Tuesday 31 May 2011

Back to Basics

In a (possibly slightly warped) attempt to eat less meat and things, I roasted a big fat chicken today.
Ideally, I'd like it to last for the rest of the week, but I fear that, unless I cleverly disguise it, once it gets into the fridge it may not last long enough for leftovers creativity...

Chicken (on beetroots, turnips and wet garlic) roasting in oven.


And resting.


And tasty broad bean, asparagus and sorrel salad.



Yum.

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Burger Monday

Our menu for the evening (with handy instructions, in case we happen to have four different cuts of beef lying around at home to recreate the scene later)



First course - salad - may not look like much but was good and had yummy anchovy bits and a tasty crispy peppery crouton thing :-)


The main event...



Now that's a serious amount of burger.



You can't really see the scale in my rubbish pictures, but even with serious squashing, I couldn't properly fit it into my mouth :-)




And, just to make sure there was absolutely no way we'd need to eat again this week, pudding.




Burger Monday, brought to us by http://youngandfoodish.com/events/burgermonday and, more specifically today, by John Cadieux of Goodman and O'Shea's butchers.

I shall definitely be returning for further burgerage soonly - amazing!

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Friday 27 May 2011

Thursday 26 May 2011

Turnips

My vegetable box was full of teeny tiny turnips and wet garlic this week.
So - braised turnips and wet garlic with asparagus on the side. Tasty!



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Tuesday 24 May 2011

Haddock Monday

Steamed haddock with soy type dressing and stir fried spring greens.
All containing my first wet garlic of the year.
Yum.



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There Are Times...

... When only something stodgy and, to be honest, slightly nasty, will do :)
Katsu curry from Japanese Canteen...



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Pastrami Party

And pictures thereof...

Giant (v dense) rye bread wot I made.



Table laid with many breads, pickles and sauerkrauts


Pastrami




And a small mountain of doughnuts




Here's how they looked in progress









And here's what happens if you let your friends and family play with your Buzz Lightyear Potato Head


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Finishing Things Off

Courgettes with garlicky, chilliey tomato sauce.



And chocolate.
Can't stop eating this evening.
I blame my stupid cold ;-)

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Friday 20 May 2011

Oopsie

Forgot to photograph my eggsparagus with jerkonnaise tonight (you've seen it all before in any case...) so here's some pudding for you instead...
British strawberries with yogurt and a splendid splodge of wedding jam.



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Wednesday 18 May 2011

Quickfast Food

Asparagus, eggs and a miscellany of dressings/sauces...



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Tuesday 17 May 2011

Something Fishy

Haddock with asparagus, roasted tomatoes and watercress 'pesto'.
But no strawberries. Or raspberries. Because mean old Sainsburys didn't bring me any :(



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Monday 16 May 2011

Bottom-of-the-Fridge Food

Ratatouille (or thereabouts) with carrots and a very tiny bit of chicken...



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Sunday 15 May 2011

Day O' Seasonal Things

Artichoke for lunch.





And asparagus and the remaining gulls' eggs for tea. With butter.






The eggs were good. Very good. But probably not *really* good enough to justify the price tag. Am glad I tried though :)

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Biscuits

I've been experimenting with baking biscuits that don't raise your blood glucose levels too much.

It's quite a specific challenge, but one I have a particular interest in.

My first attempts yesterday went pretty well, but needed some further honing - my chief taster deemed them too floury/dry.







I had another go this morning - much more successfully. I originally thought they were a bit sweet, but the 'team' deem that to be just my lame tastebuds :-)

So here are the results... I made pretty small quantities, as I was tasting loads of things at once and changing things as I went - the recipes are for a moderate quantity of each, but they would also scale up or down depending on what you want to do.

I made pretty small biscuits in all cases - personally, I prefer that approach - means you can have more helpings :-)
All of them have things in that will raise blood glucose a bit, but, particularly if eaten at mealtimes for pudding or similar, they shouldn't hurt too much!







Three different recipes:

Soft Chocolate Cookies
100g butter (I used salted - if you don't, you'll want to add a pinch of salt to the recipe)
40g fructose sugar (I got mine from Holland and Barratt - pretty sure some supermarkets have it too)
20g cocoa powder
120g ground almonds
20g plain flour

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the other ingredients (including salt if you used unsalted butter) and mix to form a fairly stiff dough.
Put teaspoons of the mixture onto a lined baking sheet.
I baked for about 15 minutes at 150 in my fan oven - you'd probably need it to be a bit hotter with no fan.
These were pretty nice plain, but, after they've cooled, you could dollop on a little bit of melted chocolate (mixed with butter if you want to reduce the sugar further, though it won't make *that* much difference) and top with fruit or nuts.
These, in particular, have very little in them to raise blood glucose excessively - of course they will a bit, but they didn't affect me too much at all.

Shortbread Type Biscuits
100g butter (as above)
60g fructose
120g plain flour
120g ground rice


Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the other ingredients (including salt if you used unsalted butter) and mix to form a stiff dough.
Roll mixture into little balls and flatten into rounds on a lined baking sheet.
I didn't do it this time, but this recipe would lend itself really well to chocolate chips (plain chocolate won't raise blood glucose much in this) or nuts or similar.
Alternatively, if you make thumbprints in each biscuit before baking, you can put little splodges of jam in the imprints when you take them out of the oven - sugary, but only a very little bit.
Or, of course, just keep them plain.
As above, I baked for about 15 minutes at 150 in my fan oven - you'd probably need it to be a bit hotter with no fan.


