pepper.

FH will be up on Monday with a Mexican feast.  Tomorrow we are going for a Sunday lunch at FH's  brother's girlfriend's mum's house.  We decided when we began this veggie nonsense, that we will eat whatever we're given when we go round to other people's houses, so we may well be back on the meat tomorrow.  I can't tell you how much I'm hoping that it's going to be pork...

Enough pasta for two (I’m not great at pasta or rice quantities, so I’m not going to try and guess)

1 onion

1 courgette

3-5 mushrooms (depending on size or mushrooms and appetite)

2 cloves garlic

2 tsp sundried tomato paste

1tsp tomato puree

1 large handful of rocket

30g blue cheese

Chili oil

10g parmesan (or veggie alternative)

Pescetarian Penitence

Spring is springing

After a long silence when I was mostly not very busy, but very lazy, I am back to report on FH's and my new adventure - we are going vegetarian at home for Lent.  Whew.

I am, as you may have guessed, back from France after my Parisian adventures and have been living in a garrett in Battersea for the last nine months.  It's good to be back!

Veggie meal one

Beetroot, red onion and chicory salad

So Lent began yesterday, and if we eat like this for the next 40 days, I will be a happy bunny indeed.  I am beginning to feel like the main challenge of the month won't be not eating meat, but will be not eating my body weight in cheese.  Almost every delicious-looking recipe I look at is pretty cheese heavy...








So, we ate a salad.  A salad with pears.  Now, I am not a fussy girl.  I have long said that there are only three things that I don't like - Phoenix claws (also known as chicken feet), marzipan and pears.  Now pears can come off the list!  They're still not my favourite things (I'm not a fan of the texture), but macerated in gooseberry vinegar, I have to admit they are pretty tasty.

Beetroot, red onion and chicory salad

Feeds four

	Dressing ingredients
Five or so golf-ball sized cooked beetroot	1tsp Dijon mustard
Two heads of chicory broken into leaves	3 tbsp red wine vinegar
Two pears cut into large chucks	3 tbsp good olive oil
150g feta cheese	Salt and pepper
One avocado in chunks
Handful of rocket
Two red onions
6 tbsp gooseberry vinegar
150g walnuts
A good drizzle of honey
Four bulbs of garlic (whole, skin-on)

Preheat the oven to 180°

The avocados and pears will start to oxidise and go brown as soon as they are cut up, so I poured over  three tablespoons of gooseberry vinegar and left them to macerate.  This won’t stop the browning altogether, but will stop it a bit.

Cut the onions into wedges, put them in a baking tray and drizzle with oil.  Put the whole garlic cloves in the same tray.  Roast for 30 minutes.

Cut the beetroot into bite-size pieces, pop in a baking tray and pour over the other three tablespoons of the gooseberry vinegar; into the oven with it for 20 minutes.

Put the walnuts into a baking tray (I realise that there are lots of baking trays involved here) – try to use a non-stick tray for this, otherwise you might have some issues afterwards.  Squeeze over the honey and give it a stir to coat.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Once nicely caramelised, tip onto a plate to cool a bit.

Rinse the rocket, if necessary, and put in a large bowl with the chicory leaves.  Add the beetroot, pear, avocado, onions and walnuts.

Crumble the feta over the top.

To make the dressing, mix together all the dressing ingredients and squeeze the garlic out of its skin and mush into the dressing.  The dressing might taste a bit too tart when you try it, but keep in mind that there are lots of sweet ingredients in the salad itself.

Enjoy!  I would say to serve it with bread or similar, but I ate so much salad (who knew that was possible!?) that it wasn’t necessary.

No more bacons - sad face!

So far so good, then with the vegetarianism, but I am sad that there will be no bacon for breakfast this weekend.  For the last few weekends we have been eating the tastiest sandwiches for breakfast.  It's two slices of toast, one of them spread with chilli jam and one spread with garlic mayo.  Slice half an avocado and mush it onto the side of the bread with the mayo.  Fry up three slices of bacon until super crispy and delicious, then pour over one egg beaten with a little milk and seasoning to make a bacon omelette.  When your omelette is cooked up good, fold it up so it'll fit into your sandwich.  Sandwich and enjoy.  Enjoy one for me, too!  

Hippety-hop brigade part II

When we were at the Hoxton, they asked us to take a publicity photo.  I did a bit of sleuthing (read: I e-mailed them to ask) and found the picture!

I told you.  Hats are totally cool.

When we were part of the hippety-hop brigade

Ok, so definitely more hip than hop.  Although the FH and I are neither trendsters nor rude boy/shorty wannabees we can pass for the former much easier than the latter.

Once upon a time before the Olympics had even begun (it was on the opening night), FH and I got dolled up in our glad rags, I put on a very fetching hat (below) and we hot-footed up to Hoxton for a night of being trendy to celebrate FH's birthday.  I have to admit that I was not feeling on the top of the world as I have recently (i.e. the day before) had a rather large altercation with a steep flight of stairs which ended in a visit to a very lovely and charming doctor at the local A&E for some stitches.  No sympathy necessary as it was almost entirely self-inflicted.  I say almost as the bottles of wine may also have had something to do with it.

Note hat: very fetching

Moving on from that unfortunate incident... FH and I went to Hoxton where we stayed at the über hip Hoxton Hotel, thrice-running winner of the Guardian's best UK hotle accolade, for the princely sum of £1.  One of your British pounds.  How?! I hear you ask... By having a very clever husband able to answer the questions and take advantage of their one pound offer quicker than the others who were out to snatch the prize.  Hooray for FH!

FH at the Hoxton Hotel

So, we arrived and settled in.  Very fine it was too.  We then went out to sample the night charms of Hoxton.  Were had a table booked at the St. John, which markets itself as nose-to-tale eating.  We went there feeling adventurous and determined to try something new. 

A side note here - FH and I love food.  As in luuuuurve food.  And we especially love trying new things.  To this end, we always share.  And not this namby-pamby one starter and a main to share.  We'll each have starter and main, but swap half way through.  This way we get to have four small dishes instead of two larger ones.  It also means, because we are incredibly competitive, that somebody gets to win.  The person who wins is the person who orders the nicest dish; there's a prize for every course, so sometimes the first course loser can quits on the main, or the starter winner can make it 2-0.  

Anyway, at St John's FH had lambs' tongues to start followed by rabbit, and I had roast bonemarrow followed by sweetbreads.  FH won the first course - the bonemarrow wasn't as tasty as I thought it would be and the lambs' tongues were delicious.  They were served cold which I wasn't really expecting, and they were really lamb-y, which was also a surprise; I don't think of Ox tongue as tasting particularly beefy.  I hands down won the second course; sweetbreads are delicious.  No pudding - I'm not a huge pudding gal.

By this time my injuries were starting to get the better of me and I limped back to the hotel accompanied by FH just in time to catch the most boring part of the opening ceremony - the athletes' procession; totally missed the Queen and James Bond.  However, I've seen it since and it was awesome.

We do love a bit of our Daniel

Bien arivée!

Arrived in France safe and sound despite having dislocated our shoulders with tugging along three ridiculously heavy suitcases; it was OK until we actually arrived and had five flights of stairs to climb.  I thought FH was going to murder me.  He might have done, I think, except for the fact that a) it would have rendered all the carrying pointless, and b) it was our anniversary.

Just some of the lovely stairs to my appartment

Despite the near-death and heavily-burdened nature of our anniversary, we did manage to have some nice treats too.  We had lunch of tasty lamb and couscous at home before striking out on our great adventure, which took us via the longest champagne bar in the world (it was on the way, being in St. Pancras and all).

Don't mind if I do...

It had the best feature in the world, which should be fitted as standard in all houses (above) and it made us very happy - a snackette calmed FH's worried nerves (and by nerves, I mean belly) - and we were ready for stage two of the journey.

I am aware that I look a bit sloshed, but I'd only had one!

Stage two was less than ideal, so we'll skip over that to the apartment.  It's small, but lovely and unlike the last time I was in France, I'm not sleeping in the living-room!  My own bedroom (despite it being a single) is a complete luxury.

Taken from 10 metres from my building...

 Also luxury is living this close to la tour eiffel.  Wow.  I've never lived in an area before where people do a double take when you tell them your address.  It's pretty cool, and I'm definitely getting ideas above my station.  FH told me that he'd never been up the Eiffel Tower before, so on Wednesday we clomped up all 700-odd stairs to the second platform and took the lift to the top.  It's still impressive, even having done it before, and this time I took the time to read all the signs about the construction and the landmarks visible.  It was very edukashunal.

Also on Wednesday, we went to the Café Constant, a little bistro-type place owned by a Michelin-starred chef.  We were meant to go on Tuesday evening when we arrived, but we were to late (by about two minutes) and got anniversary frozen pizza instead - romantic!  The café had been recommended by my new flatmate, and she certainly has good taste (both in resto and in flat buddies) because it was delicious.  There were interesting things on the menu too; a bit more out there than your typical bistro fayre.

So FH has now returned to the Big Smoke without me, and I am left in Paris to begin adventuring on my own.  

A little bit of knitting

And I mean very little...

In my quest for viable procrastination, I decided to knit a cardigan for my cousin's little girl who's due in September.  I have a vague recollection of promising something similar whilst a bit tipsy at a family get together back in May.  I figure that being pregnant and therefore not being drunk, she'll probably remember the conversation so I should try to make good my promise.

We're seeing her on Saturday, by which time she'll be roughly barge proportions, for a wedding (of another cousin).  I was aiming to have it ready and bingo! Deadline hit... Hooray!

The results:

A tiny cardi for a tiny Owls fan

I used this pattern, and it came up a bit small even though I made a gauge and everything.  Luckily I decided to make the 6 month version.  Thus when I made it little it only shrunk to newborn.  I reckon that if I'd begun at newborn it'd probably fit the guinea pig.

Despite its diminutive size, I'm really pleased with my effort.  This is the first entire garment I've made (beside scarves and gloves) and therefore represents an evolution in my knitting career.