Splodge Cookies
I was really pleased with the way these turned out. Can't decide whether these or the chocolate ones were my favourite.

100g butter (as above)
60g fructose
60g plain flour
60g ground rice
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the other ingredients (including salt if you used unsalted butter) and mix to form a soft dough.
Splodge teaspoons of the mixture onto a lined baking sheet.
As above, I baked for about 15 minutes at 150 in my fan oven - you'd probably need it to be a bit hotter with no fan.

I'm definitely going to do more of this - I already have a pretty good idea of how to make cakes that raise blood glucose a bit less. Cookies/biscuits are more of a challenge, but I'm quite inspired now - I have loads of ideas that I want to try :-)


Saturday 14 May 2011

Feeeeeesh

Dover sole and asparagus.



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Gulls' Eggs

With asparagus, tomatoes and the end of the asparagus-end puree.


There were actually two eggs, but, in my excitement, I ate one before taking the photo.

They were nice. Creamy.

I have another two to eat later this weekend.
I'll formulate a more eloquent opinion by then!


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Bonus Lunch

Thought I was going to have my, increasingly all too frequent, lunch of diet coke and slightly stale office air today.
In fact, though, my rather lovely colleague wandered off to City Caphe, braved the mighty queue and brought tasty things back for the hungry masses.
Summer rolls for me. Huge big overflowing ones. Yum.




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Friday 13 May 2011

Late Tea

Mushrooms, spring onions and garlic with asparagus puree.
And mayonnaise and sweet chilli sauce.
A bit lame, but didn't get home till after 10, so couldn't be bothered to do anything better.



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Wednesday 11 May 2011

Mushrooms

Mushrooms stuffed with spicy stuff and some stolen chicken livers. And asparagus. Of course ;-)


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Tuesday 10 May 2011

Twitter-Steamed Fish

As recommended by my lovely twitter advisory committee...
Steamed haddock with soy, lime, chilli, garlic and ginger type dressing and asparagus.
Husband also had rice.
The picture is his - was prettier than mine (though - looking back at this picture - evidently not much...)



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Yesterday

Asparagus with tomatoes, asparagus-end puree and sweet chilli sauce.
Yum yum yum :)




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Sunday 8 May 2011

Weekend Asparagus

Asparagus with asparagus end purée, tomatoes and eggs.
I know - I'm so original...



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Lunch

The ham that we got my dad for his birthday last week.



Yummy


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Saturday 7 May 2011

Using Things Up

Fridge is now almost bare...

Something I'd like to call slaw, but probably isn't, because it doesn't have cabbage served with the end of the confit pork and rice for husband and eggses for meeeeeeee.



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Cakesperimental

So, as twittered earlier, I had a burning cake making desire today, but tragically no butter at all, and little inclination to venture out and forage for any...

I did, however, have a great big tub of full fat Total yogurt, which husband had accidentally bought in a fit of supermarket overenthusiasm.

So I thought to myself "Yogurt - that's quite like butter, right?" and proceeded with the following cakesperiment (you'll have to forgive the dreadful food styling and photography - you'd think I'd be getting better at it by now, wouldn't you?)

It worked (though am officially worst food stylist/photograph... on Twitpic

Jennie's Experimental (but successful) Raspberry Yogurt Loaf Cake


You will need:

  • 3 large eggs
  • 7oz caster sugar (plus extra for topping)
  • 7oz SR flour
  • 7oz full fat yogurt
  • Raspberries (mine were frozen)
  • Orange zest (optional)
  • Pinch of salt
And here's what you do:
  1. Pre heat oven to 180 (or reasonable baking temperature)
  2. Break eggs into bowl and whisk until fluffy
  3. Add sugar and whisk into eggs
  4. Chuck in flour, salt, yogurt and zest and fold into mix (but don't mix too hard)
  5. Put into loaf tin (or similar) and poke raspberries into top (I usually do this with fruit in cakes, rather than mixing into mixture as it seems to stop them sinking too far and stops the whole mixture going pink)
  6. Sprinkle the top with a reasonable layer of sugar
  7. Stick into the oven and bake for about half an hour (or till cooked)
  8. When cool (but sill warm), turn out of tin and stuff slices into mouth, preferably garnished with further yummy yogurt and a glass of amontillado :)
I was really pleased with the way this turned out - quite muffiny and definitely tasty. 
I'm going to put in more raspberries next time (blueberries would also be nice - I love baked blueberries) and maybe a bit of juice as well as the zest.

No butter = Not a disaster at all :-)

Friday 6 May 2011

Lamb Friday

Rack o'lamb with miso sweet potato mash and a leeky baked thing...




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Location:London,United Kingdom

And A Catch Up Meal

From earlier in the week...
Haddock, asparagus and mayonnaise. Not remotely exciting, but pretty nice anyway.




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Dinner of Best Things

Last night I ate some of my favourite things :)

Asparagus, eggs, pickled onions (is there ANYTHING that isn't improved by pickling?) and sweet chilli sauce.
Big Yum.



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Tuesday 3 May 2011

First Day Back After Long Weekend

Calls for something a bit luxurious...
So - seabass and roasted asparagus and tomatoes.




Followed by yummy British strawberries - hurray for the polytunnels, I say :)

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Monday 2 May 2011

End of Bank Holiday Tea

Alas... Back to work tomorrow. At least it's a short week - it's hard to imagine what it must be like to work for a full five days ;)

Leek and kidneys with tomato sauce. Served with grilled courgettes and asparagus.




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